George has been doing the act so long, she can see that he believes it himself.
George says, “This must have been fun for you.”
She gives him a quizzical look.
“The fantasy you had of how this would play out.”
“And how did I think it would play out?”
“You’d steal my product, and I’d tell you what I know about your daughter.”
“That’s my fantasy?” She makes a show of considering the idea.
“But here’s how it’s really going to go.”
She waits, an agreeable smile on her face.
He leans back against his car, not a care in the world, head tilted toward the ceiling. “You’re gonna give me back my product, or my suppliers will kill you by the end of the day. And then it won’t matter what you find out about your daughter.”
“You keep calling her ‘your daughter,’ like you don’t know her name.”
He sighs. “But if you give me back my product, I won’t say a word to my suppliers.” He comes off the car, his eyes open yet unkind. “And you can go back to your... life.”
“By ‘suppliers,’ you mean Marty.”
He grimaces. “Whatever.”
“So your deal is you let me live and you don’t tell Marty I jacked your drugs because... you’re a nice guy?” She closes some of the distance between them. “Or because if Marty or any of his crew found out you lost two loads in one day, well, George, I mean” — she chuckles — “your life will be fucking done.”
George meets her chuckle with his own, his gaze darting a bit, though. “Okay, I’ll grant you my job would go away. But I’ll just go back to college.”
“Oh, George. George.” She shakes her head softly. “You failed Marty twice. Plus, you can help the police prove he’s the reason drugs are getting into Southie. You know his routes, his suppliers, I’ll assume. You probably know at least a few of the cops on his payroll.” She can see her words have landed like body blows. She gets close enough for him to feel her breath on his face. “George, if you live for twenty-four hours after word gets out that you lost Marty’s latest supply, I would lose all faith in the way the world works.”
“My mother is—”
“Marty’s piece of ass, yes. I know. It won’t be enough to save you. Marty likes pussy but not as much as Marty loves money.”
He says nothing for a minute. He looks down at her hands. “If you didn’t have that gun...”
She steps back. Holds it up. “This gun?” She places the gun in her waistband at the small of her back. “No more gun.”
He looks at the door behind her. Doesn’t move.
“All you have to do is go through me,” she tells him.
He considers his options.
“Just push me aside, George.”
“Think I can’t?”
She laughs loud. She can’t help herself. “That’s exactly what I think, George. You’re running out of time.”
“Wait.”
“No,” she says. “Make your move. Get me out of your way.”
“Give me my product.”
“Fuck your drugs.”
“Give me—”
She steps close to him again. “You will not get your drugs until I walk out of here with everything I want. So either try to fight me right now, or drop the act and let’s move this along.”
George goes back to the dead eyes. She can see him practicing it in the mirror over the years in his mother’s house.
“I’m a businessman,” he says. “Let’s negotiate.”
“You’re a fucking boy,” she says. “Did you notice what was in your trunk?”
“It wasn’t my product.”
“The drugs are what’s not in your trunk, yes. Did you notice what was in there, though?”
He thinks about it. “There was a gym bag.”
“What’d you do with it?”
“I dunno.”
She indicates with her head. “You tossed it aside, George. It’s right behind you. Go get it.”
His face scrunches in contempt. “You go get it.”
She pulls the gun from behind her back and hits him in the forehead with the butt.
His eyes water and he stumbles backward. “Holy fuck!”
“Next time it’s your perfect nose.”
He gets the bag.
“Put it on the hood and open it.”
He does. Stares inside. Can’t compute what he’s seeing. After a bit, she’s pretty sure the hesitation on his face stems from understanding what the items in the bag mean, as opposed to any confusion.
Under the sudden harsh light, the items in the bag pick up a sallow, garish glow—
A needle, a spoon, a lighter, a length of rubber tubing, an eyedropper filled with water, and a small plastic baggie with brown powder inside.
“I assume you recognize your own supply.”
He looks at it. “So?”
She sighs. “I’ve always given you credit for a brain. Maybe not a heart but a brain.” She indicates the items with a flick of the gun. “You sell it. Now you’re gonna try it. Or you will never see your ‘product’ again.”
He laughs. It’s supposed to sound derisive, but it sounds scared. “No fucking way.”
She fires at his feet. He jumps. Grabs his ears.
She doesn’t grab her own, but now she can’t hear shit. That’s what happens when you fire a round in a seven-by-four box with a metal door. Stupid, Mary Pat. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Maybe the time for talk is over, though, because George is reaching into the bag. He wraps the rubber tube around his bicep, ties it off. He slaps the flesh around the inside crook of his elbow, looking for a vein. He’s not very good at it because he’s not acting from experience, only from years of observing the poor saps from whom he made his money.
Eventually, the ringing in her ears subsides enough for her to speak. “Lemme help.”
She puts the gun back by the base of her spine. Prepares the powder on the spoon, adds the water, and cooks it with the lighter. She watched Noel do it once, near the end, after she’d thrown him out of the house before there’d be nothing left to steal. At that point he was beyond caring and sat on the bench in the playground under the half-broken streetlight. She watched him from the other side of the playground, out of his sight line as she leaned against the Jefferson Building, aware that she was watching suicide. Might take months, might take weeks (it took somewhere in between), but it was premeditated murder of the self nonetheless. He’d been in and out of rehab by that point, had robbed from her, robbed from his sister, robbed from Ken Fen, robbed from every friend he had until he had no friends left.
Except George. His supplier.
She sees George patting the flesh around the inside of his elbow again, and she reaches out and pinches the flesh so hard he yelps. “Hey!”
“That’s how you get a vein.”
He takes the needle and draws the mixture off the spoon. Once the syringe is full, he holds it out to her.
She shakes her head. “I’m not helping you shoot yourself up with your own poison.”
It takes him four hesitant pokes before he hisses and drives the needle into the vein. He meets her eyes, his thumb over the plunger, and she waits him out.
He depresses the plunger.