She stiffened but still did not turn her head.
‘You have a choice,’ he continued. ‘You can tell your husband what happened tonight. From what I hear, he’s the kind who could get all hot under the collar about a thing like this, and it might lead him to come looking for me. If he does, I’ll kill him. He brought this on you by his own actions, but he won’t see it that way. And, you know, it won’t help you anyway. I knew a man once whose girlfriend was raped. He could never look at her the same way again. Could be he thought that she was soiled goods. Whatever the reason, they broke up. End of story. Think about that before you go shooting your mouth off to your husband. I was you, I’d just tell him that we called, that we put the fear of God into you, and he should sort out his affairs before we come calling again.’ Dempsey picked up the shoebox of cash. ‘In the meantime, I’ll take the money as an interim payment on what was lost. We’ll be on our way now. Go fix yourself up. You don’t want him seeing you like that when he gets home.’
He brushed past Ryan on his way out the door.
‘You coming?’
Ryan was still staring at Mrs. Napier.
‘You want to apologize to her again?’ asked Dempsey. ‘You can, if you think it will help.’
But Ryan just shook his head. There was something wrong about what he was seeing: not just the act that had been committed, but the aftermath. He tried to put his finger on it but couldn’t, and then Dempsey was pulling him away, and they were walking to the car, and the assault was forced from his mind for a time as he told Dempsey about the call.
‘Regular nine-one-one,’ said Dempsey. He was counting the money in the shoebox, flipping his finger through the bound bills. Dempsey separated four hundred in twenties, split the stack evenly in two, then stuffed two hundred into his wallet and two hundred into Ryan’s coat pocket.
‘Walking-around money. If he gives you more, just take it and keep your mouth shut.’
‘How much was in there?’ asked Ryan.
‘Two-five now, plus change.’
Ryan laughed. It was that or pull over by the side of the road and beat his fists against the sidewalk in frustration.
‘All that for a lousy three grand?’
‘Hey, I had a good time.’
Now Ryan did pull over, causing the driver behind them to honk his disapproval. He turned in his seat, ready to release his belt and tear Dempsey’s throat out, but Dempsey already had his hand on the butt of the gun. His left hand was raised, one finger extended in warning.
‘What? You going to kill me?’ asked Ryan. ‘You going to pull the trigger this time?’
‘No, but I’ll break your nose with it, and I’ll go further if you make me. You want to make me do that to you?’
‘You raped a woman, just for three grand.’
‘No, I didn’t. I had the three grand anyway.’
Ryan almost lost it again, but the sight of the gun revealing itself to him brought him back to his senses. His shoulders collapsed, and he laid his forehead against the steering wheel. He felt ill. His face was bathed in warm, clammy sweat.
‘Three grand,’ he whispered. ‘Three grand and change.’
‘Maybe you haven’t been keeping up with developments, Frankie, but Mr. Morris is hurting. Two grand here, a grand there, a couple of hundred from the junkies – it all adds up. It keeps him in business, and keeps us in a job. More to the point, it’s keeping us alive. Our credit isn’t so good right now, and the bank of goodwill has closed its doors.’
‘He’s drowning,’ said Ryan. ‘He’s going down.’
‘That’s not what I said, and if I was you I wouldn’t be saying things like that out loud either. It might get taken as disloyalty. It’s swings and roundabouts. Everybody’s hurting in this economy. He’ll come good again. He just needs time.’
Ryan raised his head. Dempsey’s face was expressionless. It gave no clue to whether he believed a word that he was saying.
‘You’re going to start driving now, Frankie, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘We good?’
Ryan nodded.
‘Let me hear you say it.’
‘We’re good.’
‘Right. Now let’s go see what he wants.’
They drove in silence toward Cambridge. Eventually Dempsey let his head rest against the window, his eyes fixed on distant lights. Ryan smoked a cigarette, and thought about a boy he once knew, Josh Tyler, who died in a lake at some summer camp in New Hampshire when his canoe capsized. Josh could swim, but the kid in the canoe with him couldn’t, or not well enough. He panicked, and dragged Josh under the water. The kid was kicking, and one of the kicks caught Josh in the side of the head and knocked him unconscious. Somehow the kid made it to the canoe and managed to hold on to it, but by then Josh Tyler was dead. Drowning men will drag you down if you let them, thought Ryan. Sometimes, to survive, you have to let them sink.
They found a spot not far from the entrance to the Brattle Street Theater, and sat back to wait.
‘What’s on there?’ asked Ryan.
‘
‘I don’t know it.’
‘What do you mean, you don’t know it?’
‘I said I don’t know it. I’ve never seen it, never even heard of it. It must be new.’
‘No, it’s not new. It’s old. Nineteen seventy-three. Robert Mitchum and that guy, the one from
‘I didn’t go to movies much as a kid.’
‘Still, you should know it.’
‘What’s it about?’
‘A snitch.’
Dempsey didn’t say anything else. Ryan felt him looking at him, but didn’t say anything, just waited for him to continue. Eventually, Dempsey did.
‘Eddie – that’s Mitchum – decides to rat out his buddies to avoid doing time. He’s old. He doesn’t want to go back in the can.’
‘And?’
‘And what?’
‘How does it end?’
‘I’m not going to tell you how it ends. Go rent it sometime.’
‘I’m not going to rent it.’
‘Well, I’m not going to tell you how it ends.’
‘Fine.’
‘Yeah, fine. You’re some asshole, you know that?’
‘You’re the asshole, not telling me how it ends.’
‘You want to know how it ends?’
‘No, I don’t care now.’
‘You want to know?’
‘No.’
‘You want to know. I know you want to know.’
‘Right, tell me.’
‘It ends with a guy being tied to a chair while another guy forces him to watch the fucking movie, that’s how it ends.’
Ryan let a beat go by.
