And if I have, how can I clean up my mess in a city I barely know?
We finally stop at a simple bistro packed with natives. The swarthy maître d’ leads us to a red banquette in back, but even here Kate won’t look me in the eye. Then, staring at her hands on her lap, and in a cracking voice, she says, “Tom, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Not here. Not in front of everyone-where there’s nothing I can do.
“There’s something I’ve been meaning to say too,” I say. “But my head feels like it’s going to explode in here. Too noisy. Can we go someplace quieter, where it will be easier to talk?”
Apologizing to the maître d’, we step back onto the curb and walk toward the Jardin de Luxembourg.
But even at 11:00 p.m., it’s jammed with tourists. Every twenty yards or so there’s another street musician strumming a Beatles song, or a juggler tossing burning sticks, and the benches that are empty are too visible from the pathways.
Finally, I spot an empty bench in the shadow of some tall trees. After a quick check to make sure we can’t be seen, I pull her onto my lap. Still not quite believing that it’s come to this, I look into Kate’s eyes and put one hand at the bottom of her thin neck.
“Tom?”
“What is it, Kate?”
My heart is pounding so loud I can barely hear my words, and I look quickly over her shoulder to make sure no one is coming from the main path.
All night Kate could barely look at me. Now her eyes are like lasers, and she won’t take them off me, as if she’s studying my eyes to read my reaction to what she’s about to say.
“What, Kate? What’s the matter?” I ask, and bring my other hand to her throat.
“I want to have a baby, Tom,” she says. “I want to have your baby.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but Kate, desperate for an answer, stares at me like a deer caught in headlights.
“Only one?” I whisper, kissing the tears on her cheek and lowering my trembling hands to her waist. “I was hoping for three or four.”
Chapter 115. Tom
HOURS AFTER OUR first baby-making session, I lie calmly on my side and watch Kate sleep, the desperation of a few hours ago just about swept away by euphoria. I used to hate to think about the future. I’d boxed myself into such a tight corner I didn’t have much of one. Now I’m sitting prettier than the asshole who graduates first in his class at Harvard Law School.
Kate and I just won the biggest murder trial in the last ten years. We could live or work anywhere in the world, be partners at any law firm in the country, make a couple million a year between us without breaking a sweat. Or maybe, if we’re not quite ready to jump back into the harness, we just hang in Paris for a while. Stretch our trip from a week to a couple of months. Rent an apartment in the Marais. Soak up the culture. Learn about wine.
A happy woman is such a lovely sight, and Kate looks so content, even in her sleep. If she’s determined to start a family, why not do it? I’m not getting any younger. Maybe she can go to work, and I’ll be the stay-at-home dad, teach the little ginks the fundamentals before it’s too late, have them dribbling with both hands by the time they’re in preschool.
The alarm clock on the nightstand clicks, and the digital readout flips over to 6:03. I carefully slide out of bed, and with that old Joni Mitchell tune-“I was a free man in Paris ”-lodged in my head, and willing the ancient floorboards not to creak, I tiptoe to the bathroom.
I take a long, hot shower and shave. Slip on my new slacks and unwrap a shirt just back from the hotel laundry. Free and easy.
Of all the things I love about Paris, I love the mornings the most. I can’t wait to step onto the wet streets and buy my Tribune. I can already taste the flaky croissants and rich, muddy coffee.
At the door, I take one last look at Kate, lost in her unfathomable maternal dreams, and as I very gently close the door behind me, the cold steel barrel of a revolver presses into the back of my neck and the hammer is cocked back and catches in my ear.
Before I hear Raiborne’s voice say “Thanks for bringing me to Paris, Dunleavy,” I smell his cheap aftershave. Then he kicks my loafers out from under me and throws me facedown onto the floor, pulls my wrists behind my back, and cuffs me. You could be a tough guy too if you had six gendarmes with guns drawn behind you.
I still haven’t said a word because I don’t want to wake up Kate. I want her sweet dream to live a little longer. Fucked up as it may sound, I was starting to believe in it too, and if Raiborne or someone else hadn’t caught up with me, I might have gone through with it. It’s all just acting, right? If I could act like a good enough lawyer to save Dante’s ass, acting like a father and husband would have been a piece of cake.
But Raiborne doesn’t care about that.
“Your nephew knows you better than you think, tough guy.”
“He was wearing a vest, wasn’t he?” I whisper, still trying not to make any noise.
“How’d you know?”
“Because he’s a little bitch,” I say, but really I know the reason-because there was no blood. No blood!
“Three days after he crawls out of his grave, he turns himself in. Doesn’t even try to cop a plea. Just wants to share everything he knows about his uncle Tommy-which happens to be a whole lot.”
Why won’t he shut up? Doesn’t he know Kate’s sleeping? For all we know, she’s already sleeping for two. But it’s too late.
The door opens and Kate steps into the hallway in a T-shirt. Her bare feet are six inches from my face, but it might as well be six miles-because I know I’ll never touch her again.
Epilogue. After the Fall
Chapter 116. Tom
THE HEAVY BOOTS of the day guard echo off the oppressive cinder-block walls that are all around me. A minute later there’s a rattle of keys and a clanging of bolts, and when the footsteps resume I hop off the twenty-four-inch-wide metal cot. When the guard turns the last corner to my cell, I’m already standing by the door.
In the seven months I’ve been locked up in Riverhead-I’m on the same floor where Dante did his time-I haven’t had a visitor, and the only letters I’ve received are from Detective Connie P. Raiborne, Brooklyn Homicide. If Connie wants to pick my criminal brain, I say, pick away.
Since his letters are all I get in the way of human interaction, I do my best to keep him interested, even if I have to make shit up, which, if you haven’t noticed, I’m very good at.
The guard leads me to a fenced-in courtyard for my federally mandated twenty minutes of outdoor exercise a week, unlocking my wrists through a slit in the barbed wire once I’m safely inside.
Across the way, the brothers run up and down the one court they got here, their black skin glistening with sweat even in the anemic December sun.
I still have more than enough game to school those fellas, but no one’s going to let me play hoops in this joint. All I’ve got of freedom is the pock of the bouncing ball and the sun on the back of my neck. As I do my best to enjoy those, there’s a commotion at the far end of the cage, and some inmates are shoved inside.
I’m in solitary, isolated from all the other inmates, since I fucked up that guy in the shower, messed him up so bad they’re still feeding him through a tube. So right away I know what’s happening and so does the whole courtyard, because the basketball stops bouncing and the place goes stone silent. For these sick bastards, this is better than HBO.
I almost feel the same way. I’m scared as hell, but excited-scared. No one ever learns the whole truth about himself, but in a place like this, you find out what you miss, and more than Kate’s skin or smile or the daydream she kept alive, I miss the action, the rush of shaking the dice and letting them roll, and right now they’re bouncing across the caged cement of this prison courtyard.