Mystic River

17

A LITTLE LOOK

AN HOUR BEFORE their scheduled meeting at Martin Friel's office, Sean and Whitey stopped off at Whitey's place so he could change the shirt he'd spilled his lunch on.

Whitey lived with his son, Terrance, in a white brick apartment building just south of the city limits. The apartment had wall-to-wall beige carpeting and off-white walls and the same dead-air smell as motel rooms and hospital corridors. The TV was on when they came in, ESPN playing at low volume even though the apartment was empty, and the various parts of a Sega game system were spread out on the carpet in front of a hulking black slab of an entertainment center. There was a lumpy futon couch across from the entertainment center, and, Sean guessed, McDonald's wrappers in the wastebasket, a freezer stuffed with TV dinners.

"Where's Terry?" Sean said.

"Hockey, I think," Whitey said. "Could be baseball, though, this time a year, but hockey's his big thing. At it year-round."

Sean had met Terry once. At fourteen, he'd been gargantuan, a huge block of a kid, and Sean could only imagine his size two years later, the fear he must put in other kids as he came smoking down the ice, top speed.

Whitey had custody of Terry because his wife didn't want it. She'd left them both a few years back for a civil liability attorney with a crack problem that would eventually get the guy disbarred and sued for embezzlement. She stayed with the guy, though, or so Sean had heard, and she and Whitey had remained close. Sometimes, to hear him talk about her, you'd have to remind yourself they were divorced.

He did it now as he led Sean into the living room and looked down at the Sega system on the floor as he unbuttoned his shirt. "Suzanne says me and Terry got ourselves a real guy's fantasy pad going here. Rolls her eyes, you know, but I get the feeling she's a little jealous. Beer or something?"

Sean remembered what Friel had said about Whitey's drinking problem and imagined the look he'd get if he showed up for the meeting smelling like Altoids and Budweiser. Plus, knowing Whitey, it could be a test from him, too, everyone watching Sean these days.

"Take a water," he said. "Or a Coke."

"Good boy," Whitey said, smiling as if he really had been testing Sean but Sean seeing the need in the man's loose eyes, the way the tip of his tongue played against the corners of his mouth. "Two Cokes coming up."

Whitey came back out of the kitchen with the two sodas and handed one to Sean. He walked into a small bathroom just off the living room hallway, and Sean heard him strip off the shirt and run some water.

"This whole thing is looking more random," he called from the bathroom. "You getting that feeling?"

"A bit," Sean admitted.

"Fallow and O'Donnell's alibis look pretty solid."

"Don't mean they couldn't have hired it out," Sean said.

"I agree. You thinking that way, though?"

"Not really. Seems too messy for a hit."

"Don't rule it out, though."

"No, it don't."

"We'll need to take another run at the Harris kid, if only because he got no alibi, but, man, I don't see him for this. The kid's Jell-O, you know?"

"Motive, though," Sean said, "if, say, he had some building jealousy of O'Donnell, something like that."

Whitey came out of the bathroom, wiping his face with a towel, his white belly emblazoned with a red snake of scar tissue that cut a smile through the flesh from the lower edge of one side of his rib cage to the other.

"Yeah, but that kid?" He wandered back toward a rear bedroom.

Sean stepped into the hall. "I don't like him for it, either, but we gotta be sure."

"Well, the father, too, and her crazy fucking uncles, but I already got guys talking to the neighbors. I don't see it playing that way, either."

Sean leaned against the wall, sipped from his Coke. "If this was random, Sarge, I mean, shit?"

"Yeah, tell me about it." Whitey turned into the hallway, a fresh shirt over his shoulders. "The old lady, Prior," he said as he started buttoning, "she didn't hear a scream."

"Heard a gunshot."

"We say it was a gunshot. But, yeah, we're probably right. But she didn't hear a scream."

"Maybe the Marcus girl was too busy hitting the guy with her door and trying to run away."

"I'll give you that. But when she first saw him? He's coming toward her car?" Whitey passed Sean and turned into the kitchen.

Sean came off the wall and followed him. "Which means she probably knew him. That's why she said hi."

"Yeah." Whitey nodded. "And why else would she stop the car in the first place?"

"No," Sean said.

"No?" Whitey leaned against the counter, looked at Sean.

"No," Sean repeated. "That car was crashed, wheels turned into the curb."

"No skid marks, though."

Sean nodded. "She's driving maybe fifteen miles an hour and something causes her to swerve into the curb."

"What?"

"Fuck do I know? You're the boss."

Whitey smiled and drained his Coke in one long swallow. He opened the fridge for another. "What makes someone swerve without hitting the brakes?"

"Something in the road," Sean said.

Whitey lifted his fresh Coke in acknowledgment. "But there was nothing in the road by the time we got there."

"That was the next morning."

"So a brick, something like that?"

"Brick's too small, don't you think? That time a night?"

"A cinder block."

"Okay."

"Something, though," Whitey said.

"Something," Sean agreed.

"She swerves, hits the curb, her foot comes off the clutch, and the car kicks out."

"At which point, the perp appears."

"Who she knows. And then, what, he just walks up and caps her?"

"And she hits him with the door, and? "

"You ever been hit with a car door?" Whitey lifted his collar and slid his tie around it, started working on the knot.

"Missed out on the experience so far."

"It's like a punch. If you're standing real close, and a woman weighs one-ten pushes a shitty little Toyota door into you, it ain't going to do much but annoy you. Karen Hughes said the shooter was maybe six inches away when he fired his first round. Six inches."

Sean could see his point. "Okay. But maybe she falls back and kicks the door. That would do the job."

"Door's gotta be open, though. She can kick it all day if it's still closed and it ain't going to go nowhere. She had to open it, by hand, and shove off with her arm. So either the killer stepped back and caught the door when he wasn't expecting it, or?"