Текст книги "Blood And Bone"

Автор книги: William Lashner

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“What the hell are you doing?” said Ramirez.

“This was my father’s bar,” said the bartender. “You think I’m not going to defend it?”

She looked at him, a skinny black kid with raw hands and a mouth set like granite. The gun sat solid in his hands. “What’s your name?”

“Bubba.”

“Bubba? You’re kidding, right?”

“Bubba Jr.”

“Well, listen, Bubba Jr.,” said Ramirez. “You point the muzzle at the floor and don’t raise it an inch until I give the word. Understand?”

“I understand,” said the bartender.

“Something’s going down outside right about now, so it’s probably safer for all of you in here. But don’t be surprised if what comes through that door next is a car.”

Ramirez squatted down and faced the door with her gun, held in both hands, pointing right at it. She spoke softly enough so that only Kyle could hear. “Remember that number your girlfriend gave me?”

“She’s just a friend.”

“Really?”

“You sound pleased to hear it.”

“Shut the hell up.” Ramirez was angry at the lift she felt. She shook her head to bring herself back to business. “There was only one person other than you who called it. I traced the guy down and asked him some questions, and I got to tell you, he creeped me the hell out. Then I realized that his voice matched the voice on the 911 call that reported your break-in at your father’s old office. So as I called for backup and a warrant to search his place, I stayed outside his building to make sure he didn’t run. Next thing I knew, he was lugging a black satchel to his car. And I have to tell you, I don’t think the satchel was filled with underwear. I followed him to here, though I wasn’t sure exactly what he was doing until I saw you step out of the bar.”

“You think he’s here to kill me?”

“He’s here to something you, baby. Didn’t I tell you to stop stirring the pot?”

“The pot kept stirring me. So we’re just waiting here like sitting ducks for him to come and get me?”

“I called in the cavalry,” said Ramirez. She glanced at her watch. “They’ll be here about—”

The squeal of brakes slipped through the door, and then shouting, and then sirens.

The short, fat kid who had left the bar with Kyle popped his head above the bar.

“Get down, you fool,” said Ramirez.

The kid’s head dropped below the bar again.

There was a knock. Ramirez put a finger to her lips and gestured at Bubba Jr., who pointed his shotgun at the door.

“It’s Henderson,” came the voice from the other side of the door.

“Henderson who?” said Ramirez.

“Henderson your mama. Open the hell up.”

Ramirez smiled as she stood and holstered her gun. “Put it away,” she said to Bubba Jr. while she twisted open the lock. “It’s one of the good guys. Or at least a reasonable facsimile.”

Detective Henderson stepped into the bar with wariness, looked around, spotted the shotgun still in Bubba’s hand, and raised an eyebrow. Then he spotted Kyle Byrne, sprawled in the booth where Ramirez had pushed him, and he growled.

“You get him?” said Ramirez.

“Not yet,” said Henderson. “You talk to the kid, find out what the hell is happening?”

“Haven’t had the chance.”

“Want to take him down to the box?”

“We can do it here.”

“And if he clams up?”

“Then we’ll box him nice and tight for a week,” said Ramirez. “Let’s see what’s going on outside first.” As they both walked to the door, Ramirez turned and pointed at Kyle. “Don’t you dare move,” she said. Then she turned to Bubba Jr. “If he stands up, shoot him.”

“With pleasure,” said Junior.

Ten minutes later Ramirez and Henderson were sitting in Kyle’s booth, Henderson beside Kyle, blocking his exit, and Ramirez across from him. The two cops had mugs of soda before them, Kyle a halffinished bottle of Rolling Rock.

“What was in the file cabinet, Kyle?” said Ramirez.

“What file cabinet?”

“Stop being cute.”

“I can’t help it,” said Kyle, smiling. “I was born this way.”

Ramirez stared for a bit and couldn’t stop herself from laughing. He was cute, and he knew it, which didn’t obviate the fact that he was playing it way too cute for his own good.

“Did I see who I thought I saw coming out of the bar a few minutes before you?” said Ramirez.

“Who did you think you saw?”

“Who do you think I saw?”

“Who do you think I think you—”

“Can we get on with this?” said Henderson. “The two of you are giving me a headache.”

“We’ve got a United States senator involved in our murder case,” said Ramirez. “How do you like them apples, Henderson?”

“I don’t,” said Henderson. “It means this peckerhead’s got us mixed up in something explosive enough to put my pension at risk.”

“You wouldn’t want to risk Henderson’s pension, would you, Kyle?” said Ramirez.

“No, ma’am.”

“So let me do some guessing here, just off the top of my head. Your father had something going on with Truscott before he was a senator. Your father died in 1994, right? That was when the senator was running for Congress the first time, if I’m not mistaken.”

“I don’t follow politics.”

“You follow it enough to know that there was something of interest to a United States senator in the file cabinet your father hid in the basement of your old house. It was probably of interest enough to get your house and your car torched. And whatever was in that cabinet was of interest enough to said U.S. senator for His Eminence to show up at a dive like this. How am I doing?”

“Not bad for a cop.”

She didn’t like that comment, and she let him know it with a glare. “A shame about the Datsun. Was it insured?”

“At some point it was, I suppose.”

“The breadth of your stupidity is astounding. Ever hear of a guy named Spangler?”

“No. I don’t think . . . Wait. Spangler?”

“That’s right.”

“A law yer?”

“That’s the one. How do you know him?”

“I don’t,” said Kyle. “But I think my father might have known him.”

“Pretty damn well, I’d bet. You see, we think this Spangler might have killed Laszlo Toth. And his face and hands were covered with something that might have been burns, maybe from your house. And he was waiting outside this bar with what appeared to be a bagful of firepower, looking, we guess, for you.”

“Where is he now?”

“We thought we had him, but he disappeared.”

“Nice work.”

“It would have been easier,” said Henderson, “if we knew even a little of what the hell was going on. And the reason we don’t is because you’ve been telling us squat.”

Kyle looked at Henderson and then at Ramirez. “Why do you say he knew my father pretty damn well?”

“Kyle, we want to impress upon you how dangerous your situation has become,” said Henderson. “We think whatever you found in that file cabinet might have gotten Toth killed, and maybe your father, too.”

“He died of a heart attack,” said Kyle.

“That’s what the death certificate reads,” said Ramirez. “But it was signed by a New Jersey doctor who was convicted of falsifying death records for an embalming factory that processed bodies for a load of funeral parlors in the tristate area. The embalming house was selling body parts and made them more attractive by altering the death certificates. Your father was cremated, right?”

“Yes,” said Kyle, looking distracted.

“So maybe it wasn’t a heart attack. Maybe he was murdered by this Spangler character and then shipped up there for his death certificate to be faked and his parts sold. Anyone in the funeral business could have set it up. What you found in that file cabinet would put you next on this guy’s list.”

“If you want our help,” said Henderson, “it’s time to come clean. What did you find, son?”

“Nothing.”

“You know that blackmail is against the law.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“Then what the hell are you doing?”

“I’m not so sure anymore,” said Kyle.

He clasped his hands tightly in front of him, closed his eyes, leaned his mouth on his thumbs. As Ramirez stared, she could see him thinking something through. Then the blood seemed to drain from his face. So they’d finally scared the little bastard, thought Ramirez. She was a bit saddened, actually. She had liked his unflappability, had liked that his wide and wicked smile seemed impervious to fear. It hadn’t seemed so much foolish as foolhardy, which was a different thing entirely. But now he was just another scared little rat in over his head. Why were men always such disappointments?

“Am I under arrest?” said Kyle finally.

“No,” said Ramirez. “But we’ll protect you, if that’s what you’re asking. We promise. Tell us what you know, and we’ll take care of you.”

“No, I mean am I free to leave?”

“You want to go? Even with that murderer out there hunting for you?”

“I have something I need to do.”

“Your laundry?” said Ramirez.

“Family business.”

“Don’t be a fool, son,” said Henderson. “Let us protect you.”

“Thank you for your concern. It touches my heart, truly. But there is something I need to do right now. Am I free to go?”

Ramirez looked at Henderson. Henderson shrugged.

“Yes, you’re free to go,” said Ramirez wearily.

“Then that’s what I’m going to do,” said Kyle.

Henderson shook his head as he rose from the booth, making way for Kyle to leave. “It’s your funeral.”

“At least he’s dressed for it,” said Ramirez.

“Thank you, both,” said Kyle, sliding out and standing. “Yo, Skitch.”

“Bro?” said Kyle’s squat friend who’d been hiding behind the bar.

“I need your bike.”

“But I’m using it tonight. I’m hooking up with that girl from Jersey, and we got—”

“Give him the bike,” said the bartender.

“When will I get it back?”

“Hell only knows,” said Kyle.

“Bro?”

“Dude.”

“Crap,” said the kid as he reached into his pocket and threw a set of keys that Kyle snatched out of the air. “Take care of my baby.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll treat it like it was my own.”

“After what happened to your 280ZX, why don’t I find that comforting?”

Kyle turned again to Ramirez. “You got a phone number, Detective?”

She leaned back, narrowed her eyes. “Yeah, I have a phone number.”

“You want to give it to me?”

“I’m not sure,” said Ramirez. She looked up at Kyle and saw the smile and felt it slice into her with its sweetness. He scratched his cheek as if to signal that she had something on her own, and she couldn’t help but wipe at it with the edge of her thumb.

“Let him have it,” said Henderson. And as Ramirez took out a card and handed it to Kyle, Henderson added, “You call us if you need us, son. We’ll be waiting.”

“Thank you,” said Kyle as he put the card into his jacket pocket.

After Kyle left, Ramirez looked at the closed door and said, “What do you think?”

“I think we’ll be on duty tonight,” said Henderson. “And poor little me, I was planning on going bowling.”

“He has no idea what he’s gotten himself into.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Henderson. “He strikes me as someone who has every idea of what he’s gotten himself into.”

“I’m worried about him.”

“I know you are,” said Henderson. “It’s why you followed the lead he gave you and traced that number and found that Spangler and kept your eye on him all the while we were putting this operation in place. Because you were worried about him. This Byrne kid is not just a piece of a puzzle, is he?”

“No.”

“See there, Ramirez, now you’re making me cranky.”

“Why? Because partnering with me, you actually have to do some work?”

“No. I just get cranky when my expectations are confounded. And here all along I thought you’d never make it as a detective.”

CHAPTER 50

UNCLE MAX WAS SITTING at the bar of the Olde Pig Snout, smoking a cigarette, nursing a beer, watching the local news on the television as his life ticked away swallow by swallow. When the door opened, he palmed his cigarette and turned his head to get a look at who was walking in. He instinctively smiled when he saw it was Kyle. And then the smile froze on his face, as if something in his nephew’s eyes made it clear that this was not simply a sweet familial visit.

“Kyle, what a surprise,” said Max. “And in a suit, no less. Who died?”

“No one,” said Kyle. “Yet.”

“Want a drink?”

“We need to talk.”

“What, you dress like that just to break up with me?”

“Over there,” said Kyle, pointing to a booth.

“Sure thing, Kyle. No problem. Let me get us a round, first.”

Max waved Fred the bartender over. Fred smiled crookedly. “How you doing there, Kyle?”

“Not so good,” said Kyle.

“What happened?” said Fred.

“I’ve been betrayed,” said Kyle.

Max’s head swung toward Kyle as if his ear had been yanked, but Fred just kept on nodding and smiling. “Good, good. You still playing ball?”

“Not anymore.”

“Just keep swinging. Anything I can get you?”

“A beer.”

“Two,” said Max. “With a couple shooters.” Max glanced back at Kyle’s stone face. “On my tab.”

“Good,” said Fred. “So everything’s good, Kyle?”

“Yeah,” said Kyle. “Everything’s just swell.”

“Good,” said Fred. “That’s good.”

“Have you ever noticed,” said Kyle when they were in a booth with their drinks, “that no matter how terrible the news, Fred always tells you how good everything is?”

“That’s about the extent of his charm,” said Max, “but somehow I find it comforting. Everything’s always good at the Olde Pig Snout, except the food, the beer and the company. So what climbed up your butt?”

Kyle looked away, let his eyes harden, and then turned back to stare at his Uncle Max. “I want to know,” he said, his teeth clenched, his voice suddenly low and hard, “how you could do it to my mother. Forget about me, a twelve-year-old kid forced to go to his father’s fake funeral, forget about how your little trick twisted my life into knots. I want to know how you could do it to my mother, your sister, how you could do it to her.”

Max stared at Kyle for a long moment, lit a cigarette, took a draw, downed his shot while smoke leaked out his nose, and then promptly burst into tears. It was not a tidy little cry, it was red and wet and full of sob and self-fury. Max’s cheeks burned, his bulbous nose turned red and ran, his beady little eyes squeezed out bucketfuls, and in the middle of it he slammed his forehead on the table once and then again, before grabbing Kyle’s shot, downing that, too, and sobbing some more.

Kyle was unmoved.

“I thought,” said Max, his broken voice coming in gasps as the sobs stole his breath, “I thought . . . I was doing the . . . right thing.”

“How could a betrayal like that ever be the right thing?”

“Because . . . because . . . because he was no damn good for her,” said Max, catching his breath now between words. “Because he seduced her and impregnated her and then just left her there in that crappy little house. And she wouldn’t move on, she wouldn’t date, she wouldn’t do anything but wait for him. It broke my heart.”

“So you faked his death.”

“I helped him do it. Yeah, I admit it. But she was still pretty, still young. I thought with him out of the way, she’d find someone new. I thought you’d end up with a real father. I thought—”

“You thought wrong.”

“I know. God, I know. But she deserved better. And so did you. You don’t know how many times I tried to set her up. She wasn’t interested. She did nothing but mourn the bastard. And you did nothing but mourn him, too. And every time I saw you both after that, it broke my heart.”

“Fuck you and your broken heart,” said Kyle.

“You’re right.”

“Just go to hell.”

“Okay, I will.”

“Good.”

Max pulled his cigarette to his lips with shaking hands, took a drag, and then wiped his eyes with his other palm. Kyle drank from his beer and looked away.

“Is that it?” said Max.

“No.”

“There’s more?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ. Okay, whatever you want, Kyle. I’ll do anything. Anything to make it up to you.”

“You can’t.”

“I know.”

“Damn right you know.”

“I was afraid you might find out when you started nosing around into what happened to your dad.”

“Then why’d you tell me to look?”

“Because I wanted you to know what he was really like, to take your blinders off.”

“You put them there when you fake-killed him.”

“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know?” Pause. “How’d you find out anyway?”

Kyle searched for some suspicion in Max’s eyes, found nothing but Max’s own tortured memories. “A cop,” Kyle said.

“Jesus. Are they coming after me?”

“No, they just think my father was murdered and the certificate was forged to hide the fact. But I figure if you were involved, there was no murder. You’re a jerk, but you’re not a killer.”

“You got that right. Of everything I am, I’m not that.”

“I still have some questions, though.”

“Okay. Sure. Whatever you want to know.”

“How did it happen? When exactly did you guys start planning this thing?”

“Can I get another beer before I tell you?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“Talk.”

“Okay,” said Max. “It started when I still had my truck and was working for the funeral home. They had me delivering these bodies up to some place in Jersey for embalming. I could tell that something was wrong, there was too many bodies going up, and it was too hushhush. So I did some asking and found out they was stealing body parts and faking death certificates. The whole thing scared the hell out of me. So I decided to talk it out with a lawyer.”

“My dad.”

“Yeah, well, he was available, and he wouldn’t charge me, you know. I told him everything, and he told me to quit, but I ignored him and kept driving, because . . . hell, the money was good. I thought that was the end of it. But then, later, he came back to me with some questions.”

“When was this?”

“A week or so before the funeral. Over the phone. And then he mentioned the possibility of him getting one of them fake death certificates.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said he was in this real-estate thing, with a partner who was going to dissolve the partnership with a gun. And he had fallen into something that might be real money, but he didn’t know if he’d be alive to keep it. And there was other stuff. He just wanted to get away. I asked about you, and his Frenchie wife. He said he had taken out insurance, that everyone would be better off. I told him he was crazy. I told him to forget about it. But then . . .”

“He offered you money.”

“Yeah.”

“How much?”

“Does it matter? I didn’t do it for the money. I did it to get him the hell out of her life. Kyle, he was no damn good, I’m telling you. Anyone who would run like he did . . . well, I thought you was both better off without him.”

“So when you put the file cabinet in the house, you already knew he was going to fake his death and run away.”

“Yeah, he just wanted some stuff kept safe for after. Just in case.”

“How much did he pay you for the whole thing?”

“Fifteen.”

“In cash?”

“Yeah.”

“You sold yourself cheap, Max. Did he pay you up front?”

“Nah. I wanted it that way, but he said he was working on a couple things and could only make the payment right at the time. So he gave me the envelope on the ride up. My share and the twenty the doctor demanded. Thickest envelope I ever got in my life. I had some dead alky’s body in the back of the truck, someone who I was supposed to take to get dumped in some pauper’s grave. I just did the switcheroo and had them burn it. Simple as that.”

“Did my mother ever know?”

“Nah. I tried telling her once, after I realized there wasn’t going to be anyone else, but I chickened out. And then she got sick. And then what was the point?”

“You sold her out, Max.”

“Kyle, I didn’t do it for the money. I ended up giving her the fifteen anyway, and more. Plenty more.”

“Why?”

“For you. She had too much pride to ever ask for anything for herself, but she’d swallow it to ask for you. And the insurance money she got was less than she needed to keep going. Those braces you got, when you busted your arm, the money you needed for school after the scholarship went kablooey.”

“She would rather have had my father than the money.”

“Kyle, it wasn’t my idea. I just helped. He’d deserted her before, he was deserting her again. I thought finally getting rid of the creep would be good for her, is all. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t know how sorry.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Kyle felt his anger subside and fought to keep it boiling. “You said there was other stuff that made him want to leave. What kind of other stuff?”

“I don’t know. Women stuff.”

“What are you talking about, Max?”

“Well, you know, there was his wife and your mom and—”

“Someone else?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Does it matter? There was always someone else, that’s just the way he was. And he said it was getting too complicated. He’d said he do them all a favor with the insurance and start over.”

“Is that what he said?”

“Yeah.”

“He was a son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”

“That’s what I been telling you. I thought it would work out for the best.” Pause. “So we still good?”

“No.”

“Okay. We’re still not good,” said Max. “We’ll never be good.”

Kyle took a peek at his uncle. “Maybe not never.”

“Not never, maybe, but not for a while,” said Max. “I know. I got it coming.”

“Damn right.”

“Damn right is right.” Another drag. “How you doing, Kyle? Really.”

“I don’t know. Good, I guess.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s good that you’re doing good.”

“Yeah.”

“Good that everything’s good.”

Kyle stared at his uncle for a moment, then turned his head to look at Fred, smiling like an idiot behind the bar. “You want to know something, Uncle Max? I hate this fucking place.”

CHAPTER 51

KYLE BYRNE WAS drunk with whine.

It might also have been the beers he had consumed at Bubba’s and at the Olde Pig Snout that intoxicated him, or the growl of the engine between his legs, or the bugs caught in his teeth, or the way his tie snapped behind him as he sped recklessly on Skitch’s motorcycle through the wilds of West Philadelphia. But more than anything else, it was the whine.

Yet who the hell had more of a reason to whine than Kyle Byrne? Everyone blames his parents for purposely screwing up his life, but Kyle now had absolute proof. His father had deserted him not out of fear for his own safety or for the safety of his only son, as he had claimed, but out of greed and lust. The truth of it filled Kyle with anger and resentment, with a sour consolation at being proved right all along, and with a feral sadness that tore through him like choked sobs. Betrayal to the left of him, betrayal to the right, and here he was stuck in the middle, stuck in this nightmare, stuck in this life.

For a time he pretended not to know where he was headed, imagined he was just accelerating into the setting sun, feeling the wind in his face and the pumping of the pistons through his bones. Speed was what he was after, raw speed, as if he could outrun the emotions that were overwhelming him. But he wasn’t running away from the source of his pain, he was running to it, inexorably. He was like the noble salmon jumping up the falls as it returned to its childhood home. Except he wasn’t a fish. And he wasn’t going to spawn. And he didn’t go well with a beurre blanc and a risotto, though being poached that very night was a real possibility.

It wasn’t long before he was back in the old neighborhood, back on the old street, sitting on the bike and surveying the charred ruins of house and car. And at the sight of it, the sadness nearly overwhelmed him, until he transmuted it into raw bitterness. Aimed at his father.

Liam Byrne was responsible for this, for everything about this. The fire, yes, of course, because of his ruthless pursuit of the O’Malley file for his own damn profit. But even before the fire. The loss of the house, because of the way he had left Kyle and his mother practically destitute. And the loss of his mother, as if the sadness of Liam’s fake death had metastasized into the cancer that failed to respond to any treatment and overwhelmed her body. And the ruinous choices in Kyle’s own life that had led him to where he was at this moment, without anything to claim as his own but the suit on his back and the target on his forehead.

He was wondering how to play the next few hours, but the sight of the burned wreckage made everything clear. He was going to do whatever he needed to betray his father the way his father had betrayed him. Ashes to ashes, baby.

He looked up and saw a police car slip onto the street, and suddenly he remembered all the trouble he was in. With his toe he tapped the gearshift into first as he popped the clutch, lurching off down the street, speeding away, a left, a right, losing the cops when he made another left. He didn’t think it mattered where he was headed, but it did. Because he was traversing a course that had become familiar in the past year. Up City Line, down Lansdale Avenue, up State Road, along the low stone fence to the cemetery. The same cemetery where his father’s fake funeral had happened fourteen years before and where his mother’s real burial had taken place just about a year ago.

He parked the bike on the narrow road that wound its way through the burial ground and walked over to her grave. He read her name, the dates, the words on the stone: loving mother and sister. Not wife, though. You couldn’t say wife. He had betrayed her there, too.

Kyle leaned over to brush some leaves away from the grass atop her plot. He rubbed his hand across the carving of her name. He dropped to one knee.

“The old bastard’s come back,” he said to the stone.

He knelt there for a moment, as if waiting for a response. He lifted his chin and saw a woman in the distance who appeared to be walking toward him, and his heart clutched with an insane hope. But why the hell shouldn’t she come back from the grave just as his father had? It only fit everything else that had happened to him the past few days. And he’d trade a hundred of him for one of her. But it wasn’t her, it was just some older woman who stopped and turned and bowed before a patch of grass far away. And like a stone falling in a dark, cold pond, his heart fell.

No, his mother wasn’t coming back, and yet he could hear her voice, soft but insistent, the way she spoke to him whenever his father made those rare visits to the house. Go to him, she would say as they sat on the porch and saw his car pull up. Go to your father.

He closed his eyes, and he remembered a shard from his boyhood, when he’d asked his mother about the father who had always been a mystery to him. They were sitting on the porch, and his mother was in the rocking chair, smoking, staring off with those impassive eyes of hers. “He’s a complicated man,” she had said to Kyle. “He’s difficult to understand.”

“And do you understand him?” Kyle said.

“No. But I love him, and you should, too.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s your father, Kyle. That’s just the way it is. And without him I wouldn’t have you.”

“Does he love us?” Kyle asked.

“In his way.”

“And what way is that, Mom?”

“The only way he can. And, Kyle, that’s all you’ll ever get from

anyone.”

Kyle didn’t understand then what she had meant, didn’t understand it still, but he remembered how he felt when his father’s car would pull up to the front of the house and his mother would tell him, “Go to him. Go to your father,” and off he’d run, down the steps to the car. And when the stranger stepped out, Kyle would hug his legs and the old man would pat him on the head and Kyle would smell the braided scents of old cigarette smoke, of Brylcreem and Aqua Velva, and the fear and the love both would overwhelm him.

But things were different now. Kyle was no longer a child with all a child’s pathetic needs, and his mother was dead, and all kinds of truths about his father had been branded into his soul. The way his father had used privileged information to extort money from a congressional candidate. The way his father had returned from the dead only to extort more money from the same candidate, and to rope his son into the scheme. The way his father had lied to and betrayed him all the years of his life. It would be different now, absolutely. He wouldn’t run to him and hug his legs, absolutely. All he felt now was anger, a seething anger that strained for release.

“So, boyo,” said the old man in the doorway of that New Jersey motel after Kyle had made his way back. The old man’s eyes were lit with greed, his smile yellow, his hands reached out with expectation. “How did it go? Are we in business?”

Kyle stared at his father for a long moment and felt the tectonic plates shift within him, before he lunged. And grabbed his father close. And buried his face in his father’s grizzled neck.

“I love you, Dad,” he said as his tears rubbed off on his father’s skin.

Fourteen years after Liam Byrne’s funeral, Kyle was finally crying for his father. And Kyle wasn’t lying. He did, truly, love his father. Despite all he knew, despite the anger that remained inside, despite the past and despite himself, he loved his father. Unqualifiedly. As had Kyle’s mother before him. Kyle didn’t trust his father, or admire him, or particularly like him. But a part of Kyle lived forever beyond the realm of reason, and that part had taken control. “I love you,” he said again.

“I know you do, boyo,” said Liam Byrne, patting his son’s head as he had all those years before, drawing out thick tears. “I know you do. Now, come inside. You have much to tell, and we have much to plan.”

CHAPTER 52

BOBBY DRAGGED THE BLACK SATCHEL through the rhododen

dron, bony stalks tearing at his flesh and filthy clothes, grabbing at the bag, which more than once he had to yank free. It was almost nine, he was almost late. He needed to be in position for when the boy showed up.

It had been no simple task getting here, with his car being watched and his whole body covered in filth. When he climbed out of the Dumpster, he knew he had to hurry, but he couldn’t just hail a cab. That Puerto Rican slut had probably called in his description to all the taxis in the area, hoping he’d turn up in the street with his hand raised as if volunteering for the electric chair. So instead he decided to move. Out of the area. North would send him through Center City, east was the waterfront, so he chose south, into South Philadelphia, stepping through the narrow streets with cars lined on either side. It would have been easy just to break open a window and steal one, except he didn’t know how to steal a car.

So he kept moving, ignoring the reactions to his filth-streaked clothes and the way he smelled, always moving, slipping into doorways and alleys when police cars cruised by and then moving again, ever south. He figured if he could just keep moving, he would come up with a plan. And then he spied the instrument of his salvation, under one of the spans of the highway, a sweet little angel with a baby and a Buick. As she leaned into the backseat to pull her baby from the car seat, Bobby pulled his pistol from the black bag.