28

FRIDAY, JUNE 8
11:38 P.M.
ST. LOUIS PARK
SUBURBAN MINNEAPOLIS

Rory Doyle drove the struggling car to the curb a block short of his destination, wanting to walk the remaining distance. The sidewalk was empty at this late hour. He passed a mattress store, a neon-red Closed sign in the window. A small deli. A computer-repair shop.

Just ahead he saw what he was looking for. Or at least he saw what was there now.

Rising from the corner lot behind a protective wire fence was the skeleton of a new building under construction. A painted sign declared it would be a combination of residential and commercial when done, with a coffee shop at street level and condos above.

Rory stepped closer to the fence.

His cigarette craving was especially strong tonight. Maybe because being here was another in a long line of promises he’d broken to himself. Another sign of the “weakness” Sean accused him of. But he told himself he didn’t care. With the trust payout nearly complete, he’d had to see the spot again.

Had the lot been vacant all these years before this new construction? Or had they rebuilt the garage that was on the corner the last time Rory was here? He had no way of knowing. He hadn’t been back for thirty-five years.

Staring at the site in the dark, Rory tasted bile rising deep in his throat. He grabbed the fence and closed his eyes, spitting out the rush of fluid in his mouth. It happened again. And again.

The nausea eased. He spit once more and took a breath, then looked up at the steel girders. And suddenly he remembered it all so well. . . .

Like how bitterly cold it was inside the garage that night. “Cold as a meat locker,” his dad had muttered when they’d all stepped out of the Mustang into the abandoned repair shop. One of their crew shut the bay door behind them, making the place more still than a coal mine.

The Mustang’s headlights that night were crusted with street salt, scattering weak light and a wavy shadow of an oilcan onto a wall. They’d emptied the car in the dim light, including the trunk’s contents. Then the rest of the crew slipped out into the snowstorm, leaving him and his dad alone in the garage.

An instant later, a sudden plop on the concrete floor made Rory jump.

He looked up, his heart racing. Chunks of snow were tracing streams off the car’s still-warm hood, sliding around the leather case his dad had propped against the windshield. The plops kept coming, like the cadence of a melting clock. He shrugged at his own jumpiness.

The place was full of smells that night, he recalled. His own sweat through his jacket. Gasoline fumes mixed with old grease. A sharp bite of iron. The iron he especially remembered.

“Wipe down the passenger doors,” his dad had ordered, tossing him an oily rag. Rory’s body was shuddering so hard he cursed out loud through his teeth, making his dad call over the hood, “Minnesota winter could freeze the marrow in a charging bear.” Yeah, Rory had thought, that had to be true. Because he could feel his own marrow freezing solid—though some of that, he knew, was the realization of what they’d just done. What he’d just done.

Rory glanced across the Mustang’s low roof at his dad, working the other side. Always the cool Jimmy Doyle. Moving deliberately, blowing frost clouds as he wiped his side of the car, cold as Rory but showing none of it. “We can’t take any chances with prints tonight,” his dad called out, calm as a cornfield after a snowfall. Like any hurry was pure choice.

After a time, Jimmy raised his chin to listen, and Rory followed suit. All he could hear was buffeting wind gusts. No sirens. No screaming alarms. His dad let out a familiar grunt of satisfaction before he pounded his feet on the hard floor for warmth.

Rory was just finishing up his side when his dad came around the front bumper and looked him up and down. “You did okay,” he said to Rory’s numb surprise. “Yep. Everything’s going to be fine.”

It would’ve felt good, the rare praise. Except it was a lie. His dad even lied when he encouraged. Rory knew he didn’t do so well. The memory of what he’d done burned in the back of his mind like a brand even as Jimmy spoke the words.

In that moment, Rory thought he’d seen regret in Jimmy Doyle’s eyes—right in the middle of the lie. Rory knew it wasn’t regret for what he’d said. But maybe he regretted that he’d taken his kid through a door that got locked shut behind all of them. Or that he’d broken the vow to Mom that he’d never involve Rory in his business. Over the years, Rory had thought a lot about that brief, uncommon look, because his dad had said more than once that regret was a cancer that made a man weaker and his enemies stronger. Maybe it wasn’t regret at all. Whatever it was, Rory never saw it again.

Then Jimmy pulled a gray plastic bag filled with bills out of a coat pocket and put it in Rory’s hand. “That’s your part of the cash we got tonight,” Jimmy said. “Take it. But be careful. They feel stiff. They’re probably new and traceable. Spread ’em out. Never bank ’em.”

Rory took the bag. Jimmy nodded approvingly and pointed at the leather case still propped against the Mustang’s windshield. “It’ll be years,” his dad said, “a lot of years before we can fence the real take for value. That’s okay. It’ll be your inheritance, Rory. So you’re gonna be smart like we talked about. Get a real job. Take no shortcuts. Be patient. Put this behind you. It’ll all be okay.”

Rory had nodded, but the strange idea that it would all be okay drew his eyes to the place he’d avoided looking until then: the floor behind Jimmy, where they’d laid the burden from the trunk. Even twenty feet away, Rory could smell the iron from that spot, floating like an accusation in the air.

His dad grabbed his shoulders. “Listen,” Jimmy repeated until Rory’s attention was focused again. “What happened tonight was one time. We had some bad luck, but we’ll put it behind us. Remember that someday that case is gonna be your inheritance. A very big one.”

The words had sounded as thin to Rory as the oilcan’s shadow. His stare wandered past Jimmy’s shoulder again.

A slap from a bare hand pounded his face, sending his vision red. Another blow caught his other cheek.

“Tell me you understand,” his dad demanded, in a voice as calm as if they were walking in the park.

His face stinging, Rory heard the first far-off call of a siren rising above the wind, followed instantly by banging on the wall. “C’mon!” came a muffled shout. “What’re you doing in there?”

Jimmy didn’t move. “Say you understand,” his dad repeated.

Above the welt forming on his cheek, Rory replied, “Sure. I understand.” He’d wondered if his eyes showed the hate as he said it.

The sirens grew louder.

Jimmy snatched up the leather case from the hood, Rory’s arm in the other hand, and dragged him around the front of the Mustang. In two strides they reached the spot where the iron smell was strongest. Jimmy took a high step over the uniformed figure curled there on the floor, surrounded by a freezing pool of rust brown.

Rory slowed, until Jimmy yanked him over the body in a single tumbling step. Two more strides and they were at the side door. Jimmy pulled it open into a face full of snow and wind.

The others were at the van outside, its engine running. Past flapping wipers, Rory saw one in the driver’s seat and another in a rear seat. The third was by the car door, snow covering his shoulders and a ski hat. A metal gas can was at his feet.

“Who’s gonna do it?” the snow-covered man said.

Jimmy turned back to Rory. “Light it up,” he shouted over the wind.

The regret was still absent from his dad’s eyes, along with the encouragement.

Maybe ordering him back in there with the guard who’d been breathing half an hour before was to pay for his mistake, Rory had thought at the time. Or to pay for what his eyes said in the garage. Maybe making Rory incinerate the guy with all the rest of the evidence was supposed to be an act of atonement to his dad.

He wouldn’t do it, Rory told himself. The orders stopped there. That was where he’d draw the line.

Except he didn’t. He hardly hesitated before stepping to the gas can, picking it up, and doing his father’s bidding. Jimmy Doyle’s bidding.

The long memory faded. Rory blinked twice. The frame of the condo and retail building returned in the darkness.

He remembered it all. Better than he remembered last week. He wished he didn’t.

Rory turned to walk away. He’d never come here again. Never. And he’d get what he deserved from that night. For his kids. Because heaven knew he’d paid for the inheritance. Paid for it every day of his life since that distant night.