Small Mercies полностью

“But you can bring them in for questioning.”

“Who says we haven’t?”

“If you had, you would have gotten some evidence.”

“Is that how it works?” He chuckles as he flicks his cigarette into the alley. “Wasn’t your first husband Dukie Shefton?”

She cocks her head at him. “Someone’s been doing his homework.”

“And Dukie was in the Life. I mean, man was a legend among thieves.”

Mary Pat feels a small flush of ancient pride well up in her at the memory of her first husband and his street rep. “He was.”

“And he was an independent, correct?” Bobby says. “Wasn’t affiliated with a crew.”

“He was independent, all right.” Mary Pat lights her own cigarette.

“But,” Bobby says, hitting the word for emphasis, “he still kicked up a percentage of his take to Marty Butler.”

She shrugs. “That’s the way it is in Southie.”

“‘That’s the way it is in Southie.’ We’re in agreement then, Mary Pat. So, if I bring people in for questioning but can’t get any evidence at all out of them because they don’t even get to talk to me for five minutes before a lawyer raps on the door, what does that tell you?”

She looks at him for a long while, rolling the cigarette up and down between her fingers. “Tells me those people are a lot less afraid of you than they are of someone else.”

“Yup.”

She takes a thoughtful drag, exhales a series of smoke rings that drift toward the alley before dissipating one by one. “So you’re saying the crime will go unsolved?”

“Hell, no,” he tells her. “No one’s letting this one drop.”

“Because a black kid died?”

“Because a black kid died on the dividing line between Southie and Dorchester on the eve of busing. It makes for the kinda story line newspapers tend to squeeze a lot of mileage out of.”

“Yet no one’s in jail.”

“Because we haven’t broken the logjam. But we will. And when we do, the dominoes will fall.”

“Or the bodies will.”

“Excuse me?”

She shifts on the hood, pulls one leg up there with her, grips the ankle. “You know as well as me that if any of this leads back to Marty Butler, all the kids on that platform that night are as dead as Auggie Williamson.”

“Why’d you say it that way?”

“What way?”

“You said ‘all’ the kids like some of them are gonna be dead regardless.”

“If Marty Butler doesn’t have success paying your legal bills,” she says eventually, “he’ll cut bait and pay for your funeral.”

“Which could be why we’re not turning up the heat too quickly.”

“But if you wait too long, they’ll get their stories straight, Marty will pay off people to be their alibis, and you’ll get nowhere at all.”

“That’s the risk.” He puts a foot on the fender.

“You think my daughter was involved, and I know she wasn’t. If we can prove what happened, I can prove her innocence.”

“And then maybe she’ll come out of hiding?”

She drifts on him for a moment. Like she just — poof — leaves her body, and he’s left staring at a statue perched on the hood of a car.

Then she comes back, but her voice is small and thin. “Yes. Then she’ll come out of hiding.”

He’s been watching her face as close as he can. “She is in hiding? Yes?”

She plucks at one of her sneaker laces. “She’s in hiding for sure.”

“Then,” he says, “you’ll just have to be patient, Mrs. Fennessy.”

“Mary Pat.”

“You’ll have to be patient, Mary Pat. If I want this to stick, I have to do it right.”

He can tell from the look on her face that she thinks he’s not only lying to her, he’s lying to himself.

“What if I talked to them?” she says.

“To who?”

“The people who don’t want to talk.”

“No,” he says. “Bad idea.”

“Why?”

He indicates her hand and face. “Your type of negotiation is called coercion under duress. It doesn’t stand up in court.”

“Only if” — she strikes the air with her cigarette — “an officer of the law had prior knowledge of it.”

“What’d you read a law book?”

“I was married to Dukie. He managed to stay out of prison most of his life and rob everything of fucking value that wasn’t nailed down in this city at one time or another. He was a law book.”

“What ever happened to Dukie?” Bobby asks.

“He didn’t take a knee.”

“To who?”

“The person you’re supposed to take a knee to.”

Standing there, taking her in, he gets a sudden whiff of her utter solitude. Of the series of traumas, big and small, that’s passed for her life.

“Mrs. Fennessy, please go home.”

“And do what?”

“Whatever you do when you’re home.”

“And then what?”

“Get up the next day and do it again.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not living.”

“It is if you can find the small blessings.”

She smiles, but her eyes shine with agony. “All my small blessings are gone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

“Then find new ones.”

She shakes her head. “There aren’t any left to find.”