Betrayal

'G.' He paused, glanced at Evan.

'I before E.' Evan tipped his vodka rocks all the way up. 'Except after C.'

'Don't tell me!'

'I just did. 'Or when sounded like a as in neighbor or weigh.''

'Okay, trying the old head-fake double reverse. I get it. But I'm on to you, boy. So here goes, again. H, Y, G, E…'

'Buzz! You're out.' Evan shook his head. 'I just told you, i before e, Stan. I told you the whole damn poem. You think I was making that up?'

'I thought you were trying to trick me. And then g is close to c sound-wise, so it was the exception.'

'Nope. It's the rule.' Evan spelled the word out.

'That doesn't sound right. I'm going to look it up at home.'

'You want to bet?'

'No, I don't want to bet. But you're right, that's a pretty simple word to win the whole county spelling bee on.'

'Well, harder than tavern, anyway. And they got that one wrong here. Twice. Three times? Who knows, maybe more. They might have it on the matchbooks.'

'Yeah, well…' Paganini shifted his bulk and cried out. 'Hey!'

'What?'

'Sat on something.' Paganini slid himself off his stool and was digging in his pants pockets. Plopping down a large set of keys in the bar's gutter, he reached in again and produced a heavy item that he plunked onto the bar. 'Knucks,' he said.

At one of their bowling league nights, the cops had gotten into a discussion about various common enhancements to a man's natural defensive arsenal. Brass knuckles had featured large in Paganini's experience, and Evan said he'd never actually encountered them.

Now he picked up the hunk of fitted metal. 'Heavy sucker.'

'Get hit with it, you're clocked,' Paganini said. 'Although who fights with their fists anymore, huh? Nowadays, you know you're going to be in a fight, you pack heat, am I right?'

'Maybe you don't want to kill who you're fighting?'

Paganini chuckled. 'Yeah, like that happens anymore. Go ahead, put ' em on. Keep 'em if you want. I collect the ones I get off perps. I got a half dozen like these at home.'

As Evan was pocketing the brass knuckles, the bartender, a midthirties slacker with a wispy effort at a beard, suddenly appeared in front of them. Paganini looked down at his glass. 'We empty again?'

'Seem to be,' Evan said. 'Let's double us up here, would you, Jeff?'

Jeff looked from one of them to the other. 'You guys walking home from here? You pull a DUI, they can come back and get us.'

'We're not going to get any DUI,' Paganini said. He reached around into the back of his pants and pulled out his wallet, opened it to the badge. 'Pour us a couple more, would you, please, and I won't report the obvious health violation keeping those meatballs out so long. Awesome meatballs, by the way. Remind me of my mom's.' He cocked his head over toward Evan. 'I believe the gentleman requested a couple of doubles.'

Jeff took a beat, nodded, and then turned to get fresh glasses and ice.

Evan lowered his voice, leaned into Stan. 'Am I slurring?'

'Nope. You're as eloquent as Cicero. How about me?'

'How about you what?'

'Am I slurring?'

'No.'

'You keeping track of where we are?'

'The Traven,' Paganini replied.

'Drinkwise, Stan. Drinkwise. I know where we physically are.'

'Four, I think, maybe. Couple of doubles is six, and we've been here'-he checked his watch-'three hours. So I figure we're blowing point oh five, six, max, which means we're totally cool to drive and will be for the foreseeable future.'

But Evan-all too familiar with the average cop's rationalization genius when drinking-was doing his own math. He was fairly certain they'd had more than four drinks already, maybe as many as six or seven, and if they had a couple of doubles on top of that, two doubles each, that would take him up to eleven generous pours. He was just about to say that maybe he'd better stick with singles to give them a better chance to metabolize off, when the bar's door opened. Glancing up at the mirror behind the bar, he put a hand on Paganini's arm and without a word stood up and turned around.

'Your mom said this was where she might look for you.' From their table in the back, where they couldn't be heard by anyone else, Tara looked around the seedy bar. 'Nice place. You come here often?'

'Sometimes. Nights get long, and I go crazy at home. Some nights I bowl. Or read or something. Two days ago I was at Mom and Dad's. I've got a life.'

'Of course you do. I didn't mean that.'

'Yeah, you do.' He sat back and folded his arms. 'You disapprove of me being here.' He looked at her, flat affect. 'You come down here to bust my chops?'

'No,' she said. 'No. I don't mean to do that. I came down here to…well, just to talk to you again.'

Jeff showed up with two drinks and put them down at their table. 'And for the lady?'

'Maybe I'll just have one of his. And some cranberry juice.'

When Jeff left, Tara pulled her chair up, reached out across the table, and touched Evan's hand. 'I'm really not here to criticize you, Evan. It's just that the other night you said you'd been drinking too much and were trying to slow down a little.'

'Yeah, well, I guess I'm not succeeding tonight. What's that look? You don't think a couple of drinks is a good idea?'

'I didn't say that. If you need it, you need it.' She pulled his hand from his glass and covered it with hers. 'Look,' she whispered, 'I don't know even any small part of what you've been through. You're the one who said it would be better if you didn't need so much alcohol.'

'That would be better. I agree.' Defiantly, he picked up his glass and took a long drink. 'But that doesn't seem to be what I'm doing right now, which is trying to keep things together.'

'What things?'

'My job, for one. What happened with my guys in Iraq. Why I'm still alive. Anger. Guilt. You name it.' He brought his eyes up, unfocused, heavy-lidded. 'And all those are before we even get to you.'

Jeff showed up with Tara's cranberry juice, placed it on the table in front of her, turned, and left. A silence settled. Evan again lifted his glass, then put it back down. 'You want to tell me about you and Ron?'

'There isn't any me and Ron. Not anymore. How can you even ask that after…?' She swallowed. 'I called him after I saw you at school on Monday. It's over.' Sighing, she went on. 'But then this afternoon he came by.'

'Didn't take the hint, huh? How did that go?'

'I never let him in. He told me he never said I'd ripped up your letter.'

Evan took that in with a solemn nod. 'The guy's a congenital liar.'

'Evan, look at me.' Her eyes bored into his. 'You're swearing to me that he said that? You didn't make that up to make him look bad? I know it's awful of me to ask, but I've got to ask you straight out. I've got to know for absolute certain.'

Evan covered Tara's hand with both of his. 'I swear to God,' he said. 'I swear on the memory of the lives of my men, I have never lied to you.'

Tara let out a long, shuddering breath, as though something that had been squeezing her had suddenly let go. 'He also denied what he told you I said in the hospital, about making your own bed and you could lie in it.'