Роберт Паркер - All Our Yesterdays

“Swell,” Flaherty said. “How ’bout you, Chris, you got anything?”

“Nope.”

“Anything on the other girl?”

“Probably killed by the same guy.”

Flaherty slammed the flat of his hand down on his desk.

“Don’t tell me ‘probably,’ Goddamnit. How about the gang war?”

Chris shrugged. Flaherty circled the room with his gaze. No one spoke.

“Okay,” Flaherty said, “it’s head-rolling time.”

Chris looked at Gus, and ran his forefinger across his Adam’s apple. Gus nodded.

“You got that right, Chris,” Flaherty said. “Nothing personal, and I know it’s not your fault. But it’s got to be somebody’s fault and you’re not running for the Senate. I’m going to wait until next Monday, so it won’t look like I’m knee-jerking to the media, and then I’m going to fire you.”

Chris said, “It’s not going to change anything. What are you going to do when the killing doesn’t go away?”

“I got two months till the election,” Flaherty said. “If we get some kind of break in the crime wave, good. If we don’t it’s time for smoke and mirrors.” Flaherty looked at the police commissioner. “Can you get Gus off this case, Sully?”

“Be easiest,” Sullivan said, looking straight ahead at Flaherty, “if Gus was to resign.”

“How about it, Gus,” Flaherty said. “Ready to step aside?”

“Fuck you,” Gus said.

“I’ll take that to mean no,” Flaherty said. “Can you reassign him, Sully?”

“I guess I got the legal right, Parnell,” Sullivan said.

“Then do it.”

“Gus could kick up a lot of dust.”

“Do it anyway,” Flaherty said. “You want to get in a pissing contest with me, Gus?”

Gus didn’t speak but their eyes locked and Flaherty felt a jolt of fear. It startled him. He knew people were afraid of Gus, but he wasn’t, or he hadn’t thought he was. He hadn’t thought he was afraid of anyone. He raised his voice a little.

“If you do you’ll regret it, because I got the machinery, the troops, you understand, to blow you and the kid right out of the water. If I have to I can make the public think you two are personally responsible for everything since Sacco-Vanzetti. You think I can’t?”

“Don’t get shrill,” Gus said.

He put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. Then turned and walked out of the room. Chris stood and looked at Flaherty for a moment, and then went out after his father.

When Mary Alice came into her condo, Gus was there looking out Mary Alice’s window at East Cambridge across the river. A Nike gym bag stood, zipped and uncompromising, on the hassock in front of the leather chair in the living room.

Mary Alice looked at the gym bag and at Gus.

“Clean out your part of the closet?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Were you planning to leave a note, or just let me figure it out when I came home and found your clothes gone?”

“I waited for you,” Gus said.

“What a guy!”

Gus turned from the window.

“We don’t love each other, Mary Alice.”

“You’re so sure?”

“We like to fuck, and we’re friends. But...” Gus shrugged.

“Say it’s true. This is a news flash? You just discovered it?”

“No.”

“Then why now?” Mary Alice said. “Why today did you decide you had to move out because we don’t love each other?”

“You ever been in love?” Gus said.

“Who knows, Gus? Who the fuck knows?”

“You got a right to it, you know.”

Mary Alice stared at him.

“I got a right to it,” Gus said. “You and me, maybe we gave up on it too easy.”

“Or maybe you did,” Mary Alice said.

Gus shook his head.

“No, you’re not it, Mary Alice. You’re a nice woman, but... you’re not the one.”

They stood across the room from each other in silence. Mary Alice was standing very straight. She walked slowly to the dining alcove and put her purse on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and got out some single malt Scotch and poured a shot into a short, thick glass. She carried the glass back into the living room and leaned on the wall by the front door and folded her arms and took a small sip of the Scotch.

“So,” she said. “Who’s the one?”

Gus shook his head.

“Sure as hell isn’t Peggy,” Mary Alice said.

Gus shook his head again.

“Got anything to do with Flaherty firing Chris?”

Gus shrugged.

“I can’t prevent it,” Mary Alice said.

“I know,” Gus said. “I’m not blaming you. It’s just...”

Mary Alice sipped some more Scotch.

“It’s just what?” she said.

“I need a drink,” Gus said.

Mary Alice jerked her head toward the kitchen.

“You know where,” she said.

He went and mixed a strong Scotch and soda with a lot of ice in a tall glass. Even under duress he’d never liked it straight. He brought the drink back to the living room. Mary Alice hadn’t moved. He went back to the window and stared out at East Cambridge again.

“It’s just what?” Mary Alice said.

“It’s over,” Gus said.

“You and me?”

“Everything,” Gus said.

Mary Alice waited. He might talk or he might not. But she knew pressing him was useless.

The days had shortened. To Gus’s left, upriver, the sun was setting out of sight beyond his field of vision. Its low-slanted peach-colored light showed faintly on the river before he lost sight of it as it flowed under the Longfellow Bridge. There were a few white sailboats scattered on the wide, dark water where it backed up behind the dam.

“My life’s caught up with me,” Gus said. He made a sound which could have been a laugh. “And my old man’s life before that. Time to put it away.”

Mary Alice waited some more, but Gus didn’t say anything else. Finally Mary Alice spoke.

“Is there somebody else, Gus?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But there won’t be next week.”

“Gus,” Mary Alice said, “what are you talking about?”

Gus finished his drink in a long swallow and went to the kitchen and rinsed the glass and put it back in the cabinet over the sink. Then he came back in the living room, picked up the gym bag, and walked to the door.

“Good-bye, Mary Alice,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment and then turned her head away. He opened the door.

“I hope it works for you, Mary Alice. You’re a nice woman.”

Mary Alice didn’t speak or turn her head back. Gus went out and closed the door. Mary Alice stood silently with her arms crossed beside the door staring at nothing. Then she walked slowly into the kitchen and poured another shot of Scotch. She raised her full glass as if to give a toast.

“Well, Parnell,” she said aloud, “it looks like you and me.”

Then she drank some of the Scotch and walked slowly back to the living room, hugging herself.

They were heading west on the Mass Pike in Newton.

“Where are we going, Gus?” Tom Winslow said.

Gus didn’t answer. It was the start of the evening rush hour and the pike was thick with traffic heading for the western suburbs.

“I mean, Jesus, Gus. You got no right to just come along and tell me to get in the car. I’ve got banks to run. Laura and I have guests at home this evening. Sometimes you get carried away, you know, with being a policeman.”

Gus took the Route 30 exit.

“Why are we going here?” Tom said. “What on earth reason would you have to take me out here?”

Gus drove through Weston’s minimal downtown and turned right. They drove in silence for several minutes. Gus stopped the car in front of the inconspicuous gate in the tall bushes and took his car keys and got out. He opened the gate and got back in the car and drove in the narrow driveway and over the little bridge and parked in front of the cottage.