Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [31]
I had nightmares about Gerry often. Always Gerry. Never Evandro, never Alec Hardiman. Just Gerry. Probably because I’d known him my entire life. Back when he’d been a cop, walking the local beat, always with a smile and a friendly. ruffle of the hair for us kids. Then, after he’d retired, as owner and chief bartender of the Black Emerald. I drank with Gerry, had conversations long into the night with Gerry, felt at ease with him, trusted him. And all that time, over the course of three decades, he’d been killing runaway kids. A whole forgotten populace that nobody was looking for and nobody missed.
My nightmares varied, but usually Gerry killed Phil in them. In front of me. In reality, I hadn’t seen him slice Phil’s throat, even though I’d been only eight feet away. I’d been on the floor of Gerry’s bar, trying to keep his German shepherd from plunging its teeth into my eye, but I’d heard Phil scream; I’d heard him say, “No, Gerry. No.” And I’d held him while he died.
Phil Dimassi had been Angie’s husband for twelve years. Until their wedding, he’d also been my best friend. After Angie filed for divorce, Phil quit drinking, became gainfully employed again, was on the road to a kind of redemption, I think. But Gerry blew all that away.
Gerry fired a bullet into Angie’s abdomen. Gerry cut fissures into my jaw with a straight razor. Gerry helped end the relationship I had with a woman named Grace Cole and her daughter, Mae.
Gerry, the left side of his body on fire, had a shotgun pointed at my face when Oscar fired three bullets into him from behind.
Gerry damn near destroyed all of us.
And I wait for you down here, Patrick. I wait.
I had no logical reason to think that searching for Amanda McCready was going to lead to the sort of carnage my encounter with Gerry Glynn and his pals had created, no logical reason at all. It was this night, I reasoned, the first cool night in a few weeks, the dark-slate feel of it all. If it were last night, moist and balmy, I wouldn’t be feeling this way.
But then again…
What we’d learned, unequivocally, during our pursuit of Gerry Glynn was exactly what Angie had spoken of tonight—that people could rarely be understood. We were slippery creatures, our impulses ruled by a variety of forces, many of them incomprehensible even to ourselves.
Why would someone abduct Amanda McCready?
I had no idea.
Why would someone—several someones, actually—want to rape a woman?
Once again, I had no idea.
I sat for a while with my eyes closed, trying to see Amanda McCready, to conjure up a concrete inner sense of whether she was alive or not. But behind my eyelids, I saw only the dark.
I finished my beer and looked in on Angie.
She slept on her stomach in the middle of the bed, one arm splayed across the pillow on my side, the other clenched in a fist against her throat. I wanted to go to her and hold her until what happened in the Filmore stopped happening in her head, until her fear went away, until Gerry Glynn went away, until the world and everything ugly in it passed over our bodies and rode the night wind out of our lives.
I stood in the doorway a long time, watching her sleep, hoping my silly hopes.
8
After her estrangement from Phil and before she and I became lovers, Angie dated a producer with New England Cable News Network. I’d met the guy once and hadn’t been particularly impressed, though I do recall he had great taste in ties. Wore too much aftershave, though. And mousse. And dated Angie. So the chances of us getting together for late-night Nintendo games and Saturday softball were pretty slim from the get-go.
The guy proved useful after the fact, however, because Angie kept in touch and occasionally, when we needed them, scored us tapes of local news broadcasts. It’s always amazed me how she can do that—stay in touch, remain friends, get a guy she dumped two years ago to do her favors. I’d be lucky to call an ex-girlfriend and get my own toaster back. Maybe I