Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

I was beginning to wonder, as I sat up on the roof every night and fought off sleep while I watched him do nothing upon nothing, if maybe he was on to us. Knew we’d discovered who he was. It seemed unlikely, but still, all it would have taken was a casual anecdote from the postman I’d run into on the street. Hey, Scott, some guy thought you were his old college roommate, but I set him straight.

One night, Scott Pearse walked to his window. He sipped some scotch. He stared down at the street. He raised his head and looked directly at me. But it wasn’t me he was looking at. In a room bathed in track lighting, with the dark night outside his window forming a slate wall before him, all he’d be able to see would be his own reflection.

He must have been fascinated with it, though, because he stared in my direction for a long time. Then he raised his glass, as if in a toast. And smiled.

We moved Vanessa at night, took her out via the service elevator and along a maintenance corridor, out through a back door into the alley behind her building, and drove her away in Bubba’s van. Vanessa, unlike most women if they’d just climbed into a van and found Bubba in back with them, didn’t blink several times or gasp or move as far away as possible. She sat on the bench that ran from behind the driver’s seat to the rear doors and lit a cigarette.

“Ruprecht Rogowski,” she said. “Right?”

Bubba stifled a yawn with his fist. “No one calls me Ruprecht.”

She held up a hand as Angie pulled the van out of the alley. “My mistake. It’s Bubba, then?”

Bubba nodded.

“What’s your stake in all this, Bubba?”

“Guy killed a dog. I like dogs.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Let me ask you-you got a problem spending time with a mental defective who’s got what they call ‘antisocial tendencies’?”

She smiled. “You are aware what it is I do for a living?”

“Sure,” Bubba said. “You got my buddy Nelson Ferrare off.”

“How is Mr. Ferrare?”

“Same old,” Bubba said.

Nelson, as they spoke, was in fact taking my place on the rooftop across from Scott Pearse’s place. He’d just returned from Atlantic City, where he’d fallen in love with a cocktail waitress who’d loved him back until he ran out of money. Now he was back in town, willing to do anything for a little cash and a chance to go back to his cocktail waitress and run out of money again.

“Does he still fall in love with every woman he sees?” Vanessa asked.

“Pretty much.” Bubba rubbed his chin. “So we’re clear, sister, here’s the deal: I’m going to stick to you like crabs.”

“Like crabs,” Vanessa said. “How appealing.”

“You’ll sleep at my place,” Bubba said, “eat with me, drink with me, and I’ll be with you in court. Till the mailman goes down, you’re never out of my sight. Get used to it.”

“Can’t wait,” Vanessa said, then shifted on the bench. “Patrick?”

I turned fully in the captain’s chair, looked over at her. “Yeah?”

“You’ve decided not to guard my body?”

“We have a past relationship. That means I’m compromised emotionally. Makes me the worst choice for the job.”

She looked at the back of Angie’s head as Angie turned onto Storrow Drive. “Compromised,” she said. “Sure.”

“Scott Pearse,” Devin said the next night at Nash’s Pub on Dorchester Avenue, “was born in the Philippines to military parents stationed in Subic Bay. Grew up all over the globe.” He opened his notebook, leafed through it until he found the correct page. “West Germany, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Cuba, Alaska, Georgia, and finally, Kansas.”

“Kansas?” Angie said. “Not Missouri.”

“Kansas,” Devin repeated.

Devin’s partner, Oscar Lee, said, “Surrender, Dorothy. Surrender.”

Angie narrowed her eyes at him, shook her head.

Oscar shrugged, picked his dead cigar out of the ashtray and relit it.

“Father was a colonel,” Devin said. “Colonel Ryan Pearse of Army Intelligence, designation classified.” He looked at Oscar. “But we got friends.”

Oscar looked at me and jerked his cigar back at his partner. “Notice White Boy always says ‘we’ when he talks about me and my sources?”

“It’s a race thing,” Devin assured us.

Oscar tapped some ash off his cigar. “Colonel Pearse was Psych Ops.”

“Which?” Angie said.

“Psychological Operations,” Oscar said. “Kind of guy gets paid to think up new ways to torture the enemy, spread disinformation, generally fuck with your head.”

“Was Scott his only son?”

“You betcha,” Devin said. “Mother divorced the father when the son was eight, moved to some shitty subsidized housing in Lawrence. Restraining orders against the father follow. She drags his ass into court a few times, and here’s where it gets fun. She claims the father is using psych ops against her , fucking with her mind, trying to make everyone think she was crazy. But she’s got no proof. Father gets the restraining orders dropped eventually, gains bimonthly visitation rights with the kid, and one day the kid comes home when he’s, like, eleven to find Mommy sitting on the living room couch with her wrists cut open.”

“Suicide,” Angie said.

“Yup,” Oscar said. “Kid goes to live with the father on base, joins Special Forces when he turns eighteen, gets an HD after-”

“A what?”

“An honorable discharge,” Oscar said, “after serving in Panama during that five-minute conflict over there in late ’89. And this made me curious.”

“Why?”

“Well,” Oscar said, “these Special Forces guys, they’re career soldiers. They don’t just do a couple of years and muster out like regular grunts. They’re after Langley or the Pentagon. Plus, Pearse should have come back from Panama in the catbird seat: He had honest-to-God battle time now. He should have been it , you know?”

“But?” Angie said.

“But he wasn’t,” Oscar said. “So I called another of my buddies”-he shot a look at Devin-“and he did some digging and essentially your boy, Pearse, got shitcanned.”

“For what?”

“Lieutenant Pearse’s unit, under his immediate command, hit the wrong target. He was almost court-martialed because he gave the orders. In the end, he knew some brass with pull because he and his unit escaped with the military equivalent of a severance package. They walked with HD’s, but no Pentagon, no Langley for those boys.”

“What target?” Angie said.

“They were supposed to hit a building allegedly housing members of Noriega’s secret police. Instead they went two doors down.”

“And?”

“Wasted a whorehouse at six in the morning. Sprayed everyone inside. Two johns, both Panamanian, and five prostitutes. Your boy then allegedly walked through the room and bayonetted all the female corpses before they torched the place. That’s just rumor, mind you, but that’s what my source remembers hearing.”

“And the army,” Angie said, “never prosecuted.”

Oscar looked at her like she was drunk. “It was Panama. Remember? Killed nine times as many civilians as military personnel? All to capture a drug dealer with former ties to the CIA during the administration of a president who used to run the CIA. This shit was fishy enough without calling attention to your mistakes. The rule of combat’s simple-if there are photographs or members of the press in attendance? You broke it, you buy it. But if not, and you cap the wrong guy or guys or village?” He shrugged. “Shit happens. Set the torches and march double-time.”

“Five women,” Angie said.

“Oh, he didn’t kill ’em all,” Oscar said. “The whole squad went in there and unloaded. Nine guys firing ten rounds a second.”