Mystic River

"That's 'Sergeant,'" Whitey said. "You barely remembered they were here at first, but now you can remember carding them. You remember what time they left, maybe? Or is that selectively foggy?"

The bartender, a young guy with biceps so big they probably squeezed off the blood flow to his brain, said, "Left?"

"As in departed."

"I don't? "

"It was right before Crosby broke the clock," a guy on the stool said.

Sean glanced over at the guy? an old-timer with the Herald spread out on the bar between a bottle of Bud and a shot of whiskey, cigarette curling down into the ashtray.

"You were here," Sean said.

"I was here. Moron Crosby wants to drive home. His friends try to take his keys. Shithead throws them at them. He misses. Hits that clock."

Sean looked up at the clock over the doorway leading to the kitchen. The glass had spiderwebbed and the hands had stopped at 12:52.

"And they left before that?" Whitey asked the old-timer. "The girls?"

"About five minutes before," the guy said. "The keys hit the clock, I'm thinking, 'I'm glad those girls aren't here. They don't need to see that shit.'"

In the car, Whitey said, "You work up a timeline yet?"

Sean nodded, flipped through his notes. "They leave Curley's Folly at nine-thirty, do the Banshee, Dick Doyle's Pub, and Spire's in quick succession, end up at McGills around eleven-thirty, are inside the Last Drop at ten past one."

"And she's crashing her car about half an hour later."

Sean nodded.

"You see any familiar names on the bartender's list?"

Sean looked down at the list of Saturday night patrons the bartender at McGills had scribbled on a sheet of paper.

"Dave Boyle," he said aloud when he got to it.

"The same guy you were friends with as a kid?"

"Could be," Sean said.

"He might be a guy to talk to," Whitey said. "He thinks you're a friend, he won't treat us like cops, clam up for no good reason."

"Sure."

"We'll put him on tomorrow's to-do list."

* * *

THEY FOUND ROMAN FALLOW sipping a latte at Café Society in the Point. He sat with a woman who looked like a model? kneecaps as sharp as her cheekbones, eyes bulging slightly because the skin on her face was pulled so tight it looked like it had been glued to the bone, nice off-white summer dress with those spaghetti straps that made her look sexy and skeletal at the same time, Sean wondering how she pulled that off and deciding it must be the pearl glow of her perfect skin.

Roman wore a silk T-shirt tucked into pleated linen trousers, looking like he just stepped off a soundstage of one of those old RKO movies set in Havana or Key West. He sipped his latte and leafed through the paper with his girl, Roman reading the business section, his model thumbing through the style section.

Whitey pulled a chair over to them and said, "Hey, Roman, they sell men's clothes where you got that shirt?"

Roman kept his eyes on his paper, popped a piece of croissant in his mouth. "Sergeant Powers, how you doing? How's that Hyundai working out for you?"

Whitey chuckled as Sean sat down beside him. "Looking at you, Roman, you know, in this place, I'd swear you were just another yuppie, ready to get up in the morning and go do some day trading on your iMac."

"Got a PC, Sergeant." Roman closed his paper and looked at Whitey and Sean for the first time. "Oh, hi," he said to Sean. "I know you from somewhere."

"Sean Devine, State Police."

"Right, right," Roman said. "Sure, I remember now. Saw you in court once testifying against a friend of mine. Nice suit. They're stepping things up at Sears these days, huh? Getting hip."

Whitey glanced over at the model. "Get you a steak or something, honey?"

The model said, "What?"

"Maybe some glucose on an IV drip? My treat."

Roman said, "Don't do that. This is business, right? Keep it between us."

The model said, "Roman, I don't get it."

Roman smiled. "It's okay, Michaela. Just ignore us."

"Michaela," Whitey said. "Cool name."

Michaela kept her eyes on her newspaper.

"What brings you by, Sergeant?"

"The scones," Whitey said. "Love the scones in this place. And, oh yeah, you know a woman named Katherine Marcus, Roman?"

"Sure." Roman took a small sip of his latte and wiped his upper lip with his napkin, dropped it back on his lap. "She was found dead this afternoon, I heard."

"She was," Whitey said.

"Never good for the neighborhood rep when something like that happens."

Whitey crossed his arms, looked at Roman.

Roman chewed another piece of croissant and drank some more latte. He crossed his legs, dabbed at his mouth with the napkin, and held Whitey's gaze for a bit, Sean thinking this was one of the things that had begun to bore him the most about his job? all these big-dick contests, everyone staring each other blind, nobody backing down.

"Yes, Sergeant," Roman said, "I knew Katherine Marcus. Is that what you came here to ask?"

Whitey shrugged.

"I knew her, and I saw her in a bar last night."

"And you exchanged words with her," Whitey said.

"I did," Roman said.

"What words?" Sean said.

Roman kept his eyes on Whitey, as if Sean didn't rate any more acknowledgment than he'd already given.

"She was dating a friend of mine. She was drunk. I told her she was making a fool of herself and she and her two friends should go home."

"Who's your friend?" Whitey said.

Roman smiled. "Come on, Sergeant. You know who it is."

"So say the words."

"Bobby O'Donnell," Roman said. "Happy? She was dating Bobby."

"Currently?"

"Excuse me?"

"Currently," Whitey repeated. "She was currently dating him? Or she had once dated him?"

"Currently," Roman said.

Whitey scribbled in his notebook. "Goes against the information we have, Roman."

"That so?"

"Yeah. We heard she dumped his doughy ass seven months back, but he wouldn't let go."

"You know women, Sergeant."

Whitey shook his head. "No, Roman, why don't you tell me?"

Roman closed his section of the paper. "She and Bobby went back and forth. One minute he was the love of her life, the next he was cooling his heels."