The Town: A Novel (47 page)

“What you need to do now,” he went on, “is turn your anger where it belongs—on them.” He knocked on the blotter of pictures. “With your help we can put these assholes away for a long time.”

She went into her sweatpants pocket and brought out a business card, handing it to him. The first thing Frawley noticed was the icon of the scales of justice printed in the lower-left corner.

“This is my lawyer,” Claire said. “If you want to talk to me again, you do it through her.”

Claire punched the
her
. Frawley read and reread the card, the saliva in his mouth turning bitter.

“Lucky,” he told her, slowly collecting his photographs from the desk blotter. “Lucky for you I don’t need you much anymore, or else this would get very unpleasant.” He took MacRay’s mug last, reviewing the cocksure face once more himself before returning it to the envelope. “Why didn’t I tell you you were being sweet-talked by the guy who kidnapped you? Because I needed to keep MacRay close. Because this is a federal criminal investigation, not fucking
Love Connection.
”

“You can go now.”

“Here’s the deal, Ms. Keesey. MacRay is going to come back to see you again.”

“No, he’s not—”

“And when he does,”
Frawley talked over her, “and when he does—any contact you have with him, any conversation
whatsoever,
you will report it to me. Either yourself or through your
lawyer
”—he flicked at the business card—“or else you will be looking at a criminal prosecution yourself. That is not a threat, that is a promise. This is a felony case I am investigating, and any unreported contact between yourself and the suspect will be prosecuted.”

He stood, pocketing her lawyer’s card, still pissed.

“You think you feel humiliated now? How about going on trial for aiding and abetting an armed felon? How about putting this whole affair out there for
the entire world to see? ‘Bank Manager Falls for Armed Robber’—how’s that sound? You like reading tabloids? Want to be in one?”

He stopped himself there, opening the French doors.

“Yeah, it’s rough, but you brought this on yourself. I can’t help you if you won’t let me. MacRay
will
come to you again. And when he does, you will tell me.”

W
HAT IT FEELS LIKE
, being underwater.

Krista was there, finally. Submerged. The Tap Downstairs a brick aquarium tank now, the bourbon in her system giving her gills.

Everything slower. Sounds reaching her late, stretched out so that she could mull them over or just let them pass her by. Life becoming fluid, languid. She reached her hand to the bar and met the resistance of the water, the push starting a ripple. Every movement began a current and left a wake. A twist of her head tipped the balance of the room, everything lifting then settling back into place again, the sounds lagging behind, a moment or two before finding her ears in their new position. One thing flowing beautifully into the next.

Alone at the bar in the center of the liquid universe.
Fuck you, Mrs. Joanie Magloan.
The former Joanie Lawler always used to love to say,
Shit, what you think, I’m gonna be one of those married girls who stops going out?
This was before she kissed the freckled frog prince Magloan and got turned magically into a housewife. Two nights ago Krista called her—
Sorry, Kris, can’t make it.
So tonight, Krista didn’t even bother trying her. S he’ll put in a call to her tomorrow—you bet—letting it slip out that she hit the Tap without her, because that was psychology. Making her think she’s missing out was what would get her ass in gear next time. Not Krista being the single girl, begging.

The music was a pleasant warble. No U2 without the Monsignor there tonight—her Pope, her grateful Pope. His cock crowed three times—so gratefully—each crow a stab of betrayal at Duggy, and now she couldn’t get him on the phone. Hiding away in the Forgotten Village, his Vatican City.

A dollar bill from her jeans pocket—her last. Undulating in her hand like a waving fern. Her shoes touched the floor, a swimmer walking across colored rocks on the bottom of the night-lit Tap aquarium, toward the wall of brick coral, the jukebox a treasure chest opening and releasing bubbles. Three bubbles for a dollar. She punched in the same code three times, The Cranberries, “Linger.”

Swimming back, she pretended to snub the guy who had been checking her out all evening.
So check this out,
she thought, moving slow, giving him the full view.

Splashy was always good for one on the house, but she liked to know she still had the power, especially now as she felt it starting to fade. They say the day your baby starts living is the day you start dying, and if they were right, then she had been wasting away for twenty-one months now.

Twenty-one months was the average life span (she remembered Duggy telling her this once—she remembered everything he told her) of a one-dollar bill in circulation. Fifties and hundreds, they lasted the longest.

I am wanted. I have currency.
She was a clean, firm bill, no longer quite so crisp, but still negotiable legal tender. Maybe not a C-note anymore, but definitely a fifty.

She regained her seat and waited for the ripples to subside and her vision to clear. He was stirring now. Hooking his Bud bottle by the neck and walking it over, pulled by the tide.

I am a fifty you want in your pocket.

The swell and sway of displacement as he mounted the empty stool to her right. Sitting open-legged, aggressive, waiting for her to look his way. His words swam to her.

“Seemed like we were having a bit of a staring contest over there.”

“Yeah?” said Krista, the word a soft bubble escaping from her mouth. She could tell immediately he wasn’t Town. She didn’t trust his face. A sea horse with barracuda eyes.

“I think I was winning,” he said.

She nodded. “I think you were.”

“This your song?”

It took a while for the music to reach her. “It’s mine. All mine.”

“Kind of sad, no?”

She finished her drink in front of him. “Only if you let it be.”

Like he was studying her. A little creepy, but she hung in there. The bourbon dose reached her gills and in rushed more equalizing water.

“One night at a bar,” he said, leaning closer, “this guy was going around to ladies telling them he was judging a Hugging Contest, and would they like to enter. And most of the time, believe it or not, they fell for it, and he would hold them and rub their backs, all smarmy and shit. I finally got so sick of watching this guy that I took him outside. I told him I was judging a Face-Punching Contest.”

Krista smiled, drifting. “Anyone tried that shit on me, I’d do the punching myself.”

He toasted her with his Bud, draining it, returning it empty on the bar. “Oh, by the way,” he said. “I’m here tonight judging a Fucking Contest.”

Water rushing around them, the undertow of the late hour washing bodies from the bar, Krista smiling, licking her lips.
Okay, sport.
“Why don’t you buy me a drink.”

He produced a twenty from his pocket and laid it Jackson-up on top of the bar.

Here I am,
she thought.
Here I float.

He ordered two of what she was having and hopefully didn’t catch the knowing wink Splashy gave her. The guy talked and he was all right. Cute guy, just not her type. Her type was Duggy. He was another in a long line of not-Duggys.

Something about kids, did he say? “I have a daughter.”

It was an excuse for him to look her over again. “That you gave birth to?” he said. “Yourself?”

“Twenty-one months ago.”

Only thing that bothered her was him not checking her hands for rings.
What, like there’s no way I could catch a husband?

Early on, he had said his name. She had missed it because it wasn’t Doug. He had nice, strong hands. The nice, strong hands ordered two more drinks.

He said something about the price of real estate in the Town. “I own,” she told him.

“You own your own condo?”

“My own
house,
” she said, his disbelief both annoying and flattering. “A triple. Left to me by my mother.”

“Wow. Just you?”

“That’s right.” It was easy, as well as nice, to pretend she had no brother.

“I have to ask. A woman with her own house. Sitting here with an ass making the rest of the barstools crazy with envy. What are you doing down here alone on a weeknight?”

She nodded Indian-like, like she had the answer but wasn’t telling. “Getting wet,” she said, dancing her drink on the waves. “Drifting with the tide.”

He toasted her. “Bon voyage.”

“You live in the yard, huh?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Always. What you doing down here? Slumming?”

“That’s right.”

“Looking for an easy pickup? A tasty little slice of Town pie?”

“Mostly just trying to do my job.”

“Your job? Oh, right. I forgot. The Fucking Contest.”

“Basically correct. I work for the FBI.”

She threw back her head, laughing, starting to like him more now. “That was the first good giggle I’ve had in a month.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re awright. Doesn’t mean I’m going home with you or anything. Don’t think I’m looking to do you on your balcony, cooing over the view.”

“I don’t have a balcony.”

“No? That’s too bad.”

“I’m in a shitty sublet, and out on my ass in like six weeks. A toast, Krista. Let’s drink to balconyless me.”

“Fair enough.” She figured she must have told him her name when—

“I don’t see your brother around tonight.”

“My brother?” Who is this guy? “You know Jem?”

“We bump into each other now and then.”

Thought he wasn’t Town. “I had a higher opinion of you.”

“You and Doug MacRay used to run around, right?”

Now she stared. “How you know Duggy?”

“We sorta work together.”

“Ah,” she says, feeling tested. “Demolition.”

A smirk in this guy’s eyes. “Nooo.”

Things changing now. Water temperature falling a few degrees. She tightened up, a reflex around people she didn’t know.

The guy pulled out one, two, three, four, five more twenties, stacking them on the bar. “You a pretty decent judge of size?”

“Depends,” she said. “Size of what?”

He held up a single twenty. “How big would you say this is?”

“If this is a bar game, I’m not much of a—”

“How long? Six inches? In your estimation. Over or under?”

She squinted. “Under.”

“Wrong. Six point one four inches exactly. Now the width.”

“You’re turning into kind of a weird guy.”

“The girth. Some claim it’s more important. Give a guess.”

She just looked at him.

“Two point six one inches. I know everything there is to know about money. Thickness of a bill? Point oh oh four three inches. Not much to excite you there. Weight? About one gram. That makes a twenty almost worth its weight in, say, dust.”

Staring at him now. Him staring at her. The water stopped dead.

“So how’s it work?” he said. “Bartender takes a call, gives you an address? You pick up a package at Point A, deliver it to Point B, and for that the Florist pays you a C? That right? Easy as A-B-C?”

Water starting to drain, the stopper pulled and that sucking sound going.

“You’re thinking about walking out on me,” he said. “See, it’s not that simple, though. I start waving this gold badge around”—he opened it on the bar next to the twenties, briefly—“lots of questions then, for you. So here’s how we’ll do. I’ll buy you another drink, and you and I will repair to the back of the room there, a table away from everyone, have a little talk.”

The door was near, but it was a long walk up those crooked rubber steps, and she didn’t have her land legs yet.
Don’t be stupid here.
“I don’t want another drink.”

He took her hand, gripping it, leaning in close. Smiling his government eyes. “Fine. We’ll do this right here, nice and intimate. Like lovers.” He pressed the five crumpled twenties into her hand like a wad of trash. “I’m paying you a C-note right now, to deliver a package to me. And that package is information.”

No need to bother looking around to see who might overhear them because all she was going to tell this asshole was to go fuck himself. “I don’t know—”

“You don’t know anything, sure. I understand. Only one problem with that. I
know
that you do know things, okay? A-B-C. That’s as simple as one two three. You and me.”

So cold once the water runs out. When the dry air attacks you like your conscience. She looked for Splashy’s help, but he was gone.

“I’m really not an asshole, all right?” the guy said, his hand squeezing her hand holding the cash. His humid cologne. “Lucky for you, I’m not the kind of cop who’s going to come down hard, threaten you with losing your daughter, talking foster homes and all that dreadful, dreadful shit. Not me.”

Her mind was shivering.

“And I don’t even care about your messengering for Fergie. Drug dealing, racketeering, criminal conspiracy—you’re just a cog in that machine. A go-between. But a good broom sweeps clean, and I’m riding a good broom here. A dynamite fucking broom. I’m not asking you to wear a wire. I’m not looking to
use
you like that,
endanger
you, no. I’m going totally positive on this. How many cars you own, Krista?”