“I am,” she said.
I was feeling giddier as we spoke. It was either the Percocet and Barolo or the eyes. Whatever their true colour was, looking into them was still painless. “Kate,” I said. “Katie. Were you worried about me?”
“Geller, please.”
“I think you were, a little.”
“I’m a police officer. It’s my job to worry about persons who might be the target of a violent offence.”
“Thank you,” I said.
She said, “You’re welcome. And on that note, I’ll leave you to your date.” She looked out at the balcony again. “I’m surprised.”
“What?”
“That he’s a smoker.”
“Who?”
“Your… companion?”
“What makes you think it’s a he?”
Hollinger nodded at the picture window behind me. Broken rings of smoke were drifting into the night. “I’ve seen a thousand women smoke in my life. I’ve never seen one blow smoke rings like that.”
“You are good.”
“I told you. Enjoy the rest of your evening, Geller.”
“You too, Kate. Or can I call you Katie?”
“Not when I’m working,” she said.
“Please tell me, please, you’re not fucking her.”
“Not that it’s your business, but why not?”
“She’s a cop, isn’t she?”
“You could tell that from the balcony?”
His shrug was both immodest and condescending. “From across the street, I could. I got an extremely developed nose for the law.”
“Well, just to make you feel better, she’s not just a cop. She’s a sergeant in Homicide.”
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Or what is it you people say? Oy?”
“If I was sleeping with Katherine Hollinger,” I said, “oy wouldn’t even begin to cover it.”
“So why else was she here at this hour? Last I heard, they were clamping down on overtime.”
“She’s worried about me,” I said.
“You should consider wiping that idiot grin off your face.”
“You grin like that when you talk about Carlo.”
“As I should. He’s so quick, so smart. He’s at that age where they learn something new every second of every day. You should see him do a puzzle. I know he’s done them before, but he finishes them so fast, his little brain whirring along, so proud ’cause Daddy’s watching. I tell you, this kid… I was watching cartoons with him when you called, me on the couch and him lying on my chest. I could feel him breathe, smell his hair. He’d had his bath and he was all clean in his PJs, this sweet little package. And I couldn’t help wondering, how do people get so fucked up? How does someone like Marco start out smelling like shampoo and toothpaste and turn into a rabid fucking wolf?”
Rabid. The perfect word for Marco. And you can’t let rabid animals live among you. They have to be killed. Shot down as they cross the town line.
“So Cara would take you back if you could quit.”
“She still loves me. I could tell today, the way we sat and talked. For the first time in a long time, we stopped talking at each other and both listened a bit. We actually communicated, like she was Oprah and I was fucking Dr. Phil.”
I almost made a crack about him fucking Dr. Phil but decided to go on living instead. “What did you decide?”
“That I need to get out. Retire undefeated. Do whatever it takes to keep my little unit together. I never had that with my mother. I want Carlo to have it with us.”
“Anything else you can do to make a living?”
“I don’t know. Run a restaurant maybe. Hey, don’t you smirk,” he said. “My day job, you want to call it that, I run the restaurant in the plaza we went to today.”
“Where you sent the guy?”
“It’s mostly a paper arrangement. I need a legitimate-looking income on my tax return. A manager runs it day-to-day but I hang around. I pick up things. Tell you something else might surprise you.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not a half-bad cook. My mother was fantastic and I learned a lot from her.”
“Doesn’t surprise me at all,” I said.
“No?”
“Nope. The OPP warned me you were good with a knife.”
“You’re not as cute as you think, Geller.”
“Katie Hollinger thinks I’m cute.”
“Katie? Oh, Christ, the sergeant.”
“She does, I can tell.”
“Great. My partner wants to dick a homicide dick.”
“We’re partners?”
“On this particular venture.”
“The killing of Marco Di Pietra.”
“It’s either that or wait to see if Vito tries,” Ryan said.
“You think he will?”
“If Vinnie Nickels doesn’t get off the fence soon and make a pronouncement, there’s a war coming for sure. Vito associates me with Marco so he might decide I’m worth killing once it starts.”
“Or before.”
“True. If, on the other hand, we get rid of Marco, Vito would have less incentive to mess with me. He might let me go. He fucking has to.” He tried and failed to keep his emotion out of his voice. “This life I made for myself… ever since this thing with the Silver boy… fuck, getting out is all I can think of. I can’t keep waking up in a cruddy hotel, living out of my car. Not that I blame Cara for kicking me out. Who wants to live with me and my ghosts?”
I’d been asking myself the same thing since the day I flew home from Israel.
CHAPTER 33
Toronto: Friday, June 30
Roni and I walk through a narrow alley between cinder-block buildings. The sun is directly above us, blazing hot, making me squint so hard my head starts to hurt. There are more soldiers patrolling ahead of us and behind us, part of a sweep through the camp to clear it of militants before Passover, when their attacks usually surge.
There are no adults in the alley. None we can see. Just Palestinian children lined up against the walls on both sides, calling out to us first in Arabic, then Hebrew, asking for money, chocolate, cigarettes. Many have bandages around their heads, their hands, their ears. Some have a crutch or a stick to lean on.
“Chuparim,” they cry, using the Hebrew word for goodies or treats. “Tan lanu chuparim.” Give us treats.
Roni has a cigarette going and one boy, bolder than the others, steps in his path and holds out his hand. “Come on,” the boy says in perfect Hebrew. “One cigarette. A fair price to let a Jew devil pass.”
Roni can’t help but smile at him. The boy looks twelve or thirteen, not a whisker on his cheeks, a young Sal Mineo with full, soft lips and unspoiled skin. Roni cradles his M-16 in his arms and reaches into his pocket for his Royals. As he does, the largest of the beggar kids, a stocky kid about sixteen with his arm in a sling, jumps on Roni’s back. He pulls a long thin blade out of the sling and stabs Roni in the neck. A second assailant, no more than
