Chapter 42
42
PATRICK
I don’t know what makes me finally wake up and smell the feckin’ coffee.
Maybe it’s pure exhaustion. Without Fiona’s body to sedate the goddamn brain squirrels, I haven’t slept more than two hours at a time in weeks.
Maybe it’s handing over my credit card for yet another week of staying at the hotel. I hate these four walls. My clothes are tangled on the floor of the closet. The cheap snacks I’ve pretended are meals tumble on top of the dresser. I’m sick of drinking Jameson out of a white plastic cup that looks like it’s made to hold piss samples at a doctor’s office.
Maybe it’s the report Cole Wolf has finally compiled, two weeks after I hired him. I drive down to DC to pick up the encrypted thumb drive he made because I won’t chance it to any courier. As he walks me through what he’s captured—thousands and thousands of phone records, computer files, and transcribed notes of in-person meetings—I wonder if Wolf ever sleeps.
Because he’s delivered proof that Aran Dowd is pure sin.
Sure, the feds have the fecker on Crash distribution. With enhanced sentencing for endangering the lives of minors, they can send him to prison for the rest of his natural life.
But Dowd is singing like Maria Von Trapp in the Austrian hills. He’s already handed over the Crew’s entire banking system—everything Fiona and I learned from Q, all the offshore accounts, all the crypto. The feds have access to every new deposit, to each withdrawal Dowd’s made “for the good of the clan.”
He’s given them the Old Colony’s structure too—Clan Chief and Warlord and Quartermaster, the brigades of sworn soldiers, and runners who are still being tested. The feds keep pressing for specific names; they have long lists of candidates. Dowd’s resistance is shredding like the roof of a thatched hut in the middle of a category five hurricane.
And the feds are leaning hard to get the same structure on every other clan in the country. Whenever Dowd gets cagy about his own crew, Michelangelo Barbieri switches to asking questions about the others.
I’m ready to boke when I finish going through all the garbage Wolf’s raked up. I thank him and I authorize a bank transfer into his account with more zeroes than I’ve ever spent in one place. At least my personal banking hasn’t been handed over to the feds. Yet.
When I get back to Philly, I place one call: To Doc Kelleher. He tells me to come by direct, and he gives me a month’s worth of meds from the stash in his office. He says he’ll email the drugstore up in Boston, get the scrip on record for the coming year.
I dry-swallow the pills on my way back to the hotel. It takes me five minutes to throw my things into bags. Fifteen to argue with the clerk at the front desk, asking for a refund for the rest of the week, the days I paid for yesterday. He can’t give me any satisfaction, but we agree to let the manager decide things overnight.
I spend the night in a Boston hotel room that’s a clone of the one I left in Philly. I can’t say I sleep well—my body still misses Fiona’s—but I wake feeling calmer than I have in weeks. More focused. Like I’m the one calling the shots instead of the feckin’ squirrels.
Must be the meds.
Showered and dressed, I’m ready to drive to one of the big box stores on the edge of town. I need a computer to handle all the data Wolf’s found because there’s no way to plug the encrypted drive into my phone. Once I have a decent machine, I can start the hard work of reading every page of evidence. Of building a case that will take down Aran Cocksucking Dowd forever.
But there’s one stop I need to make first. One part of my life that isn’t the mob, that has nothing to do with the Old Colony Crew.
The tables are already set up outside Yankee Roast. Three people are in line at the counter, taking their time choosing their breakfast treats. Hannah Mulroney is at the register, her young face breaking into easy smiles as she rings up each customer.
Kimi’s nowhere in sight.
When I get to the front of the line, I order a cup of drip coffee and a blueberry-corn muffin. I have my wallet ready, and I tip more than the total for my meal. Hannah’s already looking past me to the next customer when I ask, “Is Kimi in the back?”
Hannah stiffens for just a moment, like the sole of her shoe rolled over a sharp stone. Recovering quickly, she says, “Kimberly’s a little under the weather today.”
Today . I don’t believe her for a second. I think about my sister-in-law’s jaundiced face, her drawn cheeks beneath her tight-wrapped headscarf. “I hope she feels better soon,” I say, and I mean it .
When I pick up my computer, I’ll get a pad of paper too. A box of envelopes. Stamps if they sell them. I’ll write Kimi a note. I don’t have a return address to put on the letter, nothing to scare her off from opening it. She might get a few lines into my apology before she decides to throw it away.
I’m halfway to the door when Hannah calls out, “Excuse me!”
When I look back, she nods toward the counter that stretches across the shop’s front window. “If you have time to take a seat? I’ll just finish up here and…”
I don’t know what goes after and . But I take my coffee to one of the high stools while she finishes with the customers in line. I make the cup last, same as I do the muffin. I watch the traffic walking by outside the bakery.
It’s a beautiful late-July morning. The sun catches on a patch of cobblestones exposed beneath the asphalt street. The afternoon will be hot. People are already wearing shorts and T-shirts.
I want to see more days like this. I want to watch the summer turn to autumn, turn to winter, turn to spring. I want to breathe the city’s rhythms, from Red Sox to Patriots to Bruins, and back again to baseball. Somewhere, deep in my bones, my body knows I’m home.
“Freshen that up for you?” Hannah’s holding a carafe of coffee.
I hold out my mug.
“You’re my Uncle Pat, aren’t you?”
For one panicked moment, I want to deny it, but that’s absurd, because this is the entire reason I came here this morning. Fighting the urge to spread a hand over my tattooed sleeve, I say, “I am. I was married to your Aunt Jenn.”
Hannah nods. “There’s a picture of you on my mother’s mantel, from your wedding day. You look so young there.”
My lips twist in something that might be mistaken for a smile. “Time flies. ”
A faint blush spreads beneath the freckles on her cheeks. “I mean, you both looked so in love.”
“We were.”
She hooks a foot on the stool next to me, pulls it out, and sits down. “Mom’s not just out today. She’s back in the hospital. She had a bad reaction to her last round of chemo.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“I’ll be sure to tell her you asked after her.”
I stare into my coffee cup. “Maybe that’s not such a good idea. I don’t want to make anything more difficult for her.”
“Naw,” she says. “She’s tough. She can take it.”
“I hope so. I really hope so.” I take a napkin from the dispenser on the counter. I pat my pockets, but I don’t have a pen—I never do.
Hannah fishes one out of her apron. “Will this help?”
I scrawl my phone number on the paper. “If you need anything… You or your mom.”
She glances at the number as I hand it over with her pen. “Yeah,” she says. “Um, thanks.” For a moment, I worry that she thinks I’m making a pass. But her eyes have grown glassy, and she’s trying hard not to blink. The set of her shoulders tells me she’s changing the topic on purpose when she says, “Let me pack up a box of those tarts. Your wife seemed to like them.”
My wife…
I must look as confused as I feel, because Hannah’s voice takes on the sing-song tone of a kindergarten teacher, like she’s reminding me of something I forgot two decades ago. “The cherry tarts. She ate them the last time you were here.”
“How the f— hell do you know what my wife ate?” Hannah wasn’t even born when Jenn died.
“I gave them to her. After Mom made you sit outside. At first I was embarrassed that Mom made such a scene, but then I saw how cute you two are together?—”
“How cute…” I repeat, because I’m finally beginning to un derstand the confusion. Hannah isn’t talking about Jenn. She’s talking about Fiona. She thinks Fiona and I are married.
“Oh, crap,” Hannah says. “I’ve embarrassed you. What can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic. And when I see two people who pay that much attention to each other… You’re so… I don’t know. What’s the word? Attuned?”
“Fiona and me?”
Hannah glances at my hand, the one that’s gripping my coffee mug so tight the pottery might shatter. “Crap,” she says again. “You aren’t married yet.”
“There’s no yet . We’re just friends. We were friends.”
Her look is full of skepticism, like I’ve just told her I left my wallet at home and can’t afford to pay for the breakfast I’ve finished. “Right,” she finally says. “Whatever.”
I debate how much of an explanation I owe this woman because—however unlikely—I am her Uncle Pat. Before I can settle on an answer, my phone buzzes in my pocket.
My stomach registers the letters on the screen before my brain does, and I regret my second cup of coffee. I look around the bakery like I expect to find a hidden camera. Or maybe there’s a microphone taped beneath the counter.
Hannah glances at the screen and cracks up—a full belly laugh that crinkles her eyes and shows her teeth. “Go on and answer that,” she says. “I’ve got dishes to wash.”
I barely notice her walking back behind the counter. Instead, I’m busy clearing my throat. I’m fighting to draw a full breath. I’m telling myself to let the call go to voicemail.
But my hand doesn’t listen to my feckin’ brain. My finger lands heavily on the bright green icon. I raise the phone to my ear and try to sound normal as I say her name: “Fiona.”