All Our Yesterdays (23 page)

“I’m worth shit,” Gus said. “Just like my old man, two generations of fucking bog-trotting Paddies, married to the wrong broad. Hired muscle, rattling doorknobs and busting heads, working for the Yankee dollar.”

“Gus!”

“Going nowhere, worth nothing. Married to a hysterical fucking cow. No, he’s the one. My son. Break the chain. Be something decent. Have some land. Dogs.”

The image was there again. The hunting dogs coursing the meadow, barking excitedly, rolling over each other in play, looking back up the hill at him. And beyond them the dark river with the sun glinting off it.

“Gus, don’t say things like that. You’re a successful man. You’re a police captain. Homicide commander. You make good money.”

“Better than you know,” Gus said into the black void behind his closed eyes.

Mary Alice stopped rubbing his neck. She sat upright and stared down at his face.

“Are you on the take?” she said softly.

He didn’t speak or move. He sat with his eyes closed and his face expressionless.

“Are you, Gus?” she said.

He was still. She didn’t ask again. He drank. She sipped her wine. Then she put her hand back down and began to rub his neck again.

“You asked me if I had rules,” he said.

She nodded.

“The kid is my rules. He’s what I stand for. He’s all I believe in. You understand? Him only, nothing else.”

“Not even me, Gus?” Mary Alice said. “A little bit?”

He opened his eyes then and stared up at her.

“I like you, Mary Alice,” he said, “and I don’t lie to you. Settle for that.”

She took his glass and put it on the floor and slid onto his lap and kissed him. Her mouth opened. Her tongue moved insistently. He opened his mouth to hers, allowed her tongue in. His arms were around her loosely. She put hers around his neck and twisted herself against him, her back arching, her thighs sprawled openly across him. She took one of his hands and placed it between her thighs.

“Jeans are kind of tough,” Gus said softly.

“You could take them off,” she said with her mouth against his.

“I may be getting a little long in the tooth for fucking in chairs too,” Gus said.

Mary Alice giggled.

“I’m not thinking about the length of your tooth,” she said, and stood up in a quick fluid movement. She stepped out of high heels, unzipped her jeans, and slid them down her thighs. She used one foot to step herself out of the jeans. Gus looked at her from the chair as she thought he looked at everything. His face was
nearly empty, touched only with a hint of amusement, or contempt, she never knew which, and if it was contempt, she was never sure for whom. His eyes ran slowly over her body, looked at her breasts, which were still good, she knew, and down the slope of her stomach, which had softened a little, but not too much. She put her hands on her hips and stared back at him, and for a moment there was no sound, and no movement in the room, as if the two of them were locked in this fierce tableau.

Then he smiled and said, “You still look good, Mary Alice.”

And he stood and put her suddenly on her back on the floor, and made love to her without removing his clothes. As always, she was noisy: moaning, and talking, wildly antic through every experienced ritual of foreplay and culmination. As always, he was silent: focused and skillful until the moment of ejaculation, when he buried his face against her neck and clung to her savagely while the spasms passed. Sometimes when he did that she thought he might be crying, but there were never tears, and when it was over his eyes were always dry.

They lay beside each other on the floor. Her head rested on his arm. She rolled her head toward him.

“Is it like this when you fuck Peggy, Gus?”

He didn’t answer for a time, staring up at the smooth white ceiling.
Plasterboard skim coated
, he thought.
You don’t see an actual plastered ceiling much anymore
. Then he rolled his head over and met her eyes.

“I don’t fuck Peggy,” he said.

“Y
ou don’t fuck her, Gus?”

He was sitting at her kitchen table while she cooked some eggs. She had put her shirt back on, and buttoned it up. The tails of it hung to her thighs. He drank some Scotch. The pleasure was gone from it. He no longer felt good, but he knew he’d feel worse if he stopped. Now he just had the heavy feeling, and the hard need not to let it go.

“No,” Gus said.

“Never?” she said.

Mary Alice tilted the pan and pried the edge of her omelet so that the still-runny center would cook. Gus smiled.

“Hardly ever,” he said.

“Jesus, Gus. That’s no marriage.”

“What the hell do you know about marriage?” he said.

“I had a lousy one,” Mary Alice said. She dropped some mushrooms into the center of her omelet and folded it over. “I know one when I see it.”

Gus shrugged.

“Do you ever want to?” Mary Alice said.

“Fuck Peggy?” Gus made a brusque laugh. “Why would I want to do that?”

“Lot of husbands and wives like to do it,” Mary Alice said. She slid the omelet onto a platter and put the toast in. “You want coffee?”

Gus shook his head. Mary Alice put out some jam and a bottle of ketchup, and served her omelet, cut in two, on two plates. The toast popped. She buttered it and put it on a plate between them. Then she poured herself some more white wine and sat down to eat. Gus drank some Scotch and soda. He was mixing them very dark now.

“She can’t cook for shit either,” he said.

Mary Alice was quiet. Gus poured some ketchup on his omelet. He took a bite and chewed it silently, and drank some more Scotch.

“She used to have a tight little body,” he said. “And she was lively and cute, and chatty. I was kind of proud of her. She never liked sex that I could tell, but she let me because it was, you know, Catholic stuff. Wifely duty, and having a baby. All that shit. And then after Chris was born it was like, well, that’s done. And she didn’t want to do it anymore. Birth control was sinful and she had a tipped womb and her back hurt. And taking care of Chris made her exhausted. Truth is when I married her she was a cute little girl and she never got to be more than that. Except now she’s not cute.”

Gus drank the rest of his Scotch and went for more. Mary Alice sat very still. Gus rarely talked to her about anything.

“Bad back was a godsend to her,” Gus said. “Now she wedges herself into her fucking corset and straps herself in … like body armor … fucking chastity belt.”

He brought the Scotch back and sat down with it and looked at her hard across the table. There was always that hard edge in Gus, always something a little frightening, a little exciting.

“And she got fat,” he said. When he was drunk his speech slowed down, but he never seemed to slur. “A lovely sight in her corset.”

He took a drink.

“And when she takes it off you can see the grooves it made in her fat. Course, you don’t see her that much with it off, ’cause she dresses and undresses in the closet.”

He drank again and stared into the glass while he swallowed.

“We got twin beds now.”

He drank again and stared at the wall past her head for a long time. It was an empty wall, no pictures, nothing to decorate it. Mary Alice sipped her wine, and finished her omelet. Gus’s omelet cooled on his plate with only a bite gone.

“Why’d you marry her, Gus?”

“Better than daily Mass with my mother…. And, I wanted a kid. I was all my old man ever cared about. Which wasn’t much.”

“Why do you stay with her, Gus?”

“After Chris? I left her, she’d have got the kid,” he said. His gaze stayed on the wall.

“Maybe not,” Mary Alice said.

“We’re Irish,” Gus said. “And Catholic. She’d have got the kid.”

“What about now?”

Gus shrugged.

“Too late,” he said.

And he stared at the blank wall as if it would stay confusion.

G
irl Scout Troop 3 from Abington was just filing through the gate to see
Old Ironsides
when they heard the firecrackers. A man came running toward them from the direction of the Mystic River Bridge, and then a car came, going too fast, weaving among the orange-striped plastic barrels that marked the construction way, and there were more firecracker sounds and the man fell sprawling forward and they all heard Mrs. Simpson, who was in charge of them, say, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” And the car pulled away and the man didn’t move where he had fallen and it seemed very quiet. Then someone noticed that Debbie Mc-Bride had fallen down too. And she didn’t get up either, and Mrs. Simpson ran over to her and looked at her and they all heard her say, “Jesus.” And a cop came running from down by the museum and in a while there were ambulances, and police cars, and more policemen than there even were in Abington. And through it all the man in the street and Debbie McBride both lay very still, and didn’t move.

“A
fucking Girl Scout,” Parnell Flaherty said to Mary Alice Burke. “An Irish Catholic fucking Girl Scout from the suburbs.”

He was walking back and forth in his office in front of the window that looked down on Quincy Market.

“I knew it would happen. I knew those assholes would shoot a civilian.”

“It could be worse,” Mary Alice said.

“Sure,” Flaherty said. “It coulda been the pope, from fucking Rome.”

“She didn’t die,” Mary Alice said.

She was leaning her hips against the edge of Flaherty’s big conference table behind the couch. She had on a black silk suit with a short skirt, a cardigan jacket, and a man-tailored white shirt, open at the throat. There was a rope of pearls around her neck.

“Isn’t that swell?” Flaherty said. “The plucky little dear can tell her story over and over again. And we can see pictures of her in her cute little hospital bed and hear her cute little interviews on the six o’clock news and the eleven o’clock news, and the noon news and the sunrise edition of eye-opener news. They killed her we’d have had to get through the funeral and then it would have been over.”

Mary Alice smiled. “Mister Warm,” she said.

Flaherty tossed his head.

“Winslow has been killing me on crime in the streets. This is going to feed him for a year.”

“Maybe it’s done,” Mary Alice said.

“The O’Briens and the Malloys?” Flaherty shook his head. “Gus says it’s a blood feud.”

“So it could happen again.”

“And again,” Flaherty said. “And again. They don’t give a shit.”

He turned and stared down at the Marketplace.

“Crime Wave Sweeps Hub,” he said. “Fear Grips City.”

“Any intelligent voter will know it’s not your fault,” Mary Alice said.

Flaherty turned from the window and looked at her with his arms folded across his chest.

“Yeah, sure. Both of them,” he said.

“So what can you do?” Mary Alice said.

“The electorate doesn’t like it when you do nothing,” Flaherty said. “Even if nothing is the thing to do. They like action. Even if it’s the wrong action.”

“Granted.”

“So we do something,” Flaherty said. He continued to stare at her, arms folded, motionless against the cityscape below his window. Mary Alice assumed he was posing, as he often did. “You got any ideas?”

Mary Alice raised her eyebrows.

“You’re a smart broad, Mary Alice,” Flaherty said. “I’m interested in what you got to say.”

Mary Alice pursed her lips and was silent for a moment while Flaherty kept his pose in front of the window and waited.

“You need a special prosecutor, or investigator, or commissioner, or whatever you decide finally to call it. Somebody appointed by you personally to bring a
stop to this deadly gang war that threatens the very fabric of urban civility.”

“Urban civility,” Flaherty said.

He began to walk again, arms still folded, pacing back and forth in front of his window.

“Urban civility,” he said again, as he walked.

Mary Alice waited. Flaherty had his head down as he paced. His eyes were nearly closed.

“So who?” he said.

Mary Alice took in a deep breath and said, “Chris Sheridan.”

Flaherty froze in midstride. His eyes slitted, his arms folded, his head down, he stood absolutely still while Mary Alice listened to the tick of the big old Seth Thomas clock on Flaherty’s desk. Then he slowly straightened and turned his head toward her, his eyes wide open now.

“Gus Sheridan’s kid.”

Mary Alice nodded.

“He’s a lawyer,” she said. “A nationally known criminologist, son of a cop.”

“And he goes out with Cabot Winslow’s sister,” Flaherty said.

Mary Alice smiled.

“Would he do it?” Flaherty said.

“I don’t know.”

“You been fucking Gus for ten years,” Flaherty said. “You must know something.”

“I didn’t know it was common knowledge,” Mary Alice said.

“It’s not. I know it. I know a lot of things. Would he do it?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never even met him.”

Flaherty nodded.

“What do you think Gus’s reaction would be?”

Mary Alice shrugged.

“He loves the kid,” she said. “I know that.”

Flaherty started to pace again.

“You think Gus cuts any corners?” he said.

“I’m not here to talk about Gus,” Mary Alice said.

“Sure,” Flaherty said.

Flaherty walked back and forth. The Seth Thomas clock ticked.

“Gus is a handful,” Flaherty said. “You understand him?”

“No.”

“Don’t want him for an enemy.”

“He’s not likely to be your enemy if his kid’s on your side,” Mary Alice said.

Flaherty nodded.

“How about you, Mary Alice? You got something going? You got some motive here?”

Mary Alice smiled and shook her head without speaking.

Flaherty tossed his head again and laughed.

“Course you do. Everybody does.”

Mary Alice remained quiet. Flaherty slapped his hands against his thighs to some internal rhythm for a moment. Then he smiled.

“Let’s get Chris Sheridan in here,” he said, “and offer him the job.”