First Thrills - Lee Child [39]
“Let’s go check out the promenade,” suggests Eddy.
The Kid rolls his eyes. I agree, I want to get this over with, but Eddy is already on his way. Over his shoulder, I see Manhattan. From a distance, the towering shapes and rectangles look like an immaculate geometric drawing, a conception impossible to build. Then the murky gray water comes into view, the moat separating the boroughs from The City, as it’s simply referred to by those who don’t call it home.
The water reminds me of Pier 4 Bush, the day my father took me to learn his routine. Looking out at the mercury water and stacks of identically shaped, multicolored crates, Pop introduced me to what seemed like half the ILA Union. Augie, the plan clerk who told what crates wouldn’t be missed; Patty, the dock boss who told the checkers where to carry them; Eddie, the checker who took the crates off to a truck; and Ernie, the rounds man who was on the job twenty-three years without making one arrest. Then Pop and Ernie collected on some gambling debts. Nobody got violent around me, least of all Pop, whose hands had already begun to shake and couldn’t intimidate a child—he approached the dockworkers, as they would say, with two feet in one shoe. That day he told me I had a choice about whether I wanted to follow in his footsteps. As far as he was concerned, I chose wrong.
Now look at me. He’d be real proud.
The Kid leans over the banister, dangling a ball of spit at his lips and letting it fall below. I want to discipline him, smack him around. Not that my father ever laid a hand on me, though I know he wanted to. Couldn’t ever bring himself to do it, no matter what instance of open defiance.
Looking on the water, Eddy takes out a small bottle of Scotch and takes a sip, offering it to me, his blue hands shaking. I glance around.
“What’re ya looking fer? We’re the law,” he says.
“You think we seem like cops if we smell like liquor?”
“Like a crooked cop, yeah. Fuck, they smellin’ yer breath fer anyway?”
I sip it.
“My pop,” I tell Eddy, the swallow stiff in my throat, ahh, “was a Scotch man. He worked on a dock. Longshoreman. Worked by the water every day.”
“Yeah? How’d he do?”
“Did okay. Had to hustle, though.”
I drink again from the gold liquor and it drops to my stomach like a warm dagger.
“Longshoreman makes good money now,” says Eddy.
“Yeah. Now.”
The Statue of Liberty stands at the end of the island like Manhattan’s toy. Tuesday is a bright, lazy day for some people; bachelors walking their dogs, mothers or nannies pushing strollers, and ghetto teens making out in big coats. It’s difficult to look at The City and see Eddy’s city. I can imagine some crimes more than others. I see professionals and I naturally imagine their drug habits, and the violence that brings them what they need. For every person, there is a logical shadow. For every BlackBerry-carrying, Bluetooth wireless talking professional, there is a messenger-bag middleman, bringing him goodies from some well connected, nickel-plate Ruger-carrying mover-shaker. What scares me about Eddy is how he sees the shadow side of sexuality. For every flower-buying, wife- fucking father, there’s a child-buying, prepubescent-molesting deviant. It bothers me. I try not to be naive about things, but it bothers me. Drugs and violence are tolerable, but touching children is just another animal.
“We’re gonna get a good thing goin’, Ron,” Eddy tells me. “Get this thing here down to a science.”
“Yeah.”
A science. This guy must have a wardrobe’s worth of skeletons in his closet.
I have to wonder how Eddy sees and uncovers this aspect of The City with such ease. He knows where to go. He can find and spot his mark. Eddy is no protector of children. Unlike The Kid, Eddy does not know his own power. What some men do to children is an unchangeable truth in Eddy’s life. He is a perpetual witness. His triumph is that he then hurts the aggressor