Broken Angels

31

Byrne sat in his car on Eleventh Street, near Walnut. He'd had every intention of making it an early night, but his car had brought him here.

He was restless, and he knew why.

All he could think about was Walt Brigham. He thought about Brigham's face as he talked about the Annemarie DiCillo case. There had been real passion there.

Pine needles. Smoke.

Byrne got out of his car. He was going to head into Moriarty's for a quick one. Halfway to the door he decided against it. He walked back to his car in a sort of fugue state. He had always been a man of instant decision, of lightning reaction, but now he seemed to be walking in circles. Maybe the murder of Walt Brigham had gotten to him more than he realized.

As he opened the car he heard someone approaching. He turned around. It was Matthew Clarke. Clarke looked agitated, red-eyed, on edge. Byrne watched the man's hands.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Clarke?"

Clarke shrugged his shoulders. "This is a free country. I can go where I want."

"Yes, you can," Byrne said. "However, I'd prefer it if those places were not around me."

Clarke reached slowly into his pocket, pulled out a camera phone. He turned the screen toward Byrne. "I can even go to the twelve hundred block of Spruce Street if I feel like it."

At first Byrne thought he had heard wrong. Then he looked closely at the picture on the cell phone's small screen. His heart sank. The photograph was of his wife's house. The house where his daughter slept.

Byrne slapped the phone from Clarke's hand, grabbed the man by his lapels, slammed him into the bricks of the wall behind him. "Listen to me," he said. "Can you hear me?"

Clarke just stared, his lips trembling. He had planned for this moment, but now that it had arrived he was completely unprepared for the immediacy, the violence of it.

"I'm going to say this once," Byrne said. "If you ever go near that house again I will hunt you down and I will put a fucking bullet in your head. Do you understand?"

"I guess you don't-"

"Don't talk. Listen. If you have a problem with me, it is with me, not with my family. You do not fuck with my family. You want to settle this now? Tonight? We settle it."

Byrne let go of the man's coat. He backed up. He tried to control himself. That would be all he needed: a citizen complaint against him.

The truth was Matthew Clarke was not a criminal. Not yet. For the moment Clarke was just an ordinary man riding a terrible, soul-shredding wave of grief. He was lashing out at Byrne, at the system, at the injustice of it all. As misplaced as it was, Byrne understood.

"Walk away," Byrne said. "Now."

Clarke straightened his clothes, made an attempt to restore his dignity. "You can't tell me what to do."

"Walk away, Mr. Clarke. Get help."

"It's not that easy."

"What do you want?"

"I want you to own up to what you've done," Clarke said.

"What I've done?" Byrne took a deep breath, tried to calm down. "You don't know anything about me. When you've seen the things I've seen, and been the places I've been, we'll talk."

Clarke glared at him. He wasn't going to let it go.

"Look, I'm sorry for your loss, Mr. Clarke. I truly am. But there isn't-"

"You didn't know her."

"Yes I did."

Clarke looked stunned. "What are you talking about?"

"You think I didn't know who she was? You think I don't see it every day of my life? The man who walks into the bank during a robbery? The elderly woman walking home from church? The kid on a North Philly playground? The girl whose only crime was being Catholic? You think I don't understand innocence?"

Clarke continued to stare at Byrne, speechless.

"It makes me sick," Byrne said. "But there's nothing you or I or anybody else can do about it. Innocent people get hurt. You have my condolences, but as callous as it may sound, that's all I'm going to give you. That's all I can give you."

Instead of accepting this and leaving, it appeared that Matthew Clarke wanted to take matters to the next level. Byrne resigned himself to the inevitable.

"You took a swing at me in that diner," Byrne said. "A sucker punch. You missed. You want a free shot now? Take it. Last chance."

"You have a gun," Clarke said. "I'm not a stupid man."

Byrne reached into his holster, took out his weapon, tossed it into his car. His badge and ID followed. "Unarmed," he said. "I'm a civilian now."

Matthew Clarke looked at the ground for a moment. In Byrne's mind it could still go either way. Then Clarke reared back and hit Byrne in the face as hard as he could. Byrne staggered, saw stars for a moment. He tasted blood in his mouth, warm and metallic. Clarke was five inches shorter and at least fifty pounds lighter. Byrne did not raise his hands in defense or anger.

"That's it?" Byrne asked. He spit. "Twenty years of marriage and that's the best you can do?" Byrne was baiting Clarke, insulting him. He couldn't seem to stop himself. Maybe he didn't want to. "Hit me."

This time it was a glancing blow off Byrne's forehead. Knuckle on bone. It stung.

"Again."

Clarke ran at him again, this time catching Byrne on the right temple. He came back around with a hook to Byrne's chest. And then another. Clarke nearly came off the ground with the effort.

Byrne reeled back a foot or so, held his ground. "I don't think your heart is in this, Matt. I really don't."

Clarke screamed with rage-a crazed, animal sound. He swung his fist again, catching Byrne on the left side of his jaw. But it was clear that his passion, and strength, were waning. He swung again, this time a glancing blow that continued past Byrne's face and into the wall. Clarke screamed in pain.

Byrne spit blood, waited. Clarke slumped against the wall, spent for the moment, physically and emotionally, his knuckles bleeding. The two men looked at each other. They both knew this battle was winding down, the way men have known for centuries that a fight was over. For the moment.

"Done?" Byrne asked.

"Fuck… you."

Byrne wiped the blood from his face. "You're never going to have this opportunity again, Mr. Clarke. If this happens again, if you ever approach me again in anger, I will fight back. And as hard as it may be for you to understand, I'm as mad about your wife's death as you are. You don't want me to fight back."

Clarke began to cry.

"Look, believe this, or don't believe it," Byrne said. He knew he was reaching. He had been here before, but for some reason it had never been this hard. "I'm sorry about what happened. You'll never know how sorry. Anton Krotz was a fucking animal, and now he's dead. If there was something I could do, I would do it."

Clarke glared at him, his anger subsiding, his breathing returning to normal, his rage falling back into the dominion of grief and pain. He wiped the tears from his face. "Oh, there is, Detective," he said. "There is."

They stared at each other, five feet between them, worlds apart. Byrne could tell the man was not going to say anything else. Not this night.

Clarke picked up his cell phone, backed his way to his car, slipped inside, and sped off, fishtailing for a moment on the ice.

Byrne glanced down. There were long streaks of blood on his white dress shirt. It wasn't the first time. It was the first time in a long time, though. He rubbed his jaw. He had been punched in the face enough in his life, starting with Sal Pecchio when he was about eight years old. That time it had been over a water ice.

If there was something I could do, I would do it.

Byrne wondered what he'd meant by that.

There is.

Byrne wondered what Clarke had meant.

He got on his cell. His first call was to his ex-wife, Donna, under the pretense of saying "Merry Christmas." Everything was fine there. Clarke had not paid a visit. Byrne's next call reached out to a sergeant in the district where Donna and Colleen lived. He gave a description of Clarke and the car's plates. They would dispatch a sector car. Byrne knew he could have a warrant issued, have Clarke picked up, could probably have a charge of assault and battery stick. But he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Byrne opened the car door, retrieved his weapon and ID, headed for the pub. As he stepped into the welcoming warmth of the familiar bar, he had a feeling that the next time he confronted Matthew Clarke it was going to turn bad.

Very bad.