Robert B. Parker’s Someone to Watch Over Me

9

“You come back much?” I said.

“Not much to come back to,” Mattie said. “My sisters would rather take the T into town and stay with me. When they graduate, they’ll be long gone from here. Southie ain’t Southie anymore. It’s Condoville for rich dipwads.”

“Glad I’m not rich,” I said.

“Or a dipwad,” Mattie said.

“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”

It was dark, and we sat in the front seat of my Land Cruiser watching the twin doors of a triple-decker duplex in South Boston. The building needed paint and new windows and stood out on Fourth Street, where most of the old houses were either gutted and renovated or replaced with modern-looking condos. Mattie was right. The Old Southie of corner stores and dive bars was tougher to find than an authentic accent in The Departed. Many of those who’d grown up here could no longer afford it.

“What about your grandmother?”

“You know she’s been sober four years now,” Mattie said. “Can you believe it? But that life. That aged her a lot. She’s got a lot of health problems. Diabetic. Can’t walk across the street without losing her breath. You can’t live on cigarettes and whiskey.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

Mattie nodded.

“Ever hear from Mickey Green?” I said.

“Nah,” she said. “I heard he moved to Florida.”

“He owes you,” I said. “You were the only one who believed him. If it weren’t for you, he’d still be in the can.”

“I didn’t care as much for him as I did getting the scumbag who killed my mom.”

“You did great.”

Sitting in the passenger seat, hidden in shadow, Mattie nodded again. I leaned back in the seat, the windows down. The street was dark except for the intermittent tall lamps and lights in windows. No one passed, and no one paid us any attention. We’d been there for forty-five minutes. I knew I’d made the correct decision about the lobster roll.

“Chloe may have been stupid about money, but she didn’t deserve to see that shit.”

“Nobody does.”

“I remember when I was a kid getting a bad feeling from this priest who used to come around the projects,” she said. “He ran some kind of youth program. Board games and watching movies and all that. After-school bullshit. You know. He used to always knock on my door and ask my mom if I wanted to join him and the other kids. And my mom always shut the door in his face. She said the man had the devil in his eyes and she’d seen it before.”

“Your mom knew.”

“Yeah,” Mattie said. “But once, I heard this priest was taking a bunch of kids to the zoo. And my mom wouldn’t let me go. I was mad and said screw it and decided to go anyway.”

A city electric truck rumbled past, nearly taking off my side-view mirror, and then turned down G Street. It was very dark and quiet again. I heard a dog barking far in the distance, making me think of Pearl and wonder how she was doing with Susan.

“The priest had this big black car,” she said. “But when I met him at the front of the projects, it was just him. I asked the priest if I’d gotten there early, and he acted like he’d already been to the zoo, dropped off the other kids, and come back for me. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he opened up the door. Like my mom said, something was wrong with his eyes. His skin was also real white, like someone who never went outside. So white you could almost see through him.”

“Translucent.”

“Sure,” Mattie said. “Anyway. He was sweating and smelled like bathrooms and old closets at Gates of Heaven. Like he’d crawled out of one and come for me. I got real nervous, told him I had to get back home, and ran all the way back to my apartment. Two weeks later, I found out he’d been watching some girls change into their swimsuits. He was reported, they canceled the after-school thing, and I never saw him again.”

“Sometimes you just know.”

“Is that something you’re born with?”

“Maybe,” I said. “I think the older I get, the better I am at reading people. Sometimes I’m wrong. But more often I’m right.”

“Like if someone is lying.”

“Lying is tough,” I said. “Sometimes people are such good liars they believe it themselves.”

“But you know when someone wants to do you harm.”

“Yep,” I said. “I usually know when they aim the gun at me.”

“Smartass,” Mattie said. “You know what I mean.”

“Sure,” I said. “You can see it in their eyes or the way they hold themselves. Men often stiffen up when they react to you. Like dogs. You need to develop a sense of awareness when you’re in a bad place with bad people. Realize it may come at you from any side or all sides all at once.”

“How come you didn’t like being a cop?” she said. “I bet you were a good cop.”

I shrugged. A pair of headlights appeared far off in my rearview mirror. We both watched the car come up fast and then disappear into the distance. A few seconds later, another turned behind us and moved slowly past my window.

“I liked being a cop,” I said. “I didn’t like taking orders.”

“And you like working for yourself.”

I nodded.

“Maybe being a cop wouldn’t be so bad,” Mattie said. “The guy who came to talk to me after my mother was killed was stand-up. The detectives that came later wouldn’t listen. But the guy on patrol stayed with me and my sisters until my grandmother got there. In the same way I got the bad feeling about the priest, I had a good feeling about this cop. Even though my world had just been tossed upside down, he made me feel like everything was going to be okay. That I would live through this. You know? That’s something else.”

“Love all,” I said. “Trust a few.”

“You love all?”

“Maybe not all,” I said. “But I appreciate the sentiment.”

The second car stopped in front of the duplex. The side door opened and a young woman in a white hoodie got out. She headed up the steps, showing herself under a bright porch light, and pulled out some keys to unlock the door.

“That’s Debbie.”

“Nice car.”

It was some type of Mercedes coupe with the top up. We were too far to see the license plate or who was inside.

“Can I say, ‘Follow that car’?” Mattie said.

“Please do.”