the table, his gaze drifting from Black's face down to his chest, to his hands, then back up to his face.
'Paul Boyle had two daughters,' Morrissey said, his voice still low, easy, almost soothing. 'One's sixteen, a junior out at Malden High.
She wants to go to college. Smart kid, too, they tell me. Honor society and all that. Pretty girl. The other's thirteen. She's in seventh grade, a good athlete, kind of a daddy's girl type. Liked it a lot, I understand, when he went to her basketball games.'
Black gulped hard, knowing where Morrissey was leading him.
'Here they are,' Morrissey said, sliding a pair of pictures across the table-one of just two girls standing in the driveway of a modest suburban home, both girls gangly, all arms and legs in the way some teenagers are. They were smiling in an embarrassed kind of way, looking like they were biding time, waiting to do something else. The other picture was a more formal family portrait-a husband, presumably Paul Boyle, and his wife standing up, their two daughters sitting in chairs in front of them. 'Take a look.'
For a few seconds, Black was riveted by the photographs. Then he felt his head spin, his stomach grow queasy. The smoke continued to float up from the cigarette across his face. He looked away from the pictures at the empty wooden expanse of the table.
'I'm Kevin Morrissey. Lieutenant Kevin Morrissey. I assume you've been read your rights?'
Black continued to look down.
'Well, it's probably worth repeating the highlights. You have the right to remain silent. You also have the right to a lawyer. If you should want a lawyer, we will cease talking to you immediately and give you the opportunity to call your lawyer. You are free to do that any time you please.'
Morrissey paused, and his voice became more confiding. 'My advice to you right now, Curtis, is that a lawyer would not help and may well hurt. We can work together a lot more easily without someone getting in the way right now.' Change of tone again, back to the original one.
'But again, that's your call. You do have the right. I just want you to know that.'
Black nodded and said nothing. He didn't have a lawyer, didn't even know a lawyer. A lawyer was never part of his program, never necessary, not until the FBI and Boston Police had showed up at his Chelsea apartment that afternoon.
Morrissey eyed him expectantly, nodded himself, and said, 'So what went wrong? You don't usually kill people, Curtis. That's not your style.
And look at this guy. Good husband. Good father. You know he was an usher up at St. Paul's Church. He's dead. And look at his family.
They've got to live a life without him. I wonder if those girls will even be able to go to college now.'
He said this not in a taunting tone, but flat, matter-of-fact, curious.
Black sat in silence. Morrissey took a last puff of his cigarette, stubbed it out on the table, tossed it on the floor, then lit up another one.
The smoke continued to wash over Black's face. The faces on the photographs smiled up at him. The room seemed so painfully small and shrinking by the moment, the stains on the wall clawing at him.
Morrissey said, 'You ever hear of the charge of felony murder?' He paused, got no reaction from Black, and continued. 'We have it here in Massachusetts. It's when a victim dies in the commission of a felony, just like last week on Hanover Street. Everyone involved in that felony, whether they pulled the trigger or were some flunky driving the car, they're all going away for life. That's the sentence: life.'
Morrissey was silent. Black gazed down at the table. This, he was coming to realize, was the dreaded climax not only of a tortuous week, the longest, most painful week of his life, but the climax of what had until then been a successful career of crime. Successful criminal careers, he was realizing, don't end with a banquet and a gold watch.
One way or another, they usually end in court, then prison. For the last seven days, Black had awaited his destiny. He could have fled like a couple of the others, just taken his cash and boarded a plane and gone somewhere he had never been before, never to return. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Some odd part of him, a part he had never felt before, kept him back, told him he had to face the consequences of that deadly dusk on Hanover Street. He had already lost his wife and their son in a hit-and-run crash the year before.
After that, he felt he had nothing left to lose.
'We have an informant,' Morrissey said, his voice still so calm, so easy. 'This informant tells us that you were recruiting for a job a couple of months ago. You were getting ready for a heist. This heist.'
Morrissey paused, stubbed out another cigarette, and threw it on the floor, Black continued to look down at the table, away from the photographs.
'We have a witness, an employee of the city of Boston's Transportation Department, Parking Enforcement Division. He saw someone double-parked in that blue cargo van outside of the bank. He tried to get that person to move, then wrote out a ticket. He picked your photograph out of a lineup, an old FBI surveillance photo we have, and identified you.'
Black flinched, his almost imperceptible movement the only betrayal of a wave of sheer terror working its way up his spine. If there was even a scintilla of doubt about his fate, it was decided with those foreboding words. We have a witness. Black lifted his head up. His eyes rested on Morrissey. The two men locked stares in total silence.
'There is a way out,' Morrissey said finally, the two men still eyeing each other, Black in desperation, the detective providing at least the veneer of help. 'There's a way out.' He shuffled some papers around purposefully. 'Let me tell you how.'
Black continued to stare at Morrissey, who lit up yet another cigarette, took a fast drag, and put it down right on the table.
'I don't believe you fired the weapon,' Morrissey said. He paused, letting that thought hang out there with the cigarette smoke and the awkward adolescent smiles of Paul Boyle's two daughters. 'Judging from where we believe you were during the commission, and the ballistic tests, we don't think you could have fired the weapon.'
Silence, Black just staring back.
'Not your style.' Morrissey raised his graying eyebrows. 'And who knows, I may be able to find another witness who says you never got out of that van, which would make it impossible for you to have fired the gun, because Mr. Boyle was shot by someone standing over at the doorway to the bank.'
Black continued to stare at him, his blank face masking a hurricane of thoughts and questions churning in his head. What kind of deal? Could he avoid doing time? What would that mean to the rest of his life?
What would it mean to the others involved?
Morrissey continued, 'So we cut a deal, me and you. I'd still have to convince the FBI to go along with this too, and they're not as easy and they're not as eager, but the worst of the charges in this case is in state court, this felony murder count. Life in prison, just for being there. It takes a long time to live a whole life in prison, you know.'
Black could only imagine, which is what he was doing sitting in the chair trying not to breathe in the smoke, trying not to let his eye linger on the photographs of Paul Boyle's two daughters, trying not to let his guard down and be trapped by this man across from him.
'We cut a deal,' Morrissey said. 'You give me the names. You tell me who fired the shot that killed Paul Boyle. You tell me who else was involved. I'm especially interested in a convict by the name of Rocco Manupelli, who has strong connections to the Boston branch of La Cosa Nostra. You help us, we protect you, we put you in the federal program, we send you out of state with a new identity and a new way to make a life, an honest way to make a life. You make out. We make out.
The only losers in this thing are the fucking murderers who killed this man.' With that, Morrissey reached across the table and waved the Boyle family portrait in front of Black's face. 'These girls don't have a father.'
Black stared at him, still silent. He wondered to himself if he could do it. Could he be a rat? He didn't know these guys well. He didn't owe Manupelli anything. They had bungled the job. He had it teed up perfectly for them. Just follow orders and adhere to the plan, and they'd be all set now. And what was the alternative? If he didn't rat,
