COUPLE OF THINGS,” Darcy Gaines said.
We were back at the Dunkin’ in Brighton a couple days later.
“First of all,” she said, “Jake Rosen seems to have dropped out of sight.”
“Has he done something like that before?” I said, before casually asking her to pass the sugar.
“Apparently so,” she said. “But then he’s always seemed to be operating off his own set of rules.”
I told her I’d gotten that same vibe off him myself, but hadn’t talked to him since earlier that week.
“He say anything about some undercover thing he might have had going on?” Darcy said. “A reason he would have gone dark, even temporarily?”
“No,” I said. “But he was always talking about having to go see some guy.”
She bit off the end of a cruller, then washed it down with coffee. I sipped my own coffee. I still liked it better than Starbucks.
“The other thing that’s happened,” she said, “kind of amazing, is that a string of those pop-up brothels, the ones being worked by a lot of kids, suddenly closed down, all the way from the Rhode Island border to Lowell.”
Almost like Lisa Morneau’s dying wish, I thought.
I shrugged. “Maybe you scared them right out of business, Lieutenant Gaines,” I said.
“Doubt it,” she said. “Don’t know that I ever could have proved that Tony was behind them, at least not enough to stand up in court.”
“Gotta admit, though,” I said, reaching over and picking up her cruller and taking a bite out of it. “Sounds like a happy ending. Right?”
“For us,” she said. “Not the kind the idiots are used to in places like that.”
WHEN I GOT back to River Street Place, Richie and Richard were already inside. The first thing I saw, and heard, was Richard happily chasing Rosie up the steps.
I hadn’t seen the little boy since Santarpio’s.
Richie and I sat at the kitchen table. Maybe someday I would tell him everything that had happened, and how it had happened. But for now, I just told him that as far as I was concerned, the case was closed.
“You know who did it?” he said.
“Think so,” I said. “Just can’t prove it.”
“Was it Tony?”
“It was not.”
“Can you tell me who?”
I told him.
“That cowboy cop you told me about?” Richie said.
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?” Richie said.
“Gone,” I said.
“Tony have something to do with that?” he said.
“Only in a peripheral way,” I said.
“There’s more to the story, isn’t there?”
“Always.”
“But you’re safe from him?”
“Yes,” I said.
Then I said, “I’m so sorry that he put your boy in the line of fire.”
“I know you are,” he said. “So am I.”
He looked at me with eyes he shared with the boy. Then he smiled. In that moment I knew I loved both of them, just perhaps not in the way Richie wanted. Or I wanted.
“I’m going to need some time to figure things out,” he said.
“Back at you, big boy.”
Richie said, “Before there can be a three of us, I have to get to know him better. And maybe myself.”
“I know,” I said.
“I have to learn how to be a father before I can be anything else,” he said. “I know I keep saying that you and I can make this work. But before that, I have to.”
“You’re a fast learner,” I said.
I placed my hand, open-palmed, in the middle of the table. He placed his hand on top of it. Then he picked up my hand and kissed it and went and called out for his son.
A few minutes later, they left.
A few minutes after that, I put on my running clothes and jogged over the Fiedler Footbridge and then down along the river, running toward the Mass Ave Bridge in the morning sun, the day feeling like early spring. I was still trying to feel guilt about Jake Rosen, but could not. Maybe Tony Marcus was right. Maybe sometimes street justice was the best you could do.
I ran faster once I made the turn, the wind at my back now. Just not as fast as Lisa Morneau had run that night. When I was back home, I showered and dressed and felt like I was the one who looked like a million damn dollars.
Then I put Rosie in the backseat of my car and the two of us drove to Paradise.