Death of the Black-Haired Girl

40

AFTER NEW YEAR’S A YOUNG woman from Taunton confessed to vehicular homicide in the case of Maud Stack. Lieutenant Salmone called Eddie on the phone. Stack’s condition had declined, and though he did not bother to be abstemious in drink, his memory was intact.

“Woman,” Salmone reported, “called Mona Carberry. White girl from Taunton, Mass. Twenty-seven years old. Single parent of a thirteen-month-old. Driving without insurance. History of minor traffic violations. Sometimes employed as a stripper. The car was her boyfriend’s.”

“Maybe he was driving?”

“We think maybe he was.”

“God. Girls still do that?”

“Sometimes. You wouldn’t believe. Guys do it for their girlfriends too.”

“Jesus,” Stack said. “There’s hope for the world.”

“You see it that way, Eddie?”

Stack grunted.

“They don’t usually follow through on it if they’re looking at time,” Salmone said. “Just about never. So we think this guy will come forward pretty soon.”

“Is there any connection with the article Maud wrote?”

“It doesn’t look like it. The girl has no connection with the college, and besides, we think her boyfriend was the driver. He better come to his girlfriend’s rescue soon or he’ll be fucking sorry.”

“Break him down,” Stack said, “the dumb fuck. He doesn’t deserve her.”

“He was in Iraq. He got a Bronze Star. He has a drug arrest and a big pill problem. The girlfriend says he didn’t want to go to the game so she went without him and got drunk. Doesn’t sound very likely.”

“No.”

“Hey, listen, Eddie, how are you?”

“I’m lousy, Sal. But I’m old and sick.”

“Right.”

“I’ve lived too long already. Wouldn’t you say?”

“It’s not up to us, you know.”

“Oh, fuck that, Sal. What are you giving me? Fucking religion. I’m tired of this. I’m trying to get pills. Something reliable. I don’t like taking street shit.”

“Sure, Eddie.” Salmone disapproved. Man up, partner, he thought. Everybody dies. But of course not everyone has to lose a beautiful child.

“I’m gonna have to come for you and ask for my weapon back, Sal.”

“Not from me you ain’t getting it.”

“I’m glad you took it, I really am. I might have wasted the fuck.”

“You’re not getting it back.”

“I’d buy one, you know. I don’t want to, though.”

“That’s good, Eddie. You don’t need it, a guy like you.”

“You know why I don’t buy it?”

“Of course. You do it, you hurt other people. You hurt me.”

“Let me tell you something. I don’t worry about eating the gun or not. I worry about blasting some individual or other. I can take being remembered as a suicide. I don’t want to go down as an asshole. The raging psycho.”

“Don’t hurt yourself, Eddie. Put it in the hands of God — like — you know, man. Don’t hurt yourself anymore.”