O'Farrell's Law

Billy clearly wasn’t interested.

“They won’t come, Rick and Felipe, during the night!”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I’m just sure.”

“How long are you staying?”

“A few days.”

“Who’s going to look after us when you’ve gone?”

“I’ll work it out.”

Billy insisted on holding O’Farrell’s hand between both of his and several times opened his eyes, accusingly, when O’Farrell tried gently to withdraw. It was an hour before O’Farrell got away. The dinner things were cleared and Jill and Ellen were sitting side by side on the couch, like hospital visitors waiting for a diagnosis they didn’t want to hear. O’Farrell told them everything, and Ellen began to cry when he got to the reason for Billy saving the money, the threats that the men had made, and McMasters’s thought that Billy might benefit from seeing a psychiatrist.

“Well?” O’Farrell demanded.

Ellen looked uncomprehendingly up at him, red-nosed and wet-faced. “Well what?”

“I want direct, honest answers.”

“About what?”

“About a lot of things. Let’s try drugs first.’”

Her lips quivered afresh but Ellen didn’t break down. “No!” she said. “How many times have I got to say no!”

“Until I’m satisfied,” O’Farrell said.

Ellen opened her mouth to speak but then apparently changed her mind about what she was going to say. She said, very quietly, “No. I don’t do cocaine! No, I don’t do crack! No, I don’t deal. No, I haven’t turned my son into a runner! There! Satisfied?” It was very difficult for her to hold on and Jill reached out to her as she had in McMasterss office, in support.

“What about the day-care center?” O’Farrell persisted relentlessly.

“You knew about that!” Ellen said defensively. “Thousands of single parents use the system. It works. Don’t look at me as if I’ve done something wrong!”

“How long has he been there by the time you collect him?”

“Usual time.”

“What’s usual time?”

“I told you about the extra work, when we had the first scare at the school,” Ellen said. “Billy was always okay at the center until I collected him.”

Jill pulled away from their daughter. “It took them long enough to realize he was arriving late.”

“But they did realize it,” Ellen said. “And as soon as they did, they told me.”

“How about another direct, honest answer?” O’Farrell challenged. “Tell me, directly and honestly, how much Patrick’s caught up with the payment arrears. And how promptly the regular amounts have come in?”

Ellen gave a helpless shrug. “He promised,” she said.

“He hasn’t paid up a goddamned cent, has he!” O’Farrell said.

Ellen shook her head, not looking up at her father.

“For God’s sake!” Jill said, finding something at last to be angry instead of sad about. “What’s wrong with you! You’re working full-time and extra when you can—and you let him get away with this?”

“That’s going to stop, right here and now!” O’Farrell said. “I’m going to sort everything out with Billy and I’m going to sort everything out with that bastard ex-husband of yours.…” He stopped, caught by a sudden thought and remembering Billy’s bedroom pleas. He said, “You called Patrick, about the drugs business?”

Ellen nodded. “Before you. He said he had some important appointments running through until well into the evening, that he’d get over if he could. I guess he couldn’t. This new job is pretty demanding … worrying.…”

“I just can’t believe this! I just can’t believe I’m hearing this—” Jill Mailed to protest, but O’Farrell took over, careless of interrupting his wife and careless, too, of the fury he was supposed never to feel.

“Billy was pretty worried today, too, holding my hand and pleading not to be hurt. You’re more than a damned fool. Don’t you realize you’ve actually neglected Billy, letting Patrick off the hook like you have?”

There was a listless shoulder movement from their daughter. “I guess,” she said.

O’Farrell was gripped by a feeling of helplessness, helplessness and impotence. Abruptly he -stood and announced, “I’m going out for a while. A walk.”

“But …” Jill started.

“I need to get out.”

There was a chill coming off the lake and O’Farrell set out toward it, knowing there was a lakeside walk through a park but thinking after two blocks that in the darkness he didn’t know how to find it. He turned back toward the township, knowing he could really have found the park if he’d wanted, knowing, too, why he’d changed his mind. Evanston wasn’t big; sprawled awkwardly, with a mall he knew he couldn’t reach tonight on foot, but definitely not big. Boxer was an identifiable enough name, if it were how the man was normally known. Foreign accent and a broken nose and a red-flower tattoo on his left hand. And a racing bicycle, although O’Farrell guessed that was reserved for pickups, not nighttime cruising. Sufficient to go on: to look at least.

O’Farrell reached the main highway, running parallel with the railway line, and began to walk its full length, taking in the side roads when he came to them. At restaurants he checked through windows, on the pretext of reading the menus, and he went into every bar he came to, for the first time in months using a drink to justify his presence rather than because he needed it. Drink in hand, he walked around them all, looking, and at one tavern— one of the ones he thought most likely because there was live music and everyone was young, far younger than himself—there were some sniggers and someone behind the bar asked if he needed any help. O’Farrell chanced asking for a man called Boxer and got headshaking blank-ness in reply.

What in the name of Christ did he imagine he was doing! The question came in a bar just beyond the railway bridge over the Chicago road, a shabby place where the regulars examined him like the intruder he was, resenting his examination of them. What would he have done if there’d been someone here—or anywhere else—matching Billy’s description? The tattoo was pretty distinctive but not unique, and the broken nose certainly wasn’t. Was it enough evidence to justify killing a man, which is what he’d set out to do? What about the usual, professional criteria? Personal vengeance and vigilante stuff are for the movies. Was that what he would have done, dragged the man into some darkened parking lot and beat a confession from him, just like they did in the movies? And then killed him? Killed someone? Hadn’t that been the agony, over the last few months, not wanting to kill anyone? Hadn’t that been what he’d told Lambert? The demands flurried like snow through his mind and like snow blocked up, so that he couldn’t separate question from answer and more often couldn’t find answers to the questions.

O’Farrell left his drink and hurried from the bar, as if he had something to be guilty about, which he supposed he had in thought if not actually in deed. The apartment was in darkness when he got back. He groped his way through it without putting on the light, not wanting to awaken anyone. He undressed in the dark, but as he was lowering himself cautiously beside Jill, she said, “I’m not asleep.”

“I didn’t mean to be so long.”

“Did you find him, the supplier who got Billy to carry the stuff?”

“No.” O’Farrell detected the movement and then Jill’s hand took his.

“Would you have tried to kill him, if you’d found him?”

“I wanted to,” O’Farrell said.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Jill said. “These people are very vicious. You’d have probably gotten hurt yourself.”

It was the nearest she’d come openly to questioning his manhood. She wouldn’t have believed him capable, of course.