The Last Kind Words

30

I leaped out of bed to the sound of screams. I hit the stairs and jumped down three at a time. JFK rounded the corner, barking insanely. I’d never heard him like that before. He knew something I didn’t. My mother hung wilted against the back-door jamb, hunched over but with her knees angled outward like she was about to push out a baby. Beyond her, my old man was hauling something heavy across the yard, gasping, struggling, the way he had when we’d pulled up tree stumps together. JFK circled and chewed at his hindquarters. I watched my father dragging Mal’s massive and rigid body through the dirt, guts trailing behind. His brother’s dead weight was too much for my dad, and his eyes flitted in a wild panic as he searched anywhere for help. His wet gaze finally landed on me but he was too out of breath to say anything. He mewled what could’ve been my name. My father had finally lost control. I took a step off the back porch and my knees nearly went out from under me. My mother moved to me, turned away, and tightened her arms around herself, her eyes shut tight. Grey hurtled from the back door like a ballet dancer, covering an unbelievable distance in four or five bounds. He was in a white T-shirt and boxers, which were immediately soaked through with red. Grey’s voice cracked to pieces as he shouted, “Call an ambulance!” It was too late for that. It was too late for anything. My mother wailed in response. Dale appeared at my side. She wasn’t sobbing, but the tears ran into her mouth. “Don’t move him. You’re disturbing the… the… forensic evidence. The police-” My father and Grey dragged Mal on his back, flattening the grass and digging gouges in the rain-softened earth. Mal’s head bounced across the ground, which made his tongue jut and withdraw like he was testing soup that was still too hot. His eyes were half open and perfectly focused. He seemed puzzled, a little uneasy, but not too concerned about any particular thing. His face tilted and I caught his gaze. He still had something to tell me. I rushed forward and tried to help and they batted me away. I reached for my cell phone to call Gilmore and realized I was naked.

31

It rained like a son of a bitch the day we buried Mal. Some of his old grifter and heister cronies showed up and stood there in the downpour, sipping from flasks and sobbing.

The young priest knew our family’s reputation and went full out with a morality lesson as he stood over the open grave. He had thick glasses spattered with raindrops. He had trouble reciting certain passages and stumbled over the words, misspoke them, chased after them, his voice rising dramatically. He reached for hellfire but stammered too badly to get the proper rhythm down.

Dale hung back with Old Shep. He was in a wheelchair and dressed to the nines, and she kept her hands on his shoulders. He wore a white fedora that my mother had placed on his head to keep him warm, and the rain ran off the ends of it. Within the etched sorrow of Dale’s face I thought I could see a hint of anger. Butch was a no-show.

Beneath her umbrella, my mother let out occasional gasps of disbelief. I thought I could almost hear my father’s heartbeat above the wind. I kept a watchful eye. I was afraid that my old man might strangle the priest with his own rosary.

Gilmore stood behind my mother like he was one of the family. I knew it was insane to think he was a killer, but he reminded me so much of Collie that I couldn’t let go of the fear and suspica ›herk glafor mion. There were at least five officers scattered through the cemetery, all carrying the same umbrellas and pretending not to survey us. The cops had given us hell for moving Mal, but they seemed to accept that my father and Grey had simply been too upset to think rationally. We spent four hours answering questions. They collected all the knives they could find in the house, which was maybe half. If my family had been trying to cover up the crime, there were a thousand square miles of marsh from Sheepshead Bay to Fresh Kills where we could’ve tossed the corpse.

I stood in Grey’s suit and ill-fitting shoes. I wore one of his raincoats as well. I hadn’t knotted it properly and the tails flapped in the wind. Lin showed up and mostly hid herself under her umbrella. She didn’t introduce herself to the family and I didn’t do it for her. I probably should have, but the timing couldn’t be worse.

Victoria and Eve each held on to one of Grey’s hands, the three of them stooped beneath Grey’s umbrella. Eve met my eyes once and gave a sad smile. I nodded back.

Somehow we got through the service. They lowered Mal in and everyone passed by and tossed roses into the flooded grave. His grifter friends threw in other bits as well. Coins, photos, goodbye notes they’d written, pocket Bibles. They were more emotional than I would have guessed. A few were openly crying. One fumbled his way toward Grey and nearly knocked him over. Another drew my father into a wild bear hug. My mother appeared to know them both and whispered and consoled them until they clumsily moved off.

The rain hissed like water in a pan simmering on a stove. I was tired of the noise.

Grey’s hand trembled so badly that when he walked past the grave and threw in his rose it fell short. His knees started to buckle and he nearly went headfirst into the hole. My father and I both rushed to him and kept him on his feet. Victoria wrapped an arm around his waist and he clopped back and laid his head against her shoulder.

Large puddles had formed at the edge of the grave. Grey’s rose swirled around twice before a stream carried it to the lip, where it hung and quivered before finally dropping away.

The image had an impact on me. The deep-red flower disappearing into the black pit. I knew I would have sporadic dreams about it for the rest of my life. Because it looked to me as if, at the last instant, the rose had been snatched into the grave.

The line of mourners continued to snake away. I waited until everyone else had walked off toward their cars, then I reached into my pocket and pulled out a fresh deck of cards and tossed it in. It was a stupid gesture, but I was a man full of stupid gestures. I was about to make another one.

When the priest turned to go, I reached out and grabbed him by the wrist.

“The last kind words ever spoken to Jesus were spoken by a thief.”

“Excuse me?” He tried to pull away but I held on. “You’re-you’re-”

“We were the first let into heaven. Thieves are pardoned.”

I tugged him toward me and enjoyed the pained expression on his face. Then I released him and left him there with his certain knowledge of God and hell. I walked away in my own bitter confusion.

Most of the mourners came to the house and ate. Gilmore begged off and said he had to get back to work. He shook my hand and I held on an instant too long. He frowned at me in puzzlement and misread my intention. He gave me a quick, awkward hug and th=left.

My mother and Dale kept presenting hors d’oeuvres and platters of cold cuts. A few folks spoke to me. Some I recognized. Most I didn’t. I think I responded, but I had no idea what I might’ve said. I searched for Lin. She hadn’t shown. I realized it was important to introduce her to the rest of the family. She was my brother’s wife. I wasn’t thinking clearly and knew it.

My father began to get hold of himself. He started to take charge, passing out drinks, his voice growing louder. He and the heisters told anecdotes. There were even a few chuckles as they ate and drank together. I kept thinking about Mal and me crashing backyard birthday parties, him taking over the grill and cooking hamburgers, the two of us singing happy birthday to Timmy or Holly or Bob when nobody knew who the hell we were. It almost got me smiling.

I stuck close to my grandfather’s corner. I sat beside Old Shep, and his glassy eyes remained fixed on the television for a minute. He still had the hat on. I liked seeing it on him. It was a throwback to the good old days when he was nearly as stylish as Grey.

He slowly inched his head toward me. I didn’t know what it meant. He was almost looking into my eyes. He was freshly shaven and the suit looked good on him. I knew he was in there somewhere. Maybe he wanted to talk. I said, “Gramp, if you-” and he slowly turned back to the TV. I put my hand on his knee. I hoped he would snatch my wallet again. I stood and turned my hip toward him, praying he would reach for me. He didn’t.

Grey was still devastated but reeling himself in. He looked like he was half dead himself, drained of color and energy. It was the only time I’d ever seen his hair mussed. He hugged Vicky to him, but I thought I could see in her eyes that she knew this was it, the end of the line for her.

Eve stepped to me and said, “There’s only one question a person can ask after a funeral. It’s a foolish one but it’s the only one. How are you holding up?”

I hadn’t spoken all day long except for what I’d told the priest. It was difficult forming words.

“I suppose there’s only one answer to give,” I said. “I’m doing the best that I can.”

She put a hand to my chest. “Terry, whatever you’re thinking about doing, don’t.”

“I’m not thinking of doing anything.”

“Yes, you are. I can tell. You’ve got blood in your eye.”

Her fingers massaged me through my shirt. I shut my eyes and lost myself for a moment in the human contact. Then I took a breath and turned aside. “Eve, you showed me a very nice night, and I should thank you for it. It’s been a long time since I had a chance to hold a beautiful woman close and fall asleep in her arms. But how about if you don’t pretend as if you really know me.”

“All right. But I meant what I said the other night. I do believe you’re a good man, at heart.”

“But you keep qualifying it as ‘at heart.’ ”

“Only because I realize you’re under an incredible strain.”

She was being thoughtful and kind but I felt the way I’d felt during the times I’d been arrested and kept in the county cage. I wanted to shrug my shoulders and hurl the world from off my back. “I won’t do anything rasalih and I’m not going to get hurt.”

Eve saw something in my eyes that must have felt like an invitation. “You can talk to me if you like, Terry. About anything, at any time. This has nothing to do with my job. Please know that. Please believe that.”

“I do.”

I knew I would never see her again unless it was on the day of Collie’s execution.

Grey tried to tell a story about Mal but it fell apart about halfway through. My old man picked up the slack and finished the tale, and the old grifters all laughed appropriately. Grey eventually went to his room. Vicky must have thought he was coming back, but after a half hour she thanked my mother and Dale for the food and said goodbye.

There was still a lot of meaningless chatter, but somehow the emptiness and quiet of the house deepened. All the many secret rooms carried with them a brooding silence across the decades and generations of Rands.

My parents broke from the others and found me with Gramp. My father said, “I’m worried about Grey. He has no one now.”

“He has us,” my mother said. “He has his girlfriends. They help keep him happy.”

“No, we have each other, but he’s alone. Despite all the women, he’s alone. His health, it’ll get worse now.”

“We’ll make sure he goes to the doctor more often.”

“He won’t go.”

My dad looked out the screen door. There was no sun, but he turned away with a hand shielding his eyes as if he’d seen something he couldn’t take. Maybe Mal out there demanding action.

“Who?” he said, his voice firm. “Who the hell could have done this? And why?” My father looked at the floor, and then his gaze settled on me. “Do you have any idea?”

“No.”

He nodded, because that’s all any of us could really do. Nod as if we were in complete agreement with some larger force that would do whatever it wanted with us whether we consented or not. Then he and my mother walked back to the dining area and became proper hosts again for their guests.

Dale gravitated toward us. She said, “Gramp needs to be changed. Ma usually handles it, but I thought I’d give her a rest and do it myself.”

“That’s very considerate.”

“Can you help me get him to his room? On the bed?”

I wheeled him there, eased him out of his chair, and got him onto the bed. Dale got out a set of pajamas and an adult diaper. We turned him over on his belly and she cleaned him like a newborn. It was loving and illuminating. It was possibly the worst thing I’d ever witnessed, because all the time I was watching Old Shep I was seeing myself down the road.

My sister finished up and got Gramp back into his chair. I made sure we put his hat back on him. He deserved a little cool. Back in front of the TV, he perked up a little.

Dale glanced at me and said, “You’re going to do something, aren’t you, Terry?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “Tomorrow.”

“Good,” she said, and slipped off.

I went up to my room, changed out of Grey’s suit, and put on my own clothes. er I didn’t remember crying but my face was covered with salt tracks. I washed up. JFK stood in the door and growled. I looked in the mirror and made the same sound.

32

Wes had tried to reinforce his basement window so that I couldn’t pop it again, but I easily finagled past his lackluster efforts. I hit the stairs and tried his closet again. He’d moved his stash. It took me five minutes to find it in the central-air conduit in his living room. He’d chipped some paint around one of the vent screws. It was as clear to me as a beacon in the dark.

I snatched up both of the Desert Eagles and extra clips. I counted out forty thousand from his cache and stuffed it in my jacket. I drove over to the Fifth Amendment, walked in, and approached Danny’s table with my hands in my pockets. He and Wes and a couple of his soldiers were eating dinner and drinking wine. I could smell the veal Marsala, spicy garlic tomato sauce, and the fried calamari.

One of his boys-the same mook who’d stopped me during the poker game-lazily moved up in front of me and said, “Hold on, you can’t just-”

I drew the Desert Eagle and shot him in the thickest part of his thigh. He shrieked and fell down, clutching the wound. There was less blood than I’d imagined. I’d never fired a gun before. It was easier than I’d expected.

The rest of his crew started going for their hardware and I rushed up and jammed the pistol under Danny’s left ear.

“Let’s converse,” I said.

Fear twisted in his eyes but he held himself together. “Don’t you think this is a bit much, Terry? You Rands don’t use guns.”

“I’ve had a change of heart.”

He tried to turn but couldn’t do it with the barrel wedged into that ganglia of nerves. “Sorry to hear about your uncle.”

“I came to pay off,” I said. I drew the stacks of money out of my pocket with my left hand and tossed them, one after the other, onto the table. They bounced and fell into his veal, then into his lap. “Here’s the thirty-seven g’s my uncle owed you.”

“But Mal-”

“Plus a little interest. Count it, Danny. And count it slow. Make it last as long as you can.”

Wes very quietly said, “Terry, listen to me now. Don’t do anything crazy. Just think this through.”

“I have.”

“No, no you haven’t, Terry. No, you haven’t at all.”

“You really think this is the best time to argue with me, Wes?”

Danny tried to scoot out of the way of the splashing Marsala sauce but he had nowhere to go. “Wait, just wait,” he said. I finished emptying the cash onto his plate. “You’re smarter than this. You’re much sharper than this.”

“Who was the hitter?” I eyed everyone sitting with him. They all looked like your average mook. None of them stood out from another. None of them had any style or hipness or grace. Any one of them could have been the knife man. I looked for shoulder-holster bulges. It didn’t prove anything. Plenty of hitters ca"1ewonwidthala saucrried guns and then made examples of their victims with blades. “You think your father would approve? Hiring a knife fighter to ice an old man? Two in the head is too clean for you now? My mother and father found him dying in his own shit. You brought my mother into this.”

My vision started to light up with red. I moved the barrel of the gun and pressed it hard into Danny’s left eye.

“That hurts! For Christ’s sake! Stop acting so nuts!”

“Who’s acting?” I said.

“I didn’t do it, Terry! I didn’t order it done! Listen to me. I didn’t do this. Grief has made you stupid. I know something about that.”

“I want the name. If he’s sitting here, tell me now.”

“I have no name to give you. Nobody here does that kind of work. You need to start listening to me.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because we’re friends.”

“We haven’t been friends since the eighth grade, Danny. You’re not counting your money. I wouldn’t want you to think I cheated you. Mal said it was only thirty-seven, but there’s forty. You keep the change, right?”

The guy I’d shot was still rolling around on the floor in agony. The crew started getting antsy. Someone was going to make a move soon. I grinned at them. I pulled the other Desert Eagle out of my waistband and held it on them. I knew at least a couple of these pricks wouldn’t mind seeing Danny go down just so they could skip to another syndicate outfit, head off to Chi or L.A.

One mook really knew how to give a death glare. He was drilling it hard into my forehead.

I let out a chuckle and whispered, “Come on, you.”

Danny knew the scene was a second away from detonating. He held his hands up in front of him and tapped the air, trying to get us all to simmer. Half of his crew looked at him like they hated his guts. I wondered if he noticed.

“If you take me out, you’re doing it for nothing. I didn’t cap your uncle. I didn’t give the word. Whoever did it will still be out there.”

“Your father would be ashamed of you,” I said. “You’ve got no cool, Danny. Your dad wouldn’t have given much more than an asskicking for snatching thirty-seven g’s during a dirty game. Not to someone who deserved as much respect as Mal did.”

“I thought it might come to this. I thought you might think it was me, but you’re usually more levelheaded. I didn’t expect you to take it so far.”

“You’ve got to work on your presentation,” I told him. “You’re not very convincing.”

“I don’t know what else you want me to say.”

Big Dan had done some rotten things in his time but he never crewed up with a psycho hitter who used a blade like that. Mal had thrashed around in his own guts for five minutes before he finally gave in.

And I had heard him talking to someone. I had turned over and gone back to Kimmy instead of looking out the window. All I’d had to do was go to the window and maybe he’d still be alive.

I backed up a step. I checked Danny’s eyes one last time. So far as I could see, he was telli="1@ng the truth. It didn’t mean anything. He was nearly as adept a liar as I was. I said, “We’re done now, Danny, for good.”

I backed up farther. I kept the guns trained on everyone. The mooks looked a little disappointed that I hadn’t pulled the trigger.

“Take your money, Terry,” Danny said. “I don’t want it.”

“It’s not mine. It belongs to Wes.”

Wes sucked down the rest of his wine and poured himself another glass. “I knew you were going to juke me,” he said. “Did you go in through the same window? I don’t care if it does look bad, I’m getting a fucking security system put in.”

I backed out all the way to the front door. Nobody got to their feet. Most of them went back to their food. No one was going to come after me right now. Danny might decide later on that he couldn’t let so brazen a move go without some kind of answer. He had to save face in front of his men and the other outfits. But I thought that maybe this was the breaking point. His men were already jumping ship, and this might make the rest of them go. He wasn’t cut out to be a boss. He couldn’t handle this kind of stress.

I cleaned the guns down and threw them both into the backseat of Wes’s car. I hadn’t accomplished a thing. Just as I was leaving, I saw Butch pull in. I thought, Fuck him, let him drop, I don’t give a shit. He hadn’t even shown at the funeral to help support Dale, the prick.

But I wasn’t going to let my little sister go down with him. She was an actress. I imagined her with a plastic mask over her face, her hair styled short, more boyishly, a padded shirt filling her out with a male physique. I saw her carrying a gun Butch gave her that still had the serial numbers intact. I saw her lying in the backyard with her hands clutched to her belly.

I had to make sure she was safe from coming anywhere near the underneath. I couldn’t let what happened to me and Collie and Mal happen to her.

I drove around town for a while. I turned on the radio. I listened to the news. Cara Clarke’s death had officially been listed as a suicide.

33

In the morning I drove over to Stan Herbert’s pawnshop. He’d bought out the stores on either side of him and had upped his game. He had a lot of old flea-market type crap but he’d expanded into the real deal. Old TVs, DVD players, DVDs, CDs, iPods, laptops, cell phones, BlackBerrys, digital cameras, and other computer equipment. He still wasn’t going to be able to give Butch’s crew what they were expecting for the ice. Maybe he’d lied to them and planned on making excuses when it was time to pay up.

There were a handful of people in the place, some customers wandering around and a couple of young employees who were rearranging stock. Stan was in back, in his office, sitting in front of his computer and going through ledger sheets.

“Hello, Stan,” I said.

He looked up and the screen continued to glow in the reflection in his glasses. He’d lost the rest of his hair, but he’d picked up a few pounds and looked healthier and happier than I remembered. He wheeled his seat back and looked me up and down.

“Well, you’re a Rand, I know that much,” he said. le.ard hug D01C;Not sure of the breed, though.”

“Terrier.”

He nodded. “Okay, I think we’ve met before.”

“A couple times when I was a kid, helping my father unload laptops and stereo systems.”

“Not so loud. The boys up front don’t know I was ever a part of the bent life.” He got up and closed the door, sat again and steepled his fingers. “Heard about Malamute. Saw it on the TV. Hell of a waste, him going out like that. Hell of a card player. Hell of a finger man.”

“Right. Can we talk?”

“I don’t move your kind of product anymore,” he said.

“What kind would that be?”

“The illegal kind.”

“Oh, you’ve gone straight. Good, glad to hear it.” I raised my voice and projected toward the door. “Then you’re not going to try moving any ice you might get from a five-man crew that’s taking down a family jewelry store and expecting to get paid mid-six figures-”

“Christ, not so loud,” he hissed.

It was probably true that he’d gone mostly legit. But like every other fence in the world, he’d never turn down a good heist when he was going to pull in a major percentage and do almost no work for it.

“What’s their score?” I asked.

He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Stan, you do know. I know you know. Just tell me and I’m out of here. What is it?”

“I don’t rat. I don’t do that.”

“It’s ratting if you go to the cops. I’m not a cop. Besides, you’re already going to rob them blind. You lied about the payout and they’re only going in because they think they’re about to be rich. Even if they pull it off, they have to kick up to the Thompson crew. They’re going to walk away with peanuts and they won’t be happy. They might even try to take it out of your ass.”

“Jesus.” He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and my stomach tightened. I got in much closer and watched him carefully. He pulled out a bottle of J &B and poured himself two fingers in a dirty glass. “Why do you care?”

“That’s my business, Stan. Your business of the moment is to tell me who’s running the string.”

“You Rands, you used to be a good family to work with.” He threw back half the glass and made a face. “But now you’re all sick in the head, you know that?”

I leaned on his desk. “Yeah, I know it. Now, who bosses the string?”

“Some kid.”

“Which kid? Use names, Stan. Butch?”

“No, not that one. He’s a moron. He only goes by Butch because his last name is Cassidy, can you believe it? Fucking idiot. No, the boss is another guy. Young, like Butch, but smarter, you know? His name is Harsh. That’s all I can tell you.”

“Is it his score? Did he put it together?”

Stan finished his drink, put the bottle back in the drawer, pushed the glass away from him.. Tр1C;I think so.”

“Is it a tight string?”

“Who knows? I can’t be sure with this new kind of punk.”

“Contact info.”

He tried to stand, but I blocked him and he dropped back heavily into his seat. “You can’t foul the juke, Terrier. If you do and it traces back to me-”

“I’m not going to foul it. I’m going to make sure it goes off without a hitch. Give me an address.”

“I don’t have one, but I can give you a number.”

He pulled it up off his computer. “Password protected and encrypted. Better than a floor safe in the corner.”

He read the number off. I memorized it and said, “They’re packing.”

“So far as I know, yeah.”

“So what happens when they find out you’re not going to give them anything more than a dime on the dollar, Stan?”

His eyes danced with amusement. “It’ll work out.”

“A guy named Harsh might be eager to use his piece. You shouldn’t have lied to them on what you were going to be able to move.” I got up and opened the door. “Hey, you have any piano babies or Toby mugs?”

“What? Porcelain?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“I don’t deal with that kind of crap.”

“Who does?”

He thought about it for a second. “Try Rocko Milligan.”

I left, got in my car, and headed north on Route 231. I called Harsh’s number. When he answered I said, “This is Butch. Meet me at the Rail Cross Diner on Commack Road.”

“This doesn’t sound like Butch.”

“I’ve got a cold. Twenty minutes.”

“Who is this?” Harsh asked.

“Come find out.”

“How will I know you?”

“I’ll be the one calling out, ‘Harsh, you asshole, your jewelry-store score is on the fucking skids.’ Twenty minutes, right?”

34

Harsh showed up on time. I was having a cup of coffee and relaxing in a back booth. It wasn’t hard for him to guess I was the one who’d called him. It was a small joint and I was the only one sitting alone.

He was a little older than Butch, maybe twenty-three or -four. Buzz-cut blondie wearing a tight white T-shirt under a loose jean jacket. He had wraparound shades on. Everybody and their shades. It must be a retro thing, guys falling back on what was hip in the seventies. They were all watching too many DVDs, trying to pick up on classic style. He scanned the place, spotted me, and took his time stepping over.

It looked like he was carrying a.38 in his jacket pocket. Right off, that meant he wasn’t a pro. I could’ve been a cop. He could get a couple of years just for having a piece on him. You never packed unless you knew what you were packing for.

He stood before me and I said, “I’m Terrier Rand.”

“I’ve heard of you. Your people have been in the news. I don’t like that.”

“You don’t like that?”

“I don’t like being seen with guys who might have reporters following them.”

That was actually pretty smart of him. I reassessed Harsh a bit. He sat and the waitress zipped over and he waved her away. He took off his shades. His eyes were youthful but he was trying to keep them mean. I guessed that he’d been in the game since he was young, had pulled a couple of jobs that had gone well, and then he’d impatiently struck off on his own. That’s the only reason I could imagine that he’d taken on a punk like Butch.

“You know my sister?” I asked.

“Yeah, I know her.”

“How well?”

“Not too well. I never touched her if that’s what you mean.”

It wasn’t, but I decided to take it at face value. I pulled an envelope out of my pocket and put it in front of him.

He didn’t make any move toward it. That was another good sign that he wasn’t a complete moron.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Three grand. You’re going to pay off Butch and cut him out of this jewelry-store score. Take a thousand for yourself and give him the rest. Tell him it’s his cut for helping out as much as he did and that you’ll hire him on for the next job.”

He studied me coldly. “Why would I do any of that?” he said, neither affirming nor denying anything.

“Because he’s going to be unable to assist you. Find another man.”

Harsh let out a slow grin. There was more than a hint of cultivated savagery to it. “You, I suppose?”

“No. I don’t want in. I don’t want to know anything about it. I already know too much. Because Butch talked out of turn. He approached me thinking I’d jump on board. It was a mistake. Not an unforgivable one, but bad enough. He also wrote Stan Herbert’s name on a pizza box and left it out in the open for anybody to see.”

“And you know Stan.”

I nodded. “And I know Stan. Whatever he promised you, you won’t get more than ten percent of the ice’s worth in cash.”

“He said twenty-five.”

“It’ll never happen.”

Harsh started running other schemes in his head. His eyes flashed with possibilities, trying to find a way to squeeze more money out of the deal. I could see he already had other scores in the works as he started mentally shuffling through them, wondering about other fences, other people he could talk with.

“Why were you working Butch’s place?” he asked.

“Finding out what I could. Is it your heist? You put it together?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you wind up with Butch on your string?”

Harsh wasn’t sure how much he should tell me. I drank my coffee. I looked out the window onto Commack Road. He would e201ဆither trust me a little further or not. There was nothing I could do to force his hand.

Finally he decided he didn’t have much to lose by discussing things with me. “I asked Mr. Thompson for a man who might be willing to help out on a job here and there.”

“And he actually suggested Butch?”

“Yeah.”

Danny should’ve either stepped up and offered one of his own men or kept out of the score altogether. But he wanted to have a thumb in every pie without putting in any time or effort, even if it only ruined the pie. “You should have known better right off.”

“I did, but I didn’t know how plugged in Butch might be with the Thompson crew.”

“He picks them up from the airport.”

“I know that now. I wasn’t comfortable kicking him off the job. He’s good enough to do what I need him to do.”

“You hope. What’s Danny’s cut of the action?”

Harsh looked away, a little bothered having to talk numbers. “Mr. Thompson gets fifteen percent of our net.”

“His father used to take ten.”

“His father is dead. And there’s no time to find another man.”

“You’ve still got a couple days,” I said. “I can even provide you with some names if you like. Either way, you’ve got no choice.”

“I don’t like being braced.”

“Nobody does.”

He put his shades back on and ran a hand over his buzz cut. “You’re not going to ice Butch?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Just hurt him a little.”

“Less than a little, but it’ll be enough.”

“Right. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“What would I gain by lying? Like you said, you know who I am.”

He squared his shoulders. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he was thinking about it. “Okay, you’re paying me a wad of cash. You’ve got to have a reason.”

“I do.”

“Your sister.”

“That’s right. I want her unconnected.”

“She’s as connected as they come. She’s from a family of thieves. One’s on death row and due for the needle, and another just bought the farm.” He pushed away from the table and stood. “You people are bad news. You think you’re doing her a favor? You’re doing me one.”

35

Butch’s door was open again. He was inside, smoking a joint, listening to his iPod with his earplugs in. His eyes were closed and he was singing loudly and badly along with music I couldn’t hear.

I still had Higgins’s blackjack. I stepped up behind Butch and caught him on the sweet spot. He slumped over without a sound. I took off his right shoe and tapped his ankle once. He made a little no9;rp. He c doise in his sleep like a colicky newborn. His foot began to swell.

There was nothing in his freezer except a half tray of ice. There were no dish towels in the kitchen. I walked the apartment. There were no towels on the rack in the bathroom. Butch certainly led the life. I found a dirty T-shirt on the floor of the bedroom and wrapped the ice cubes in it, then pressed it to his ankle. He’d be off his feet with a minor fracture for two weeks. The score would go down without him. If it went bad and Harsh and his crew wound up in the bin, Butch would be in the clear, and so would Dale.

I searched the place again. I looked for signs of my sister. I found nothing. Before I left, I dumped the melting ice cubes in his sink and threw the dirty shirt back on the floor.

When I got home, my parents were sitting at the kitchen table, dressed in black again. They’d just gotten back from the cemetery. I put my chin to my chest. The funeral had been yesterday and already they were visiting the wet grave again. My mother looked at me like she knew it was too much but she had to do it for my father’s sake.

He grinned at me without any humor and said, “You okay?”

“Sure.”

“That’s good.”

I wondered if he was going to ask me again if I knew who had killed Mal. He got up and walked out the door, headed to the garage, still in his suit.

I followed him. I thought I should stick close.

He said, “Four months until the stone is ready, can you believe it?”

“Guess there’s a backlog.”

“We got a nice one, did your ma tell you?”

“No.”

“Not sure how to describe it. Big. Square but rounded at the top. Has a kind of silhouette of his face on it. The profile. Not really his face, just sort of his face. Who the hell would want that face on marble? Not him. Nobody. And no angels, nothing like that. But… well, anyway, it’s nice.”

“Right.”

My father stood before his treasured figurines. He seemed to be showcasing a couple of new ones. A Japanese boy pulling a wagon. And a rooster just standing there. I looked at the rooster and tried to figure out why any artist skilled in making porcelain figures would make a rooster just standing there and why anyone would want it.

I wanted to tell him I’d heard voices that night, but I didn’t know how it might help. I sat in the garage, watching him at his hobby, cleaning the pieces and rearranging them, and I could feel the waves of fury coming off him. I thought, One of these days he’s going to pick up a hammer and smash the shit out of each one of those pieces. In a week, in a month. He’ll destroy the display case and it still won’t be enough. He’ll cut himself. He’ll be slashed and bleeding and won’t even notice. There will be a thousand pounds of glass on the ground and he’ll stamp on it. He’ll take the hammer to the walls, to the windows, and he’ll keep at it until he’s too tired to hold it anymore. It’ll fall from his sweaty, bloody, trembling hand and he’ll drop to his knees but he won’t weep.

My mother will find him like that and go to him and hold him, and they’ll both continue to carry their burdens separately and together. They’ll bandage his wounds and clean up the shards and continue on with their day. She won’lig񀆛;t cry either, not in front of him, but when she’s in the laundry room, a week or a month later, she’ll drop and sob into a dirty towel for maybe twenty or thirty seconds tops, and she’ll finish throwing in the fabric softener and then go make lunch.

“Should I show up?” my dad asked. He was moving the rooster around. He tried it on one shelf, then another.

“Show up?” I said. “To what?”

He dipped his chin, shuffled more pieces about. “You know. The execution.”

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “No. Don’t do that.”

“Collie shouldn’t be alone.”

“I’m going.” I hadn’t realized that I’d been planning to attend, but there it was, and it was the truth.

“You don’t have to,” my father said.

“I think he wants me there.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means something, Dad.”

He finally settled on where the rooster should go. He closed the case. He appeared to be extremely calm. I looked over my shoulder at the workbench and thought I should hide the hammer. “To you or to him?”

“Maybe to both of us.”

My old man placed a hand on the back of my neck and pulled me into a half hug, the same way Mal had done outside the Fifth Amendment.

We walked back into the house together. My father went to change. My mother was cooking. Dale stood waiting for me. While our parents were busy she took my hand, drew me in to the living room, and said, “Something happened to Butch.”

“What do you mean?”

Her grip tightened. “He fell while he was stoned. Banged his head up and broke his ankle. He doesn’t want to call an ambulance, and I don’t want him driving himself to the emergency room with a bad foot. Plus he’s got no money or insurance and… well, his license is suspended and doesn’t have his current address on it. Will you drive me over there and help me get him squared away at the hospital?”

“Sure. Where’s he live?”

“I’ll show you.”

I went to one of my caches in the house and pulled out two grand. It should cover the emergency-room costs. Dale got into the car. So did JFK.

She said, “God, does this dog have to always drive around with us? What if someone sees me?”

“They’ll think better of you being with John F. Kennedy than with Butch.”

She pulled a face. “You don’t know my crowd.”

“No, I don’t.” I decided to ask her the question that was still going around in my head. “Do you love him?”

Dale grimaced, her lovely features falling in on themselves. “Are you nuts? Hell no. But he’s sexy. In a dumbass kind of way.”

“I thought he was your beau?”

“I’m getting a little tired of his shit, to be honest.”

I liked hearing it. I hoped it was true. I tried to imagine her studying hard and nail019ying the SATs and worrying about university acceptances, but I just couldn’t do it. There was still time for her to break away from the rest of us.

“Did you get the role?” I asked. “Blanche?”

She twisted a lock of her hair and drew it over her ear. “No, but I’ll be helping out as stage crew.”

I squinted and almost chuckled. She was lying to me again. Toying with her hair was her tell, I could see it now that I knew what I was looking for. She’d gotten the role and turned it down. It was an act all right, for our mother’s benefit. Dale knew Mom came to watch the audition. Now my sister could mislead our parents and say she was at rehearsal while she was really out with Butch. It wasn’t a big lie. It was a rather average lie, the kind any teenage girl told her family.

I nodded. I took a breath.

“Let’s talk about Mal.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I think we probably need to.”

Dale pressed herself as close to the passenger door as she could. She burst into tears.

“I don’t want to talk about Mal,” she said.

“I need to know if you saw anything.”

“I would have told you!”

“You told me that you thought someone has been following you. You said it was just a feeling.” She still had her face turned from me, the back of her hand to her mouth with tears dripping across her wrist. “Were you telling the truth?”

She screwed up her face and regained some control. She sniffed hard and gasped for air. Then she glared at me.

“No,” she said. “I just wanted a knife.”

“Why?”

“Protection, Terry. Even before Mal was murdered in our backyard, I could feel things slipping.”

“What does that mean?”

She weighed her words carefully. “Dad sneaks out at night sometimes. Grey is hardly ever around. Mal stole some money from Danny Thompson. We lived in this house with Collie Rand, Terry. What if he was home in bed when he decided to go on his rampage?”

I’d had similar thoughts myself. “Right, but that was five years ago, Dale. He’s-”

And then I understood.

My brother’s legacy was to make us all suspicious of one another. To worry that at any minute any one of us could be overwhelmed by the underneath.

“You wanted to protect yourself from me,” I said. “The knife was for me.”

Her tears were completely gone and she sat straight up. In typical Rand fashion, her expression was nearly blank and her eyes empty of emotion.

“I’m sorry, Terry.”

“Don’t be. It was a smart move.”

She nodded.

I had to be careful not to make turns until she gave me the proper directions. We pulled up in front of Butch’s place. Before we climbed out I handed her the cash and said, “Here.” She took the money without counting it and pocketed it. She said, “Thank you,” and kissed my cheek.

Ih="񀆾 stepped into his apartment and tried to act like I’d never been there before. Butch was on the couch with two squares of toilet paper stuck to the back of his head. His foot was up on the table atop a pillow leaking stuffing. He was angry with himself and kept saying, “I’m so stupid. I’ve fouled up everything.”

“No worse off than you were before,” Dale said. “Except you’ll have a limp for a while.”

“No, babe, no. I don’t even know what I did. I can’t figure it out. What’d I trip over? Where’d I bang my head?”

“Maybe now you’ll listen to me when I say you smoke and drink a little too much.”

Butch checked the toilet paper, looked at the small spot of dried blood, crumpled it, and tossed it on the floor. “Don’t start.”

He put an arm around each of us and hopped while we carried him down to my car.

“Jesus, you brought the dog?” Butch said. “Why’d you bring the dog? I need to lie down back there.”

“The dog isn’t going to bother you,” Dale said.

“He’s already bothering me. He won’t move. Can you get him to move?”

I snapped my fingers and JFK jumped into the passenger seat. Dale and Butch sat in back, sort of cuddling while he groaned and she whispered. There was a strange kind of music to it. It was a song I knew. Halfway to the hospital I looked at my sister in the rearview. She had Butch’s head in her lap. He had shifted to moaning but not too loudly.

“You’ll need a ride back,” I said. “I’ll wait for you.”

“Don’t bother,” Dale told me. “We’ll get a cab.”

“If I survive,” Butch said.

“You’re going to survive, honey.” Dale shushed him and made gentle noises like she was singing him a lullaby.

“I’ll wait,” I said.

She glanced out the window. We passed some jocks jogging past and she watched them. I had worried about what being a Rand was going to do to her. She was a popular, beautiful girl. She was a teenager. She was fickle. She was scared. She was smart not to trust strangers, even if they were her own blood. She was mature and harder than she should be. She was going to be all right, but she’d made a misstep with Butch. She wasn’t in on the heist, but just hanging around a crew stupid enough to have Butch along might bring the brick wall down. With Butch out of the way, she was going to be safe for the time being. Maybe she’d turn her sights on the team quarterback. Maybe she’d go after some other badass. I’d keep watch.

She turned her head and her brunette hair brushed the glass. She caught my eye in the mirror and said, “What?”

36

The dead don’t drift. They’re rooted, irresolute, and inflexible as your own past. Sometimes your ghosts chased after you every minute of the night, and sometimes they just couldn’t keep up. I saw Butch back to his apartment and my little sister back home.

Another day passed. Collie was that much closer to his death. I got up early anidtnue to tbd followed Gilmore to the station, then sat in the parking lot for an hour, watching the cops come and go. I no longer had even a gut feeling about him. He simply reminded me too much of my brother and I couldn’t let a crazy idea go. I wondered if this was Collie’s plan from the beginning, to run me so ragged that I’d explode the way he did. Was it possible that he hated me that much? To wind me up and let me spin out of control over the edge? And then I thought, Yes, it was. It had to be, because I had no other answer.

I started the car and drove without direction. I had no idea where I was going, but my autopilot seemed to have all the usual destinations mapped out. My stomach was still twisted up. I still didn’t know if Collie was telling the truth. I went by the high school, the lake, the Commack Motor Inn. I wove in a wider and wider radius but always returned to the same pattern. I drove past Kimmy and Chub’s house. I never broke 40 mph. I eased along and the hours passed. I put three hundred miles on the car. I thought no one, not even my brother, was wasting his life as badly as me.

I parked across the street from Eve’s house. She wasn’t home yet and I was glad for it. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I noticed she’d had the window fixed. The lethal lawn gnome had been moved back out in front of the bush.

I played the radio low and listened to some oldies station and my mind went along with it, rolling on the tide of another time. Whenever some image hit me, I pressed it away. There seemed to be no good memories. Everything brought pain. A man should be composed of more than his heartaches, his failures, his missed opportunities and regrets. Even Collie knew love. I turned the radio up. I nodded for a bit.

When I opened my eyes, I saw a little red Mazda come zipping into the driveway. I watched a young woman get out, dressed in blue scrubs covered with pictures of different breeds of dogs and cats. She dropped her purse and stooped to pick it up. It was Eve’s daughter, Roxie. She had curves in all the right places, her long brown hair swaying lightly in the breeze as she grabbed her sunglasses, cell phone, iPod, and stuffed them back into her purse. She looked the way I imagined her mother had looked twenty-five years earlier. But, more than that, she looked pissed.

She took another step toward the front door and her cell phone rang. She answered, angled her face down, and listened for a moment. She said, “Well then, why don’t you just go fuck yourself?” Her voice carried to me as clearly as if she were in the backseat.

Roxie fumbled for the disconnect and stared at the cell phone like it was the face of a lost lover. She tried to stuff it back into her purse and dropped it again. The phone hit the walk and she gave it a nice kick that catapulted it into the garage door, where it broke to pieces.

It was the kind of thing only your first and greatest love could make you do. This would be the pain and passion by which all other pain and passion would be measured through the rest of her life. I thought of what kind of scars and marks Butch would leave upon Dale’s understanding of men. I thought of my eternal draw to Kimmy, Gilmore shattering over Phyllis, and Grey’s never-ending heartbreak at being left at the altar.

I snapped off the radio.

My attention dispersed, then refocused.

My exhaustion over the past several days was making it hard to keep my thoughts straight. My instincts were off. I didn’t know whether Collie had played me across some elaborate game or not. Was Gilmore really a killer, or a bent cop who was her1closer to my father than I was? I saw Mal crawling across the grass almost directly beneath my bedroom window. The same dream called to me. Go with Kimmy. Drive away.

I looked out the window at Roxie Drayton.

She looked like her mother, the same dark intensity, the same lovely features-

She looked like-

She looked a little like Becky Clarke.

She looked a little like Cara Clarke.

She looked a little like-

She looked a little like Dale.

I shut my eyes and twisted my face aside.

She looked like Eve.

My sister had said, Dad sneaks out at night sometimes. Grey is hardly ever around.

I heard Flo’s voice, as loud in my ear as if she were in the backseat. He still comes in here sometimes. Handsome. A touch of class. He knows how to treat a woman.

I knew then who else was trapped in the currents of the underneath. I knew because it was my blood tide. I knew because we looked just alike.

I threw the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. The transmission moaned so loudly that Roxie dropped her purse again. I sped off. I called home and my mother answered. I asked, “Is Dale home yet?”

“Out with that Butch, I think,” she said with disappointment. “I hope the next boyfriend’s a doctor. Is that asking for so much?”

“The next boyfriend’s going to show up next week. Just keep your hopes in check that he’s a B student. Who else is home?”

“Who do you expect to be here? Your father’s in the garage. You want to talk to him?”

“No,” I said. My voice was too blunt. I tried to soften it up. “That’s okay. What about Grey?”

“He’s been out all night.”

“With Vicky?”

She let out a small noise of exasperation. “How would I know? Since when do any of you tell me anything about where you’re going?” The irritation and frustration were taking hold. She’d been through so much, and it wasn’t over yet. She’d given everything she had to holding us together, and we kept falling further and further apart. I heard her place the phone against her chest, the heavy beating of her heart somehow calming me. “We need to sit down as a family again.”

“Pencil me in, Ma. I’ll call again later.”

“We’ll be here.”

I disconnected. I let my mind wander in ways it hadn’t before.

I heard my father’s voice.

I think your uncles have a touch of Alzheimer’s too. I’ve found them out in the yard in the middle of the night a couple of times, looking dazed.

Who could get up that close to Mal to do what had been done to him? Who would Mal trust?

I shook my head as if I had an earache. I slammed my fist down on the steering wheel. I was wrong, I had to be wrong. I phoned Vicky and Eve’s television station. Like the last time, it took me ten minutes to work through the menu. Finally I got her.

“Hello,” Vicky said. “Victoria Jensen.gn=q01D;

“This is Terrier Rand. I’m looking for Grey. Is he with you?”

“No, he’s not, Terry, I haven’t seen him.”

I shook my head again. My throat was beginning to constrict. I coughed and licked my lips. “You haven’t seen him?”

“Not since the funeral.” I waited, and the pregnant pause took on all kinds of meaning. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say next. He’s no longer interested in me. But no beautiful woman wants to admit that out loud. “I’ve been very busy with work. I just haven’t found the time to return his calls. And you know, Terry, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but you and Eve make a wonderful couple. I think that-”

I cut her off. “Vicky, this is something of a rude question, and I’m sorry for it, but did my uncle stay with you that night we had the double date?”

“No, Terry, he didn’t. He said he didn’t feel well.”

“Thanks.”

“Tell him I’ll talk to him soon.”

I hung up.

Grey had slept with Eve. He had met Roxie. I thought about the peeper at Eve’s window watching the two of us in bed. Becky Clarke strangled during Collie’s spree. The missing knife.

Grey with his ladies’-man looks, owning a thousand women but not the one he’d truly wanted, the one who’d rejected him forty-five years ago. Like any of us, he was capable of violence.

“No,” I said. “No.”

Where had Grey been spending his nights?

I drove home. I’d been thinking of someone close to the family, someone who might have followed Collie that night, someone who knew our ways. I’d been thinking of Gilmore. I stepped harder on the gas pedal and jockeyed through the traffic. I kept pushing. Someone said, “No.” Someone had been saying that for a while. I checked the rearview. My lips were moving, but I didn’t know the voice.

I slowed when I got to the corner of our block. I eased up to our house and saw Grey’s car in the driveway. I pulled in, got out, and stepped up the porch. I wondered if I’d gone over the big ledge. I wondered if I was finding madmen around every corner because I’d already become one myself.

My mother and father were in Gramp’s room, cleaning and changing his pajamas. My grandfather’s eyes were focused on the ceiling but it still felt like he was looking at me.

My parents glanced at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure about what I’d found out or if I’d found out anything at all. The pulse in my belly was throbbing heavily. My father said, “Don’t stare, Terry. Old Shep’s got some pride left.”

“Oh, sorry.”

I turned away and started back down the hall. I moved to the bottom of the second-floor stairs. I looked up and could see shadows playing against the corridor wall. I heard the creak and thrum of water rushing through the pipes. I took a step, thinking, Maybe I should wait.

“Jesus God, what the fuck am I doing?” I whispered.

“Who’s that?” Grey called.

I climbed the rest of the stairs and d trostood in his doorway. Grey was stripped down, with a towel around his waist, about to step into the running shower. He was laying a suit out across his bed. Steam coiled through the air.

I said, “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Let it wait until I come out, right? This goddamn floor is like ice.”

“Sure.”

He padded to his bathroom and shut the door. I had maybe ten minutes to search the room. I hit all the key spots where anything of importance might be hidden. I found forty g’s in cash split among three caches but nothing else of note. If Collie’s knife was here, I couldn’t find it. No trophies, no newspaper clippings. I needed proof. I needed to know for sure. His wallet was on the corner of his bureau. I went through it and discovered nothing that mattered.

I checked the suit he was about to put on.

I reached into the inside jacket pocket and found a photo.

It was old. It showed a pretty teenage brunette smiling happily, head half turned over her shoulder, her hair a wild flurry in the wind, dark and blurred branches of shaking trees in the background. I didn’t have to guess who she was. The only girl he’d ever truly loved. She looked a little like Rebecca Clarke. Roxie Drayton. Dale. All this time later, all the times I’d heard the same story, and I still didn’t know her name. She’d left him at the altar and broken his heart, and in his sickness she continued to haunt him, crawling through the seams of his mind. Every young pretty brunette became a part of the same obsession. My mother had said it herself. An older man who can’t let go of his own youth, who’s preoccupied by the past… Too much silk and not enough sand. She just hadn’t realized how far he’d gone.

Inside jacket pocket. Right over his heart.

I could see him putting the suit on, working the tie until it was perfect, then slowly dragging his thumb across the left side of his coat like he was touching the cheek of the woman.

Maybe I should do a more thorough search, check the rest of the house, his car. Maybe I should wait and watch him longer now that I suspected.

But I wasn’t a patient man. I couldn’t imagine leaving him alone in this house another night with my sister near him. I didn’t know how far into the underneath he was. I didn’t know if I was right or wrong about him. Maybe Collie was going to his bunk each night laughing himself to sleep that I was out here running in circles. Maybe Gilmore hid his trophies elsewhere. Maybe there was a killer in the woods watching the house right now. Maybe my father had gone to see Kimmy for some other reason.

I had to get Grey alone.

I went to my room and shut the door. I thought of all the years I’d spent here feeling safe, surrounded by my family, my father and uncles on watch. I could feel the underneath tugging at me, that insane sense of panic trying to make me jump the wrong way. Vertigo made my legs wobble and I reached out to touch the wall. Behind it was our legacy, three generations of junk.

I sat on the bed and put my head between my knees. When the dizziness passed I called information and got the number for Rocko Milligan’s pawnshop. He answered on the fifth ring with a flamboyant, “Yallooo?”

“Rocko, this is Terry Rand.”

He sucked air. “Holy shit, a ghost from the past. Let me guess, you’re on the narrow and yhe sou met a girl you want to marry, and now you need a good deal on the ring. You know I’m the man to talk to about that.”

“Not entirely on the narrow yet, Rocko, but if I ever gear up for marriage, I’ll get the ring from you. Now listen to me. Do you ever sell my father figurines?”

Rocko coughed out a chuckle. “Terry, not for nothing, but your father is loopy for the fucking things. I don’t get it. They’re not worth shit.”

“When was the last time he came by?”

“He hits me up every month or two. Been a while. I think he goes out east, checks the antiques shops in the Hamptons for this crap. The old ladies out there like their porcelain too. Or they did years ago. Now their grandkids are inheriting it all and dumping it at garage sales.”

“I want you to call him for me,” I said. “Tell him you’ve got a few nice pieces in.”

“I never call him, Terry, he just comes in on his own.”

I listened to Grey moving around in his room, getting dressed across the hall. I almost hung up because it all suddenly seemed so stupid to me. I’d been wrong about everything so far, why should this be different? But I continued to clench the phone to my ear. “I’ll square up with you and make it worth your time.”

“My time’s worth two C-notes,” Rocko said.

“Fair enough. Call him now.”

I walked downstairs. My parents were on the couch, watching a news channel, with Gramp in his chair beside them, a blanket over his lap. His hair had been trimmed. His face was clean and pink. He smelled of baby powder.

My father turned his head in my direction as if to say something, but he didn’t get the chance. The phone rang and he stood to answer. I took his seat and pretended to be interested in the news. My mother was tsking and saying how terrible, how sad. My father asked Rocko what was so special about the pieces, and Rocko must’ve known what to say, because my dad actually said, “Oohh,” with a great delight. It was a sound that at once amused and alarmed me. It was further proof I didn’t know my old man as well as I thought I did.

He hung up and reached for his jacket off the back of the kitchen chair. “Rocko Milligan’s got some bisque figurines from ’46. Another buyer is interested so I’m going to run over there.”

“You should go too, Ma,” I said. “I’ll watch Gramp.”

She frowned at me. “What? To a pawnshop?”

“The two of you can go out to dinner.”

“He didn’t ask me to dinner.”

My father looked a little embarrassed, but his expression quickly shifted to one of enthusiasm. The bisque figurines had put him in a tenuous good mood. It was an overreaction in the face of Mal’s death, but I was glad for it. “You want me to take you out to eat tonight?”

“I didn’t say that. I’ve still got half a roast in the fridge. Why would we go out to dinner?”

“Leave the roast. We haven’t gone out together in a while. We can eat at the Nasgonset Inn. We always liked their Italian.”

“They have a good house wine. All right. Let me get dressed and put my face onx20.”

“You look fine,” I said.

“He’s right,” my father agreed, “you’re beautiful. And I don’t want to wait two hours or we’ll never get out of the house. Come on.”

My mother reluctantly agreed with a timid smile. Once again I grew aware of just how burdened they both were by how ugly things had become over the past few years and my part in that. This might be her last smile, the last I’d ever see. My name would be spoken with shame from now on, just like Collie’s. I almost took a step toward her, but my dad gripped her hand and led her out the door. She looked over her shoulder once and met my eyes. I watched his back muscles moving beneath his shirt as he walked onto the porch. Outside, JFK lumbered to his feet and licked my father’s hand. My mother gave the smallest of waves. Then my old man tugged her across the porch and to the car. I watched my parents pull out of the driveway.

I looked at the ceiling and listened to Grey’s footsteps. My breath hitched. I shut my eyes and tried to center myself, but too much flashed across the screen of my mind. I kneeled beside my grandfather’s chair. I had no idea what he’d seen, what he knew. Maybe he did have some shame left, maybe not. His chin was resting against his chest. I reached for the remote and turned the cartoons on for him with the sound down low. His head lifted.

I smelled Grey before I saw him. His vegetable moisturizers, aftershave, citrus conditioners, the minty mouthwash. He was ready to go out. I didn’t know where. Which woman would he chase tonight? A few thin shafts of sunlight crossed behind him as he moved into the living room. He was in a charcoal suit, white shirt, and power tie. A shiver passed through me. There was something chilling about seeing him so well dressed now.

He didn’t notice me kneeling on the floor. He didn’t seem to notice anything. He went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of Glenlivet. He took a deep pull and then let out a sigh.

“Pinsch?” he called. “Ellie? Anyone still here?”

There was a hint of desperation in his voice. He sounded lonely, even forlorn.

He cocked an ear, waiting for a response. When there wasn’t one, he stepped to the screen door and stared out at the rest of the world. He was cool and handsome, hepcat aristocratic. He was dashing like they didn’t make them anymore, sophisticated swank and suave as he sipped his drink in the sunlight.

After a minute he seemed to soften and slacken a little. He pawed at his face. He said something I didn’t catch. It might’ve been my father’s name again. It might have been mine. His grip on the glass eased and it began to slide out of his hand. I thought it would hit the floor but he managed to hold on. His breathing deepened.

I looked into my grandfather’s eyes. He wasn’t watching the cartoons anymore. He was staring at my face.

I stood and spoke Grey’s name.

He didn’t respond. He seemed to almost be sleeping on his feet. I spoke again, louder. He turned his head toward me.

“What the hell are you doing there?” he asked. “Does he need a change?”

It was like I’d woken him in the middle of the night. He took a deep breath, cleared his throat, took a sip of his drink, and straightened his tie.

The neckties. Maybe I should have known just from the necktie fetish. I thper oought of him knotting them around his fists, snapping the material in his hands. Following Collie around town on the night of the underneath, guessing what was going to happen.

Worse, I wondered if Grey had somehow actually pushed Collie into the underneath.

“You want a drink, kid?”

He must’ve been excited after our night out together at Torchy’s. He had sensed the underneath tugging at me too. He thought it might lead me to going mad dog. He’d wanted to see what I was capable of, if I was ready to be drawn down the same way Collie was. It’s why he pushed so hard for the double date. It had been Grey out there in Eve’s yard. He’d stood at the window and peeked in on me having sex with Eve. Did he want me to attack her? Had he expected me to kill her?

I remembered Grey’s hot eyes during the poker game. I remembered how he had slapped my face and looked at me like he had something to say but was unable to say it. He’d watched me at work during the game, the tension high, ready to fight, ready to snap. He saw me baring my teeth at Danny Thompson, going for his throat.

It had somehow aroused Grey’s sickness. His dementia needed a catalyst to activate it. Since I’d come home he’d been waiting for the underneath to take me down too, so that he could follow along in my blood-drenched wake the way he had in Collie’s.

Mal must’ve seen the agitation in Grey, the growing chaos. After the card game that night, he must’ve recognized how detached Grey was becoming. I imagined him finding Grey outside in the yard, holding a necktie twisted between his fists. I could see Mal reaching for his brother out of love and terror. He’d discovered him out back before, wandering the yard. I could picture Mal being as afraid for his brother’s sanity as for his own.

Maybe he knew what was happening. They had spoken quietly. I could see Grey admitting what had happened, mentioning Rebecca Clarke’s name. Then reaching into his pocket and drawing out the knife.

Collie’s knife, the one he’d yanked out of Douglas Schuller’s chest in the gas station men’s room. Staring at it in the moonlight, I could see the vastness of the truth being too huge for Mal to handle. I imagined him going to grab his brother, maybe to shake him, to hurt him, or only to clench him tightly. So physically strong that the first couple of stabs might’ve only felt like wasp stings. Once he realized he was being murdered, he might have embraced the pain, accepted it, unable to fight against the person he loved most in the world. Thinking, How is this possible? How is it possible that I’m being killed by my own brother? And Grey still stabbing Mal like he was trying to kill whatever was wrong in himself. So divorced from himself that he not only didn’t know himself but didn’t know who he was killing.

As much as I hated Collie for what he’d done, as much as I’d said that I wanted him to die, in my heart I would never be able to kill my brother.

I backed away.

Grey said, “That drink, yes or no?” He furrowed his brow at me. Not a hair out of place.

I thought of Lin’s files. Could Grey really be responsible for all those murders? Or had he only killed Becky Clarke on a dark, insane night that consumed him and my brother? I thought of Collie pleading with me, setting me in motion. Had he wanted this? Had he spotted Grey behind him at some point during his spree? Had he known about Grey all along?

amp;st #x201C;Terrier, you’re shaking. You’re pale. Sit down.”

“No, I’m all right.”

“You’re sweating. Let me get you that scotch.”

He started to move across the kitchen and I held my hand up, gestured for him to stay still.

“No,” I said.

“You all right? You sick?”

“Me? Yeah, maybe.” I checked his eyes. He was back, but did his conscience know what he’d done? Was he aware of it, or was the truth hiding deep in his head? “I need to know the truth, Uncle Grey.”

“The truth? The truth about what?”

“About what you’ve done.”

“What I’ve done? What the hell have I done?”

A rush of despair moved through me. I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and held back the flood. “You killed Mal. You snuffed Becky Clarke.”

He grinned crookedly like it was a bad joke and he couldn’t figure out the punch line. He scoffed and let out a chuckle. Then his face hardened. He finished his drink and slapped the glass down hard enough that it rang like a bell. “What the hell are you saying?”

“You did it, Grey.”

“You’ve got to calm down, kid.”

“I am calm.”

“Your imagination is working overtime. You’re bent all out of shape. Is this what’s been on your shoulders? This is what talking to your brother has done? No wonder you’re acting flighty.”

He moved toward me and I backed up. He kept coming and I kept backing up into the living room. He unbuttoned the top button of his collar. His hands moved incredibly fast. He continued smiling. I stood a little straighter. I stopped trembling. “Don’t do it, Grey.”

“Don’t do what?”

“Look at your hands, Grey.”

He looked down. He found that he was holding his tie twisted between his fists. His chin came up again and he met my eyes.

“Terrier, you need to listen to me. Just calm down, kid. You need to calm down.”

“I am calm.”

“Talk to me.”

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” I asked. I could feel the tears in my throat. “Do you know who I am?”

“Talk to me, Terrier. We can talk this out. We need to talk this out. I’m here for you. I’m here to listen to you.”

“Do you even know who you are anymore?”

He came at me so casually, his face passive. He let the tie go slack between his hands, winked at me the way he used to when I was a kid sitting beside him at a ball game and the team he’d bet on had won the game. He never lost that kind of bet, it was always a sure thing. He’d sit back in the stands with a beer halfway to his lips and he’d give me a wink and hit me with that grin, the one that said nothing could stop us, nothing could ever beat us. I took another step backward. He brought his hands a little higher. I whispered his name. I was strong and fast. He was sixty-two. He had powerful hands. I could outrun him if I could just stik,get my legs to work. I backed up and passed in front of the television screen. As I blocked out the cartoons, Gramp’s head fell forward, then came back up. I wanted him to look at me again. I wanted him to tell me I was right. I hit the far wall. Maybe I’m wrong, I could be wrong. Grey came closer until our chests were nearly touching, like he wanted a hug.

“Don’t make me do this,” I begged.

“Do what?” Grey asked. “What are you going to do? Tell me.”

He got the tie up to my throat and began to press. He couldn’t get much purchase. He tried to turn me, hoped to get behind me. I coughed and said his name again, tried to push him away. We wrestled across the room, knocking pictures off the wall: Collie graduating from high school, smirking, thinking he had the world by the balls with his stupid blue mortarboard and tassel; Dale and my mother grinning into the camera, my sister about six, missing one front tooth, really giving it her gleeful all; Gramp at twenty-one, hip and not quite handsome, but with amused eyes like he’d already snatched the photographer’s wallet. Glass shattered on the floor.

We bashed up against a curio cabinet that almost went over. I got a flash of Gramp’s eyes and thought I saw a hint of sorrow in there. I wondered how much of his family’s destruction he would hold himself accountable for. I thought of Scooter fifteen years from now, when she’d be a beautiful young brown-haired woman jogging in the park. I thought of Grey still on the prowl. He said, “Stop it, Terry!”

I croaked, “Let go,” and drove the heel of my hand under his chin. It wasn’t enough. I hit him again. Two rivulets of blood poured out the sides of his mouth, but he wouldn’t stop. JFK started barking like mad outside, leaping at the screen. I hooked Grey twice to the belly and he pulled away. His eyes were fiery but without personality. Without any of the Grey I knew in them. He’d vanished that quickly into the underneath.

I hauled off and hit him in the face again. He dropped his tie on the floor and fell back, reaching out to steady himself against the card table. He touched his jacket pocket and drew his hand away as if he’d been burned. The symbols of our life intensified over time and controlled us right to the end.

He went for his trouser pocket, moving so fast that I barely saw him draw out Collie’s knife.

It was a switchblade. A weak choice-the thin blade tended to break easily-and I wondered why Collie had bought one off Fingers Brown in addition to the pistol. Did he need the feeling of sawing through flesh?

Grey snapped it open and rushed me. I dodged but not quickly enough. He stabbed me in the side. I screamed, or tried to, but the sound stuck in my throat. He tried again, and I lashed out with an uppercut that raised him onto his tiptoes and forced him away. I dropped to all fours and clenched my right hand over the wound and tried not to writhe. As I scurried back, my left hand touched Grey’s tie. I snatched it up and got to my feet. My uncle was coming for me again.

The latch on the screen door snapped and JFK burst through. He barked frantically without any idea of what to do or who to do it to. He circled us as we faced off again.

“Grey-”

“Just calm down,” he said, his jaw broken, the words flailing from his mouth.

He stabbed at me again and I tried to wrap the tie like a cord around his wrists, bind them together, but he fought free. He slash an,ed me across the belly and I barely felt it. My rage and panic were loose. I’d either hauled him down into the darkness or he’d done it to me. We were both going to die and I was fine with that.

I hissed, “Not Scooter, you prick.”

He got me in a choke hold with his left hand and pushed me back against the front window. Glass cracked behind my head and I started to bleed into my ears.

I heard footsteps. I glanced over and saw Dale rushing us, her expression frightened and then not concerned but furious, bitter, as if she too were showing her true self. I could smell beer on her breath and the sweet scent of marijuana on her clothes. She’d been out with friends or Butch again, and the guy had dropped her off at the curb. By the time she made it to the porch she’d heard the action inside. Instead of running off or calling the cops, she’d jumped into the fight.

JFK continued to bark, so frantic now he was practically out of his head.

The switchblade danced in front of my belly. Grey shifted his weight, ready to thrust through my guts.

My sister’s eyes met mine. I saw her pull the butterfly knife from her pocket, the one she’d wanted for protection. I wondered if she was going to help Grey kill me. I saw a flash of her teeth. I started to count off the major grudges she held against me, but there could be a thousand more I wasn’t aware of. Collie would never know all my resentments. No one would.

I closed my eyes and waited for her to slide her blade into my belly a moment after Grey eased in his. Maybe they’d leave me in the backyard crawling around on the lawn in my own filth. I couldn’t bear the idea of my mother seeing that and I let out a gurgling moan.

Dale shoved the knife into Grey’s back.

He cried out and glared at her over his shoulder. She said, “Oh God-”

She had trouble withdrawing the blade. It stuck between his shoulders for a moment before she finally managed to wrench it loose.

“What are you doing?” she said, her eyes full of confusion. She looked at Grey’s blood on the knife and covering her hands. Then she looked up at me. “Why did you make me do that?”

Grey glowered at her as if seeing her for the first time. A vicious, humorless leer widened across his face like a deep scar. Without turning, he prodded me again with his left hand and I went a little farther through the window. He let out a laugh as the switchblade in his right fist flailed in front of Dale. I’d never heard a laugh like that before. I reached for his wrist, but his hands were so goddamn strong and fast. It took everything I had to move him off a foot, then two, then three, just trying to get him away from my sister.

He wasn’t seeing Dale. No more than he’d seen Becky Clarke when he’d strangled her in the park. Or Eve’s daughter, Roxie, when he was drinking Glenlivet and slipping through her house. I was certain now. I could see the murder in his eyes. He was seeing the woman who’d broken his heart. I could tell that it was a sweet pain he was feeling. All of his hate flooded through him. The memories, fantasies, and impulses were a riot in his head. I pushed him harder, gagging, and we bumped into Gramp’s chair. Old Shep blinked twice and angled his chin at me. Dale came at us again, trying to break Grey’s grip on me. She held her own blade the wrong way, too tightly instead of loose across her fingers. She slashed at his back twice.

Grey grunte fuXd softly and whispered, “There’s no need for that. Everything’s going to be fine now.” His blade quit wavering and I knew he was about to kill my sister.

And then the knife wasn’t there anymore.

Grey didn’t notice. He stabbed forward with nothing in his fist. Dale squealed as if she’d been skewered, then looked down in surprise and started to back away in a run. I looked down at Gramp and saw the switchblade in his hand. He was snapping it shut. His eyes were still on the television.

I screamed something. I didn’t know what. I sounded crazy, much more insane than Grey. My belly was hot with pumping blood. I swung around behind my uncle and got the sweet silk tie around his throat, put a knee in the middle of his back, and pulled.

Dale screamed, “Terry, don’t!”

JFK spun in circles and howled as if in agony.

Grey twisted and fell aside and I dropped on top of him. The knife wounds in his back were spurting blood. Dale had done real damage. I held on. He contorted all across the floor and I held on. He whispered a word. It might have been “Why?” I’d never be sure. Dale kept shouting, her face wet, her hands red. Eventually I felt the cartilage in his throat beginning to crack. His struggles weakened. There might still be time to save him. Doctors, psychiatrists, maybe it was possible-and then? Prison? Then he started to convulse and I let go and watched him choke down his last breath.

His body relaxed and I sat up and drew him into my lap. I thought about Kimmy and wondered how I would ever look my father in the eye again.

I dropped over onto my back and JFK licked at my face and my belly. I sucked air in and tried to breathe even while I sobbed. Gramp snicked the switchblade open and then shut it again, and then opened it again.

Dale entered my field of vision. Her eyes were red-rimmed but she wasn’t crying anymore. She leaned down and gripped my shoulders. She said, “What happened? Tell me what the fuck just happened!”

“He killed Mal,” I said.

“No…”

“And Rebecca Clarke. He was sick… the Alzheimer’s… it… he-”

“No, it can’t be. Not Mal! Grey would never do that!”

“He couldn’t help himself.”

“Oh no, no… bullshit! Maybe it’s you who’s crazy!” She stared at the drying streaks of blood smeared up her forearms. “Maybe we both are.”

There was no reason for her to believe me. I was practically a stranger, whereas she’d seen Grey every day of her life. I’d done hardly anything to make her think of me as her older brother. I’d done nothing to make her believe in me. I looked and acted more and more like Collie. She already had one lunatic brother. She had to be wondering if she had two.

JFK wouldn’t come near us. He sat on the rug and stared at me with a harsher judgment than I’d ever felt before.

Dale’s eyes flashed with theories and blazing possibilities, trying to put it all together. I propped myself up against the wall, hands clutching my belly. I was leaking fast. I explained everything as quickly and quietly as I could. What I knew and what I suspected. If she didn’t buy it, she’d ca will the cops and that would be that.

“He was gushing blood,” she said. “I killed him.”

“You saved my life, Dale.”

She dropped her head back, the tears tracking down her face. I knew what she was thinking. I was thinking it too.

“Oh Jesus, oh God, poor Dad… poor Daddy. What’s Dad going to think? What’s he going to do?”

I struggled to get up and couldn’t do it on my own. She eyed me closely. She would always look at me like this from now on. She would never be completely sure of me again. The tears shimmered and slowed.

“Terry, you’re bleeding.”

“Not so bad.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Go get bandages.”

“Bandages aren’t going to stop this. You need to go to a hospital. We have to call the police.”

“No. Help me up.”

She did. I rested my weight on her and she groaned beneath me. She helped me to the bathroom. I tore a couple of towels into strips and made a bandage to knot around my stomach. The wounds hurt, but the black burden of what we’d done blunted everything else. The guilt was just beginning for us. I was drenched in cold sweat. Dale lathered up in the sink and washed Grey’s blood off, then helped me to clean up as well as I could. I found some outdated pain meds in the cabinet and popped a handful.

There was a lot to take care of. We’d already had too much tragedy in my family. My old man wouldn’t be able to handle losing another brother. He was about to lose his oldest son in three days.

Grey was going on the long grift. I wasn’t much of a forger, but I wasn’t going to have to be. Grey’s letter would be short and to the point. I had been gone for five years. Grey could vanish for a few himself. It was a better ending than the truth.

I opened a closet door and found an old black denim jacket. It was tight and hurt like hell to put on, but once I had it buttoned up, constricted against the shredded towels, I felt a little better. I picked the butterfly blade up off the floor and stuck it in my back pocket.

I checked the window. There was blood on the cracked glass. We had to do something about that. I examined the screen door. The latch was broken and would need to be replaced. The jamb looked fine. My old man would be glad to get out his tools. He wouldn’t even be curious. I could tell him I stumbled. I could tell him I got angry and kicked the door in. One stupid story was as believable as another.

“What are you doing?” Dale asked. “What are you going to do?”

“I need you to clean the house. Ma and Dad are out at dinner.” I checked my watch. “We’ve still got a couple hours.”

“They don’t go to dinner.”

“They went tonight, Dale. You’re going to clean the place. Put everything back the way it was. Wipe the blood up.” I pointed to the living-room window. “There too. Change your clothes. Throw everything bloody into a plastic bag and put it in my trunk.”

She looked over at Gramp. “Poor Old Shep, he saw it all. He filched the blade. He saved my life.”

“Both our lives.” Henimpl wouldn’t have snatched Grey’s knife if he had any doubts. “He’s still in there someplace.” I put my hand to his stubbled cheek. “Thanks, Gramp.”

Dale glanced at the corpse on the floor. “What are you going to do with Grey? We need to call… I mean… we can’t just-”

“I’ll take care of him.”

“Terry, no.” She reached up and took me gently by the collar, forced me to look into her face. “You can’t. You’re not going to-”

“I’ll take care of it.”

“Not this too.”

“Yeah, this too.”

I blitzed out the back door and got a shovel out of the shed. I looked off at the woods. A shiver went through me so violently that I had to slap the shovel down into the dirt and prop myself up with the handle. I walked back in and Dale was smoking a cigarette.

“This isn’t the way to do it, Terry.”

I couldn’t imagine dumping him in the ocean or burying him on some construction site under a thousand gallons of cement. “Leave him in Sheepshead Bay? I can’t do that.”

“It’s the safest way. We can’t keep him on our property.”

“I can’t let him go. He needs to stay at home.”

“You’re going to get caught.”

“That’s better than the alternative,” I said.

She shook her head. “I’ll be an accessory, damn you.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll keep you clear of it.”

“You’re not thinking straight. You can’t even lift him.”

“Yes, I can.”

But she was right. I got him into a seated position, hooked my arms under his, and dragged him to the back door. I managed to push his body to the top step of the porch, hunch down under it, swing his arms over my shoulders, heft him up behind the knees, and get him into a dead man’s lift. It was possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I carried him through the woods, his lips pressed against the back of my neck. Gases gurgled and escaped his mouth like muted curses.

JFK followed, sniffing at Grey’s ankles. I dug a grave behind the log where Mal and I’d had our lengthy conversation. The ground was soft from all the rain. It was easier than putting in fence-post railings. It wasn’t going to be deep but it would be deep enough for the time being. It took me only a half hour. I rolled Grey’s corpse in. At the last second, just before I threw the first shovelful of dirt on top of him, I grabbed the photo from his jacket pocket. I didn’t know why I wanted it, but I felt strongly that I had to keep it. I covered him over quickly but well and shifted the log over the grave.

When I was finished, I started back to the house. JFK stared at the muddy spot until I called him to me. Halfway through the woods, I had to stop to vomit. I was feeling light-headed and feeble. Dale met me on the back porch. She’d changed into a summer dress. She looked beautiful and very young and innocent.

“Gilmore’s here,” she hissed.

37

I used the backyard hose to wash the dirt off my hands and spray the sweat from my face. I opened the jacket and looked down at the red-stained towels wrapped around my belly. The blood was starting to soak through but you couldn’t really tell with the black denim.

“Did you finish cleaning inside?” I asked.

“Yes, but-I hurried. I might have missed something.”

I doubted it. She was too sharp for that.

“He’s got a pizza,” she said. “He does that sometimes. Brings food for when they play cards.”

“It’s okay, just go tell him that Dad isn’t here.”

“He knows you’re home. He saw your car. It’s got the bloody towels and sponges and some of my clothes in a bag in the trunk. That window in the living room is broken. I cleaned the blood off and closed the curtains over it. And the front screen is busted to shit.”

“Tell him Butch did it. You broke up with him and he came here and kicked the door in. I beat the crap out of Butch and sent him home.”

She nodded. One side of her mouth lifted in a pained half smile. “Good thinking. In case there’s any blood left around. Or on you.”

“I’ll be inside in a minute. You split.”

“No, I’m not leaving you alone,” she said.

“You’ve done enough, Dale. I’m sorry you’ve been dragged into this.”

I couldn’t say any more. This was family. These were the things of which we do not speak.

She went inside. I put on my game face. I knew I didn’t have much of one, but I made the effort. The pain meds were wearing off and my belly burned. Every time I moved a little, I could feel my skin splitting further. I waited another minute, then followed her in.

Dale had cleaned the place up fine. You couldn’t tell there had been a fight in the living room. You couldn’t tell a man had died here. Gilmore was sitting at the card table, holding a slice of pizza, the box open and turned to the seat opposite. He looked up at me and said, “Thought we could share a pie. You hungry?”

“Starved.”

I got a couple of beers out of the fridge. I checked the clock. I hoped my parents would be gone at least another half hour. The thought of facing them weakened my resolve. I sat down, passed Gilmore a bottle, and he gave me that fucked grin.

I wondered if I should play up to him, smiling and kicking back, wasting time until he got his fill of the Rands for the night and took off. But looking at his teeth I was overwhelmed with rage. I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to scream. I picked up the beer and pressed it against my lips and drank deeply and tried to fight off the urge.

“Your old man went out?”

“To dinner with my mother.”

Gilmore nodded like a proud father whose son has just gone off on his first date. “Good for them. I keep telling them they should do that kind of thing more often. Spend time together out of the house.”

He really did think of himself as some lost begotten son. I wiped my mouth and said wi;, “What’s the word on Mal’s murderer? Anything yet?”

“It’s an ongoing investigation.”

“You bastard. You actually said ‘ongoing investigation’ to me?”

He quit grinning. “I’m not on the case. And even if I was I couldn’t tell you anything pertinent. You know that.”

I nodded. This had nothing to do with cards, with friendship, with checking up on my father. Gilmore was reaching out. He couldn’t do it with his wife and kids, so he came here. Pizza is what you had on family nights.

“How’s your father holding up?” he asked.

“As well as can be expected.”

“He seems like the rock, rugged, solid, but your mother is really the strong one who can handle the serious hurt. She holds it all together. Your old man, he’s a little softer than you might think.”

“Because he takes photos of your family for you? Because he crept my old girlfriend’s house?”

“He told you about that?”

“No.”

“But you found out anyway.”

I wasn’t in control and I knew I was going to make a bad mistake. Maybe I already had. Gilmore’s expression could mean anything. I reached over and slid a slice of pizza out of the box and chewed a hunk off. My stomach surged with bile, but I kept eating.

He wasn’t a fool. He saw me sweating. He could sense the bad news coming. The question was whether he’d follow up or let it drop. He scanned the room. He checked out Old Shep. He eyed me carefully and I kept on chewing.

“You’re bleeding,” he said.

“Your asskicking scraped me up pretty good.”

“Dale said you got into it with her boyfriend.”

“Nothing major.”

“It looks like he did some damage.”

“It’s tough to make a stoner see reason.”

“A lot of people refuse to see reason.”

He took a last bite of his crust, then sat back and stared at me. His shoulders shifted a little. I fed the rest of my slice to JFK and cleaned the grease off my fingers. I saw that I’d left the slightest dab of dirt under a pinky nail. Then I took another slice. I forced myself to down it bite by bite. I thought of Grey out there in the mud. My brother would be dead in three days. My sister and I would share this sin for the rest of our lives. I heard the faint sound of metal snapping against metal. It was Gramp playing with the switchblade.

Gilmore pursed his lips. “You’re in trouble. You can talk to me, Terrier. I can help you, if you want. You’ve been looking in all the wrong places for a killer. I can imagine what you’ve found. Or what you think you’ve found. I heard about you pulling a piece at Danny Thompson’s place. That was really fucking stupid. A Rand with a gun-I never would have believed it. What if he comes after you?”

“What if he does?” I said.

“You don’t need that kind of grief.”

It almost got me laughing. “Anybody question him about Mal’s murder?

“Of course. And they’ll stay on him.”

“Even if it turns up dirt on you?”

Gilmore leered at me with surprise. “You think if he killed Mal I’d hush it up to hide my dirt?”

I looked into his eyes. They were like tidal pools heavy with flotsam. A couple of days ago I’d thought he might be a serial killer. Now I almost felt sorry for him. And I feared him. In his own way he had loved Mal the way he loved my father, the way he loved me. Like a child standing outside in the snow, staring through a window at a family he wished he was part of on Christmas Day. I thought, This guy is crazy, but he’s not our kind of crazy.

“You’re making bad moves,” he said. “Like with Cara Clarke. She hanged herself, but who knows what pushed her buttons. Who pushed her over the edge. You think you might’ve had something to do with that, Terry?”

I kept eating. We were just two pals enjoying some pizza together.

“You never should have come home,” he said.

He wasn’t going to get an argument from me there. He shifted his weight. I thought, If he takes another poke at me, even if he is a cop, I’ll break his jaw. He must’ve realized it, because we each held our ground.

I still had the butterfly knife. I wondered if this was the moment when I became my brother, when I became my uncle. What would I do to stay out of prison? What would I really do to protect my sister? Gramp’s snicking blade beat into my temples until I could barely hear myself breathing. Gilmore was here because he wanted a family, and we Rands were losing ours, one by one.

Dale sashayed into the room then. She’d been listening. She’d done another quick change and had on the clothes I’d seen her wearing the other night at the lake. The tight leather jacket, the sexy pants. She looked twenty-five and gorgeous as she paraded in front of Gilmore. “Ugh, anchovies and onions?”

Gilmore kept glowering at me. It was his default expression. Dale bent over the table, grabbed my bottle, and took a long sip. Beer leaked over her chin. I wanted to tell her not to overplay it. He’s too crafty. He shifted his gaze to her. He looked at her hips, her chest, her pulsing throat. He wasn’t thinking about reading tween vampire romance novels to her now.

“Where are you heading out to this evening?” he asked. “The lake?”

“No, I’m going out on a first date.”

“No wonder Butch crashed your door. He seems like the jealous type.”

She worked the bottle around her bottom lip. “He’s history now that Terry shooed him off.”

“Good, you’re too young to settle for someone like that punk. This new one a football star?”

Dale smiled sexily, her face full of amusement. “No, he just got out after a nickel in Sing Sing for armed robbery. But he’s completely reformed. Wants to go to night class and become an IRS auditor.”

Gilmore blinked and shrugged. “Well, that’s… good.”

She said nothing. I said nothing. But we’d closed ranks. You could feel the change in the air as we waited for the next thing to happen. Gramp kept playing with the blade beneath his blanket. It sounded impossibly loud to meon.tr but no one else seemed to hear it. Finally Gilmore stood.

He wasn’t a fool. He was a solid, sharp cop despite his vices. He knew us. In a very real way, he was us. His gaze whipsawed around the room one more time. Even with the cleaning, we’d left a million clues for him to spot. I tried to hold my leaking guts in. His knowing grin faded. He carefully wiped his hands off with a napkin, crumpled it up, and tossed it on the table. He frowned at Dale. She was a good actress but not good enough, not after having helped kill a man. A man she had loved. Gilmore’s gaze hardened. He shook his head like he was very disappointed in her. He went stone-cold-killer cop. He even looked at JFK, who let out a moan in the corner. The dog knew we’d botched it. Gilmore glanced at Dale again, made sure she had her hands in view. He turned his hip to me so he could draw his gun easily. He zeroed in on the dirt beneath my pinky nail. He read the guilt in me. He was a bad boy. He was bent. He might’ve even been in on a few body dumps himself, who knew. I wondered if we would have to get rid of him too.

He said, “So who did you two kill?”

38

I told Gilmore everything. It was nearly word for word what I’d said to Dale only an hour earlier. All that I knew and all I suspected. It fit together and made perfect sense, if you were willing to go along with it. Gilmore wasn’t. He didn’t believe me. He hadn’t seen Grey’s face as he’d tried to strangle me. Whatever I said sounded like a coward’s lie. His disgust was written in his face. I was no better than my brother. He kept looking at Dale, and I could practically hear the sound of his heart breaking. It was no different from my own.

We brought him to Grey’s grave. Gilmore huffed air and said, “Jesus fucking Christ. You buried him in your own backyard. You both want to wind up in the chair too? That what this is about?”

“No,” I said.

“Your mother. She came to your brother’s trial. Think she’ll show to yours? Or will she finally wash her hands of you once and for all?”

I remembered him saying that my mother had wept the whole time but had still tried to put in the righteous word for Collie. I wondered what she would say about me.

“I did it,” Dale whispered. “It was me. I stabbed him. I had to. Grey was strangling Terry. He was out of his head. He didn’t even recognize me. He would’ve killed both of us. It’s the truth. I had to do it.”

I wasn’t certain when Gilmore had drawn his gun but he held it loosely in his hand. So we were heading down that road already. He was going to call in backup.

I pleaded with him. “At least leave her out of this.”

“How can I?” he asked.

He stared at Dale for a very long time. In her he saw a younger sister. In her he saw his own daughters. His expression was heavy with tragedy. She couldn’t bear up under the burden of her guilt and the force of his reproach. She wavered where she stood. I watched her folding, inch by inch, but I was too slow to catch her. Gilmore spread his arms and she dropped into them, sobbing, but he kept a grip on his gun, pointed at my chest.

It was true, he knew I’d never punch a cop, not even in self-defense. Not unless I had to, in order toer.but he f

I shifted my stance.

He shook his head slowly and said, “Don’t, Terrier.”

His eyes remained dark and lonely. All he had in the world were the Rands. We both realized it. I could see that he was trying to imagine his own empty future now.

“I ought to take you apart,” he said. “I ought to take you apart and bury you next to him.”

“It was Grey,” Dale said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “Terry didn’t-”

“Shut up,” Gilmore snarled. “Both of you shut the hell up for a minute.”

I thought about what he had said when we’d first met up again outside the Elbow Room. There are lines you cross and those you don’t.

I told him, “This wasn’t a line, Gilmore. It was something that had to be done. It wasn’t his fault. He was ill. You were right, there was no serial killer. There was just Grey, drawn along in Collie’s wake. If Collie hadn’t gone mad dog, neither would Grey. He wouldn’t have crossed paths with Rebecca Clarke and she wouldn’t be dead. This is what’s best. Just turn around and walk away.”

“I can’t do that. I’m a cop.”

“You’re on the Thompson payroll.”

“That’s minor shit.”

“I know.”

“That’s nothing like this. I’ve never done anything like this.”

“I know.”

“Let’s go.”

“Leave her out of it. You can do that much.”

“It was me,” Dale said. “I did it. I stabbed him. But I had to.”

Grey probably would’ve survived the knife wound in the back if I hadn’t strangled him. I knew Dale was protecting me just like I was protecting her. Or maybe we were both intent on blaming ourselves.

Gilmore backed away toward the house. He gestured with his free hand for Dale to follow him and motioned with the gun for me to do the same. I did. I was limping now. The pain was quickly becoming agony. I could barely maneuver the back porch stairs. I got to the door and Dale hung my arm across her shoulder and led me inside. JFK stayed close by. He sensed the danger to our family. I thought he might go for Gilmore’s throat. One of us might have to.

We all stepped into the living room. Gilmore still hadn’t gone for his phone. He turned and stepped backward. I could rush him. JFK would probably do the rest. But Gilmore eyed me again and I had trouble seeing the outcome. I didn’t think I had it in me to murder him, not even to save Dale. I’d failed my family again. What in the hell was the point in coming back, I thought. I’ve done nothing but kick our home off its foundation.

Gilmore wagged the gun at me to get me moving again. At the edge of my vision I saw a flash of metal in Gramp’s hand. Some instinct was pushing him along as well, taking on the responsibilities I couldn’t handle. Beside him, JFK crouched like he was ready to leap.

I shoved Gilmore out of the way. He spun around and stuck the gun under my chin just as I plucked the switchblade out of Old Shep’s hand. I said, “Thanks anyway, Gramp, but we’re not going to do that.”

He blinked at his cartoons.

Gilmore pulled that tight, nasty grin again. He held a hand open and I put the knife in it. He snapped the blade shut and stuck it in his pocket. The false chuckle rang hollow in his chest. He said, “You know what this is going to do to your father?”

“Yes.”

“And you don’t even care, do you, you little bastard?”

Enough was enough. I made my move. I lunged forward, swung wild, and connected with his chin. It was a beautiful shot, one I’d been waiting to give him since he’d sucker-punched me in the parking lot of the Elbow Room. It was the last bit of reserve I had. I went down on my face on the rug, groaning and panting.

I started to puke but Dale got a wastebasket and helped me to my knees. When I could breathe again, I reached into my pocket and took out the photo of the woman who had jilted Grey forty-five years ago and put the splinter in his mind that had gone deeper and deeper until it cut him in two. I hoped she was alive. I hoped she hadn’t been Grey’s first victim.

I handed the photo to Gilmore and said, “I don’t know her name or anything about her, but check on it. See if she was murdered. Grey… he might have…” I looked down and streams of blood were pulsing down the front of my jeans. Dale pushed her way in and said, “Oh God, Terry, you’re-” She grabbed more towels from the kitchen and pressed them to my stomach. My mother was going to wonder where the hell all these towels went.

Dale started tying off my wounds. Gilmore said, “They won’t hold.”

“Do something,” she begged. “Help my brother.”

He winced as he rubbed his jaw and finally came to a decision. Covering over Grey’s murder was the lesser of two evils. It was between that and the promise of a completely empty life. We Rands were all he had.

“All right,” he said.

“We have to get rid of some other things,” Dale told him.

“I know a place.”

We were going to be seeing a lot more of Gilmore from now on. He owned us, and we owned him.

He and Dale helped me to my feet. Maybe I would die anyway. Maybe I wanted to die. Maybe that was the perfect choice to make.

39

I visited Collie one last time. I requested that we meet in the area where I’d first spoken with him, where we could talk on the phone and there would be reinforced glass between us.

The screws brought him in and took their time unlocking his chains. He must’ve come straight from the gym. He was still sweaty and the veins remained knotted all across his arms, twisting red and black in his throat. He smiled at me through the glass but he knew something was wrong. I was a little heartened to realize he could still worry about something even now.

The screws left and Collie spun his chair around, sat backward as usual, and snatched up the phone. I took a brea#x2="1em" a

glass betwth and reached up to mine. I moved stiffly. It had taken twenty staples to close the jagged tears in my side. The emergency-room docs had done an excellent job patching me up. They told me the scars wouldn’t be bad. The dog tattoo would need some touching up, though.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d see you again,” my brother said.

“I didn’t plan on coming back,” I told him.

“So why are you here?”

I could feel that old singular pain rising once again. My foolish mantra returned to me. It beat along with my pulse. I can do this. I can do this.

“You were right,” I said. “Someone else snuffed Becky Clarke.”

He let go with a chuckle that grew wilder until it became a whoop. It got the screws looking in at us. “I knew it. Lin was right. My girl is sharp as hell. Idiot cops couldn’t figure it out, but she did.” He raised his chin and eyed me. “Did you find him?”

“Yes,” I said.

He waited for me to continue. I didn’t. I decided there was no need to tell him that I thought Lin had been wrong too. I didn’t believe Grey was a serial killer. Instead, there was a world of mad dogs like him, husbands and boyfriends who couldn’t contain their rage, whose hands had learned how to batter and strangle. The world was littered with dead young brunettes.

His face emptied of its usual high-strung emotion. He looked at me with some real attentiveness. “Did you take care of it yourself? There’s been no word here. Nothing on the circuit. Lin hasn’t said anything.”

“I handled it. Nobody else knows.”

“Right. But I can see you’re holding back. You’ve got more to say.”

I nodded. “Why didn’t you tell me about how you kissed them?”

Collie looked away in embarrassment. His face flushed until it glowed pink. I had never seen my brother embarrassed about anything. It was a revelation. I had learned something new about him on the eve of his death, and that disturbed me. I didn’t want to believe that there was more I might learn about my brother, if we had more time.

“I didn’t know they knew about that,” he said.

“Forensics did their job. Did you really think they’d miss that?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was in the files. Your attorneys should have used it.”

“I didn’t care. I didn’t want to fight. I didn’t want them to fight for me either.”

“You should have told me anyway. Maybe it would have helped convince me that you hadn’t iced Rebecca Clarke.”

“Nothing was going to convince you one way or the other. You were either going to help or you weren’t.”

He was right. I couldn’t argue the point. Right from the beginning I knew I was going to help. Even before he asked me. Despite my own protests. He called me and I had come running home.

“Why’d you put your lips on them, Collie?”

“I just did, Terry.”

We were bound by our rituals. The underneath forced him to kill with viciousness, but perhaps rev it couldn’t steal all of his love from him. Maybe it was his way of begging forgiveness from them. Or him forgiving them for allowing themselves to become his victims and the impetus for his own destruction.

“So tell me,” he said. “What happened? Who was it?”

I leaned so far toward the glass that he actually drew away on the other side. “I want the truth from you, Collie, do you understand? Don’t run any kind of a game on me. Don’t hold back. Don’t lie. Talk straight. If you’ve got any kind of a heart, use it now. You owe me that much.”

“What the hell do you mean, Terry?”

I enunciated every word very clearly into the phone. “Did… you… know?”

“Did I know what?”

“Did you have any idea at all who it was?”

He shook his head. “No, of course I don’t know who it was. If I’d known I wouldn’t have needed you to check into it. What happened? What did you do?”

I said, “Does it really matter?”

He glanced away again. “No, I suppose not.”

I looked at my brother for so long that his expression shifted several times. He smiled, then frowned, then a hint of real concern began to ply his features.

“What is it, Terry? What do you need to say?”

My throat was raw. I swallowed several times. I looked at my reflection and then realized it wasn’t my reflection. I was staring at my brother. We were the same. Maybe it was the onset of Alzheimer’s, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe there really was no reason. Maybe Grey had none either. It might not have been the girl who broke his heart. It might have been anything at all. And me. And me. Was I going to wind up collecting Toby mugs or would I murder young women who reminded me of Kimmy? I was already a murderer. I should be sitting on the other side of the glass. I had a premonition that I would be someday.

“What is it?” he repeated.

I sucked air like I was suffocating. “Collie, I have to tell you something.”

“Okay. That’s okay, Terry. You can tell me anything you need to. Go on. What is it? Tell me.”

I said, “I love you.”

He couldn’t have been more shocked if I’d opened all the doors and ushered him to a limousine and driven him out of there. His face grew a healthy, youthful pink again. It took ten years off him. He looked like a kid again. “What?”

“You’re my brother and I love you. But I can’t forgive you. Do you understand? I’ll never forgive you. When they put you on the table, when they put poison in your blood. When they murder you, Collie… I’m sorry, but I’m going to be glad. What you see when you look at me that last time? You’re going to see someone who’s wishing that you burn in hell. But I’m not lying. I love you.”

I put my hand to the glass and fanned my fingers. His eyes were wide and his mouth had dropped open. He looked frozen in the glare of open emotion. He didn’t respond to my gesture. I hung up the phone. The screws came and put chains on my brother and led him out. I watched him shuffle through the door. He started to turn his silver head and look back a alrIt me but didn’t complete the motion. I sat there until one of the screws told me to leave.

40

The next day Collie gave it one last romp for posterity’s sake. He was going to go out having some fun. He fought them with a huge smile on his face. I knew he wasn’t really trying to hurt anyone. He was just putting on one last show for his own entertainment. The screws wrestled him down to the floor and fell over themselves. The priest stepped away and kept reading from the Bible in a shaky voice.

I concentrated on Collie. I put my will into it. I focused all my attention and directed it with all my mental wattage and tried to find him in the distance between us. I thought maybe it would be enough for him to make a last-ditch effort to connect with me.

Collie glanced up once and grinned at me through the window even while they swung their billy clubs at his back.

They strapped him down to the table and stuck the needle in. He had no last words. Not even for his wife. Lin sat expressionless beside me. I wanted to jump out of my skin but she seemed relaxed, almost serene. She’d married him knowing this would be the final outcome.

I didn’t know any of the other witnesses. I had wondered if the Clarkes would show up. I wondered if anyone else here was a relative of one of Collie’s other victims. I tried to read their expressions. I couldn’t. We all looked about the same kind of haunted.

His eyes were stone, but I imagined what it must be like staring at a group of pitiless people who all wanted you dead. Even your own brother. It felt like they wanted me dead too.

The machine took no time at all.

Collie shut his eyes and then it was over.

As we were leaving Lin folded up and almost fell. I reached out and took her in my arms and turned her to my chest. I let her sob for both of us. It went on for a long time. When she was done she pushed off me and walked away.

There was cheering outside. People hooting and flashing their headlights. Protesters were holding candles and singing hymns. It was an emotionally charged moment. I didn’t know which camp I fit into more. Vicky and her news crew were interviewing folks. I thought Eve would be on hand but she wasn’t. Maybe she’d already moved off to a new story.

Gilmore stood out beyond the gate. I walked over to him. He was smoking a cigarette. He was a touch pale. It only peripherally had to do with my brother. I knew he was thinking about family again, the family an orphan like him had never had, and the family that he couldn’t hold on to himself.

He said, “I don’t know what to say, Terrier.”

“You don’t have to say anything. In fact, I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Your mother, she-”

“What happened between you and Phyllis?” I asked.

He looked down and let a stream of smoke out. When he looked back up it was like he’d forgotten I was there. It took him another moment to respond. “She left me.”

“Any chance you can win her back?”

“I doubt it.”

“Is it what you want? To have her back?”

He paused. He/p› up the way.

“Then do whatever she needs you to do, right? Quit the force if it’s that. Be a straight arrow if it’s that. Be a better father if it’s that. Spend more time with the family, whatever it is she needs. Do it.”

“It’s easy advice but hard to change.” He shook his head. “She won’t take me back.”

I thought about him bringing my father into his ordeal. My old man breaking in to houses again, but not to juke the places, just to snap photos or to stand among the dreams of what might have been, the wreckage of our reality. “Then move on. Stop hanging around executions and people like the Rands.”

His lips crimped into that fucked grin again. I wanted to slap it off like it was an insect that had landed on him. “Why are you saying this? You know how ridiculous you are, Terry?”

“As a matter of fact I do. That’s proof that I know what I’m talking about, Gilmore. I’m Exhibit A.”

I walked away. He had as good a chance as anyone at pulling it together and getting himself back on track. So long as he stayed out of our backyard.

I got into my car. I sat there in the lot, watching the crowd. From a distance I couldn’t tell the divergent groups apart anymore. The moon climbed into the night sky. The candles went out one by one. I turned the key and threw the car into drive, then put it in park again and turned off the engine. My brother was still inside somewhere. I thought I would wait with him a little longer.

My mother phoned. She spoke my name and then said nothing more for a time. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to tell her, how much detail to give. A heavy numbness had settled on me. It was lulling and I shut my eyes.

She finally managed to ask, “Did he say anything?”

“No.”

“Are you all right?”

“I will be.”

“Come home.”

I went home. A couple of news crews were out in front. They jumped in my face. JFK barked his ass off. I said nothing. It was three in the morning.

I walked in. They were sitting in the kitchen. My mother had prepared food. It seemed right. We all took our usual places. The three empty seats seemed not to be empty at all.

No one said anything. No one asked me anything. Dale almost got up the nerve at one point but backed out. I was glad. My mother fixed me a sandwich and I ate without tasting. I helped with the dishes. She’d bought a crumb cake. It was Collie’s favorite. Dale cut us each a piece and put them on plates and we sat and stared. Eventually my mother cleaned the table again.

I was her only son now. I thought I should make some kind of grand familial demonstration. I didn’t know what it should be, so I did nothing.

My father took his beer cooler out onto the porch. The news vans were gone. I sat with him. We drank in silence. JFK circled the yard restlessly, cutting in and out of the brush and prowling the property line. My father got drunk enough that he nearly passed out. I helped him to bed. My mother feigned sleep as I laid my old man beside her.

I passed Dale’s door and heard her crying. I knocked softly and she quieted. I walked in and sat on the edge of her mattress t;

I laid down beside her but couldn’t keep my eyes closed. I stared at the ceiling and thought of everything and thought of nothing. I got up at dawn and went for an easy run around the college campus with JFK. My staples pulled and bled a little but there was no major damage. When we got back I showered, got dressed, and went shopping.

When I returned home, my parents were sitting in front of their cold, untouched breakfasts.

I handed them an envelope.

“What’s this?” my old man asked.

My mother pulled out the tickets. “A cruise?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What are we going to do on a cruise?”

“I don’t know what anybody does on a cruise. Drink piña coladas and visit tourist dives. It goes all over the Caribbean. Two weeks.”

“I think I’d be afraid to be out there on all that water. This is very thoughtful, Terry, but really-”

“You live on an island, Ma. You’re always surrounded by ocean. You’re going on a cruise.”

“This isn’t a good time,” my father said.

“Why isn’t it a good time?”

“It just isn’t.”

“It’s a good time. It’s the only time, Dad.”

“What about Gramp?” my mother said. “What about Dale? I need to cook for Grey.”

“Dale can handle herself. Gramp is getting a nurse. You don’t need to cook for Grey.”

“There’s no insurance for a nurse.”

“There’s money,” I said. “There are caches and cubbyholes stuffed with money. We’re cleaning them out. Old Shep is getting a nurse and you two are going to the fucking Caribbean if I have to row you there in a goddamn kayak.”

“What are you getting so angry about?”

“I’m not angry!”

“You seem angry.”

“I’m not angry.”

“A cruise,” my mother said.

“What the hell,” my father said.

41

I parked in front of Kimmy and Chub’s house. JFK was curled up in the passenger seat, relaxed but watchful. He’d hopped in and I needed a friend. There was no reason for me to be here. I wasn’t family. I wasn’t even a friend anymore. Three of the men closest to me in my life were gone, all within the last week, one by my own hand. My blood had thinned considerably. I climbed out and JFK stepped along with me. The weight of what I’d done hit me all at once and I bent over, holding my arms across my guts and fighting down the urge to scream. I clamped my teeth shut and made noises that no sane man should ever make. When the moment passed, I was covered in sweat and my driver’s-side window was flecked with my tandy passed Dears. JFK had his nose pressed against my knee. I stood at the bottom of the driveway. I didn’t go any farther. JFK waited and finally laid down. I almost turned around. The front door opened. Kimmy said something about the drive-in and Chub said it might rain.

Scooter ran a few cantering steps down the walk. She didn’t watch where she was going and was headed right toward me. I thought, This is not my daughter, she’s not my girl. Kimmy’s smile dropped and her eyes widened. I couldn’t read what was in them. Chub stood beside her, a little out in front in a protective manner. They really were a good match. Strong and partnered, tight together. I wondered if I was going to weep or rage or run away again. I wondered if I would even remember this scene a few years from now when it was my turn to disappear into a dark corner.

There were names set against my tongue. I would say them on my deathbed even if I didn’t know what they meant anymore. Mal. Grey. Cara. Becky. Collie. Scooter. Kimmy. She tilted her head at me as if I’d spoken aloud. I thought she would ask, What do you want? And I would say, Kiss me like I’ll die tonight. Perhaps those would be the last kind words. I was a man of vivid dreams and wondered if this was one of them. I bent as Scooter ran to me. I wasn’t insane yet. I could keep control. She rushed into my arms, laughing. I hugged her for an instant and her face fell at the sight of a stranger. She backed up and looked as if she might cry. I suspected I looked the same. She turned around and ran back to her parents and hid behind Chub’s legs. One of these days the cops would crush him and he would howl for his girls. Scooter spotted JFK and let loose with a giggle and some chatter I didn’t understand and peeked out from around her father’s knee. The dog yawned and sniffed. I didn’t smell the storm anymore. Kimmy said, “Terry.” It was still my name, and to hear it on her lips loosened my chest and let me breathe deeply in a way I hadn’t for weeks. Maybe not in years. I stood and waited for the dream to end or for the world to move me once again to where I needed to be.