Dennis Lehane - Moonlight Mile

“What’s racist about it? You’re Mexican, this is a Mexican standoff. It’d be like going Dutch with someone from Amsterdam. Now if, because I’m Irish, you accused me of having a small dick and being a drunk, that’s racist, but describing a standoff as a Mexican standoff as opposed to a plain old, you know, standoff, that seems a pretty victimless racial modification to me.”

“You’re stalling,” Kenny said.

“I’m giving everyone time to calm down.”

Helene came through the portico behind Kenny. She saw the three guns and took a big swallow, but kept coming into the dining room.

“Honey,” she said in a syrupy voice, “we just want the baby.”

“Don’t call me honey,” Amanda said.

“What should I call you?”

“Estranged.”

Kenny said to Helene, “Just get the baby.”

“Okay.”

Amanda raised her wrists so Kenny and Helene saw the cuffs. “Claire and me? We’re a package.”

Kenny’s face grew long and defeated. “Where are the keys?”

“Behind you in the handcuff-key jar.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “Really, Ken?”

“I can kill you,” Kenny said, “and just cut those cuffs off with a hacksaw.”

“If it was 1968 and this was Cool Hand Luke, maybe,” Amanda said. “You see any length of chain on these? You see anything you could cut?”

“Hey!” Helene yelled as if she were the voice of reason. “No one’s killing anyone.”

“Gosh, Moms,” Amanda said, “what exactly do you think Kirill Borzakov is going to do to me?”

“He won’t kill you,” Helene said, patting the air for effect. “He promised.”

“Oh, well, then,” I said to Amanda, “you’re fine.”

“Right?”

“Patrick,” Kenny said.

“Yeah?”

“You can’t win this. I mean, you’ve got to know that.”

“We just want the baby,” Helene said again.

“And that cross on the table,” Kenny said, noticing it for the first time. “Damn. Helene, pick that thing up, would ya?”

“Which?”

“The only Russian cross on the dining-room table.”

“Oh.”

As Helene reached for the cross, I noticed something odd in the pile of things Amanda had dumped from her leather bag-Dre’s key chain. I experienced what Bubba likes to call a disturbance in the Force, and I was so baffled I almost said something to Amanda right then, but Kenny snapped my attention back the other way by tapping the barrel of the shotgun against the wall.

“Lower your gun, Patrick. Seriously, man.”

I looked at Amanda, looked at the baby strapped to her chest and cuffed to her wrists. Claire hadn’t made a peep since the second cuff went on her. She just stared up at Amanda with what, in a self-aware being, could have been considered awe.

“The gun’s making me nervous too,” Amanda whispered. “And I don’t see how it helps us.”

I flicked the safety on and raised my hand, the gun dangling from my thumb.

“Take his gun, Helene.”

Helene came over and I handed her the gun and she placed it awkwardly in her handbag. She looked past me at Claire.

“Oh, she’s so pretty.” She looked back over her shoulder at Kenny. “You should see her, Ken. She’s got my eyes.”

No one said anything for a few seconds.

“How is it,” Kenny asked, “you’re allowed to vote and operate machinery?”

“ ’Cuz,” Helene said proudly, “this is America.”

Kenny closed and opened his eyes.

“Can I touch her?” Helene asked Amanda.

“I’d kinda prefer you didn’t.”

Helene reached out anyway and squeezed Claire’s cheek.

Claire began to cry.

“Great,” Kenny said. “We gotta listen to that all the way back to Boston.”

Amanda said, “Helene?”

“Yeah?”

“Could you do me a huge solid and grab that diaper bag and the little cooler of formula?”

“What’re you going to do with me?” I asked Kenny. “Tie me to a chair or shoot me?”

Kenny gave me a confused look. “Neither. The Russians want all of you.” He used three fingers to point at us. “And they’re paying by the pound.”

The only trailer park inside Boston city limits is on the West Roxbury-Dedham border, squeezed in between a restaurant and a car dealership on a strip of Route 1 that is otherwise zoned for commercial or industrial use. And yet, after decades of fighting off developers and buyout offers from the car dealership, the little trailer park that could remains pressed hard against a sluggish brown stretch of the Charles River. I’d always rooted for the place, taken a vicarious pride in the residents’ resilience to yet more commercial sprawl. It would break my heart someday to drive past it and see a McDonald’s or an Outback in its place. Then again, I doubted someone would take me to a McDonald’s to kill me, but it looked highly likely that I might breathe my last in a trailer park.

Kenny pulled off Route 1 onto the entrance roadway and drove us due east toward the river. He was, I’d learned, still pissed about his Hummer. He ranted about it for half the drive. How the cops had it impounded over in Southie and wouldn’t believe his story that it was stolen and he was probably going to have his parole revoked over it if they could prove he’d been anywhere near it that morning, but most of all, what really killed him, was that he’d loved that car.

“One,” I said, “I don’t know how anyone could love a Hummer.”

“Oh, I loved it, bitch.”

“Two,” I said, “why you beefing with me? I didn’t shoot your stupid-looking car. Yefim did.”

“You stole it, though.”

“But it’s not like I said, ‘Let me take it through the bullet wash.’ I was trying to find out where they were taking Sophie, and Yefim shot the shit out of your ugly car.”

“It’s not an ugly car.”

“It’s a hideous car,” Amanda said.

“It’s a pretty gay-looking car,” Tadeo chimed in. “You man enough to get away with it, though, Ken.”

Helene touched his arm. “I love it, honey.”

“All of you, please,” Kenny said, “shut the fuck up now.”

We drove in silence for the last forty minutes. Kenny was driving a late-’90s Chevy Suburban, which probably got the same mileage as the Hummer but somehow managed to be only half as ridiculous to behold. Amanda, the baby, and I sat in back with Tadeo between us. They’d tied my hands behind my back with a length of rope. It was a pretty uncomfortable way to sit for a two-hour drive, and I got a crick in my neck that worked its way down into my shoulders and would, I was sure, stay there for days. Sucks getting old.

We got off the Pike and drove south on 95 for ten miles before Kenny pulled off onto 109 and drove east another six miles, then turned right on Route 1, and took a right into the trailer park.

“How much they paying you for this?” I asked Kenny.

“How about my life? That’s a good one. Can you double it?”

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.” He looked in the rearview at her. “Amanda.”

“Yo, Ken.”

“I always thought you were a sweet kid, for what it’s worth.”

“I die fulfilled, then, Ken.”

Kenny snorted. “You’re what we’d call a pistol in my day.”

“I didn’t know they had pistols in your day.”

Tadeo laughed. “This bitch is cold.” He turned to her. “That’s a compliment.”

“Never had a doubt.”

We drove to the end of the main road. The trees and the river were the same light brown, and a riot of leaves salted with snow covered everything-the ground, the cars, the trailer roofs, the satellite dishes on top of the trailers, the tin carports. The sky was unblemished blue marble. A hawk flew in low over the river. The trailers sported wreaths and colored lights and the roof of one even sported a light display in the shape of Santa riding a golf cart, for some reason.