Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [119]
As I left the bedroom, she stubbed out her cigarette and said, “Patrick.”
I stuck my head back in the door.
“When you’re ready to talk, I’m all ears. Anything you need to say.”
I nodded.
“And if you don’t talk, that’s up to you. You understand?”
Again, I nodded.
She placed the ashtray back on the nightstand and the sheet fell away from her upper body.
For a long time, neither of us said anything.
“Just so we’re clear,” Angie said eventually. “I won’t be like one of those cop wives in the movies.”
“How do you mean?”
“Nagging and begging you to talk.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
“They never know when to leave, those women.”
I leaned back into the room, peered at her.
She shifted the pillows behind her head. “Could you hit the light on your way out?”
I turned off the light, but I stood there for a few moments more, feeling Angie’s eyes on me.
27
It was one very drunk cop I met in the Ryan playground. Only when I saw him wavering on a swing as I entered, no tie, wrinkled suit jacket scrunched under a topcoat stained by playground sand, one shoe untied, did I realize that it was the first time I’d ever seen him with so much as a hair out of place. Even after the quarries and a jump onto the leg of a helicopter, he’d looked impeccable.
“You’re Bond,” I said.
“Huh?”
“James Bond,” I said. “You’re James Bond, Broussard. Mister Perfect.”
He smiled and drained what remained of a bottle of Mount Gay. He tossed the dead soldier into the sand, pulled a full one from his topcoat, and cracked the seal. He spun the cap off and into the sand with a flick of his thumb. “It’s a burden, being this good-looking. Heh-heh.”
“How’s Poole?”
Broussard shook his head several times. “Nothing’s changed. He’s alive, but barely. He hasn’t regained consciousness.”
I sat on the swing beside his. “And the prognosis?”
“Not good. Even if he lives, he’s had several strokes in the last thirty hours, lost a ton of oxygen to the brain. He’d be partially paralyzed, the doctors figure, mute most likely. He’ll never get out of bed again.”
I thought of that first afternoon I’d met Poole, the first time I’d seen his odd ritual of sniffing a cigarette before snapping it in half, the way he’d looked up into my confused face with his elfin grin and said, “I beg your pardon. I quit.” Then, when Angie’d asked if he’d mind if she smoked, he’d said, “Oh, God, would you?”
Shit. I hadn’t even realized until now how much I liked him.
No more Poole. No more arch remarks, delivered with a knowing, bemused glint in his eye.
“I’m sorry, Broussard.”
“Remy,” Broussard said, and handed me a plastic cocktail cup. “You never know. He’s the toughest bastard I ever met. Has a hell of a will to live. Maybe he’ll pull through. How about you?”
“Huh?”
“How’s your will to live?”
I waited while he filled half the cup with rum.
“It’s been stronger,” I said.
“Mine, too. I don’t get it.”
“What?”
He held the bottle aloft and we toasted silently, then drank.
“I don’t get,” Broussard said, “why what happened in that house has got me so turned around. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of horrible shit.” He leaned forward in his swing, looked back over his shoulder at me. “Horrible shit, Patrick. Babies fed Drano in their bottles, kids suffocated and shaken to death, beat so bad you can’t tell what color their skin really is.” He shook his head slowly. “Lotta shit. But something about that house…”
“Critical mass,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Critical mass,” I repeated. I took another swig of rum. It wasn’t going down easy yet, but it was close. “You see this horrible thing, that one, but they’re spaced out. Yesterday, we saw all sorts of evil shit and it all reached critical mass at once.”
He nodded. “I’ve never seen anything as bad as that basement,” he said. “And then that kid in the tub?” He shook his head. “A few months shy of my twenty, and I’ve never…” He took another swig and shuddered against the burn of alcohol. He gave me a slight smile. “You know what Roberta was doing when I shot her?”
I shook my head.
“Pawing