DAVE WAS WALKING Michael back from school when they turned the corner and saw Sean Devine and another guy leaning against the trunk of a black sedan parked in front of the Boyles' place. The black sedan had state government plates and enough antennae attached to the trunk to shoot transmissions to Venus, and Dave could tell just by looking at Sean's companion from fifteen yards away that, like Sean, the guy was a cop. He had that cop tilt to his chin, jutting up and out a bit, and a cop's way of leaning back on his heels and yet seeming set to lunge forward. And if that didn't give it away, the jarhead haircut on a guy in his mid-forties coupled with gold-rimmed aviator shades was definitely a tip-off.
Dave's hand tightened around Michael's, and his chest felt as if someone had dunked a knife in ice water and then placed the flat of the blade against his lungs. He almost stopped, his feet trying to plant themselves to the sidewalk, but something pushed him forward, and he hoped he looked normal, fluid. Sean's head swiveled in his direction, the eyes blithe and empty at first, then narrowing in recognition as they met Dave's.
Both men smiled at the same time, Dave giving it the full wattage and Sean's pretty wide, too, Dave surprised to see what might have been actual pleasure in Sean's face.
"Dave Boyle," Sean said, coming off the car with his hand extended, "what's it been?"
Dave shook the hand and got another small jolt of surprise when Sean clapped him on the shoulder.
"That time up the Tap," Dave said. "What, six years ago?"
"Yeah. About that. You're looking good, man."
"How you been, Sean?" And Dave could feel a warmth spread through him that his brain said he should run from.
But why? There were so few of them left from the old days anymore. And it wasn't just the old clich�s-jail, drugs, or police forces-that had claimed them. The suburbs had taken just as many. Other states, too, the lure of fitting in with everyone else, becoming one big country of golf players and mall walkers and small-business owners with blond wives and big-screen TVs.
No, there weren't many of them left, and Dave felt a stirring of pride and happiness and odd sorrow as he gripped Sean's hand and remembered that day on the subway platform when Jimmy had jumped down on the tracks and Saturdays, in general, had felt like Anything Is Possible Days.
"I been good," Sean said, and it sounded like he meant it, though Dave could see something small crack in his smile. "And who's this?"
Sean bent down by Michael.
"This is my son," Dave said. "Michael."
"Hey, Michael. Pleased to meet you."
"Hi."
"I'm Sean, an old, old buddy of your dad."
Dave watched Sean's voice light something in Michael. Sean definitely had some kind of voice, like the guy who did the voice-overs for all the movie coming attractions, and Michael brightened at the sound of it, seeing a legend, perhaps, of his father and this tall, confident stranger as kids who'd played in these same streets and dreamed similar dreams to Michael's and those of his friends.
"Nice to meet you," Michael said.
"Pleasure, Michael." Sean shook Michael's hand and then rose up to face Dave. "Good-looking boy, Dave. How's Celeste?"
"Great, great." Dave tried to recall the name of the woman Sean had married and could remember only that he'd met her in college. Laura? Erin?
"Tell her I said hi, will you?"
"Sure. You still with the Staties?" Dave squinted as the sun broke from behind a cloud and bounced hard off the shiny black trunk of the government sedan.
"Yeah," Sean said. "Actually, this here is Sergeant Powers, Dave. My boss. State Police Homicide."
Dave shook Sergeant Powers's hand, that word hanging between them. Homicide.
"How you doing?"
"Good, Mr. Boyle. Yourself?"
"Okay."
"Dave," Sean said, "you got a minute, we'd love to ask you a couple quick questions."
"Uh, sure. What's up?"
"We maybe go inside, Mr. Boyle?" Sergeant Powers tilted his head in the direction of Dave's front door.
"Yeah, sure." Dave took Michael's hand again. "Follow me, guys."
Heading up the stairs past McAllister's place, Sean said, "I hear rents are rising even here."
"Even here," Dave said. "Trying to turn us into the Point, an antique shop on every fifth corner."
"The Point, yeah," Sean said with a dry chuckle. "'Member my father's house? Cut it into condos."
"No shit?" Dave said. "That was a beautiful house."
"'Course he sold it before the market got hot."
"And now it's condos?" Dave said, his voice loud in the narrow stairwell. He shook his head. "The yuppies who bought it probably get per unit what your old man sold the whole place for."
"'Bout the size of it," Sean said. "What're you gonna do, right?"
"I dunno, man, but I almost think there's gotta be a way to stop them. Send them back to wherever they grow them and their goddamn cell phones. Friend of mine said the other day, Sean? He said, 'What this neighborhood needs is a good fucking crime wave.'" Dave laughed. "I mean, that'd send property values back to where they belong. Rents, too. Right?"
Sergeant Powers said, "Girls keep getting murdered in Pen Park, Mr. Boyle, you might get your wish."
"Oh, it's not my wish or nothing," Dave said.
Sergeant Powers said, "Sure."
"You said the f-word, Dad," Michael said.
"Sorry, Mike. Won't happen again." He winked over his shoulder at Sean as they opened the door to the apartment.
"Your wife home, Mr. Boyle?" Sergeant Powers said as they entered.
"Huh? No. No, she's not. Hey, Mike, you go do your homework now. Okay? We gotta get over to Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Annabeth's soon."
"Come on. I-"
"Mike," Dave said, and looked down at his son. "Just go upstairs. Me and the guys gotta talk."
Michael got that look of abandonment little kids got when they were brushed off from adult conversations, and he walked toward the stairs, his shoulders drooping and his feet dragging like he had blocks of ice tied to his ankles. He sighed his mother's sigh and then began to climb the stairs.
"Must be universal," Sergeant Powers said as he took a seat on the living room couch.
"What's that?"
"That shoulder thing he's doing. My kid used to do the same thing at his age when we'd send him up to bed."
Dave said, "Yeah?" and sat in the love seat on the other side of the coffee table.
For a minute or so, Dave looked at Sean and Sergeant Powers, and Sean and Sergeant Powers looked back, everyone's eyebrows raised and expectant.
"You heard about Katie Marcus," Sean said.
"'Course," Dave said. "I was up the house this morning. Celeste is still there. I mean, Jesus Christ, Sean, you know? It's a fucking crime."
"You got that right," Sergeant Powers said.
"You get the guy?" Dave said. He rubbed his swollen right fist with his left palm, then noticed what he was doing. He leaned back and slid both hands in his pockets, trying to seem relaxed.
"We're working on it. Believe that, Mr. Boyle."
"How's Jimmy holding up?" Sean asked.
"Hard to tell." Dave looked at Sean, happy to tear his eyes away from Sergeant Powers, something in the man's face he didn't like, the way the guy peered at you like he could see your lies, every one of them as far back as the first one you ever told in your goddamned life.
"You know how Jimmy is," Dave said.
"Not really. Not anymore."
"Well, he still keeps it all in," Dave said. "No way to tell what's really going on up in that head of his."
Sean nodded. "The reason we came by, Dave..."
"I saw her," Dave said. "I don't know if you knew that."
He looked at Sean and Sean opened his hands, waiting.
"That night," Dave went on, "I guess it was the night she died, I saw her at McGills."
Sean and the cop exchanged glances, and then Sean leaned forward, fixed Dave in a friendly gaze. "Well, yeah, Dave, that's actually what brought us here. Your name showed up on a list of people were in McGills that night to the best of the bartender's recollection. We hear Katie put on quite a show."
Dave nodded. "She and a friend did some dancing on the bar."
The cop said, "They were pretty drunk, huh?"
"Yeah, but..."
"But what?"
"But it was a harmless kinda drunk. They were dancing, but they weren't stripping or nothing. They were just, I dunno, nineteen. You know?"
"Nineteen and getting served in a bar means the bar loses its liquor license for a while," Sergeant Powers said.
"You didn't?"
"What's that?"
"You never drank underage in a bar?"
Sergeant Powers smiled, and the smile got into Dave's skull the same way the man's eyes did, as if every inch of the guy was peeping.
"What time would you say you left McGills, Mr. Boyle?"
Dave shrugged. "Maybe one or so?"
Sergeant Powers wrote that down in a notebook perched atop his knee.
Dave looked at Sean.
Sean said, "Just crossing out t's and dotting our i's, Dave. You were hanging with Stanley Kemp, right? Stanley the Giant?"
"Yeah."
"How's he doing, by the way? Heard his kid caught some kind of cancer."
"Leukemia," Dave said. "Couple years back. He died. Four years old."
"Man," Sean said, "that just sucks. Shit. You never know. It's like one minute you're cruising on all cylinders, the next, you turn a corner, catch some weird disease in the chest, die five months later. This world, man."
"This world," Dave agreed. "Stan's all right, though, considering. Got a good job with Edison. Still shoots hoop in the Park League every Tuesday and Thursday night."
"Still a terror under the boards?" Sean chuckled.
Dave chuckled, too. "He do use those elbows of his."
"What time would you say the girls left the bar?" Sean said, his chuckle still trailing away.
"I dunno," Dave said. "The Sox game was winding down."
What was up with the way Sean slid that question in? He could have just asked it up front, but he'd tried to lull Dave with talk of Stanley the Giant. Hadn't he? Or maybe he'd just asked the question as it had occurred to him. Dave couldn't be certain either way. Was Dave a suspect? Was he actually a suspect in Katie's death?
"And that was a late game," Sean was saying. "In California."
"Huh? Ten-thirty-five, yeah. So, I'd say the girls left maybe fifteen minutes before I did."
"So we'll say twelve-forty-five," the other cop said.
"Sounds about right."
"Any idea where the girls went?"
Dave shook his head. "Last I saw of them."
"Yeah?" Sergeant Powers's pen hovered over the pad on his knee.
Dave nodded. "Yeah."
Sergeant Powers scribbled in his pad, the pen scratching against the paper like a small claw.
"Dave, you remember a guy throwing his keys at another guy?"
"What?"
"A guy," Sean said, flipping through his own notebook, "name of, uh, Joe Crosby. His friends tried to take his car keys. He threw them at one of them. You know, all pissed off. You there for that?"
"No. Why?"
"Sounded like a funny story," Sean said. "Guy's trying not to give up his keys, he throws 'em anyway. Drunk's logic, right?"
"I guess."
"You didn't notice anything unusual that night?"
"How you mean?"
"Say someone in the bar maybe wasn't watching the girls in a real friendly manner? You've seen those guys-the ones look at young women with a kind of black hate, still pissed off they sat home the night of the prom and here it is fifteen years later and their lives still suck? Look at women like it's all their fault. You know those guys?"
"Met a few, sure."
"Any of those guys in the bar that night?"
"Not that I saw. I mean, I was watching the game mostly. I didn't even notice the girls, Sean, until they jumped up on the bar."
Sean nodded.
"Good game," Sergeant Powers said.
"Well," Dave said, "you had Pedro up there. Could have been a no-hitter, it wasn't for that bloop in the eighth."
"Got that right. Man earns his pay, don't he?"
"Best there is in the game today."
Sergeant Powers turned to Sean and they both stood at the same time.
"That's it?" Dave said.
"Yes, Mr. Boyle." He shook Dave's hand. "We appreciate your help, sir."
"No problem. Happy to."
"Oh, shit," Sergeant Powers said. "I forgot to ask: Where'd you go after you left McGills, sir?"
The word popped out of Dave's mouth before he could stop it: "Here."
"Home?"
"Yup." Dave kept his gaze steady, his voice firm.
Sergeant Powers flipped open his pad again. "Home by one-fifteen." He looked up at Dave as he wrote. "Sound right?"
"Roughly, sure."
"Okay then, Mr. Boyle. Thanks again."
Sergeant Powers made his way down the stairs, but Sean stopped at the door. "It was real good seeing you, Dave."
"You too," Dave said, trying to remember what it was he hadn't liked about Sean when they were kids. The answer wouldn't come, though.
"We should grab a beer sometime," Sean said. "Soon."
"I'd like that."
"Okay then. You take care, Dave."
They shook hands and Dave tried not to wince at the pressure on his swollen hand.
"You, too, Sean."
Sean walked down the stairs as Dave stood at the top on the landing. Sean waved once over his shoulder, and Dave waved back even though he knew Sean couldn't see it.