CHAPTER 15

I made it home by four-thirty. The plumbers had not installed a tub. Undeterred by the gaping hole that yawned in its place, they had already knocked off for the day—and Roz was nowhere to be found. The red light on my answering machine flashed, so I sank into a chair, pressed the button, and listened to Mooney’s deep voice rattle off a phone number and ask me to return his call. The number wasn’t his home phone.

I got a can of Pepsi out of the refrigerator, gulped enough to make my nose tickle, and dialed.

“Mooney? Yeah, hang on a minute,” the male voice said. There had been background noises on the tape; these were more distinct: the clink of glasses, the enthusiastic patter of a TV sports commentator.

“Carlotta?” Mooney said after a long wait.

“Yeah. What’s up?”

“Meet me for a drink,” he said.

“Come on.” A bar. Of course. The guy answering the phone hadn’t given the joint’s name but a lot of bars didn’t. That way customers could give out the phone number to suspicious wives and business partners.

“Come on,” Mooney insisted, and I agreed. I thought if he’d taken to spending his afternoons in bars, I ought to see how he was doing.

Al’s, an Irish pub in Brighton, wasn’t far away. I gave my hair a quick brush, rubbed my aching knee, and left.

Inside, Al’s was dark wood and cool, but that was about all you could say on the positive side. The red leather bar stools were cracked, the long wooden bar warped, the linoleum patchy and yellowed with age. Al’s solution to his wear-and-tear problems seemed to begin and end with dimming the lights. You could barely see, what with the haze of cigarette smoke.

Mooney was on the far left of the bar with three empty seats between himself and the next customer. The place wasn’t crowded. The few patrons stared up at the big-screen TV, mesmerized by college basketball. Mooney’s shoulders were hunched. He wore jeans and a navy sweater.

I didn’t think there was another woman in the place. It was so dark, I couldn’t really tell.

I tapped Mooney on the shoulder and we adjourned to a table. He already had a Molson’s, and I ordered one of the same.

“You getting anywhere? You find the broad?” He asked as soon as the bartender was out of earshot.

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“Sorry,” he said. “Broad. I’m not supposed to say that, right?”

I gave him an update on my progress, bare bones, definitely not the way he’d taught me to report. I’m not sure why I didn’t fill him in on all the details, but maybe it was that I didn’t want him out chasing Janine. He’d missed a patch shaving, and I wasn’t sure how many beers he’d downed. So I gave him the short form.

If he hadn’t been drinking, he’d probably have noticed its sketchiness.

“Carlotta,” he said, tracing a wet circle on the wooden table. “Look, maybe you should just forget about it.”

“If it’s the money—” I began.

“It’s the damn review board. Who says they’ll take her word? A hooker’s testimony isn’t worth shit. Maybe they’ll think I threatened her, bribed her? I mean, even with a witness, unless the damn knife turns up—”

“We’ll take it one step at a time, Mooney, right?”

“Sure,” he said after a long pull at his beer bottle. He had a glass, but he seemed to have forgotten about it.

“I mean, maybe the woman knows where the knife is,” I said.

“Maybe you ought to forget about it.”

“Nah,” I said. “I’m feeling lucky.”

He said, “I’m thinking of resigning.”

I’m thinking of swimming the English Channel. I’m thinking of entering a Tibetan monastery. I’m thinking of running for President. Any of them seemed more likely statements than the first. Maybe I hadn’t heard him right.

“Mooney,” I said. “For Christ’s sake—”

“No,” he said. “Listen to me. I’ve been doing a hell of a lot of thinking, and I keep seeing that guy, that Vietnamese guy. He’s still in intensive care. I mean, why the hell did I hit him so damn hard, you know?”

“He could have killed you, Mooney.”

“There was a time I’d have talked to the guy. I’d have found a way to stop him without sending him to the hospital. I’d have—Hell, maybe I’ve been a cop too long, you know. You get—different. You start thinking differently. About people.”

I’d spent six years teasing Mooney about leaving the force, egging him on even, because it seemed so impossible. Now—

“Mooney,” I said quickly, “you used to tell me if all the good cops left—”

“Shit, Carlotta, somebody’ll do the job. Maybe it shouldn’t be me anymore. Maybe I’m not one of the good guys anymore. Maybe I’m what the papers say, a racist, a Southie Irish bigot. Maybe it’s part of me, the way I grew up. I remember there wasn’t a kid different from me in my whole school. All Irish Catholic. And I keep thinking about that guy—I mean, I don’t have a whole helluva lotta pleasant memories of Vietnam. And I can’t remember what I was thinking about when he came at me. I mean, maybe I had some kind of flashback. Maybe I thought, you know, he was the goddamn enemy or something. I don’t know.”

The bartender came within hailing range and Mooney waved a finger.

“Want another?” Mooney asked.

“No.”

“I hate to drink alone,” he said. “But I manage.”

I didn’t respond and he ordered two beers. Maybe he intended to drink them both.

“I mean,” Mooney said. “I keep thinking if the guy hadn’t been Vietnamese—”

“You said you forgot the language.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Not true?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I saw him coming at me and—I don’t think about the time I was over there much, Carlotta, but sometimes I wake up sweating and I—”

“What?”

“Shit, I can’t talk about this,” he said. “I’m sorry. How’s Paolina doing? How’s—”

“Mooney,” I said slowly, “you remember when I shot that guy in the Zone, before I left the force?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I remember.”

“And you sent me to Dr. Warner?”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“That was a good thing to do. I don’t think I ever thanked you for it.”

He set his half-empty beer down with a heavy thud. “You think I need a shrink,” he said.

“I think you need to talk to somebody who knows how to help. The department’s got people like that. I’d like to help you, Mooney, but all I can say is I don’t want you to stop being a cop, and even if you fire me, I’m going to keep on looking for this hooker because I’ve known you a long time, Mooney, and—shit …” I took a gulp of the second beer, the one I hadn’t intended to drink.

Neither of us said anything for a while. The drone of the sports commentator got louder. The score was tied and the jerk was going into raptures at the thought of a second overtime.

“I’m sorry about my mother,” Mooney said.

I took in a deep breath. “Forget it,” I said.

“She just doesn’t understand—” he began. “Hell,” he said under his breath, “I don’t understand, either.”