He toyed with his coffee cup a little before adding, "I always felt weird about that, you know? Her being your ex. I hope that never pissed you off too much."
Here, at least, Willy could be perfectly honest. "Never did. I thought you'd be a good match."
Andy smiled ruefully. "So did I. We might have been, if she'd gotten you out of her system. And even with that, the first two or three years were great, after she finally moved in with me." Suddenly he laughed with embarrassment. "That's pretty good, huh? Turns out I was more ticked off at you than you were at me, and I was the one living with her. Boy."
After a moment's stilted silence, Willy asked, "How'd she get hooked?"
Andy looked pained. "Know what I said about my being a bad choice for her? That was no lie. I didn't see it coming…I guess that's nothing new. What with the divorce and living with me and her mom rejecting her, I should've known better. But I was too busy doin' deals and living hard. By then, I'd taken her for granted, too. She was just sort of there all the time."
He was having trouble forming his words. He passed a hand across his face as if to clear it of cobwebs. Willy thought the beer might be having both a liberating and a fogging effect by now.
Finally, Andy sat up straight and admitted, "Look, you got good reason to punch me out for this, but I guess I got her into that shit. I was doing a little myself then-pills and some heroin, and the booze like always. I hate to admit it, but that's what got her started. She didn't want to be left out more than she already was, and since I was doin' it anyhow, I didn't see any harm. I know it sounds bad-I mean, it is bad-but we were clueless. It was fun, felt good, the money was startin' to roll in. By the time I woke up, she was pretty far gone. Heroin's a hard habit to break."
He didn't add anything for a while, concentrating on the empty coffee cup as if it contained nitroglycerin.
Willy prodded him in a quiet voice. "What happened, finally?"
Andy didn't meet his eyes. "Well, we did break up, of course. Her talking about you, me bitching that she was either zoned all the time or out trying to score. It got pretty ugly, and I didn't have the patience for it. I never been too good with that, either."
"You threw her out," Willy suggested, paying him back a little for the you-broke-her-heart refrain.
Andy looked at him then, an almost pleading expression on his face. "No. I mean, she did move out and we did have one last big fight. But I was too screwed up to be that decisive. It just sort of fell apart. I guess, though," he added after a pause, "that I didn't stop her, either. And I didn't go after her."
"How long ago was this?"
Andy rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. "Years. A few years. Shit, I don't remember."
"You ever keep up with her?"
He shook his head. "Nah. Damn, this sure doesn't look good, does it?"
Willy pursed his lips, thinking, it's not about you, but said instead, "When she was out trying to score, do you know who she dealt with?"
Andy was obviously confused by the question. "Who she got her stuff from?" He scratched his head. "Jesus… I don't… she started with people I introduced her to, but after things got crazy, I put the word out to shut her down. I don't know who she used after that. It doesn't matter anyway-even my old dealers are all dead, gone, or in the joint by now. Why all the questions?"
"You heard she'd cleaned up, though, right?" Willy persisted, ignoring him. "You said you'd talked to Bob. You knew about my new job."
Andy squirmed in his seat. "Damn, you really are a cop, aren't you?" He smiled guiltily. "Okay, yeah. I did hear. I mean, I asked and Bob told me. I was curious, you know? You reach a certain age, you get married, settle down, begin to think back-you and me, 'Nam, Mary… I started to wonder. The stuff you did when you were young starts to mean more."
"You called Bob out of the blue?"
"I had his number from when Mary was still around. She used to call him to find out about you. Pissed me off, actually. I told her to cut it out, but I kept the number. He was surprised to hear from me-I think even a little embarrassed-but he sort of gave me the condensed version of what was going on. I felt bad about putting him on the spot."
Which explained why Bob hadn't admitted to the phone call, Willy thought.
He noticed Andy was looking at him with a pointed seriousness all of a sudden, his drunkenness apparently evaporated.
"Enough, Willy. Why the third degree?"
Willy hesitated, pondering the value of his information and when its release could serve him best. Now seemed as good a time as any.
"She's dead. That's why I'm down here."
Andy stared at him in silence for a moment, his mouth half open, his hands tight around the coffee cup.
"Jesus," he finally murmured, barely audible amid the noise around them.
"They found her with a needle in her arm," Willy added for effect, wondering why, right after the words left his mouth. Andy had been helpful and straightforward, undeserving of such brutality. But by his own admission, he'd also taken a fragile woman, introduced her to drugs, and then tossed her out. Regardless of his sensitivity now, he'd been as bad as Willy on this score, if in a different manner, and Willy didn't see treating him any more lightly than he treated himself.
Andy sat back in his seat and swallowed hard. After taking a shuddering breath, he said softly, "That's pretty cold, Sniper. Just like the old days."
"I didn't introduce her to the shit in that needle," Willy said.
Andy's face turned dark red. He awkwardly rose to his feet and glared down at him. "The hell you didn't. You don't know the basket case I inherited. You fucked with her head so good not even the heroin had any effect. Shit…I was just the poor dumb slob standing between what you did to her and where she ended up. She was like on autopilot all the way." He leaned forward, his anger climbing. "Don't you lay that shit on me, you goddamn cripple. You don't get off the hook that easy."
He stood there breathing hard for a moment, before finally straightening and adding as he left, "The meal's on you, jerk. I hope it wipes you out."
Willy sat at the table for a long while afterward, almost motionless, trying to do what he'd done so well for years: batten the hatches and bottle up the turmoil.
But as he'd suspected they might even before he'd arrived in this city, certain survival techniques were beginning to fail.
Chapter 8
Sammie Martens parked in the narrow driveway behind Joe Gunther's car and killed the engine. Gunther lived in a converted carriage house tucked behind a huge Victorian pile on one of Brattleboro's residential streets. The town was littered with such ornate buildings, in both the high-and low-rent districts-remnants of a past industrial age when New England and its dozens of sooty redbrick communities pumped their commodities into a growing, hungry, affluent society. Now the former showpiece homes of bosses and middle managers ran the gamut from private residences to run-down apartment buildings, depending on how the town's neighborhoods had settled out.
It was late, and Sammie knew she had no real reason for being here, that nothing could be gained from it, but the lights showing through Gunther's windows encouraged her nevertheless. After all, it was the nature of Joe's character, and of how he'd encouraged them all to speak freely with him, that had prompted her to come here in the first place.
She swung out of the car into the sharp evening air and closed the door softly behind her. The carriage house was small enough that it reminded her of a toy railroad model, or something designed for dolls-seemingly an odd kind of place for an old cop to live, unless you knew him.