By the time Bonnie got home, Mrs. Biggs was already up and about, banging around in her half of the duplex. It was what she did. She rose at dawn and banged. Bang bang bang. Around 8 PM, exhausted from a hard day’s banging, she went to bed.
The banging didn’t bother Bonnie. Nothing bothered her right now, not even the various pains that had been announcing themselves throughout the morning as she left the freighter, wrapped in a sailor’s oilskin coat, then drove her Jeep out of the terminal and headed south, stopping to dispose of Kyle’s money in a river.
In her bathroom, she washed her face. The water that spiraled down the drain was pink with blood.
She reviewed the contents of her purse. Though the Walther was gone, the silencer was still there. That was good. She was pretty sure she could get it to fit her other .22. If so, she would have a use for it tonight.
You know, it was true, what they said. A woman’s work was never done.
She thought about breakfast. Normally, after seeing action, she was famished. Today she had no appetite. She decided to tend her wounds.
Rolling up her right sleeve, she saw a badly swollen purple bruise below her wrist, a reminder of Kyle’s surprise attack. With a little more force, the kick might have broken her wrist, and things could have turned out very differently.
She popped some painkillers, then bandaged her cuts and the cigarette burn, smoking a cig of her own while she did so. She was tweezing out the last of the glass slivers in her cheek when Sammy, still in her purse, started singing “I Will Survive.”
“You and me both, pal,” Bonnie said agreeably.
The caller was Mrs. Mitter, who wouldn’t be requiring Bonnie’s services any longer. “Bill and I—we had a talk. And … well, everything is out in the open.”
Bonnie played dumb. “He come clean about the other woman?”
“It’s, um, something like that.”
“Well, that’s good, Gloria. Not that he’s cheating, I mean. But at least he’s being honest. No more lies.”
She knew it was hypocritical as hell for her to say this. Her whole friggin’ life was a lie.
*
Around five o’clock she woke up on the living-room sofa and realized she’d been down for six hours. Well, she wasn’t as young as she used to be. Couldn’t pull these all-nighters anymore.
She nuked something unhealthy and ate standing at the sink. A couple of cups of coffee washed it down. She’d already taken a shower, but she took another one. Somehow it was just hard to feel clean.
She changed her bandages, took more pills, and put on a shirt bearing the message Club Sandwiches Not Seals, a nonviolent sentiment disarmingly at odds with her purpose for the evening. By seven she was on her way out the door, with the suppressor and a Beretta .22 in her purse. It was the 1952 pistol, the one she hadn’t taken last time because it was old. She figured it was okay for tonight. Edna Goodman was old, too.
Leaves were falling around her as she backed out of the garage. Halloween was coming up. She intended to give it a pass this year. She’d already been through her own personal horror show. Dracula and Frankenstein had nothing on Elvis and Ringo, and the Wolfman was no match for the Wolf.
As she was pulling away, her phone pinged with a text. The caller wasn’t identified. The message was one word: Office.
With a secret smile, she detoured to Main Street, parking in the empty lot outside her building. She entered through the front door and climbed the staircase to the second floor.
He was waiting in the hall. He’d parked his personal car on the street—no one would find it suspicious for him to park downtown—and had entered the building through a back door, unseen. He was a cop; he had a key.
“Hey,” Brad said. His face changed as she came nearer. “Whoa. What happened to you?”
“Tripped and fell.”
“Must’ve been a heck of a stumble.”
Naturally he said heck, not hell. She kinda loved that about him.
“I don’t suppose,” he added, “it has anything to do with what went down at Port Newark.”
She hadn’t turned on the news all day, but it was no surprise that the shootout had gone public. “What about Newark?” she asked innocently.
“A bunch of Albanian gangsters got shot up. Strangely enough, four of them were the same crew that came to town last night.”
“Sounds like those guys really got around.”
He leaned against the frame of her office door. “They might not be the only ones. Dan thinks you were involved.”
“Does he? He hasn’t come calling.”
“He has no evidence. Just a feeling in his gut.”
“Yeah, well, he should lay off the burritos. We just gonna stand out here and talk?”
“You know we’re not.”
She unlocked her office. They went in together, as they’d done so many times since May, when after two months of separation they’d reconnected. It had been his idea, not that she’d had anything against it. He’d simply pulled her over one day, and instead of writing up a ticket, he’d said, “I miss you.”
She knew what it cost him to say that. It was more than a matter of pride. He liked to see himself a certain way, as a straight arrow, one of the good guys, someone who followed the rules. Given what he knew, he shouldn’t allow himself to have anything to do with her.
But what was the old saying? The heart wants what it wants.
This time they’d been more careful. They never met at his apartment anymore, and he never went anywhere near her home. Her office was their little love nest. Only after hours, when the rest of the tenants were gone for the day. He always made a purchase at one of the stores nearby, just to cover himself in case anyone questioned why he’d parked on Main.
It was all about sex. No dinners out, no trips to the movies, no romantic getaways. Just the two of them together on the new sofa she’d bought to replace the ruined one. Sometimes they shared a drink; she kept liquor in a drawer of her desk. The booze was always warm, but that was okay.
The oddest thing about it was that it was probably the most normal relationship she’d ever had.
She was shutting the blinds when he said, “Dan knows about us.”
Startled, she turned. “You’re shitting me.” She’d been sure they’d both done a good enough job of playacting last night to fool the chief, who normally wasn’t all that hard to fool anyway.
Brad hung back, just inside the doorway, reluctant to proceed until all the blinds were closed. “I shouldn’t have put it like that. What I mean is, he knows we were seeing each other up till around February. One of my neighbors blabbed. But he doesn’t know … about this.”
“He thinks it’s over?”
Brad nodded. “That’s why he’s willing to cut me a break. Of course, if he ever finds out different …”
“If the situation’s getting too hairy for you, Walsh, you can always walk away. I won’t hold it against you.”
“I’m not walking away. I tried that once.”
“Yeah, I’m a hard habit to break.” She shut the last of the blinds, and he came all the way into the room, closing the door to the hall.
“You were on that freighter, weren’t you?” he said quietly.
“Really want me to answer that?”
His eyes half-closed in resignation. “You just did.”
“They were bad people.” She approached him, slipped her arms around his waist. “You have no idea how bad. And a lot of it was self-defense.”
“A lot. But not all?”
“Not all. But nobody died who shouldn’t have. At least”—she thought of Shaban—“nobody I was responsible for.”
His hands came up. Slowly, almost against his will, he took hold of her hips. “You’re never going to quit, are you?” he breathed into her ear.
“I tried. You don’t know how hard I tried.”
“For all I know”—his voice was low and bitter—“you’re planning to kill somebody tonight.”
“For all you know, I am.”
“I think I still hate you sometimes.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah.” His lips found hers. “But not enough for it to matter.”