"Yeah, I have, but I've also seen your soul. I know you weren't responsible for your family's death, Kate, even if you don't. You've just got to trust me."
Kate brushed tears from her cheeks and looked at me, eyes rimmed with red. "And what about what I did back there? If you looked at my soul now, what would you see? Have I been tainted by what I've done? Can you just collect my soul now, and go on about your merry way?"
"It doesn't work that way, Kate. You knew full well what Merihem was when you did what you did. Besides, you're innocent in all of this — he and his kind had no business meddling in your affairs."
She laughed — a shrill, humorless bark of a laugh. "So I just get a freebie, then?"
"I wish it were that easy," I said, "but taking a life — human or not, justified or not — it eats at you. You take enough of them, it'll hollow you out from the inside, until there's nothing left but a husk of your former self. I don't want to see you head down that path."
"Is that what you are, Sam — a husk of your former self?"
I shook this borrowed head, shrugged these shoulders that weren't mine. "Sometimes I think I'm something even less than that." I took her hand, led her back toward the open factory door. She didn't resist — not exactly — but there was no volition to her movements; I felt like I was posing a doll. "C'mon, kid," I said, squeezing her hand in mine, "time's short. We've got to get you out of here."
The midday sun reflected off the chromed storefront of the bar, casting haloes of light across the sidewalk and causing me to squint. I took a sip of coffee from the mug in front of me, but it was cold and bitter, and seared like acid as it went down. I pushed the mug aside. Really, I shoulda stopped drinking this shit three cups ago: my eyes were dry and itchy, and felt too big for their sockets; my scalp was crawling from the caffeine and the lack of sleep. But I wasn't about to slink off to bed. Not with a fortune in heroin stuffed into the back of a borrowed car. Not without talking to Dumas.
When I left Penn Station, I headed straight to Mulgheney's, but by the time I got there it was nearly 6am, and they'd been closed for hours. I parked the car out of sight around the block, and plopped myself down on a stoop across the street that afforded me a decent view of the entrance to the bar. I was determined to sit here for as long as it took, and anyways, what choice did I have? Dumas never gave me his number or address, so all I had to go on was that Mulgheney's was his favorite watering hole, and he had the look of a guy who had himself one hell of a thirst. The way I figured, it was only a matter of time before he showed.
Eventually, though, the waiting wore on me, and I realized if I was gonna last the day, I was gonna need a little pickme-up, and a bite to eat as well. So I moved camp to a lunch counter just a couple doors down, and ordered up a cup of coffee and a plate of steak and eggs, rare and over easy. The eggs came over hard, and the steak well, but the coffee did the trick, and the refills were free. Two hours later, though, the guy behind the counter lost his patience with me and quit topping me up, hence the cold and bitter. Didn't matter, though. Just as I was beginning to contemplate the odds on another sip being any better than the last, I spotted my mark.
Dumas was half a block away, slouching toward the bar in a sweat-stained camel-colored suit, a matching cap atop his head. I tossed a couple bills onto the counter and slid off of my stool. As I approached, he pulled the cap off of his head and mopped his brow with his sleeve. The cap blocked his view of the street. He never saw me coming.
I caught up to him just steps from the entrance of the bar, grabbing a fistful of lapel and pinning him to the wall. His face was a mask of shock and surprise, and his eyes glinted in sudden anger. Still, he made no move to stop me.
"You set me up, you son of a bitch!"
His prodigious brow furrowed. "Sammy, what is this about? Set you up how?"
"Don't play dumb with me. That package I was picking up? It was smack."
"Now how the hell would you know that? Your orders were to pick it up and drop it off, not to open it."
"Yeah, well, I did."
"Why on Earth would you go and do a thing like that?"
"Why doesn't matter — what matters is what was inside."
"Believe me when I tell you, Sam, it matters very much. That dope, it belongs to some pretty dangerous people — people who would not take kindly to you messin' with their product."
"It didn't fit," I said.
Dumas cocked his head, shot me a puzzled look. "What?"
"The suitcase. I tried to put it in the locker, but it didn't fit, so I figured I'd just take out the contents, leave 'em in the locker like you said."
To my surprise, Dumas laughed — a big boisterous fullbodied laugh that set his chins quivering. "It didn't fit? Shit, ain't that a hoot!"
"Yeah, a regular laugh riot."
"Ah, you know what they say — the best laid plans and all that. You didn't leave it there, did you? All unwrapped and everything?"
"No, I didn't leave it there," I snapped. "It's in the car."
"And where's the car?"
"It's safe."
"Good boy, good boy. So you been waiting here for me ever since?"
"That's right."
"Sounds like you've been having yourself one bitch of a day. Why don't you come inside and we'll discuss it over a drink, like civilized men? Maybe I can explain myself a bit, you'll see I ain't as bad as I might seem."
I don't know why, but I released him. Dumas straightened his jacket, picked his cap up off the sidewalk, and gestured for me to head inside.
He led me to a booth in the back — his usual, it seemed, the one I'd met him in before — and flagged down the bartender, ordering a beer and a shot apiece. When they arrived, Dumas downed his shot and took a pull of beer. I ignored mine. He eyed me a moment, giving me a chance to reconsider, and then shrugged.
"Listen," he said, "I'm real sorry about this mornin'. You weren't meant to see that."
"That doesn't change the fact I did."
"You're right, of course. I guess I owe you an explanation."
"What good is explaining gonna do?" I said. "I'm no dope peddler."
"Nor am I, Sam — nor am I. But I am in shipping, and if there are people willing to pay mightily for their shipments to arrive in time and unmolested, who am I to turn them away? What is in those shipments is their concern, not mine. And OK, yeah, maybe this time, I knew what was in the suitcase, but so what? These folks ain't giving this shit to schoolchildren, they're running a business. As in, if people wanna buy it, it's none o' mine."
"You can't expect me to just look the other way, pretend I never saw what I saw. The world doesn't work that way."
"Believe me, Sam, people see what they choose to see every damn day of their lives. Besides, I'm not the bad guy here, and neither are my clients. You wanna blame somebody, you blame Uncle Sam. These clients o' mine, they were perfectly happy running booze across the border, and wasn't nobody complaining then. But then Repeal yanked the rug right out from under 'em, and what do you expect 'em all to do? They got a right to make a living, after all."
"Sure, they got a right, only I don't want any part in the living they choose to make. The catch is, now I'm stuck with a car full of dope and nowhere to put it. Or rather, you are, 'cause I'm out." I slid the keys across the table toward Dumas. They came to rest against his substantial belly, which pressed tight against the table's edge.
"You're out."
"That's right."
Dumas nodded, raised his hands in acquiescence. "All right," he said. "I can see you've thought this through. I guess all that's left is the matter of your wife, then. Or had you forgotten?"
"You leave Elizabeth out of this."