face, then stepped into the light even as Flint tried to shield him. The sight of the gun had no effect. Nor did Michael’s presence. The man moved Flint aside as if he were a curtain, and Michael saw that one of his eyes drooped beneath an obvious depression in the curve of his skull. “I’m thirsty.” There were long scars on his forehead, old stitches that ran into the hairline. “Can I come out yet?”
Flint flashed a glance at Michael, then put a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Sure, you can.” Small defiance, now. “No one’s going to hurt you.”
“Okay.”
“Say hello to the nice man.”
The man shifted from one foot to the other. He looked shy and embarrassed, then lifted one hand in a furtive, boyish way. “Hello, nice man.”
And Michael recognized him.
“Hello, Billy.”
Billy Walker smiled at the sound of his name. “Do we have any milk?”
“Sure we do,” Flint said.
“Chocolate?”
Worry deepened the lines on Flint’s face, but he kept his voice warm as he smiled lightly and smoothed the hair on Billy’s head. “Let’s go see.”
“What happened to him?” Billy was visible at a table through an open door. He was eating sugared cereal, milk on his chin as he rocked in his seat and stared at the glass of chocolate milk. Flint was broken, now, the lies all told and done. He had nothing left, and Michael knew it.
“He got into an argument with Ronnie Saints.” Flint dug a knuckle into his right eye, and then sighed deeply as he poured another glass of bourbon. “This was about a year after you ran away. The argument got ugly, and Billy went headfirst down some concrete stairs.”
“Ronnie pushed him?”
“He denied it, of course.” The glass went up and came down empty. “Didn’t really matter in the end. Doctors spent six hours picking pieces of skull out of Billy’s brain, and he’s been like this ever since.”
“But why is he here? Why with you?”
Flint smiled a melancholy smile. “No one was going to adopt a sixteen-year-old boy with half his skull smashed in. But it’s funny, life. The concrete edge that put that dent in his head seems to have driven the rottenness right out of him, just took all that blackness and baked it in the sun.” Flint shrugged. “He was different, after, gentle and sweet and unassuming. Even after he turned eighteen, I couldn’t bear to see him loose in the world, so, I let him stay. He’d do odd jobs. Picking up sticks, sweeping. It was okay for a while. Billy. The orphanage. Then they opened the casinos.” A bright edge came into Flint’s eyes, and he sniffed loudly. “And I lost everything.”
“Are you speaking of the money Abigail Vane donated?”
“Five million dollars and I blew it. Gambling. Bad investments.” Flint was too guilty to be apologetic. “I thought I could make things better, double down, you know. But I failed everybody. All those boys. Myself. I ruined everything.”
“And when the orphanage closed?”
“There’s salvage value here. Copper gutters and pipes. Slate roof.” Flint rolled his shoulders. “A company up north bought the property and kept me on as caretaker until they could break it up. That should have been years ago, but they keep putting it off. Not that I’m complaining. They pay me a little. We have a place to live.”
Michael looked for more lies, but found none. “You’ve kept Billy with you this whole time.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Flint lifted eyes that shone with bright, clear love. “Because in sixty years of screwing up, caring for that boy is the one thing I’ve done right.”
Twenty minutes later, Flint put Billy Walker back to bed. When he came out, Michael said, “I’ll help you do something with the door.”
They patched it with plywood and ten-penny nails. Outside, with the moon rising low and fat, Michael said, “You really think they’re dead, don’t you? All of them.”
“They’ve all gone missing.”
“Why were you checking on them?”
“I got a bad feeling after I gave up the addresses. I was hoping I was wrong.”
“Did you talk to any of them?” Michael asked.
“Just Ronnie Saints, but he was paranoid and confused. Thought I was after his money or some such thing. I warned him other boys had gone missing, but he told me to mind my own damn business. Said he knew what he was doing. Two days later he was gone, too.”
Michael nodded, unsurprised. Even as a kid, Saints had been paranoid. “Any of them have families?”
“They were never going to be the family types, if you follow.”
Michael closed the door, pounded a fist on the patch. He thought of Ronnie Saints’s girlfriend, who wanted a baby and a paid-for house. “Maybe you should leave. Take Billy and find some other place. A new start.”
Flint was nodding when he said, “I just need one big win.”
Michael said nothing. Drunks and gamblers rarely changed. He picked up the shotgun and emptied it of shells. When he finished, Flint was staring.
“You really didn’t kill them?”
Michael studied the ruins that spread out in the dark. “I haven’t thought of those boys in twenty years.”
“Maybe they’re not dead,” Flint said.
“Maybe.”
Flint picked up the bottle of bourbon, swayed. “I did the best I could, you know.”
Michael tightened his jaw, but Flint was oblivious.
“When you were here,” Flint went on, “I never meant for bad things to happen. I hope to God you’ll believe me when I say that. It was just hard. So many boys, and so few of us.” He sniffed wetly, truth in his voice. “I know it was bad.”
Michael stared hard at Flint, mind turning as he sifted his own emotions and came up cool and unfazed. It was done; he was over it. He didn’t tell Flint the truth, though, did not explain that he’d come over the fence more or less inclined to kill the man. Strange that it was Billy Walker who’d saved him. Stranger still that Michael felt such compassion.
“It’s good what you’re doing for Billy.”
That was all Michael had, simple words and the gift of his life.
Flint cleared his throat. “I’m going to bed. Sofa’s yours, if you want it.”
Michael considered the offer. He wanted to see Iron House in the light of day. He wanted to walk its halls, to see the places of childhood. Maybe, he’d find unexpected insight, some sort of fresh understanding; or perhaps in the high-ceilinged halls his rage would find cause for resurrection. “There’s a hotel in town,” Michael said.
“The Volonte. It’s decent.”
A hotel sounded good: a shower and four hours of blackness; but Michael didn’t trust Flint yet, and the locals cops would love a shot at closing the Hennessey file from all those years back. A simple phone call would do it. Cops at his hotel door. A hard rush in the predawn stillness. That would be the height of irony, if with
