‘There’s a lot of bad blood. I figured it couldn’t hurt to have the law on my side.’
‘You don’t trust me?’
‘You I trust,’ said Dempsey, and he was careful not to let the taste of the lie show on his face. ‘It’s the others I’m less sure of, and I can’t hide under your coat for the rest of the day.’
Joey looked away. ‘It’s longer than that you’d need to be under there, the way things are going.’
‘Which is why we’re here. Tommy is concerned.’
‘And so he should be. So are we all.’
‘So what’s to be done?’
‘He should just walk away. I’ve told him that.’
‘He can’t afford to walk away. He wants to rebuild.’
‘It’s all gone, or as good as. They’ll bury him under the ruins of what’s left.’
‘Well, you see, Joey, he’s trying to figure out
‘Poor investments. Bad luck. Could happen to anyone. Once it starts to go south, it goes fast. It’s like a boulder tumbling down a hill. When it’s big enough, and it builds enough momentum, it can’t be stopped. It rolls, and it crushes anyone caught in its path. I tried to tell him that, but he wouldn’t listen.’
‘Well, it seems to Tommy that people might actively have conspired to send that boulder his way. He thinks that he’s been set up for a fall.’
‘A bad workman blames his tools, Martin. You know that. He’s made mistakes, and now he’s looking for someone else to shoulder the responsibility. It’s understandable, but that doesn’t make it right. There are debts that have to be settled. Unless he wins the Mega Millions, he’s going to have to off-load his business interests in order to meet his obligations.’
‘They’re all he has, Joey. If he walks, he’s left with nothing.’
‘He has his life.’
‘For how long?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You know what it means.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Come on, Joey, you’re too old to play the virgin.’
Ryan arrived with the coffee.
‘Is there milk?’ said Joey.
‘You said you wanted it black.’
‘Black, then milk. I didn’t want them fucking around with it behind the counter, sprinkling shite on it.’
‘I’ll get you the jug,’ said Ryan.
‘Nah, you do it. Not too much. Just add a bit of color to its cheeks.’
Ryan looked at Dempsey. He had no idea what that meant.
‘Brown it,’ said Dempsey. ‘Like an Asian girl.’
Ryan moved off, even more bewildered than before.
‘Too old to play the virgin, eh?’ said Joey. ‘You have some mouth on you. You should have more respect.’ But he was grinning.
Ryan came back with the coffee. Joey looked at it, tried it, and nodded.
‘Good lad. Now go outside for a minute, will you? Take some air.’
‘It’s raining,’ said Ryan.
‘It’s good for the skin. Off you go.’
Ryan sighed and went outside with his coffee. He stood with his back to them, one hand holding his coffee, the other on the gun in the pocket of his black leather jacket. He had cut away the lining especially for that purpose, a trick Dempsey had taught him.
‘He’s all right,’ said Dempsey. ‘You could have let him stay.’
‘He’s young, and I’m not sure how much he knows or doesn’t know. He’s a listener too, and I don’t like people to listen unless I tell them to. It’s not for me to betray confidences. As for Tommy and his troubles, that’s where we stand on the matter. You don’t want to go overcomplicating it.’
‘Tommy is worried that it has already been complicated.’
‘You’re talking about the girl.’
‘That’s right. It’s out of order.’
‘The girl has nothing to do with this.’
‘We’re here because of the girl. Tommy wants to be sure that Oweny doesn’t have her.’
‘He doesn’t. I asked him. He doesn’t have her. He said so.’
‘With all due respect, that’s what he’d tell you.’
‘Careful now, Martin.’ Joey wagged a calloused finger at him. ‘I’ve always been very tolerant of you. You’re brighter than ten of the rest of them put together, but don’t think you can belittle me. I’m telling you now, Oweny doesn’t have the girl. If he did, you’d have known about it long before this. What would be the point in taking her and then not using her as leverage? Jesus, I don’t think he even knew about the girl until you mentioned her to me.’ Joey sipped his coffee. ‘That’s not a bad cup of coffee,’ he said. ‘I’m glad I’m not paying for it, but it’s not bad.’
The coffee seemed to make him relent somewhat or, as Dempsey suspected, it gave him an excuse to alter his approach, to adopt a different persona. Had the stakes not been so high, Dempsey might even have enjoyed watching the performance.
‘It’s terrible,’ said Joey. ‘A young girl being taken like that. What’s the world coming to, Martin?’
And then Joey switched masks again, and Dempsey felt any lingering respect that he had for the old operator fall away like so many scales from his eyes.
‘Who knows what’s being done to her, you know what I mean? There are deviants out there who’d think nothing of forcing themselves on a child, raping her and then leaving her to die in a ditch. If she was blood to me, I don’t know what I’d do. I suppose I’d do anything, anything at all, to try and help her.’
He placed his hands together, his thumbs meeting to form the sign of the cross, just as they did every Sunday when he knelt down to pray at eleven o’clock Mass at St. Francis de Sales, his head bowed and his eyes closed, as though God cared to hear the prayers of one such as he.
‘We know people up there, Martin. We have connections. If Tommy does the right thing, we can act on his behalf. We’ll have men out combing the bushes. We’ll put the screws on every pervert between here and Canada. We can help him, Martin, but only if he wants to help himself.’
And Dempsey wondered if they did, in fact, have the girl, and if this was all part of the game: Lure Tommy in when he’s weak, and then finish him off before letting the girl go. For they would let the girl go; even a blackened husk of a man like Joey Tuna wouldn’t want the death of a child on his soul.
‘I’ll be sure to let him know that,’ said Dempsey.
‘You do whatever you want. I’m here to help if I’m needed.’
‘Even if Oweny doesn’t have her,’ Dempsey continued, ‘Tommy wants him to back off. Oweny’s acting like Tommy’s already in the grave and left everything to him in his will.’
‘Tommy’s dying, Martin. He just doesn’t want to admit it. When you’re dying, the vultures start to circle.’
‘Oweny’s not circling, Joey. He’s pulling the meat from Tommy’s bones while he’s still alive. Tommy’s not just dying; Oweny’s killing him.’
‘There are other concerns here, Martin. You’ve said so yourself. You’re no virgin either. If Tommy’s desperate, then he’s vulnerable. He’s been around a long time. He can name a lot of names. He could hurt a lot of people. We had enough of that in the past.’
‘Tommy’s not like that, Joey. You know it. He’s sound.’
‘You ever been to federal prison, Martin?’
‘No.’
‘Well, if you had you’d know that half the guys in there are locked up because they trusted someone who they thought was sound. Everybody’s sound until it comes to the moment when they’re not, when their survival is at stake and they have to cut a deal to go on living. If I were Tommy, I’d be looking for a way out now. One way out is a stone’s throw from here.’ And he jerked a thumb at the nest of law enforcement behind his back.
‘I’d know, Joey. If he was thinking along those lines, I’d know.’
