“That’s enough, Jack,” Loftus said. “I think you oughta head home.”
“Home? What home? What do I got at home? What’s that mean,
“You got a wife at home,” Loftus said. “A nice lady. You got kids. You got a nice warm bed. Go home.”
“I had a wife,” Parker said. He turned to Devlin again. “What are you lookin’ at? This is none of your business, shmuck.”
Devlin came at him in a rush, reaching for the gun, hurtling at the older man as quickly as he could. It was not quick enough. Parker grabbed the gun, spun, and slammed Devlin on the skull with the butt. Devlin fell, and then Parker kicked him. The two old men headed for the door.
“Stop right there!” Parker said. “You’re not going nowhere.”
They shuffled back to the bar. Devlin pulled himself up, climbing a stool rung by rung, as if it were a ladder. Parker faced him, an elbow on the bar. The gun was beside the beer mug.
“All right, punk. Now, I want an apology.”
Devlin touched his head, and his fingertips came away red. “Apology for what?”
“For livin’, punk.”
“Go to hell,” Devlin said.
Parker picked up the gun, his eyes wild now, and fired a shot into the ceiling.
“You better apologize, or you’re a dead man.”
Loftus leaned in. “Jack—”
Parker whirled and backhanded the smaller man.
“You shut up, George. This is between me and him. Me and this punk!”
Loftus said, “You’re gonna get in trouble, Jack.”
“Oh, yeah?” He waved the gun as if it were a toy. “Trouble, huh?
He fired at the TV set and missed. Then he stared at the mirror and the bottles, extended his arm, and fired two more shots. The mirror smashed and fell in huge jagged shards. Bottles broke, tipped over, bounced on the floor. The noise was ferocious. And then the bar was silent.
“Trouble,” Parker said to himself in a flat voice. “Trouble.”
His eyes were now blank. His body sagged. The gun hand hung straight at his side. He looked at Devlin as if he’d never seen him before, and then turned around and walked to the door, shoving the gun into his side pocket, and went out into the night.
“What the hell…” Loftus said. The two old men hurried to the door and left without a word. Loftus looked at the smashed mirror and started straightening the bottles.
“That guy should be in a nuthouse,” Loftus said.
“Give me a dime, George,” Devlin said. “That bum shouldn’t be walking the streets with a gun.”
“I don’t have any dimes,” Loftus said. “I don’t have any nickels, either. The change is all gone. Go home, Liam.”
Devlin went out. The wind was driving harder off the harbor. He went home for a while and then decided he couldn’t sleep while Parker roamed the streets. He dressed again and walked to the precinct house, ten blocks away, his face frozen, his feet without feeling, the soft swollen patch on his skull beginning to throb. He hurried up the steps of the precinct house. He stopped at the desk and explained to the desk sergeant that he wanted to file a complaint against a cop. A cop named Jack Parker.
The sergeant looked at some papers. “Jack Parker? Forget it, sport. You’re too late. They just found him on his wife’s stoop, up there by the park. With a hole in his head.” He shook his head sadly. “Seems like he eighty-sixed himself.”
Devlin bounced a fist off the rail in front of the desk.
“That bum,” he said. “He really did have trouble.”
“The worst trouble of all, sport.”
IT WASN’T A GOOD idea. Laverty was sure of that. But the girl had insisted, telling him that she couldn’t have this New York week before college without seeing the place where he’d grown up. She could never go alone, she said, and she didn’t know when they’d ever be together in New York again, and, so, after more of this, Laverty had agreed.
Now she was beside him in the rented car, three thousand miles from the house on the hill in Laguna; far from bougainvillea and surfboard summers and horse trails on the Irvine Ranch; far from the great blue lake of the Pacific. She was beside him, the map unfolded in her lap, her blond hair tossed by the river wind, and they were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge on a clear fall day and he was filled with dread.
“Now, this must be the East River, right under us,” she said brightly. “Right, Dad?”
“Right. Except I’m not sure it’s a river. I’ve read that it’s an estuary but I’ve also read that it has been cut through at the top, and that makes it a real river. All I know is the water goes uptown and downtown at the same time.”
“Amazing. And your house? Which way is it?”
“Away up there to the right. Where the green is.”
