“And you, having worked your way through college in the freight business . . .” she said. “And that’s where you see yourself in ten years?”
“Huh? No, no, no. That where you see me?”
“Not at all.”
“I thought I’d get my master’s. I’m pretty sure I could secure some kind of financial aid, a grant, something. My grades were pretty stellar back in the day.”
“Stellar?” She chuckled. “You went to a state college.”
“Cold,” I said. “Still counts as stellar.”
“And what will my husband become in his second career?”
“I was thinking a teacher. History maybe.”
I waited for the sarcastic assessment, the playful dig. It didn’t come.
“You like that idea?” I asked her.
“I think you’d be great,” she said softly. “So what’ll you tell Duhamel-Standiford?”
“That this was my last lost cause.” A hawk glided low and fast over the water and never made a sound. “I’ll be waiting at the airport.”
“You just made my year,” she said.
“You made my life.”
After I hung up, I looked out at the river again. The light had changed while I’d been on the phone and now the water was copper. I perched the last remaining bullet on the end of my thumb. I peered at it for a bit, squinting until it looked like a tall tower built along the riverbank. Then I flicked my middle finger off the center of my thumb and fired it into the copper water.
“Merry Christmas,” Jeremy Dent said when his secretary put me through. “You done with your charity case?”
“I am,” I said.
“So we’ll see you the day after tomorrow.”
“Nah.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t want to work for you, Jeremy.”
“But you said you did.”
“Well, then, I guess I led you on,” I said. “Doesn’t feel good, does it?”
He was calling me a very bad name when I hung up on him.
At the southwestern tip of the trailer park, someone had arranged a few benches and potted plants to create a sitting area. I walked over to it and took a bench. It wasn’t the rear patio at The Breakers or anything, but it wasn’t bad. That’s where Amanda found me. She handed me the car keys and a small plastic bag filled with ice. “Pavel put your DVD players in the back.”
“That’s one considerate Mordovian hit man.” I placed the ice over the center of my palm.
Amanda sat on the bench to my right and looked out at the river.
I reached across and placed the Suburban keys on the bench beside her. “I’m not driving back to the Berkshires.”
“No? What about your Blu-Rays?”
“Keep ’em,” I said. “Have a high-def fest.”
She nodded. “Thanks. How’re you going to get home?”
“If memory serves,” I said, “there’s a bus station on Spring Street, the other side of Route 1. I’ll take it to Forest Hills, catch the T to Logan, meet my family.”
“That’s a sound plan.”
“You?”
“Me?” She shrugged. She looked out at the river again for a bit.
After the silence had gone on too long, I asked, “Where’s Claire?”
She cocked her head back toward the Suburban. “Sophie’s got her.”
“Helene and Tadeo?”
“Last I saw Yefim, he was trying to get Tadeo to fork over extra cash for a pair of Mavi jeans. Tadeo’s still shaking, he’s all, ‘Just give me the fucking Levi’s, man,’ but Yefim’s like, ‘Why you wear Levi’s, guy? I thought you were classy.’ ”
“Helene?”
“He gave her a sweet pair of Made Wells. Didn’t even charge her.”
“No, I meant—is she still puking?”
“She stopped about five minutes ago. Another ten minutes, she’ll be good for the car.”
I looked back over my shoulder at the trailer. It looked pale and innocuous against the brown water and the blue sky. Across the river stood an Irish restaurant. I could see patrons eating lunch, staring blankly out the windows, no idea what lay inside that trailer, awaiting the chain saw.
I said, “So, that was . . .”
She followed my gaze. Her eyes were wide with what I’d guess was residual shock. She might have thought she knew what it was going to be like in there, but she really hadn’t. A strange, fractured half-smile/half-frown tugged the corners of her mouth. “Yeah, right?”
“You ever see anyone die before?”
She nodded. “Timur and Zippo.”
“So you’re no stranger to violent death.”
“No expert, either, but I guess these young eyes have seen a few things.”
I zipped my coat up an inch and raised the collar as late December drifted off the river and snaked into the trailer park. “How’d those young eyes feel when they saw Dre blow up in front of them?”
She remained very still, bent forward just a bit, elbows resting on her knees. “It was the key chain, right?”
“It was the key chain, yeah.”
“The idea of him, dead or alive, carrying a picture of my daughter in his pocket? It just didn’t sit right with me.” She shrugged. “Oops.”
“And you knew the Acela’s schedule, I’m sure, when you threw the cross back over the tracks.”
She laughed. “Are you serious? Whatever you think happened in those woods, do you honestly believe people walk around all conscious of their motives all the time? Life’s a lot more sideways than that. I had an impulse. I threw the cross. His dumb ass chased it. He died.”
“But [_why _]did you throw the cross?”
“He was talking about quitting drinking so he could be the man I needed. It was gross. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I don’t need a man, so I just threw the damn cross.”
“Not bad for a story,” I said, “but it doesn’t answer the original question—why were we there in the first place? We weren’t trading anything for Sophie. Sophie wasn’t even in those woods that night.”
She remained unnaturally still. Eventually, she said, “Dre had to go. One way or the other, he’d served his purpose. If he’d just walked away, he’d still be alive.”
“You mean if he’d just walked away to anything but the path of a fucking Acela.”