He raised a finger caked with dark blood, and wagged it at me.
We won by a field goal.
As a guy who grew up as desperate to be a jock as any other guy in America, and one who still cancels most engagements on autumn Sunday afternoons, I suppose I should have been ecstatic at what would probably be my last taste of team sports, the thrill of conquest and the sexual intensity of battle. I should have felt like whooping, should have had tears in my eyes as I stood at midfield in the first football stadium ever built in this country, looked at the Greek columns and the rain boiling off the long planks of seating in the stands, smelled the last hint of winter dying in the April rain, the metallic odor of the rain itself, the lonely advance of evening in the cold purple sky.
But I didn’t feel any of that.
I felt like we were a bunch of foolish, pathetic men unwilling to accept our own aging and willing to break bones and tear the flesh of other men just so we could move a brown ball a couple of yards or feet or inches down a field.
And, also, looking along the sidelines at Remy Broussard as he poured a beer over his bloody finger, doused his torn lip with it, and accepted high-fives from his pals, I felt afraid.
“Tell me about him,” I said to Devin and Oscar, as we leaned against the bar.
“Broussard?”
“Yeah.”
Both teams had chosen to convene the postgame party at a bar on Western Avenue in Allston, about a half mile from the stadium. The bar was called the Boyne, after a river in Ireland that had snaked through the village where my mother grew up, lost her fisherman father and two brothers to the lethal liquid combination of whiskey and the sea.
It was excessively well-lit for an Irish bar, and the brightness was heightened by blond wood tables and light beige booths, a shiny blond bar. Most Irish bars are dark, steeped in mahogany and oak and black floors; in the darkness, I’ve always thought, lies the sense of intimacy my race feels is necessary to drink as heavily as we often do.
In the brightness of the Boyne, it was clear to see how the battle we’d just fought on the field had spilled over into the bar. The Homicide and Robbery guys stuck to the bar and the small high tables across from it. The Narco-Vice-CAC cops took over the rear of the place, draped themselves over the backs of booths, and stood in packs near the tiny stage by the fire exit, talking so loudly that the three-piece Irish band quit playing after four songs.
I have no idea how the management felt about the fifty bloody men who’d piled into the sparsely populated bar, if they had a team of extra bouncers waiting in the kitchen and a Def-Con alert called into the Brighton P.D., but they were definitely pulling down a profit, pouring beers and shots nonstop, trying to keep abreast of the calls for more coming from the rear of the bar, sending barbacks to wade through the men and sweep up the broken bottles and overturned ashtrays.
Broussard and John Corkery held court in the back, their voices rising loudly in toasts to the prowess of the DoRights, Broussard alternating a napkin and a cold beer bottle against his damaged lip.
“Thought you guys were buddies,” Oscar said. “What, your moms won’t let you play together anymore, or’d you have a spat?”
“The moms thing,” I said.
“Great cop,” Devin said. “Bit of a showboat, but all those Narco-Vice guys are.”
“But Broussard’s CAC. Hell, he’s not even that anymore. He’s Motor Pool.”
“CAC was recent,” Devin said. “Last two years or so. Before that he did like a nickel in Vice, a nickel in Narco.”
“More than that.” Oscar belched. “We came out of Housing together, did a year in uniform each, and he went into Vice, I went into Violent Crimes. That was ’eighty-three.”
Remy’s head turned away from two of his men as they each chatted in his ear, and he looked across the bar at Oscar and Devin and me. He raised his beer bottle, tilted his head.
We raised ours.
He smiled, kept his eyes on us for a minute, then turned back to his men.
“Once Vice, always Vice,” Devin said. “Those fucking guys.”
“We’ll get ’em next year,” Oscar said.
“Won’t be the same guys,” Devin said bitterly. “Broussard’s packing it in, so’s Vreeman. Corkery hits his thirty in January, heard he’s already bought the place in Arizona.”
I nudged his elbow. “What about you? You gotta be close to thirty in.”
He snorted. “I’m going to retire? To what?” He shook his head, threw back a shot of Wild Turkey.
“Only way we’re leaving the job is on stretchers,” Oscar said, and he and Devin clinked their pint glasses.
“Why the interest in Broussard?” Devin said. “Thought you two were bonded in blood after Trett’s house.” He turned his head, slapped my shoulder with the back of his hand. “Which, by the way, was a righteous piece of work.”
I ignored the compliment. “Broussard just interests me.”
Oscar said, “That why he slapped a water bottle out of your hand?”
I looked at Oscar. I’d been pretty sure Broussard had blocked the move with his body.
“You saw that?”
Oscar nodded his huge head. “Saw the look he gave you after he clotheslined Rog Doleman, too.”
Devin said, “And I can see how he keeps looking over here while we talk so friendly and casually.”
One of the Johns nudged his way between us, called out for two pitchers and three shots of Beam. He looked down at me, his elbow all but resting on my shoulder, then at Devin and Oscar.
“How’s it going, boys?”
“Fuck you, Pasquale,” Devin said.
Pasquale laughed. “I know you mean that in the most loving way.”
“But of course,” Devin said.
Pasquale chuckled to himself as the bartender brought the pitchers of beer. I leaned out of the way as Pasquale passed them back to John Lawn. He turned back to the bar, waited for his shots, drummed the bar with his fingers.
“You guys hear what our buddy Kenzie did in the Trett house?” He winked at me.
“Some of it,” Oscar said.
Pasquale said, “Roberta Trett, I hear, had Kenzie dead to rights in the kitchen. But Kenzie ducked and Roberta shot her own husband in the face instead.”
“Nice ducking,” Devin said.
Pasquale received his shots, tossed some cash down on the bar. “He’s a good ducker,” he said, and his elbow grazed my ear as he pulled his shots off the bar. He caught my eye as he turned. “That’s more luck than talent, though. Ducking. Don’t you think?” He turned so that his back was to Oscar and Devin, his eyes locked with mine as he threw back one of the shots. “And the thing about luck, man, it always runs out.”