27

The gig couldn’t have been simpler: babysitting a Q-tip days, maybe even hours, away from becoming worm food. Nick Rossi had practically grown up in the business, starting off doing security for his old man’s bar in Southie before moving off to work some of the major clubs, where broads practically dressed in tissue paper, wore dental-floss undies, and got high and horny on Molly. Breaking up fights between drunks didn’t bother him. Usually just seeing his size and his shaved head, the tattoos running up and down his arms, the ones along his hands and his neck, and the yahoo would downshift his attitude, put it in neutral. All it took was a fuck-with-me-at-your-own-risk glance and a firm hand and a little bit of muscle and you were good to go.

Usually.

Posers were the problem. Fortunately, they were as easy to spot as a turd in a punchbowl – legit and wannabe gang bangers and juice-heads with lots of tats and wearing muscle shirts and cock-walking around the bar or club, acting like they owned the place and itching for trouble. Nick had never had a gun pulled on him – thank God for metal detectors and a liberal pat-down policy – but one time this group of Mattapan punks decided to get into it at a club, and by the time he’d broken up the fight, all three douchebags where collapsed on the floor, collecting their broken teeth. He also had a switchblade stuck in his lower back.

An ER surgeon had had to cut him open to repair the punctured kidney – and thank the sweet Lord Jesus and his family for the wonderful gift of opiates. While Nick lay in the hospital, doped up on Oxy, this humongous black dude dressed in some seriously expensive threads popped into his room and said how impressed he was by how Nick had handled himself that night at the club. Dude’s name was Booker and he owned a private security company in downtown Boston and wanted to know if Nick had any interest in a full-time gig with a nice salary and health benefits and paid sick time, holidays and three weeks’ vacation. Nick said yes.

That was almost five years ago, and, during that time, Nick, now coming up on forty-three, had carved out a nice life for himself, the only steady woman in his life a sweet white pit bull he’d named Snowball. His job took him all over the world, so he got to travel for free, but his favourite gigs were doing crowd control on movies filming in Boston, providing security for actors and actresses, consulting on the local scenery, whatever was needed. He also did a lot of ‘protection-service details’ for a big-time Boston lawyer named Mark Nelson, providing his clients with what amounted to full-time babysitting – like this Richard Byrne dude.

Since 6 p.m., Byrne had been sitting in a rocking chair, an Afghan blanket draped over his lap, staring out of the window overlooking his backyard. It was now one in the morning and the ex-priest was still up, still rocking and still staring out of the window. What was the point of sleeping when you knew you were dying, right? One look and you could tell the guy was on his way out: air tubes in his nostrils, portable oxygen tank on the floor, thin blue and purple veins bulging from beneath his egg-white skin, a vacancy sign already hanging in his eyes. Nick had seen that look so many times throughout his life that he instantly recognized it.

The weird thing? Actually, there were several weird things, but the one Nick was thinking about now was how a guy clearly so close to death would get a second wind or whatever, decide it was a good time to go out for a walk. Nick hoped the guy wasn’t planning on doing one of his witching hour strolls tonight: the air was so cold outside it could shrink your balls to the size of raisins.

Nick heard a toilet flush from down the hall and a moment later Paul Ward came into the living room, today’s Herald tucked underneath his arm. Paul was Nick’s partner. With these gigs, you always worked in pairs.

‘Get you something to eat or drink, Mr Byrne?’ Paul asked.

Byrne, his gaze pinned on the window, mumbled something under his breath.

‘Sorry, what’s that?’ Paul asked.

The ex-priest didn’t answer, which didn’t surprise Nick. Byrne liked to speak silently to himself, not hearing you or ignoring you, Nick wasn’t sure which. The guy was probably praying. He did that a lot. Nick was never able to make out what the guy was saying but he figured the man was asking for forgiveness, if such a thing was possible, for molesting those girls and making a handful of them disappear into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again.

Did Byrne really believe that the Big Man in the Sky was actually going to forgive him for the pain and horror he’d inflicted? Nick wasn’t big on religion, but he had learned a lot about God from TV and movies, and he couldn’t reconcile the idea of some powerful but benevolent being actually rubber-stamping Byrne’s sins. More likely God was turning to His son, Jesus, with a big grin and saying, This guy Byrne actually thinks I’m going to take him in just because he was a priest. Can you believe this shit?

Byrne could pray 24/7 and Nick was sure it wasn’t going to make a lick of difference. After what he’d done to those girls, the guy was destined for hotter climates.

Paul turned to Nick and said, ‘I’m gonna make myself a sandwich. You want anything?’

Nick shook his head. Paul walked away and disappeared into the kitchen, and Nick turned his attention back to playing Candy Crush on his phone.

‘Sister,’ Byrne croaked in a wet voice.

Nick looked up. ‘What’s that, Mr Byrne?’

‘Your sister.’ Byrne had stopped rocking. His eyes were locked on Nick’s, the guy suddenly looking wide-awake and alert. Lucid. ‘Your sister’s name is Michele.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘That article in the Globe about the opioid epidemic,’ Byrne wheezed. ‘It talked about a woman named Michele Rossi from Southie. She died of an overdose. Heroin. She was your sister.’

Byrne wasn’t asking him a question but rather talking like he already knew the answer – and he was right: Nick had had a sister named Michele who had died from a bad batch of heroin. The guy who had written the story was a buddy from the neighbourhood – a guy who’d had his own problems with H – and he wanted to talk about the heroin epidemic in Boston. Nick’s mother had jumped on it, wanting the world to know that her youngest daughter was more than a junkie who’d died in a motel room so disgusting bed bugs refused to live there.

That article had been run in the papers two, maybe three months ago.

‘I understand,’ Byrne wheezed. ‘The hurt can sometimes be too much for us to bear. The Lord understands that, Nicholas. He doesn’t condemn – He embraces. Don’t hold on to the hurt. If you let it go, the Lord will free you – He will heal you. Do you understand?’

Nick got to his feet, his knees cracking.

‘I can help heal you. Take the pain and guilt away,’ Byrne said. ‘Would you like me to hear your confession?’

‘I’m all set, padre, thanks.’ Nick walked out of the living room and into the kitchen.

Paul saw the look on his face and put down his sandwich.

‘What’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ Nick said. ‘Just stepping outside for a smoke. You mind?’

‘Smoke the whole pack if you want. Guy’s not going anywhere.’

Nick grabbed his black Navy pea coat from the rack and shoved his arm into the sleeve, finding it suddenly too small.

Not his coat; it was Byrne’s. The guy owned a similar one.

‘This guy ever sleep at night?’ Nick asked.

‘Not the times I’ve been here.’ Paul shoved a handful of Doritos into his mouth. ‘I think he’s got that narco thing.’

‘Narcolepsy.’

‘Yeah, that. Jesus, man, you look wiped. After you finish your smoke, grab some shuteye.’

‘What about you?’

‘I just downed two Red Bulls.’

‘Okay. Thanks.’

Nick put on his coat and stepped outside, on to the back porch.

Morphine-induced psychosis. That was the term Byrne’s lady nurse used to describe the guy’s inability to remember simple things – like where he’d put his reading glasses or keys – yet easily cough up memories from his childhood and months-old newspaper articles. Nick had seen it happen before, to his aunt Trudy. When the breast cancer had finally taken hold of her vital organs, she’d sometimes have trouble remembering who he was, and then, outta nowhere, she’d start listing the ingredients for some recipe her great-grandmother had written on a card that was stored in a box somewhere in the kitchen. Morphine could make you spit up these random bits of memory, just as Byrne had done with the newspaper article.

The air felt so good, so cold and sweet and clean. Spend an hour in that guy’s house, the windows sealed shut and the baseboard heating percolating all of Byrne’s sneezes and hacking coughs and his halitosis breath, and it made you begin to appreciate the small things in life.

The neighbourhood was so nice and quiet too, no more reporters. They had pretty much petered off. Last night, Byrne had decided to go out for one of his midnight strolls with his cane. His walker sat in the corner. He refused to use it, even in the house.

Nick leaned forward, grabbed the walker’s handles and used it to stretch out his back. First time his sister had tried to kick her habit, going cold turkey, she was so dope sick she’d had to use a walker to shuffle back and forth from the bed to the bathroom. Michele had suffered through every kind of detox and gone to every kind of meeting, and had prayed and used her support network. She had tried every gimmick under the sun and yet none of it could stop her deep and endless love for the needle.

Maybe if he hadn’t been thinking about his dearly departed sister, may she rest in peace, he would have heard the dry flick of a lighter or seen the jumping flame. But his ears were working just fine, and, when he heard the crunch of footsteps running across hard, compacted snow, he looked up and saw a tall flame spinning through the darkness, then a glass bottle shattering against the railing, splashing gasoline on his clothes and face, engulfing him in flames.