I didn’t get far.
Just across the Verazzano Bridge and back into Brooklyn, where I took the first exit onto Dahlgren Place and just sat there, at a gas station, not sure what my next step was.
The question kept drumming inside me like a bass drum that wouldn’t stop.
Where the hell was I going? I had nowhere to go. After last night I was too scared to take my son home.
Where the hell would I even sleep tonight? In some hotel room, too scared and too uncertain to go back to my home, thinking of what happened to Rollie and my ring? Not just today, but tomorrow. And the day after that. And Brandon …? Hide him at Elena’s indefinitely? Praying that I hadn’t put the person I loved most in the world in danger? Or take him down to Florida and leave him with my folks?
I was pretty certain Patrick knew nothing about the cash his old man had with him in the car. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t go after him too. That he wouldn’t be the next one on the list who was put in danger. And he wouldn’t even know why. Like Rollie. He could have a gun jammed in his mouth and be tied to a chair and he wouldn’t have a clue in the world as to what he was dying for.
I couldn’t do that.
I sat there for a while, watching people go in and out, mothers running behind their kids. Workmen getting out of their trucks.
Until I came to the conclusion I’d reached earlier this morning when I’d driven down. That I had to give back the money. It was more Patrick’s anyway than mine. I’d have to come clean and face the consequences, wherever they led.
Maybe I just wanted a partner in this.
Maybe I just wanted a way I could work this out.
Close to an hour passed before I drove back over the bridge again to Baden Avenue. I stopped at the top of the street and asked myself one last time if I was okay with what I was about to do. Because everything could change. The answer inside me grew firmer and more certain.
I was.
I had to be.
I drove back down to his house and left my car across the street. I stepped up to the porch, and smiled at the teddy bear guarding the top step. “Joe.” I knocked on the front door and stepped in the house. Someone in work clothes stuck his head out of the kitchen.
“Patrick here?”
“He’s in the back,” the workman said above the whine of a power sander. “You can go on in.”
I walked through the basically gutted house. There were some new walls being framed, and new windows hammered in. Patrick was on the back deck, nailing down two-by-fours on the newly elevated platform. The sun shone off New York Bay, almost right out the back door. Patrick looked up when he saw me, his eyes brightening. “So you know how to work a chain saw after all?”
“No.”
“Okay, how are you with a hammer then? I see you’re still wearing the same shoes …”
“I need to talk with you, Patrick,” I said, my voice slightly cracking.
He stood up and lifted his baseball cap, brushing some sweat off his brow. “Wasn’t that just what we just did?”
“I wasn’t truthful with you, what I said before. About why I was down here. Is there somewhere we can go?”
“You mean, like, to a place?”
“I mean like anywhere, Patrick, please. Just out of the cold. Away from all the noise.”
Now I was sure he could see the anxiety in my eyes. “There’s Red’s. Up on Hylan.”
“That’ll be fine. Can we go there? It’s important. Please.”
“Sure.” He nodded, placing his hammer on a bench. “I’ll just tell the guys.”