“You think maybe it was warning us about what was going to happen? That Roy was going to—”
“I think you need to go to the hospital.”
Zack swallowed hard. “What if I’m too late?”
“I don’t think you will be.”
“Okay,” he finally agreed, patting his trousers for his keys and shaking his head. When he started for the house, it occurred to Sully to ask, “Roy hasn’t been by here this morning, has he?”
Zack paused, thoughtfully. “No, I haven’t seen him since—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Sully told him, turning the key in the ignition.
“I heard he’d shacked up with some woman named Cora at the Morrison Arms.”
“I heard the same thing.”
Incredibly, he’d stalled again. “Could you ever do something like that? Like he done to Ruth?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Me neither,” he said, but he seemed to have something else on his mind, so Sully waited, his foot on the brake. “I always knew about you and her,” Zack said finally.
“I figured you did,” Sully said, feeling another wave of the heaviness descend upon him.
“Okay if I showed you something?”
“Yeah, but—”
From the back pocket of his jeans he took out a bankbook and handed it to Sully. His expression was one of pride, like a man sharing photos of his grandchildren. “That number there,” he said, pointing to what appeared to be the balance. It was well north of three hundred thousand dollars.
“Ruth knows about this?”
He shook his head, pride morphing to shame.
“That’s a lot of money, Zack. Where’d it come from?” Not that it was any of his business.
“Buy something for fifty cents, sell it for a dollar.”
“I understand the principle,” Sully said. “But you’d have to do it over half-a-million times.”
“Then I must’ve.”
“Why not tell her?”
He shook his head. “I kept wanting the number to be even bigger, I guess. She never thought the business was worth anything. Didn’t even think it was a business. She never really thought I was working, at least not like she was, all those years she waitressed, then at Hattie’s. I guess I wanted her to know I was working, too. The bigger the number I could show her—”
“Well…”
“But that wasn’t it, really,” he continued. “The real reason I didn’t tell her is I promised Ma.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Ruth was right. I know that now. Ma was always trying to drive that wedge between us.”
“What did you promise?”
“That I wouldn’t tell Ruth about all this money until she told me about her and you. And now I’ve waited too long. If she dies, I’ll never get to tell her.”
“Then go,” Sully said. “Hurry.”
He took a deep breath. “Okay.”
But when he turned and headed toward the house, Sully called after him, “You know it’s over, right?”
“Yeah?”
Sully nodded. “You don’t mind that we’re old friends, do you?”
“No,” Zack told him. “That’s all right. I’d prefer you didn’t start up again, though.”
“We won’t,” Sully promised. “It’s been over for a long while. I’m sorry it ever happened.”
That was one thing that hadn’t changed, Sully thought when Zack disappeared inside. The worst part of his affair with Ruth had always been the lies, both told and implied. And it still was. Because Sully wasn’t sorry for having loved Ruth. For loving her still. Not even a little.
—
YELLOW CRIME-SCENE TAPE still stretched across all three entrances to the Morrison Arms when Sully pulled into the lot and parked next to two animal-control vans. He reached under the seat for the tire iron he kept there, felt its reassuring heft, then placed it on the passenger seat so it would be handy. A couple dozen people, residents of the Arms by the look of them, had gathered in the lot, apparently awaiting permission to return to their apartments, though Roy Purdy, no surprise, was not among them. Nor was there any sign of the girlfriend’s half-purple, half-yellow car. Sully had seen the beater around town, and he remembered its driver, too, a morbidly obese woman in her midthirties who usually wore a Mets cap to conceal her balding head. For some reason, he was pretty sure he’d seen both it and her this morning, but where? In the hospital parking lot? Possibly, but somehow that didn’t seem right. Had he passed it going over to Ruth and Zack’s? No, it had to have been earlier. Outside Hattie’s, then, as Ruth was being loaded onto the ambulance? How could the vehicle have registered on him then, in the midst of all that commotion? And yet that was the possibility that felt most right.
Old Mr. Hynes was there, as usual. Seeing Sully approach, he said, “Donald E. Sullivan, Esquire,” his standard greeting. Sully had no idea where he’d come up with the middle initial, but it wasn’t his. “You don’t look so hot.”
“I don’t feel so hot,” Sully admitted.
“How come? Young fella like yourself.”
“Call it chickens coming home to roost,” Sully told him. “You look all right, though.”
“ ’Cause I am all right,” the old man cackled. “Don’t no chickens roost on me if I can he’p it.”
“They’re still looking for that snake, I see.”
“Still lookin’,” the old man snorted. “Ain’t enough for folks to worry about. Now we got reptiles.”
“Speaking of snakes,” Sully said, “you know who Roy Purdy is?”
“Police was by earlier, looking for him. Heard he had himself some trouble earlier this morning.”
“He’s got more coming if I can find him before they do.”
“Whack him a good one for me, if you think of it. He like to let fly with that word I don’t ’preciate.”
“I think I know the one you mean.”
“Learned it on his daddy’s knee, probably, like most crackers do.”
“That’s where I learned it,” Sully told him.
The old man nodded up at him. “James E. Sullivan, Esquire,” he said. “Big Jim, they called the man. I ’member him.”
“Not fondly, I’m guessing.”
“They’s worse.”
“Name five.”
“You know what you should do, Donald E. Sullivan, Esquire?”
“Tell me.”
“You should let the police find that boy. Let them whack him ’stead of you. You look like you the one might get whacked. Fact, you look like you been whacked already.”
“I’ll be extra careful,” Sully promised.
“Do that,” the old man said, “and you just might be okay.”
—
“JESUS CHRIST,” said Gert, looking up from his newspaper when Sully slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar. “What happened? Did the Horse burn down?”
“Not that I know of,” Sully told him, blinking, his eyes still blinded by the utter darkness. “Why?”
“When was the last time you darkened my doorway?”
“It’s been a while,” Sully admitted. Near as he could tell, he and Gert were alone in the joint, though it sounded like someone was banging around in the kitchen.
“Why is that?” Gert said. He’d set the newspaper down but made no move to rise from his own stool.
“You think it could be the service?”
“Service,” Gert said, as if this were indeed a foreign concept. “So service is what the man wants.”
“I don’t suppose you’ve got anything for heartburn.”
“Hah!” the other man said, finally sliding to his feet. “Do I have anything for heartburn.” Coming up the bar he grabbed a plastic tub of Maalox tablets large enough to contain a human head and banged it down in front of Sully. Next came a quart of Pepto-Bismol, then, finally, a fifteen-hundred bottle of generic ibuprofen. From the bar gun he shot a tall glass of water. “Knock yourself out. No charge.”