Small Mercies

20

According to Rum, after Frank Toomey told them to go back and “finish the job,” he stayed where he was. Leaning against his car.

“So he didn’t go with you?”

“No.”

“And he didn’t elaborate on what ‘finish the job’ meant?”

“No.”

“He didn’t get any more specific?”

Rum shakes his head. “Uh-uh.”

Bobby can already see Frank’s defense attorney going, “So, ‘finish the job’ could have meant going home for the night, cleaning up the bottles you broke, or could have even meant helping get Auggie Williamson to a doctor.”

Finishing the job, Bobby knows, could mean fucking anything.

When it came down to what they did do when they returned to the platform, Rum was sure that someone rolled Auggie Williamson onto the tracks but was somehow unsure who that someone could have been.

And how could that be?

“I was taking a piss,” Rum informs them.

This fucking job, Bobby thinks. You have them, they’re on the ropes, ready to talk, and then some pestilent germ of a polluted idea works its way into their hamster brain and they think, I can get out of this.

And you’re back to square one.

Bobby’s too tired — and on his night off — to go back to square one.

“Rum,” he says, “it takes two people to roll a body. Otherwise, the body goes right when you want it to go left, or left when you want to go right, it’s a whole thing. So, you and George, you rolled Auggie Williamson off the platform. And he fell and hit the back of his head and died. You didn’t mean it, but it happened.”

Rum says, “That’s not what happened.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Okay, we rolled him off the platform, okay, we did that.”

Bobby nods.

“But then he got up.”

“He what?”

“He got up. Like he rose to his feet?”

Vincent stops writing. They watch Rum Collins. He’s not looking up and to the right anymore — a sure sign someone’s lying. He’s looking in — a sure sign someone’s remembering.

“He got up. And then he fell back down. And then he kinda got to his knees. And the girls were crying cuz it was, like, pathetic? So we climbed down there with him?”

“All of you?”

Rum looks at them. Nods.

“And then what happened?”

“Someone found a rock.”

“Who?”

Rum looks at them and says nothing.

“Who found the rock?”

Rum says, “It wasn’t me.”

“So who was it?”

Rum grits his teeth. “It wasn’t me.”

Bobby watches him for a bit. Looks at Vincent, who gives him a tiny headshake — they’re at the part of the dance where they could lose this kid.

“Let’s forget about who has the rock for a minute,” Bobby says. “Just tell me what they did with it.”

Rum turns that over in his brain for a bit. He’s too stupid to know at this point that he’s already copped to half a dozen felonies, including attempted murder.

He opens his mouth and, in a sentence, ties himself to it for life. “They — the person — hit him in the back of the head with the rock.”

“Hit Auggie Williamson.”

“Yeah.”

And this was the piece that has never lined up with every story they’ve heard or every theory they’ve surmised about what happened that night — how did Auggie Williamson get the fracture at the base of his skull?

Now they know.

“And what happened to Mr. Williamson then?”

“Mr. Who?”

That gets to Bobby for some reason. If you’re going to kill someone, at least know their fucking name. “Williamson,” Bobby says through gritted teeth. “The black guy.”

“He went down on his face. Never moved again.” Rum stares at his thumbs for a bit before he looks up at Bobby and Vincent, blinking under the fluorescent. “Now that I told you what happened, can you square things with her?”

“With who?”

“The, uh, ya know, the broad who threatened to cut off my dick.”

Bobby says, “I don’t think you gotta worry about her anymore.”

Rum lets out a loud sigh. “Fuckin’ A.”

Vincent says, “Ronald Collins, you’re charged with murder in the second degree in the death of Augustus Williamson.”

Rum, chewing a hangnail, says, “What?”

“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say—”

“Wait a minute! Fucking what now?”

“—can and will be used against you—”

Rum looks at Bobby. “I didn’t do it.”

“You were there,” Bobby says, “and you didn’t stop it. In the eyes of the law, that makes you just as guilty as whoever swung that rock.”

“No,” Rum says. And then more emphatically: “No.”

Vincent says, “Your only shot of walking the streets of Southie again before, I dunno, two thousand and four? Is to tell us who swung that rock.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“Tell us.”

“I want my lawyer.”

“Tell us!”

“I want my lawyer.” He looks at them, tears streaming down his face but eerily calm. “Right fucking now.”

Bobby and Vincent stand. “Okay.”

“You’re a hard guy?” Vincent says. “That’s good. Cuz you’re gonna do hard time with lots and lots of hard guys.” He grabs his crotch. “Hard as drill bits.”

“Over a nigger?” Rum stares at them in utter disbelief.

Bobby nods. “Bet your dumb white ass, motherfucker.”