Ricky smashed that ridge, and Lindstrom cried out.
“Michael,” Ricky ordered, “stay here. Don’t let anyone come back here.”
Ricky dragged Lindstrom down the alley, behind the building.
The next minute lasted a year. Michael heard the sounds of his brother beating Lindstrom. The rock made a wet slap as it struck. Lindstrom barked out for help twice. Ricky grunted with effort.
When Michael finally went back there, he found Ricky splashed with blood. His right hand, which held the rock, was literally red. It looked painted. A spatter-line of blood droplets was stitched across his face.
Lindstrom lay on his side, covering his head. Tentatively he lowered his arms and his head lolled back.
Ricky stood over him. He seemed to target the broad bone of Lindstrom’s exposed forehead. He flipped the rock in his hand so that the narrower tip was exposed at the bottom of his fist-a more concentrated blow to punch a hammer-hole in that shell, to shatter it.
“Ricky,” Michael said. “Stop.”
54
Station One.
Joe pushed into the lobby from the wagon house, into a whirl of coming and going, cops drifting in like a rising tide for the shift change. He meant to get up the stairs to his locker, grab his things, get his car, which was double-parked, run out to the house for supper with Kat and Little Joe, then bolt back into town for a detail at Hayes-Bickford’s which he needed because they paid cash on the spot, no waiting, and he needed to turn that cash around to make his nut with Gargano, who cut him no slack for all the work he was doing, all the risks he was taking. Joe always rushed through the stationhouse now. He could not bear to linger. Discreet as he had been about moonlighting as a strong-arm, among cops a taint had attached to him. No one ever said anything. He could not even be sure it was really there. But he seemed to hear disdain in their voices. He thought they swerved to avoid him in the hallway, as if he stank. They fell silent when he entered the locker room. It was not simply that he was crooked, even outstandingly so. No one knew the true extent of it, Joe was sure, and anyway the rule among cops was “see no evil, speak no evil.” The cops who were not on the sleeve, roughly half the force, even if they did begrudge the others their little envelopes of cash, kept their mouths resolutely shut. No, in Joe’s case the real problem was that he had managed the whole business so badly. He’d been a fool. He was marked for a bad end, and no one wanted to be standing nearby when it arrived.
The lieutenant on the desk was a hump named Walsh. Big-bodied, dough-faced loudmouth hump with gray hair spit-combed back over his scalp, and a pencil-line smirk. Kind of guy who always had something to say. Walsh called to Joe, “Hey, Detective”-a message in the formality, a jab-“Conroy wants to see you. He’s in the pool room.”
“What’s he want?”
“To give you a medal. The hell do I know?”
“Well, what did he-? Never mind.”
Joe cast a yearning look toward the stairs. This was the contingency he could not afford, the surprise that disrupted the whole schedule. Already he began to imagine the complications rippling through the rest of the night: the chilly phone call to Kat to say he would have to skip dinner again, the empty promises he would utter about making it up sometime, and his own sour mood as he loafed around Hayes-Bick’s all night. Fuck, he thought. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.
There was a pool table in a room on the first floor of Station One. No one was sure why it was there, who had put it there, or how long it had been there. Certainly no one played much pool. There seemed to be a lot of miles on it, though. The baize had gone milk-white and bald in places, particularly where the balls were racked and where the cue ball was spotted.
Joe found Brendan Conroy alone in this room, contentedly maneuvering his way through a solitary game. Conroy’s bulk tended to shrink the table by comparison. In his hands the cue seemed foreshortened, child-sized. But his game was surprisingly delicate and artful. As Joe entered, Conroy neatly pocketed a ball in the corner and drew the cue ball back toward the center of the table with biting backspin.
“You a pool shark, Brendan?”
“How much you got in your pocket?”
“Nothin’. Some gum maybe.”
“Guess you won’t find out, then.”
Conroy surveyed the table. He leaned over the end-stiffly, impeded by his belly-and tapped a deft little touch shot in which the cue ball dawdled from the center of the table to the rail, shouldering the seven ball into the side pocket as it passed. He came around to the side of the table to smack the next ball home along the rail with a happy clack.
“You come here to play pool? ’Cause I got to go. Kat’s waiting. She’ll have my balls in a vise.”
“Let her wait. It’ll be good for her.”
“Jesus, Bren, you don’t know. I got enough trouble.”
“That’s why I’m here. To ease your trouble. You’re moving.”
“Yeah? Where now?”
“Vice and Narcotics.”
“You’re shittin’ me.”
Conroy lowered his eyes to the level of the table, seeking a clear path for the cue ball. “I shit…you…not.”
“You want me to chase hookers around all day?”
“Somebody’s got to do it.” Conroy boxed the cue ball into a muddle at the far end of the table where it bumbled around without purpose. “Now look what you made me do.”
“Brendan, if it’s all the same to you, I’d just assume stay where I am. I’ve got some things workin’ here.”
“It’s not all the same to me. I extended myself on your behalf, boyo.”
“I know. It’s just-”
“I extended myself and now I expect you to say thank you and listen to sense. You may not think much of Vice and Narcotics, but it’s a step up. More money. No victims, no pressure. You want to make captain someday? You’ve got to learn every aspect of the business. Learn your trade. A good detective can go anywhere, Homicide, Burglary, Vice and Narcotics, doesn’t matter.”
“I’m no detective, Bren. We both know that.”
“You’re a good police, Joe.”
Joe did not answer.
“You’re a good police, and Vice and Narcotics is where you’re needed at the moment. And it will serve your purpose as well. Two birds with one stone. Take you away from the North End for a while. Get you over to Berkeley Street; time you started meeting some people who matter, and stop pissing people off.”
“What’s that mean?”
“This is a small town, boyo.”
“And?”
“Little birdie tells me you paid a visit to Farley Sonnenshein.”
Joe said nothing.
“Now, why would you go and bother a man like that?”
“I was working a case.”
“A B-and-E.”
“It’s not just a B-and-E.”
“No? What is it, then? A few broken windows. They didn’t even take anything. What’ve you got? Trespassing, malicious destruction-misdemeanors. And for that you barge in on a man like Sonnenshein? Foolish.”
“B-and-E in the nighttime isn’t a misdemeanor.”
“Don’t smart-mouth me, boyo. I don’t need a law lesson from you.”
“The case won’t go down, Brendan.”
“It’ll go down. They all do. Someone else’ll make it go down.”
