The Killing Room (Richard Montanari) - By Richard Montanari Page 0,65
knew it was going to be all right. For her, anyway. I wasn’t so sure about me.’
‘What do you mean?’
Byrne looked up, out the window, at the traffic crawling up the street. A light snow had begun to fall. Byrne didn’t respond. Jessica waited a while, moved on.
‘What happened to Marcus?’ Jessica knew Marcus Haines was on the wall at the Roundhouse, so this story was not going to have a happy ending.
‘A month later Jimmy came back, and I didn’t work with Marcus again. Not on the line anyway. Marcus went to the Fugitive Squad. I ran into him one night at Bonk’s. He was hitting the Jameson hard. Told me the affair with the girl was over. Three weeks after that I got loaned out to Fugitive to serve a warrant on a couple of bad actors.
‘Marcus took the door – my door. He didn’t make it three feet before they opened up. He took the first two in the vest, but the third was a head shot. Clean hit. Died on his feet. Never got off a single shot.’ Byrne took a deep breath, exhaled slowly. ‘Those rounds were meant for me, Jess.’
Jessica gave the gravity of the moment a respectful pause. ‘What about the young woman?’
‘She gave her statement, the DA looked it over, never brought charges. Went down as a justifiable.’
Byrne ran his finger over the surface of the photograph.
‘There’s more, isn’t there?’ Jessica asked.
Byrne said nothing for a few seconds. ‘What I did was wrong.’
‘No, what you did was right. At that moment, it wasn’t about procedure. It was about right and wrong. We all have to make those calls.’
‘I know. But when I hit her, I really hit her. It all came out of me. I hit her hard because she was stupid, because she was on the pipe, because she hooked up with loser after loser, because she was beautiful, because I can’t change a fucking thing about this city, no matter how hard I try.’
Jessica knew she had to say something. She couldn’t just leave it like this. She tried to bring the conversation around to the present.
‘We’ll get this guy, Kevin. We’ll get him off the streets, and it will make a difference.’
Byrne reached into his pocket, took out a single key. ‘Here.’
Jessica took the key from him. ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s the key to this apartment. It occurred to me that the only other person with a key is Colleen, and she doesn’t even live in this city anymore. I want you to have it.’
Jessica was more than a little moved by this. She hoped it didn’t show. ‘I promise not to drop it in any high-crime areas.’
‘I appreciate it.’
Jessica slipped the new key onto her key chain, pulled on her coat, opened the door, turned. ‘You sure you’re okay?’
‘Top of the world.’
‘Right,’ Jessica said. ‘How come all Irish cops quote Jimmy Cagney?’
Byrne smiled, but it was sad.
‘Call me if you need me,’ Jessica said.
Byrne didn’t respond. Jessica hadn’t expected him to.
When she stepped through the doorway, she turned one last time. Byrne was still at the window, the old photograph in hand, looking out at the silent, snow-covered street.
TWENTY-ONE
The old man stands at the back of the auditorium. It is a large, rectangular room, decorated with bright streamers and multicolored bunting, with folding chairs aligned row by row, eighty in all. There is a small stage with risers at the front. The event is a chorale of first-and second-grade children singing songs that welcome spring, which is just a month or so away.
In the audience are scores of proud parents and grandparents, flip cameras in hand. Onstage thirty or so children are singing: ‘If You’re Happy and You Know It.’
She watches the man from the other side of the room – his eyes, his hands, the cant of his shoulders. He has the countenance of a kindly uncle, but she knows better. She knows what he is.
At the end of the song she walks across the room, sidles up next to him. He does not notice her.
‘Hi,’ she says.
The man turns to her, a bit startled. He quickly looks her up and down, tiny predator’s eyes assessing threat. He finds none. He fashions a smile. ‘Hello.’
She gestures toward the stage. ‘They are so precious when they are this age, aren’t they?’
The old man smiles again. ‘That they are.’ He looks more closely at her, this time with a flicker of remembrance. ‘Have we met before?’