Harlan Coben - The Innocent

Screw the consequences, right?

He looked for Stephen McGrath's ghost. He often sat on the next bar stool. But Stephen was nowhere to be found tonight. Good.

Matt was not a good drinker. He knew that. He could not hold his liquor. He was already past buzzed and nearing inebriation. The key, of course, was knowing when to stop- maintaining the high without the aftermath. It was a line many people tried to find. It was a line most tripped over.

Tonight he really didn't care about the line.

"Another."

The word came out slurred. He could hear it. It was hostile too. The vodka was making him angry or, more likely, letting him be. He was actually hoping for trouble now, even while he feared it. The anger was making him focus. Or at least that was what he wanted to believe. His thinking was no longer muddled. He knew what he wanted. He wanted to hit someone. He wanted a physical confrontation. It didn't matter if he crushed someone or someone crushed him.

He didn't care.

Matt wondered about this- this taste for violence. About its origins. Maybe his old chum Detective Lance Banner was right. Prison changes you. You go in one guy, even if you're innocent, but you come out…

Detective Lance Banner.

The keeper of the Livingston gate, the dumb hick bastard.

Time passed. It was impossible to say how much. He eventually signaled for Mel to come over and total him up. When he hopped off the stool, the inside of Matt's skull screamed in protest. He grabbed the bar, got his bearings. "Later, Mel."

"Good seeing you, Matt."

He weaved his way out, one name ringing repeatedly in his head.

Detective Lance Banner.

Matt remembered an incident in second grade when he and Lance had both been seven. During a recess game of Four Squares- the dumbest game since Tetherball- Lance's pants had split. What made it worse, what made it one of those wholly horrifying childhood incidents, was that Lance had not worn underwear that day. A nickname had been born, one that Lance hadn't been able to shake until middle school: "Keep It in Your Pants, Lance."

Matt laughed out loud.

Then Lance's voice came back to him: "We have a nice neighborhood here."

"That so?" Matt said out loud. "Do all the kids wear underwear now, Lance?"

Matt laughed again at his own joke. The noise echoed in the tavern, but nobody looked up.

He pushed the door open. It was night now. He stumbled down the street, still cracking up at his own joke. His car was parked near his house. A couple of his quasi-neighbors stood near it, both drinking out of brown paper bags.

One of the two… homeless was the politically correct term they used nowadays, but these guys preferred the old standby winos, called out to him. "Yo, Matt."

"How are you, Lawrence?"

"Good, man." He held out the bag. "Need a swig?"

"Nah."

"Yo." Lawrence made a waving motion with his hand. "Looks like you been having your fill anyway, huh?"

Matt smiled. He reached into his pocket and peeled off a twenty. "You two get some of the good stuff. On me."

A broad smile broke out on Lawrence's face. "Matt, you's all right."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm very special."

Lawrence laughed at that one like it was a Richard Pryor special. Matt waved and walked away. He dug into his pocket and pulled out his car keys. He looked at the keys in his hand, at the car, and then he stopped.

He was plastered.

Matt was irrational right now. He was stupid. He'd love to beat the hell out of someone- Lance Banner being number two on his list (Charles Talley was number one, but Matt didn't know how to find him)- but he was not that stupid. He wouldn't drive in this condition.

Lawrence said, "Yo, Matt, you wanna hang with us?"

"Maybe later, guys."

Matt spun around and headed back toward Grove Street. The number 70 bus hit Livingston. He waited at the stop, swaying with the wind. He was the only one there. Most of the people were traveling from the other direction- exhausted domestics trudging back from the wealthier environs to their far more humble abodes.

Welcome to the flip side of the burbs.

When bus 70 pulled up, Matt watched the tired women descend, zombielike. Nobody spoke. Nobody smiled. Nobody was there to greet them.

The bus ride was maybe ten miles, but what a ten miles. You went from the decay of Newark and Irvington and suddenly it was like you hit another universe. The change happened in a snap. There was Maplewood and Milburn and Short Hills and finally Livingston. Matt thought again about distance, about geography, about the truly thinnest of lines.

Matt rested his head against the bus window, the vibration working like a strange massage. He thought about Stephen McGrath and that terrible night in Amherst, Massachusetts. He thought about his hands around Stephen's neck. He wondered how hard he squeezed. He wondered if he could have let go as they fell, if that would have made a difference. He wondered if maybe, just maybe, he gripped the neck even tighter.

He wondered about that a lot.

Matt got off at the circle on Route 10 and walked toward Livingston's favorite watering hole, the Landmark. The lot on Northfield Avenue was chock full of minivans. Matt sneered. No thin line here. This was not Mel's. This was a goddamn wussy bar, if ever he saw one. He pushed open the door.

Lance Banner would be here.

The Landmark was, of course, nothing like Mel's. It was brightly lit. It was loud. Outkast sang about roses smelling like boo-boo- safe ghetto music. There was no cracked vinyl, no peeling paint, no sawdust on the floor. The Heineken signs worked. So did the Budweiser clock, complete with moving Clydesdales. Very little hard liquor was being served. Pitchers of beer lined the tables. At least half the men were dressed in softball uniforms with various sponsors- Friendly's Ice Cream, Best Buy, Burrelle's Press Clipping- and enjoying a post-rec-league-game celebration with teammates and opponents alike. There was a smattering of college kids home on break from Princeton or Rutgers or- gasp- maybe Matt's almost alma mater, Bowdoin.

Matt stepped inside and when he did, nobody turned around. Not at first. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was boisterous and red-faced and healthy. Everyone talked at the same time. Everyone smiled and swore too casually and looked soft.

And then he saw his brother, Bernie.

Except, of course, it wasn't Bernie. Bernie was dead. But man, it looked like him. At least from the back. Matt and Bernie used to come here with fake IDs. They'd laugh and be boisterous and talk at the same time and swear too casually. They'd watch those other guys, the rec-league softball players, and listen to them talk about their kitchen additions, their careers, their kids, their boxes at Yankee Stadium, their experiences coaching Little League, the lamentations over their declining sex lives.

As Matt stood there, thinking about his brother, the energy of the place shifted. Someone recognized him. A ripple began. Murmurs followed and heads turned. Matt looked around for Lance Banner. He didn't see him. He spotted the table with the cops- you could just tell that was what they were- and recognized one of them as the cop-kid Lance had braced him with yesterday.

Still heavily under the influence, Matt tried to keep his walk steady. The cops gave their best laser glares as he approached. The glares didn't faze him. Matt had seen much worse. The table grew silent as he approached the cop-kid.

Matt stopped in front of him. The kid did not step back. Matt tried not to sway.

"Where's Lance?" Matt asked.

"Who wants to know?"

"Good one." Matt nodded. "Say, who writes your lines?"

"What?"

" 'Who wants to know?' That's funny stuff, really. I mean, I'm standing in front of you, I'm asking you directly, and you come up, bang, on the spot, no time to think, with, 'Who wants to know?' " Matt moved in closer. "I'm standing right here- so who the hell do you think wants to know?"