Mystic River

"Sure," Whitey said. "We'll FedEx that merit badge to you."

Sean gave Moldanado a smile and a nod and shut the door on him as soon as he crossed the threshold.

"No witness," Sean said.

"Uh, no shit."

"The physical evidence from the car won't hold up in court."

"I'm aware of that."

Sean watched Dave put a hand over his eyes and squint into the light. He looked like he hadn't slept in a month.

"Sarge. Come on."

Whitey turned from the microphone and looked at him. He was starting to look exhausted, too, the whites of his eyes gone pink.

"Fuck it," he said. "Kick him loose."

24

A BANISHED TRIBE

CELESTE SAT by the window of Nate & Nancy's Coffee Shop on Buckingham Avenue across from Jimmy Marcus's house as Jimmy and Val Savage parked Val's car half a block up and started walking back down toward the house.

If she were going to do this, actually do it, she had to get out of her chair now and approach them. She stood, her legs trembling, and her hand hit the underside of the table. She looked down at it. Trembling, too, and the skin scraped along the lower half of the thumb bone. She raised it to her lips and then turned toward the door. She still wasn't sure she could do this, say the words that she'd prepared in the motel room this morning. She'd decided to tell Jimmy only what she knew? the physical details of Dave's behavior since early Sunday morning without any conclusions as to what they meant? and allow him to make his own judgments. Without the clothes Dave had worn home that night, it didn't make much sense to go to the police. She told herself this. She told herself this because she wasn't sure the police could protect her. She had to live in this neighborhood, after all, and the only thing that could protect you from something dangerous in the neighborhood was the neighborhood itself. And if she told Jimmy, then not only he, but the Savages as well, could form a kind of moat around her that Dave would never dare cross.

She went through the door as Jimmy and Val neared their front steps. She raised her sore hand. She called Jimmy's name as she stepped into the avenue, looking like a crazy woman, she was sure? hair wild, eyes puffy and black with fear.

"Hey, Jimmy! Val!"

They turned as they reached the bottom step and looked over at her. Jimmy gave her a small, bewildered smile, and she noticed again what an open, lovely thing his smile was. It was unforced and strong and genuine. It said, I'm your friend, Celeste. How can I help?

She reached the curb and Val kissed her cheek. "Hey, cuz."

"Hey, Val."

Jimmy gave her a light peck, too, and it seemed to enter her flesh and tremble at the base of her throat.

He said, "Annabeth was trying you this morning. Couldn't get you at home or work."

Celeste nodded. "I've been, ah?" She looked away from Val's stunted, curious face as it peered into her own. "Jimmy, could I talk to you a sec?"

Jimmy said, "Sure," the bewildered smile returning. He turned to Val. "We'll talk about those things later, right?"

"You bet. See you soon, cuz."

"Thanks, Val."

Val went inside and Jimmy sat down on the third step, made a space for Celeste beside him. She sat and cradled her bruised hand in her lap and tried to find the words. Jimmy watched her for a bit, waiting, and then he seemed to sense that she was all bottled up, incapable of speaking her mind.

In a light voice, he said, "You know what I was remembering the other day?"

Celeste shook her head.

"I was standing up by those old stairs above Sydney. 'Member the ones where we'd all go and watch the drive-in movies, smoke some bones?"

Celeste smiled. "You were dating? "

"Oh, don't say it."

"? Jessica Lutzen and her bodacious bod, and I was seeing Duckie Cooper."

"The Duckster," Jimmy said. "Hell ever happened to him?"

"I heard he joined the marines, caught some weird skin disease overseas, lives in California."

"Huh." Jimmy tilted his chin up, his gaze gone back half his lifetime, and Celeste could suddenly see him doing the exact same thing eighteen years earlier when his hair was a little blonder and he was a whole lot crazier, Jimmy the kind of guy who'd climb telephone poles in thunderstorms, all the girls watching, praying he didn't fall. And yet even at the craziest times, there was this stillness, these sudden pauses of self-reflection, this sense one got from him, even when he was a boy, that he carefully considered everything with the exception of his own skin.

He turned and lightly slapped her knee with the back of his hand. "So what's up, dude? You look, uh?"

"You can say it."

"What? No, you look, well, a little tired is all." He leaned back on the step and sighed. "Hell, I guess we all do, right?"

"I spent last night at a motel. With Michael."

Jimmy stared straight ahead. "Okay."

"I dunno, Jim. I may have left Dave for good."

She noticed a change in his face, a setting of the jawbone, and she suddenly had the feeling Jimmy knew what she was going to say.

"You left Dave." His voice was a monotone now, his gaze on the avenue.

"Yeah. He's been acting, well?He's been acting nuts lately. He's not himself. He's starting to frighten me."

Jimmy turned to her then and the smile on his face was so icy she almost slapped it with her hand. In his eyes, she could see the boy who'd climbed those telephone poles in the rain.

"Why don't you start from the beginning?" he said. "When Dave started acting different."

She said, "What do you know, Jimmy?"

"Know?"

"You know something. You're not surprised."

The ugly smile faded and Jimmy leaned forward, his hands entwined in his lap. "I know he was taken in by the police this morning. I know he's got a foreign car with a dent in the front passenger quarter. I know he told me one story about how he fucked up his hand and he told the police another. And I know he saw Katie the night she died, but he didn't tell me that until after the police had questioned him about it." He unlocked his hands and spread them. "I don't know what all this means exactly, but it's beginning to bug me, yeah."

Celeste felt a momentary wash of pity for her husband as she pictured him in some police interrogation room, perhaps handcuffed to a table, a harsh light in his pale face. Then she saw the Dave who'd craned his head around the door last night and looked at her, tilted and crazed, and fear overrode pity.