65

FRIDAY, 8:00 PM

THE PAIN WAS EXQUISITE, a slow rolling wave that inched up the back of his neck, then down. He popped a Vicodin, chased it with rancid water from the tap in the men’s room of a gas station in North Philly.

It was Good Friday. The day of the crucifixion.

Byrne knew that, one way or another, this was all probably coming to an end soon, probably tonight; and with it, he knew he would face something inside himself that had been there for fifteen years, something dark and violent and troubling.

He wanted everything to be in order.

He needed symmetry.

He had one stop to make first.

 

THE CARS WERE PARKED two deep on both sides of the street. In this part of the city, if the street was blocked, you didn’t call the police or knock on doors. You definitely didn’t want to blow your horn. Instead, you quietly put your car in reverse, and found another way.

The storm door of the ramshackle Point Breeze row house was open, all the lights burning inside. Byrne stood across the street, sheltered from the rain beneath the tattered awning of a shuttered bakery. Through the bay window across the street he could see the three pictures that graced the wall over the strawberry velvet Spanish modern sofa. Martin Luther King, Jesus, Muhammad Ali.

Right in front of him, in the rusted Pontiac, the kid sat alone in the backseat, completely oblivious to Byrne, smoking a blunt, rocking gently to whatever was coming through his headphones. After a few minutes he butted the blunt, opened the car door, and got out.

He stretched, flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt, straightened his baggies.

“Hey,” Byrne said. The pain in his head had settled into a dull metronome of agony, clicking loud and rhythmically at either temple. Still, it felt as if the mother of all migraines was just a car horn or flashbulb away.

The kid turned, surprised but not scared. He was about fifteen, tall and rangy, with the kind of body that would serve him pretty well in playground hoops, but take him no further. He wore the full Sean John uniform—full-cut jeans, quilted leather jacket, fleece hoodie.

The kid sized up Byrne, assessed the danger, the opportunity. Byrne kept his hands in plain sight.

“Yo,” the kid finally offered.

“Did you know Marius?” Byrne asked.

The kid gave him the twice-over. Byrne was way too big to mess with.

“MG was my boy,” the kid finally said. He flashed a JBM sign.

Byrne nodded. This kid could still go either way, he thought. There was a simmering intelligence behind his now bloodshot eyes. But Byrne got the feeling the kid was too busy fulfilling the world’s expectations of him.

Byrne reached slowly inside his coat—slowly enough to let this kid know there was nothing coming. He removed the envelope. The envelope was of a size and shape and heft that could only be one thing.

“His mother’s name is Delilah Watts?” Byrne asked. It was more like a statement of fact.

The kid glanced at the row house, at the bright bay window. A thin, dark-skinned black woman in oversized gradient sunglasses and a deep auburn wig dabbed at her eyes as she received mourners. She was no more than thirty-five.

The kid turned back to Byrne. “Yeah.”

Byrne absently thumbed the rubber band around the fat envelope. He had never counted the contents. When he had taken it from Gideon Pratt that night, he had no reason to think it was a penny less than the five thousand dollars they had agreed upon. There was no reason to count it now.

“This is for Mrs. Watts,” Byrne said. He held the kid’s eyes for a few, flat seconds, a look that both of them had experienced in their time, a look that needed no embellishment, no footnoting.

The kid reached out, cautiously took the envelope. “She gonna want to know who it’s from,” he said.

Byrne nodded. Soon the kid understood that no answer was forthcoming.

The kid stuffed the envelope into his pocket. Byrne watched as he swaggered across the street, up to the house, stepped inside, hugged a few of the young men standing sentinel at the door. Byrne looked through the window as the kid waited briefly in the short receiving line. He could hear the strains of Al Green’s “You Brought the Sunshine” playing.

Byrne wondered how many times this scene would be played out across the country this night—too-young mothers sitting in too-hot parlors, presiding over the wake of a child given to the beast.

For all that Marius Green may have done wrong in his short life, for all the misery and pain he may have spread, there was only one reason he was in that alley that night, and that play had nothing to do with him.

Marius Green was dead, as was the man who killed him in cold blood. Was it justice? Perhaps not. But there was no doubt that it all began the day Deirdre Pettigrew met a terrible man in Fairmount Park, a day that had ended with another young mother with a ball of damp tissue in her hands, and a front room full of friends and family.

There is no solution, just resolution, Byrne thought. He was not a man who believed in karma. He was a man who believed in action and reaction.

Byrne watched as Delilah Watts opened the envelope. After the initial shock set in, she put her hand to her heart. She composed herself, then looked out the window, directly at him, directly into Kevin Byrne’s soul. He knew that she could not see him, that all she could see was the black mirror of night, and the rain-streaked reflection of her own pain.

Kevin Byrne bowed his head, then turned up his collar and walked into the storm.