Michael shook his head. His right hand went to his brow, smoothing the eyebrows with two fingers absently and he sensed somewhere in his skull, afloat behind the thick bone-wall of his forehead, the first dim presence of pain, like a ghost.
He saw the two women.
Claire, the career-girl newspaper reporter. Two-legged rats in the West End. Lots of money to be made there. That’s the kind of cheese those rats like. Find the cheese.
And of course he saw Amy, too, the night before she was killed. Why would Brendan Conroy kill Joe Senior? What motive? I have an idea. A wiseacre smirk. I have an idea. And of course she did have an idea: because Senior had been spilling what was going on in the West End. The West End had to be cleared. The New Boston had to come.
The pain hovered in his skull, settling now behind the right eyeball. A tumorous weight leaned against the back of the eyeball. An ache. It draped itself over the ocular nerve like a boa on a tree branch. Still faint.
He tried to empty his head of thought, of stress. He was not his body; he was in his body, and he could control it. Maybe the storm would pass him by, blow out harmlessly to sea.
“You alright, Mikey?”
“Yeah. I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“We got to go. There’s something-”
The three of them stood to leave. Michael put his hand on the table to steady himself.
Ricky grabbed his arm. “Sure you’re okay?”
“Yeah.”
Michael let his eyes close.
He was not his body. He was in his body. Empty the mind. Release the pressure.
But it was already too late. The thing was inside him. The anxiety of the last few days. Plunging from one lead to the next, feeling the solution closer and closer. He wished he was not there. He wished he was at home. He did not like people to see him when the migraines came. It was a weakness, this inability to regulate one’s own body.
“You know what?” he said. “Maybe I better just-”
There had been no aura this time. No illusions-no melting surfaces or mosaic vision, no sense of wonder. The aura did not always come. Sometimes it was just pain.
“Mike,” he heard Joe say, “want me to drive you home?”
“No. I’m just gonna go lie down for a while. I’ll catch up with you guys later. Sorry. I hate this.” He shuffled toward the kitchen door. “I hate this.”
Later. An hour, several hours.
There was a sound in the dark, in the deep space: a ticking like the tip of a tree branch tapping a windowpane.
Near its peak, Michael thought. Had to be. It squeezed his head like a helmet. In the interior of his skull there was throbbing, synchronized to his pulse. He felt, or imagined he felt, the beating of vascular arteries as they piped the toxic fluids into his head, the rhythmic earthwormy bunching-and-stretching of peristalsis.
Again, he caught that sound in the darkness. Less faint. Rhythmic. Approaching. Chink-chink-chink. More insistent now, like a child’s finger tapping on the window, demanding to be let in. Chink-chink-chink.
He lay on his side, utterly still, and searched for the sound, but the signal was weak.
Chick-chick-chick-chick.
There it was! Footsteps.
The pain subsided momentarily.
Chick-chick- BANG! As if a door had slammed open and the sound that was distant and external was now inside his head, chick-chick-chick-chick-chick-chick.
He saw feet running, close up, black patrolman’s shoes in a dead sprint, soles scratching the sandy pavement.
Joe Daley, Sr., so vivid! So thrillingly close! His cheeks jounced with each step. His nylon windbreaker luffed and crinkled as the wind filled it. He held one hand over his heart to keep his junk-reading glasses, notebook, smokes- from jumping out of his shirt pocket.
Michael could reach out and touch him. Inches away. Touch his father’s face.
But Joe Senior pulled away. Michael was behind him now. Saw his leg-kick as he ran. Eastie warehouses to the left, harbor to the right.
Farther behind Joe Senior-well behind-was Conroy. He chugged along slowly, then jogged, then stopped altogether. He grimaced. What had he done? What had he done to his friend?
Joe Senior seemed to sense his partner had dropped away. At the corner of one of the big redbrick buildings, he turned around and spread his hands: The hell are you doing, Brendan?
“You go,” Conroy wheezed. “I’ll catch up.”
Joe Senior shook his head. Conroy was a character. How they had lasted this long together he would never know.
Senior disappeared around the corner of the building into the alley.
Enough!
Michael had seen enough. He turned off the movie. He knew how it ended. He knew how to make the pieces fit. There would be time to confirm it later. For now, sleep.
Margaret opened the door and the young man swept in with it, as leaves that have accumulated in a doorway will be pulled inside when the door is opened. He did not step all the way into the house. He stopped directly in front of her.
“Hello, Margaret.”
There was a delay, a fraction of a second, during which Margaret placed him-there were bruises on Kurt Lindstrom’s face, one of his hands was bandaged-then she slammed the door against him with a yelp of surprise and fear. He warded off the door, pressed it open again. Margaret continued to push for a moment but realized she would not be able to force him out, so she stepped back. She behaved as if she had invited him in, as if she was not distressed by his presence. What choice was there? She retreated to the living room.
“Oh, come on, Margaret. What are you so afraid of?”
“I’m not afraid.”
“No. No reason to be.”
“I’m not.”
“Course you’re not. Nothing to be afraid of.”
“My sons will be home soon.”
“Will they?” He checked his watch. “It’s late.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Visiting.”
He ambled into the small room. His posture was lazy and pliant, like a teenager’s.
She got out a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table and lighted it in an actressy way. They were talking, at least. That seemed to matter, to suggest that she had a say in what might happen here. She could engage him, steer him.
“What happened to your hand?”
Lindstrom looked at the hand. “Your son.”
She presumed he meant Joe. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you. Why don’t you offer me a drink?”
“A drink?”
“Yes, a drink. What kind of hostess are you?”
“I don’t-what, what would you like to drink?”
“What do you have, Margaret?”
“There’s some beer, I think.”
“No, not beer. How about Scotch. Do you have Scotch?”
“I’ll go see.”
