First Thrills - Lee Child [38]
When I see the wallet I think of this and only this. I try to joke in my head, but I cannot smile. I see the kid reduced to a baby and wrapped in my wife’s tan arms: a bundle of joy, shock, and heartbreak. Is there a parent alive or dead who hasn’t been heartbroken?
The wallet now is the source of the evil, clear evidence that Eddy knows exactly what this kid is doing and is an accessory. Eddy takes this confession in his hand like a ticket at a deli. I cannot decide if Eddy is magnificently in tune to his hustle or just facile as cardboard.
We join the heavy flow of traffic, heading toward the inevitable. There is no point in talking business in front of these strangers, so the three of us keep quiet. Eddy gives me commiserating glances as we squeeze on the crowded train, reminding me of Pop again. Old and red faced, Pop would raise his eyebrow and shrug like that with me, often reduced to the basics of interaction, like we spoke different languages.
The crowd thins before we leave Manhattan. We get off at the Clark Street station, stepping into the open Brooklyn air beneath the old sign for Hotel St. George. Nothing tastes different about the air, but I’m aware of it. I’m breaking an old promise I made my father by coming here. I didn’t want to see him in Brooklyn, with his Benson-hurst lowlifes and me trying to be a cop. I wonder what borders of mine my wife’s unborn bundle will cross. The Kid looks around, stark baby-blue eyes restless and pissed.
“Who’s this guy, anyway?” he asks, gesturing to me.
“That’s Ron.”
“Hi,” I say.
“Detective Ron?” says The Kid, being smart.
“As far as you’re concerned,” says Eddy, “yeah, he’s a fuckin’ detective.” Eddy clears his throat with a thick, nasty hack. Then, as if his throbbing throat reminds him, he lights a cigarette.
“You want one?” he asks me, already putting his pack of Marlboro menthols away. It is a running joke between us. I don’t smoke. He offers anyway, hoping someone will join him in being self-destructive.
“Yeah,” I say.
“You serious?”
“Yeah. Calm my nerves a bit. I got to act like you anyway, right?”
Smiling, his old movie star dimple like a crater in his cheek, Eddy takes his pack back out, and looks inside. He shakes it. Then reaches in, and gives me one, a bit bent. Then he throws out the pack, and motions toward me with his lighter.
“Wait,” I say. “Your lucky?”
When he opens a new pack, Eddy always flips the first cigarette upside down, and saves it for last, his “lucky.”
“It’s no problem,” says Eddy. “It’s lucky. So maybe you won’t get addicted.”
He lights it. The minty smoke burns down my throat, and bites my lungs. I cough.
“Damn,” I say. “What you smoke these for? Things have teeth.”
The smoke clears way for more to come. The feeling is old and familiar. Pop smoked cigars, so I smoked cigarettes.
“You got a preference?”
“Used to smoke regular cigarettes,” I say. “Parliaments.”
“Heh. Pansy ass.”
We keep walking, following The Kid’s little sinister swagger.
“When you were a cop, you ever want to be a detective?” he asks me.
“Sure,” I say, thinking. “But I most likely woulda gone upstate, you know? Been a trooper. Easy work, man. Good money.”
“Heh. No angle in a fugazi state trooper, though, I’ll tell you that. Looks like you got to settle for a detective.”
“A detective’s good,” I say. “Just never thought I’d score good on the test.”
“You scored fine on my test, heh.”
I repeat this to myself: I am a laid-off cop. I still have my shield. That is why Eddy wants to work with me. He needs identification. I am bitter about being laid-off. I repeat this to myself.
We reach Pineapple Street. The neighborhood is a residential haven, with grand old architecture in muted red and earth tones. No home is higher than four stories on the tree-lined blocks, with ceremonial