The Burning Soul

him, was snitching to the feds, selling out his associates to secure his own position. They might decide that Tommy wasn’t sound. Joey had put all of this to Tommy at the fish market after hours. He had shown Tommy the new backlit table in the butchering room, the sharp knives hanging clean in preparation for the next morning’s work. Fillets of fish could be placed on the backlight, Joey explained, revealing the presence of parasites in the flesh that could then be removed.

‘That’s what we’re doing now,’ said Joey. ‘We’re picking out the parasites. We’re taking the blade to them, and afterward the flesh, our flesh, will be clean. If in doubt, Tommy, you take it out. That’s the new rule. Don’t give anyone cause to doubt you, that’s my advice.’

So Tommy had killed Ronald Doheny, strangling him in a basement in Revere, and his sister had hated him for it, and Tommy had waited for the chance to avenge himself on Joey Tuna.

‘Look, I never trusted him, Tommy,’ said Dempsey. ‘Him, and his stink, and the way he talked at you, not with you, like he always knew more than you did. If a truck had hit him, I’d have sent the driver a fruit basket. If he’d been electrocuted, I’d have written a thank-you note to the power company. But I didn’t think that you’d kill him, Tommy, because they can’t let that go. Now they’ll keep coming after us until we’re done. Because of it, we got no cards left to play.’

Tommy finished the cigarette and flicked it toward the road, watching it flare briefly before it exploded on the ground and faded to nothing.

‘If you want to walk away, I understand,’ he said. ‘I won’t blame you for it.’

‘I don’t want to walk away,’ said Dempsey. ‘But I don’t want to die either.’

‘So what’s left?’

‘You don’t owe them, Tommy. You don’t owe any of them.’

They looked at each other, and Dempsey was aware that, for the second time in recent days, he was discussing the possibility of a monumental act of betrayal, the very act that he had intimated might have led to Tommy’s downfall. He tensed his abdomen, waiting to absorb the punch that might come, or the hand to the throat, or the gun beneath the chin and the oblivion that would follow. There had been times in the past weeks and months when he thought he might even have welcomed the peace that a bullet would bring. But Tommy didn’t make a move, and he didn’t look angry or even surprised. He even appeared to consider the possibility for a moment, then swat it away. For the first time, Dempsey truly understood that Tommy had resigned himself to what was to come. This garbage-strewn, weed-scarred parking lot was his Gethsemane. Only the thought of his niece was keeping him from facing his enemies directly and embracing their final judgment on him.

‘I can’t do that, Martin. You know I can’t.’ Gently, he laid a hand above Dempsey’s heart and tapped his finger in time to its beats. ‘And you can’t do it either. If you did, I’d make sure that I lived long enough to kill you myself. We’re not rats, Martin. Never that.’

Dempsey nodded sadly.

‘You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking. I’m frightened, I suppose.’

‘You don’t have to be frightened, Martin. We might get out of this yet. And if we don’t, well, I’ll be there with you at the end. You know that, don’t you?’

His hand moved from Dempsey’s breast to the back of his neck, his big palm cupping it fondly. There was no threat to it. It was a moment of contact between a father and a beloved, if sometimes troublesome, son, the older man letting the younger understand that he would guide him on the right path. Dempsey knew Tommy well, had learned to judge his moods and his silences, the cadences of his sentences and the meaning hidden in the pauses in his speech. He closed his eyes and smelled Tommy’s breath on his face, and the sweat from the journey, and the smoke on his hair and his clothes. Dempsey thought of his own father. How long had it been since he’d seen him: six, seven years? They had never been close, and his mother’s death had not brought them any closer. His father now lived somewhere outside Phoenix, in a house that he had bought with his second wife’s insurance money. The old man had outlived two of his women, and Dempsey believed that he might outlive one or two more. He was a hard man, but he drew women to him, drew them to him and then ground them down. Dempsey had never been to Phoenix. He wondered if he would ever make it now.

Tommy’s hand lifted. He patted Dempsey on the back.

‘Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.’

‘I was going to order a pizza. I haven’t eaten since morning. You want something?’

‘No, I’m good.’

‘You should eat, Tommy. It’s not good for you to be starving yourself. You’ll need your strength. We’ll need your strength.’

‘You’re right, Martin. Let me know when it comes. Maybe I’ll grab a slice of yours.’

They walked back toward the motel. Ryan stood at the open door of his room. When he saw them coming, he went inside. Dempsey noticed how still the night was, how quiet. Their voices had probably carried back to Ryan. He was always curious, was Ryan. He was always listening. Who had said that to Dempsey once?

It came to him: Joey Tuna. Old Joey, who was trusted by everyone, or was said to be trusted by everyone, but trusted no one. Mr. Indispensable. Everybody’s friend. He was gone now, but he’d have his revenge, even from beyond the grave. Men would kill them in his name, mourning him publicly even as they expressed private relief at his passing, because a man who is everybody’s friend really has no friends at all.

‘How long will we stay here, Tommy?’ Dempsey asked as the two men parted.

‘Not long,’ said Tommy. ‘We’ll wait, and then we’ll move.’

‘What are we waiting for?’

‘A call. Just a call.’

Tommy went into his room, closing the door behind him, and Dempsey joined Ryan. He was now lying on one of the beds, flicking through the channels on the TV. The room was cleaner than Dempsey had expected. Everything looked worn, but he’d stayed in chain-hotel rooms that were worse. It was as if the office and the woman were a test, and the room the reward for passing it successfully, for not being taken in by appearances.

Ryan didn’t speak. Dempsey thought he might have been sulking.

‘I’m ordering,’ said Dempsey. ‘You hungry?’

Ryan shook his head. He’d found the same sitcom that the woman in the office had been watching. These shows were on some kind of perpetual loop, a domestic hell soundtracked by canned laughter. Dempsey had no time for any of them.

The phone in the room allowed local calls only, free of charge. Dempsey ordered a sixteen-inch margarita pizza, convinced that, once the food came, Ryan and Tommy would eat their share. But when it arrived Ryan was already asleep, and Tommy’s room was dark. Dempsey knocked softly at the door, but there was no reply. He ate alone, the sitcom playing silently on the TV, lost in the pointlessness of it all. When he had eaten his fill, he slipped from the room and walked to the nearby bar. It was not dissimilar to the motel: unprepossessing from the outside but simple and cozy within. There was a pool table to the right of the door, and a CD jukebox to the left was playing Waiting for Columbus. All the tables were unoccupied, but three men and a woman were seated at the bar. The woman had a hand on the thighs of the men at either side of her, and the third man’s knee was held between her legs. She smiled at Dempsey as he entered, as if inviting him to find a way to join in, and he smiled back before taking a seat as far away from the group as possible, with a pillar blocking their view of him. The bartender told him that he would be closing up soon, but nobody seemed in any hurry to get going, and the lovers had an assortment of liquor and beer racked up, the bottles still fresh from the cooler.

‘Just one for the road,’ he said. He put a ten and a five on the bar, ordered a boilermaker, and told the bartender to keep the change for his trouble. When the bartender went to the well, Dempsey stopped him and told him to make it with Jack’s from the call.

‘Don’t make much difference if you’re dropping it in a beer,’ said the bartender.

‘It does to me.’

‘It’s your money.’

‘Sorry that it’s coming out of your tip.’

‘Don’t be. It’s my bar.’

He was in his sixties. Twin scars ran the length of both arms from the elbows to the wrists. He saw Dempsey looking at them and said, ‘Motorcycle.’

‘I figured unsuccessful suicide, but I’ll buy the bike story.’

The bartender chuckled. It sounded like mud bubbling up from a hot pool.