Instead of wearing a skirt, as their wives would have, Nora had on black pants and black leather boots; her hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore silver earrings shaped like stars.
“I’ll bet she’s dying for it,” Jim Wineman said.
“What?” Hennessy said.
Billy was following his mother, dragging the baby behind him. He looked at Hennessy and their eyes met, but Billy quickly looked away. He had on some kind of woolen cape that was tucked into his jacket and flapped after him like the broken wing of a bird.
“Divorced,” Jim Wineman said. “You know what I mean.”
Jim Wineman and Sam Romero looked after Nora sadly. “Jesus,” they both said.
“I’ve got to work on my shelves,” Hennessy told them. He left them in Auto Parts and followed Nora to the checkout counter. There was a lump in his throat.
“Oh, hi,” Nora said when she saw him. She had the counter filled with screwdrivers and fuses and a dust mop. The baby was sitting on the counter pulling at the saw. “Don’t touch,” Nora told him.
“You don’t need to buy that,” Hennessy said. “I’m getting one just like it. You can borrow mine.”
“Isn’t that sweet,” Nora said to Billy.
Billy shrugged and turned his attention to a tray of batteries.
“I keep telling him how important good neighbors are,” Nora said. “In fact, I’ve been meaning to call your wife.”
Billy and Hennessy both froze.
“My wife?” Hennessy said.
“I want to invite Stevie over. We live right across the street. They could become great friends. Maybe even best friends.”
Hennessy noticed that Billy was growing fainter. It was as if he were retreating inside his clothes or as if—and this was probably just a trick of the fluorescent lighting above them—he were disappearing.
“Don’t ring up that saw,” Hennessy said to the cashier who was totaling Nora’s bill.
Nora took out her wallet and reached for a ten-dollar bill. Her nails were amazingly red. She turned to Hennessy and looked right at him. “So what do you think?” she asked.
Hennessy stepped back, surprised.
“About the boys.”
Nora took her package off the counter and handed Billy the mop. She scooted James aside so that Hennessy could be rung up.
“Well,” Hennessy said carefully. “I think boys will be boys.”
Nora thought this over. “I see what you mean,” she said tentatively.
“I mean, they have to make their own friendships. You’ve got to let it happen naturally.”
He swore that Billy was getting visibly more solid. The boy came to stand beside his mother, and although he didn’t look up, he was obviously listening to every word.
“Good point,” Nora said.
She waited for Hennessy, and as they walked out together Hennessy refused to look at Wineman and Romero. He held the door for Nora, and when they went out to the parking lot they discovered they had parked right next to each other.
“What a coincidence!” Nora said. She put James into the car, then went to open the trunk in the front of the Volkswagen.
“God, I hate this car,” Nora said.
Billy was still holding the mop; he looked even paler in broad daylight.
“You ever kill anyone?” Billy asked Hennessy.
Hennessy looked down at the boy; the top of his head was knotted with clumps of unruly hair.
“I’m not usually tracking down murderers,” Hennessy said.
“Yeah,” Billy said. He swung the mop back and forth. “So. Did you ever kill anyone?”
“In the war,” Hennessy said. “In France.”
“Stevie says you kill someone nearly every day,” Billy said.
“That’s not exactly true,” Hennessy said. He could see Nora’s right arm as she reached up to shut the trunk.
“Oh, yeah?” Billy said.
“Yeah,” Hennessy told him. “As a matter of fact, it’s a lie.”
Nora came back to them then. She was smiling and she held out her arms. For a moment Hennessy felt confused and weak in the knees. He took a step forward, and when he did Nora tilted her head.
“The saw,” she said.
Hennessy stopped where he was.
“You said I could borrow it, and I need it today. If that’s all right.”
“Oh,” Hennessy said. “Sure.”
After Billy had gotten into the backseat, Hennessy helped Nora fit the saw into the passenger seat.
“Don’t you kids touch this,” Nora said. “Thanks a million,” she told Hennessy when she got behind the wheel. “I need more shelf space.”
Hennessy stood beside his car and watched her drive away, enormously pleased that Jim Wineman and Sam Romero would be thinking he was on his way home to make the shelves that would just have to wait until Nora returned the saw.
All the next day Hennessy couldn’t get Nora out of his mind. He spent the afternoon with Ellen and the kids at her sister’s, and he gave the kids their Sunday baths. But he kept thinking about Nora. That night, after the moon rose, Hennessy began to dream about her. The children and Ellen were all asleep in their beds and the curtains were drawn. Hennessy was under a white sheet and a light wool blanket; he wore striped pajamas and his feet were cold and white. When he found her in his dreams he pulled her down beside him, into his single bed. Ellen never heard them, she didn’t even turn in her sleep. How could she not smell the perfume Nora was wearing? How could she not hear the bedsprings creak?
He unhooked whatever Nora was wearing; he didn’t care that his wife was asleep in the same room. He put his hands on Nora’s breasts while Ellen pulled her blanket up, while his children slept, while the wood waiting to be cut into shelves lay on the basement floor. She was so hot his fingers burned when he touched her. He could hear the alarm clock ticking on the night table and the sound of the boiler in the basement below them. He slid one of his hands along her belly, then down between her legs. When she started to moan, he put his other hand over her mouth so Ellen wouldn’t wake. But how could she not hear them? How could she not see the shape of Hennessy’s mouth on Nora’s skin? No, he couldn’t care about that, he couldn’t even think about it. He shifted and moved inside her, and stopped thinking altogether, and when he woke up he was crying.
He went into the bathroom and washed his face, but after that he was afraid to go back to sleep. He got dressed and made himself a cup of instant coffee. He couldn’t drink it, so he went to check on his children, and then he returned to the bedroom, took his gun from the night table, and went out to his car.
The sky was still dark when he parked outside Louie’s Candy Store. The morning newspapers were being delivered.
“Geez,” Louie said when Hennessy came in, carrying a bundle of newspapers. “You’re the early bird.”
Hennessy sat down at the counter and had a cup of real coffee. He thought about all those people asleep in his house. He had no idea whether he even liked his wife and his children. He couldn’t remember what song Ellen had been singing to herself when he came home from the hardware store, or what excuse Stevie had given when he’d been asked why his bedroom window was wide open the morning after Halloween or why, if he’d gone to sleep right after his bath, his fingers were black as coal.
Hennessy wasn’t due down at the station house for a few hours and he couldn’t go home, so he took a slow drive through the neighborhood. The leaves were all gone and the trees looked like black sticks against the blue sky. A black cat darted out across Harvey’s Turnpike, and Hennessy wondered whether this meant the cat had crossed his path. Just to make certain, he made a left turn before he reached the spot where the cat had crossed. He kept his speed down, and at a quarter to six he found himself on the edge of the development. He pulled over and parked across from the house where he’d been called in to the domestic. He still felt as if he were in some kind of dream, because if he’d been thinking he never would have c
ome here. His tongue was thick, and his stomach was sour, and the back of his neck felt as if someone had stuck pins into it. With the heater turned off, the car was cold, but Hennessy stayed there, parked. The men on the block came out of their houses and left for work; the children all walked to school. By eight thirty no one had yet come out of the house Hennessy was watching, so he got out of his car and walked across the street.
His bones felt bruised from sitting in the car for such a long time. He went up the steps and knocked on the door, and when no one answered he hopped off the stoop. He went to the living-room window and peered in, but even before he rubbed a circle in the dirty glass and looked in, he knew the house was empty.
A woman from the house next door had come out on her lawn and was staring at him.
“Are you the realtor?” she called.
Hennessy straightened up and walked through the bushes. “A friend of the family,” he said.
“Really?” the woman said. “Well, they’re not here. They moved to New Jersey.”
“That explains it,” Hennessy said.
“Three weeks ago,” the woman told him.
Hennessy thanked her and walked across the lawn. He was late for work now, so he started his car and made a U-turn and headed for Harvey’s Turnpike. But before reporting in, he stopped at a drugstore and bought a large bottle of Pepto-Bismol. He uncapped the bottle and took a long swig, then flipped open his glove compartment and threw the bottle inside. He had just been a little too late, that was all. And why that should make him feel so terribly sick, why that should make him want to step on the gas and drive as far as he could get, he had no idea.
4
THE THIEF
THERE WAS BLACK ICE ALL OVER the streets. You couldn’t see it, but it was there, waiting for you to step off the curb. Car doors froze shut, tree branches cracked and fell onto the lawns, traffic lights were so encrusted you couldn’t tell red from green or stop from go. On Dead Man’s Hill there was a thin coating of ice over the snow; if you set up your sled just right, perfectly in line with the ruts of the dozens of sleds before yours, you would take off like lightning. If it was evening, you would come close enough to the cars on the Southern State to make your vision blank out in the glare of the headlights; during the day the sunlight reflecting off the ice would make you so dizzy you’d just lie there after your sled overturned, and then in a panic you’d get up as quickly as you could, terrified, convinced that if you didn’t move soon the ice would freeze you into place, and that’s the way they’d find you, sometime in the spring, deep within the thaw of Dead Man’s Hill.
But neither the ice nor the unusually cold temperatures kept Jackie McCarthy from washing his Chevy every Friday and Simonizing it every other Saturday. He wore black cotton gloves with the fingertips cut off, which allowed him to hold the Q-Tips when he cleaned the dirt off his silver mag wheels. He preferred Turtle Wax and the heat of his breath and a soft cotton dish towel stolen from his mother’s kitchen drawer. That was the way to get a really good shine, a shine so slick he could see his own reflection in the rear fender. He always kept the key in the ignition, the window rolled down, and the radio on. He sang “Ooh, baby” while he worked. He sang “Sweet Little Sixteen.” When he caught a glimpse of himself in the side-view mirror he gave it his all, as if he were onstage. Yeah, he thought to himself. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He felt lucky and hot; he had cash in his pockets almost all the time now. He and Pete and Dominick Amato had taken another car from the Saint’s garage, Mr. Shapiro’s two-week-old Cadillac. Before they took the Caddy down to Queens Boulevard, where Pete’s cousin gave them cash for it, they had driven out to Jones Beach, right through the snow before the plows had cleared the parkway, and it was just about the best ride Jackie ever had. All right, it was true, in the morning he had to pay because he was the one who had to stand next to his father, the one who had to shift his weight from one foot to the other in the cold while the Saint unlocked the garage and saw that the Caddy was gone. Jackie had thought he knew what to expect, and in a way he was looking forward to seeing the Saint blow up. When the key went into the garage lock, Jackie took a deep breath. This is it, he told himself. This is when the Saint goes nuts, when he raises his voice, maybe even smacks me. But once the door was pushed aside, all the Saint did was stand there, and then he collapsed against the cold bricks, as if someone had hit him hard.
“What’s the matter, Pop?” Jackie had said. He had planned to act real casual, but his voice broke. He felt as though he might be watching his father have a heart attack.
The Saint sat down in the doorway to the garage, right in the oil slicks and the pools of gasoline and the rest of the dirt that they’d never get rid of, in spite of the Saint’s daily sweeping.
“Come on, Pop,” Jackie said. When he knelt and helped his father up, the Saint felt like a bundle of twigs in his arms. Jackie walked his father into the office and over to a hard-backed metal chair. What Jackie really wanted was a cigarette, but he had never smoked in front of the Saint and he certainly wasn’t about to start now. Before he called the police, the Saint phoned Phil Shapiro at work, and God, it made Jackie sick to hear him apologize to Shapiro, to be so fucking silent when you knew that on the other end of the line Shapiro was giving him hell. When he couldn’t take it anymore, Jackie leaned over and slammed his hand down on the phone to cut off the call. His father looked up at him, confused.
“You don’t have to take that crap from him,” Jackie said. “Let him take his business elsewhere.”
“It was my fault,” the Saint said.
“Pop,” Jackie said, “the car was stolen.”
“I should have had an alarm system,” the Saint said, echoing Shapiro’s last words to him.
“Look,” Jackie said, “the Jew’s insured. He can afford another Caddy.”
Jackie had turned to hang his leather jacket on a hook, so he didn’t see the Saint get up and come at him, didn’t even realize what was happening until his father grabbed him and pushed him up against the wall. This was it, this was the explosion Jackie had thought he wanted; finally he’d see the Saint act like a human being. But it wasn’t the way Jackie had expected, and it brought him no satisfaction when the Saint let go of him. As the Saint backed off he looked smaller than ever; you could snap him in two with one strong hand.
An hour later, when Hennessy arrived, Jackie was in the garage rebuilding a carburetor, but the Saint was still at his desk, staring out the plate-glass window. Hennessy drove up in his unmarked black Ford, which had an attachable siren he kept under his seat. He parked beside the air pump and got out. There was no business at the station and he could hear the radio playing in the garage. “I Only Have Eyes for You.” Hennessy went into the office, and when the door swung closed behind him, John McCarthy didn’t even look up.
“You can’t believe the roads out there,” Hennessy said. “Slicker than hell.” He went over to the percolator McCarthy always kept on a small pine table and poured himself a cup of coffee, then realized it was yesterday’s and cold. Hennessy put the cup back down on the table and wished someone else had gotten this call.
“The car was my responsibility,” McCarthy said.
“I hate to tell you,” Hennessy said, “but this kind of thing happens all the time. Was the garage jimmied open?”
“He brought it in because the door squeaked. He could have taken it back to the dealer, but I offered to do it for him. It turned out the door just needed a little oil,” McCarthy said. “That’s all.”
“Windows broken?” Hennessy asked.
John McCarthy shook his head. “I need an alarm system.”
Hennessy lit a cigarette and took a look around. The floor was so clean he didn’t feel right just dropping the match, so he slipped it into his coat pocket.
“Think back to last night,” Hennessy said. “Did you lock the garage door?”
There was a curtain of blue smoke between them. Ice was forming inside the plate-glass
window.
“I don’t know,” John McCarthy said. “I can’t remember.”
Hennessy gave McCarthy the police report to fill out and while he did, Hennessy went into the garage. It was colder here, downright freezing outside the radius of a small electric heater set up on the concrete floor.
Jackie was kneeling on the concrete, singing along with the radio he had set up on the workbench. He had seen Hennessy pull up, and now he felt the cop behind him, but he didn’t stop singing.
“Maybe you’re Ed Sullivan material,” Hennessy said.
Jackie turned as if surprised. “Mr. Hennessy,” he said, standing. “Yeah.” He grinned. “Maybe I am.”
Jackie watched Hennessy check the garage. No broken glass, no jimmied locks.
“It’s a bitch, isn’t it?” Jackie said. “Shapiro just brought it in to have the doors oiled. My dad wouldn’t feel so bad if it wasn’t for that Corvette a while back.”
“Your father ever forget to lock the door?” Hennessy asked. He was standing beside the double doors, giving them the once-over.
“Pop?” Jackie said. “Never. He doesn’t even forget to sweep the floor every day.”
Hennessy looked down at the concrete; there was no place to put his cigarette out, so he let it burn down between his fingers.
“You ever forget?” Hennessy asked easily.
“Hey.” Jackie grinned. He could hear his own pulse in his ears. “I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid.”
“Yeah,” Hennessy said. “Yeah, well, do me a favor. Just keep an eye on your father.”
“What do you mean?” Jackie asked. He looked over to the office. The Saint was busy filling out the report, so Jackie figured he could sneak a quick smoke. He got out a cigarette and his silver lighter. He leaned his head away from the lighter when the flame shot up, and he lit his cigarette carefully.
“I don’t know,” Hennessy said. “He’s confused. He doesn’t know if he locked the door or not.”
That was when Jackie knew he had it made. Hennessy didn’t suspect a thing. Jackie looked over his shoulder to make sure his father wouldn’t catch him smoking, then took a deep drag of his cigarette and tapped the ashes on the floor.