Moonlight Mile

“Sure,” she said. “They didn’t want to touch it either.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “Bigger fish, I guess.”

That didn’t make sense. I couldn’t imagine what it was but she wasn’t telling me something.

“What do you think I can do here, Beatrice?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What can you do?”

The softening breeze moved her white hair around. There was zero doubt that she blamed me for her husband getting shot and being charged with a grocery list of crimes while he lay in his hospital bed. He’d left his house to meet me at a bar in South Boston. From there, the hospital. From the hospital, jail. From jail, prison. He’d walked out of his house one Thursday afternoon and never walked back in.

Beatrice kept looking at me the way nuns used to look at me in grammar school. I hadn’t liked it then, I didn’t like it now.

“Beatrice?” I said. “I’m real sorry your husband kidnapped his niece because he thought his sister was a shitty parent.”

“Thought?”

“But he did, in fact, kidnap her.”

“For her own good.”

“Okay. So we should just let anybody decide what’s good for a kid who doesn’t belong to them. I mean, why not? Every kid with an asshole parent, line up at the nearest subway station. We’ll ship you all to Wonkaville where you’ll live happily ever after.”

“You through?”

“No, I’m not.” I could feel a rage building in me that got closer to the surface of my skin every year. “I’ve eaten a lot of shit over the years for doing my job with Amanda. That’s what I did, Bea, what I was hired to do.”

“Poor guy,” she said. “All misunderstood.”

“What you hired me to do. You said, ‘Find my niece.’ And I found her. So you want to give me the arched eyebrow of guilt for the next ten years, knock yourself out. I did my job.”

“And a lot of people got hurt.”

“ I didn’t hurt ’em, though. I just found her and brought her back.”

“That’s how you live with it?”

I leaned back against the wall and exhaled a long burst of air and frustration. I reached into my coat and pulled out my Charlie Card to slide through the turnstile. “I gotta go to work, Bea. A pleasure seeing you. Sorry I can’t help.”

She said, “Is it about money?”

“What?”

“I know we never paid your bill from the first time you found her, but-”

“What? No,” I said. “It has nothing to do with money.”

“Then what?”

“Look,” I said as softly as I could, “I’m hurting just as bad as anyone in this economy. It’s not about the money, no, but I can’t afford to take on any job that doesn’t pay, either. And I’m about to go in for an interview with someone who might give me a permanent job, so I couldn’t take side cases anyway. Do you understand?”

“Helene’s got this boyfriend,” she said. “Her latest? Been in prison, of course. Guess what for.”

I shook my head in frustration and tried to wave her off.

“Sex crimes.”

Twelve years ago, Amanda McCready had been kidnapped by her uncle Lionel and some rogue cops who’d had no interest in ransoming or hurting her. What they’d wanted was to put that child in a home with a mother who didn’t drink like she owned stock in London gin or pick her boy toys from the Sex Freaks Shopping Network. When I found Amanda, she was living with a couple who loved her. They’d been determined to give her health, stability, and happiness. Instead, they’d gone to prison, and Amanda had been returned to Helene’s home. By me.

“You owe, Patrick.”

“What?”

“I said you owe.”

I could feel the rage again, a tick-tick turning into a tom-tom beat. I had done the right thing. I knew it. I had no doubt. What I had in place of doubt, though, was this rage-murky and illogical and growing deeper every day of the last twelve years. I put my hands in my pockets so I wouldn’t punch the wall with the white subway map on it. “I don’t owe anyone anything. I don’t owe you, I don’t owe Helene, I don’t owe Lionel.”

“What about Amanda? You don’t think you owe her?” She held her thumb and index finger a whisker from touching. “Just a little bit?”

“No,” I said. “Take care, Bea.” I walked toward the turnstiles.

“You never asked about him.”

I stopped. I dug my hands deeper into my pockets. I sighed. I turned back to her.

She shifted her weight from her left foot to her right. “Lionel. He should have been out by now, you know, a normal guy like him. The lawyer told us when we pled guilty that he’d be sentenced to twelve years but only do six. Well, that was the sentence. They told the truth about that.” She took a step toward me. She stopped. She took two steps back. The crowd streamed between us, a few people giving us looks. “He gets beat up a lot in there. Worse things, too, but he won’t talk about that. He isn’t meant for a place like that. He’s just a sweetie, you know?” She took another step back. “He got in a fight, some guy trying to take whatever my husband didn’t want to give? And Lionel, he’s a big guy, and he hurt this guy. So now he has to do the full twelve and he’s almost done. But they’re talking about new charges maybe unless he turns rat. Helps the feds with some gang that’s running drugs and things in and out of there? They say if Lionel doesn’t help them, they’ll mess with his sentence. We thought he’d get out in six years .” Her lips got caught between a broken smile and a hopeless frown. “I don’t know sometimes anymore, you know? I don’t.”

There was no place for me to hide. I held her eyes as best I could but I eventually dropped my gaze to the black rubber flooring.

Another group of students walked behind her. They were laughing about something, oblivious. Beatrice watched them go and their happiness shrank her. She looked light enough for the breeze to toss her down the stairs.

I held out my hands. “I don’t do independent work anymore.”

She nodded at my left hand. “You’re married, uh?”

“Yeah.” I took a step back in her direction. “Bea, look-”

She held up a hard hand. “Kids?”

I stopped. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t find the words suddenly.

“You don’t have to answer. I’m sorry. I am. I was stupid to come. I just thought, I dunno, I just…” She glanced off to her right for a moment. “You’re good at it I bet.”

“Huh?”

“I bet you’re a real good father.” She gave me a wadded-up smile. “I always thought you would be.”

She turned into the crowd exiting the station and vanished from my view. I went through the turnstile and down the stairs to the subway platform. From there I could see the parking lot that led out to Morrissey Boulevard. The crowd streamed from the stairwell onto the asphalt, and for a moment, I saw Bea again, but just for a moment. Then I lost sight of her. The crowd was thick with high school kids, and most were taller than her.

Chapter Four