I know you, Frankie.
I know you.
Ryan shivered. The voice had sounded so clear to him, as if Dempsey were sitting there next to him, the gun in his hand. But Dempsey wasn’t as smart as he thought he was, and Ryan wasn’t as young and callow as Dempsey had adjudged him to be. If Dempsey kept pulling shit like that gun trick earlier in the evening, Ryan would be forced to provide his own solution to whatever psychological difficulties Dempsey was enduring. He thought about going back into the house, pressing the revolver against the back of Dempsey’s neck while he was buried in the Napier woman, and pulling the trigger. The image was so inviting that he felt his finger slipping over the guard and fastening on the trigger, instinctively applying the pressure required.
When the cell phone rang, he almost pulled the trigger in shock.
He didn’t need to look at the caller ID. Just like Dempsey, Ryan carried two cell phones: one for personal use, along with a little general business that was always conducted discreetly, and another that was changed weekly. Calls to the second phone only came from one destination. Ryan answered on the second ring.
‘Where are you?’
That voice with its distinctive rasp, the voice of the man who had brought them to this pass, who had lowered them to the status of prey. Their fates were linked to his, and they were still waiting for him to find a way to make it all good again. Neither Ryan nor Dempsey had spoken the thought aloud, but they had both begun to suspect that they might die waiting for that to happen.
‘The cab thing. He still hasn’t shown. We found cash, though.’
‘Cash? Good.’ That was what they’d been reduced to: foraging for enough cash to enable them to keep moving and stay alive. ‘Forget about the guy. We’ll deal with him another time. You know the Brattle Street Theater?’
‘The movie place? Sure.’
‘Find somewhere to park, close as you can get to it.’
‘Now?’
‘No, next month. Put Dempsey on.’
‘He’s not here. I’m in the car. He’s inside.’
‘Why?’
‘In case, you know, the guy comes back.’
‘Who’s in there with him.’
‘A woman. The guy’s wife.’
There was silence on the other end of the line, and Ryan knew that the man was connecting the dots. He had always been good at figuring people out, or so it had seemed. He’d just lost that gift when it came to his enemies.
‘Get him out of there. This is important.’
He hung up. Ryan now had the gun in one hand and the cell phone in the other. He slipped the gun back in its ankle holster, the cell phone into his pocket, then made his way quickly across the street. A man passed, a newspaper under his arm and a beer can in one hand, concealed in a brown paper bag. The man nodded at him, and Ryan nodded back. He kept his eye on the guy all the way to the Napier house, but the man didn’t look back. Ryan had left the front door unlocked when he stepped outside. It banged against the wall when he opened it too quickly, and he called out from the hallway just in case Dempsey panicked and came out waving a gun or a knife.
‘It’s me! We have to go.’
He knocked on the living-room door before entering. He saw Dempsey buckling his jeans. Helen Napier was kneeling on the couch. Stockings and panties were lying coiled together on the floor. She was adjusting her dress, pulling it down to cover her thighs while keeping her back to the door. Her shoulders were shaking. She did not turn to look at him.
‘Is she okay?’ asked Ryan.
‘What do you think? If it’s any consolation to you, I was gentle with her. Your timing is good, though, I’ll give you that. A few minutes earlier, and I might have been annoyed at the intrusion.’
Dempsey checked the room to make sure he hadn’t dropped anything, then spoke to Mrs. Napier.
‘Helen,’ he said.
She stiffened but still did not turn her head.
‘You have a choice,’ he continued. ‘You can tell your husband what happened tonight. From what I hear, he’s the kind who could get all hot under the collar about a thing like this, and it might lead him to come looking for me. If he does, I’ll kill him. He brought this on you by his own actions, but he won’t see it that way. And, you know, it won’t help you anyway. I knew a man once whose girlfriend was raped. He could never look at her the same way again. Could be he thought that she was soiled goods. Whatever the reason, they broke up. End of story. Think about that before you go shooting your mouth off to your husband. I was you, I’d just tell him that we called, that we put the fear of God into you, and he should sort out his affairs before we come calling again.’ Dempsey picked up the shoebox of cash. ‘In the meantime, I’ll take the money as an interim payment on what was lost. We’ll be on our way now. Go fix yourself up. You don’t want him seeing you like that when he gets home.’
He brushed past Ryan on his way out the door.
‘You coming?’
Ryan was still staring at Mrs. Napier.
‘You want to apologize to her again?’ asked Dempsey. ‘You can, if you think it will help.’
But Ryan just shook his head. There was something wrong about what he was seeing: not just the act that had been committed, but the aftermath. He tried to put his finger on it but couldn’t, and then Dempsey was pulling him away, and they were walking to the car, and the assault was forced from his mind for a time as he told Dempsey about the call.
‘Regular nine-one-one,’ said Dempsey. He was counting the money in the shoebox, flipping his finger through the bound bills. Dempsey separated four hundred in twenties, split the stack evenly in two, then stuffed two hundred into his wallet and two hundred into Ryan’s coat pocket.
‘Walking-around money. If he gives you more, just take it and keep your mouth shut.’
‘How much was in there?’ asked Ryan.
‘Two-five now, plus change.’
Ryan laughed. It was that or pull over by the side of the road and beat his fists against the sidewalk in frustration.
‘All that for a lousy three grand?’
‘Hey, I had a good time.’
Now Ryan did pull over, causing the driver behind them to honk his disapproval. He turned in his seat, ready to release his belt and tear Dempsey’s throat out, but Dempsey already had his hand on the butt of the gun. His left hand was raised, one finger extended in warning.
‘What? You going to kill me?’ asked Ryan. ‘You going to pull the trigger this time?’
‘No, but I’ll break your nose with it, and I’ll go further if you make me. You want to make me do that to you?’
‘You raped a woman, just for three grand.’
‘No, I didn’t. I had the three grand anyway.’
Ryan almost lost it again, but the sight of the gun revealing itself to him brought him back to his senses. His shoulders collapsed, and he laid his forehead against the steering wheel. He felt ill. His face was bathed in warm, clammy sweat.
‘Three grand,’ he whispered. ‘Three grand and change.’
‘Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with developments, Frankie, but Mr. Morris is hurting. Two grand here, a grand there, a couple of hundred from the junkies – it all adds up. It keeps him in business, and keeps us in a job. More to the point, it’s keeping us alive. Our credit isn’t so good right now, and the bank of goodwill has closed its doors.’
‘He’s drowning,’ said Ryan. ‘He’s going down.’
‘That’s not what I said, and if I was you I wouldn’t be saying things like that out loud either. It might get taken as disloyalty. It’s swings and roundabouts. Everybody’s hurting in this economy. He’ll come good again. He just needs time.’
Ryan raised his head. Dempsey’s face was expressionless. It gave no clue to whether he believed a word that he was saying.
‘You’re going to start driving now, Frankie, okay?’