Dennis Lehane: Moonlight Mile

He said, “I know you got some rough friends and I know you’ve been in some serious scrapes, so you don’t scare easy.”

News to me. I was scared shitless. Pissed off, instinctively memorizing every detail I could about the two guys I could see, and thinking about ways to get the Latino’s pipe into my hands and straight up his ass-but scared out of my mind, just the same.

“Your first instinct is going to be to come after us, if we let you live.” He unwrapped a piece of bubble gum and popped it in his mouth.

If .

“Tadeo, give him a towel for his face.” The science teacher gave me a cocked eyebrow. “Yeah, I said his name. Know why, Patrick? Because you won’t come after us. You know why you won’t come after us?”

It would hurt too much to shake my head, so I simply said, “No.”

“Because we’re bad fucking guys and you’re a soft fucking guy. Maybe not once, but this isn’t ‘once.’ I hear your business went to shit because you started bailing on anything that smelled like a rough case. Understandable for a guy who got shot a bunch of times, almost bled out and shit. Still, the word’s out you don’t have the stones to do this at our level anymore. You’re not part of this life. And you don’t want to be.”

Tadeo came back from the kitchen area and put two paper towels in my hand. I fumbled for them, listing to my left, and he ran the end of the pipe along the side of my neck with a soft chuckle.

I snatched the pipe out of his hand and drove a foot into his knee at the same time. Tadeo fell backward and I came off the couch. The science teacher yelled, “Hey!” and pointed a pistol at me and I froze. Tadeo scrambled backward on his ass until he reached the wall. He stood, favoring his good leg. I remained frozen, the pipe in my hand, my arm cocked. Science Teacher lowered the gun as an indication I should lower the pipe. I gave him a tiny nod of agreement. Then I flicked my wrist. The pipe tomahawked across the room and hit Tadeo between his eyebrows. He let out a yelp and bounced off the wall. The gash above his nose opened and flooded his eyes. He took two steps toward the center of the room and then three more steps to the side. He took a few more steps and walked into the wall. He put his hands on the wall and gulped for air.

“Oops,” I said.

Science Teacher dug the gun barrel into my neck. “Sit,” he hissed, “the fuck down.”

The third guy came into the room now-huge, maybe six-four, three-eighty. He was breathing heavy, waddling.

“Take Tadeo upstairs,” the redhead said. “Put him in the shower, throw some cold water on him, see if he has a concussion.”

“How do I see if he has a concussion?” the big guy asked.

“Look into his eyes, I don’t fucking know. Ask him to count to ten.”

I asked, “Will you learn anything new if he can’t?”

“I told you to shut up.”

“No. You told me to sit the fuck down, and you’re already running out of options.”

The fat guy led Tadeo out of the room. Tadeo kept polishing the air in front of him, like a dog having a dream.

I lifted the paper towels off the floor. One side of them was clean, and I pressed that side to my face, came back with a red Rorschach test. “I’m going to need stitches.”

Science Teacher leaned forward on his bench, the gun pointed at my stomach. He had an open face with a light dusting of freckles the same color as his hair. His smile was bland and eager, like he was acting the community-theater role of someone who wanted to be helpful. “What makes you think you’re walking out of here?”

“Like I said, your option-clock is ticking down to nothing. There were people on the street when that guy boosted my bag. Someone’s already called the cops. The house next door isn’t occupied, but the house behind you is, you dumb shit, and there’s a good chance someone saw Tadeo pop me with the pipe. So whoever hired you to deliver whatever message you’re supposed to deliver, I’d get kinda peppy about delivering it.”

Science Teacher didn’t strike me as stupid. If he’d wanted to kill me, he would have put two in the back of my head when I’d been kneeling on the floor of the unfinished kitchen.

“Stay away from Helene McCready.” He squatted in front of me, the gun dangling between his thighs as he gazed up into my face. “You snoop around her or her kid, you ask any questions, I’ll bullet-fuck your entire life.”

“Gotcha,” I said with a nonchalance I didn’t feel.

“ You got a kid now, Patrick, a wife. A nice life. Go back to it and stay in it. And we’ll all forget this.”

He stood and stepped back as I made it to my feet. I walked into the kitchen and found the roll of paper towels on the floor. I pulled off a wad and pressed it to my face. He stood in the doorway, staring at me, the gun in his waistband. My own gun sat back in the desk at Duhamel-Standiford. Not that it would have done me any good after Tadeo hit me in the head with a pipe. Then they would have just taken the gun, and I’d be out a laptop, a laptop bag, and a gun.

I looked over at him. “I gotta go to an ER and get my face stitched up, but don’t worry, I don’t take it personally.”

“Gosh,” he said, “you promise?”

“You threatened my life, but I’m cool with that, too.”

“Darn white of you, too.” He blew a bubble and let it snap.

“But,” I said, “you stole my laptop and I really can’t afford to buy a new one. Don’t suppose you’d give that back to me?”

He shook his head. “Finders keepers.”

“I mean, that fucks me up, man, but I’m not going to turn it into something it ain’t. Because it’s just business. Right?”

“If it ain’t, ‘business’ will do until the right word shows up.”

I pulled the paper towels from my face. They were a mess. I folded them over and put the wad back to the side of my head for a minute, looked again at the redheaded science teacher standing in the doorway.

“So be it,” I said and dropped the red wad of paper towels on the floor, tore off a fresh batch, and let myself out of the house.

When we sat down to eat, Angie looked across the table at me with the same controlled fury she’d been wearing since she got a good look at my face, heard about my trip to the health center, and ascertained that I was, in fact, not going to die tonight.

“So,” she said, “let’s start at the beginning.” She speared a few pieces of lettuce. “Beatrice McCready finds you at JFK Station.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And she tells you her smutty sister-in-law misplaced her daughter again.”

“Helene’s smutty?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed.”

My wife smiled. Not the nice smile. The other one.

“Daddy?”

I looked over at our daughter, Gabriella. “Yeah, honey?”

“What’s smutty?”

“It’s like kooky,” I said, “only it rhymes with slutty.”

“What’s slutty?”

“It’s like ooky,” I said, “except it doesn’t rhyme with kooky. Why aren’t you eating your carrots?”

“You look funny.”

“I wear big bandages on my face every Thursday.”

“No suh.” Gabriella’s eyes grew wide and solemn. She had her mother’s big brown eyes. She also had her olive skin and wide mouth and dark hair. From me she’d gotten curls, a thin nose, and a love of silliness and wordplay.

“Why aren’t you eating your carrots?” I asked again.

“I don’t like carrots.”

“You did last week.”

“No suh.”

“Uh-huh.”

Angie put her fork down. “Don’t start this, the both of you. Do not.”

“No suh.”

“Uh-huh.”

“No suh.”