I’d spent weeks standing by while people like Evandro and his partner and Hardiman and Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy wreaked violence on innocents for fun. Because they enjoyed the pain of others. Because they could.
And suddenly I wasn’t just angry at Jack or Kevin or Hardiman, I was furious at every person who practiced violence willingly. People who blew up abortion clinics and bombed airliners and butchered families and gassed subway tunnels and executed hostages and killed women who looked like women who’d spurned them in the past.
In the name of their pain. Or their principles. Or their profit.
Well, I was sick of their violence and their hate and my own codes of decency, which may have cost people their lives in the last month. Sick to fucking death of it all.
Jack was staring up at me defiantly and I could feel blood roaring in my ears and still hear Kevin hissing in pain through clenched teeth beside me. I met Bubba’s eyes and saw a gleam in them and it invigorated me.
I felt omnipotent.
I kept my eyes on Jack and pulled out my gun and rammed the butt into Kevin’s gritted teeth.
The shriek he sent out into the atmosphere was one of complete disbelief and sudden, utter fear.
I grabbed his hair in my hand, my eyes still on Jack, and the hair felt slick and oily between my fingers as I rammed the barrel into his temple and cocked the hammer.
“You have any feelings for this guy, Jack, talk.”
Jack looked at Kevin and I could see it pained him. I was once again surprised by the bonds that could exist between two people who knew so little about love.
Jack’s mouth opened and he looked so, so old.
“You got five seconds, Jack. One. Two. Three…”
Kevin moaned and his broken teeth rattled against the wire in his mouth.
“Four.”
“Your father,” Jack said quietly, “burned Rugglestone from head to toe over the course of four hours.”
“I know that. Who else was there?”
His mouth opened wide again and he looked at Kevin.
“Who else, Jack? Or I start counting again. From four.”
“All of us. Timpson. Kev’s mother. Diedre Rider. Burns. Climstich. Me.”
“What happened?”
“We found Hardiman and Rugglestone hiding out in that warehouse. We’d been looking for the van all night and that morning, we found it right in our neighborhood.” Jack licked his upper lip with a tongue so pale it was almost white. “Your father came up with the idea of tying Hardiman to a chair and making him watch while we did Rugglestone. At first, we were just going to take a few shots each, then work on Hardiman, then call in the police.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I don’t know. Something happened to us in there. Your father found a box hidden under the floorboards. The box was inside a cooler. There were body parts in it.” He looked at me wildly. “Body parts. Of kids. Adults, too, but, Jesus, there was a child’s foot in there, Kenzie. Still in a small red sneaker with blue polka-dots. Christ. We saw that and we lost it. That’s when your father got the gasoline. That’s when we started using the ice picks and razor blades.”
I waved my hand at him because I didn’t feel like hearing any more about the good citizens of EEPA and their systematic torture-killing of Charles Rugglestone.
“Who’s doing Hardiman’s killing for him now?”
Jack looked confused. “What’s-his-name. Arujo. The guy your partner killed last night. Right?”
“Arujo had a partner. You know who it is, Jack?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t. Kenzie, we made a mistake. We let Hardiman live, but—”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why’d you let him live?”
“Because it was our only way out once G busted us. That was the deal he made with us.”
“G? What the hell are you talking about?”
He sighed. “We got caught, Patrick. Standing around Rugglestone watching his body go up in flames with blood all over our clothes.”
“Who caught you?”
“G. I told you.”
“Who’s G, Jack?”
He frowned. “Gerry Glynn, Kenzie.”
I felt light-headed suddenly, as if I’d just tried to smoke another cigarette.
“And he didn’t arrest you?” I asked Jack.
Jack nodded slightly. “He said it was understandable. He said most people would do the same.”
“Gerry said this?”
“Who the fuck am I talking about? Yeah. Gerry. He made sure each one of us knew what we owed him, and then he sent us on our way and arrested Alec Hardiman.”
“What do you mean, you owed him?”
“We owed him. Favors, shit like that, for the rest of our lives. Your father pulled strings and got him the zoning and the liquor license for his bar. I got him some creative financing. Other people did other things. We were forbidden to talk with each other, so I have no idea who gave him what outside of me and your old man.”
“You were forbidden to talk with each other? By Gerry?”
“Of course by Gerry.” He stared at me and the veins in his neck were bright blue and hard. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with when it comes to Gerry, do you?
Jesus.” He laughed loudly. “Holy shit! You bought all that Officer Friendly bullshit, didn’t you? Kenzie,” he said and strained against the noose, “Gerry Glynn is a fucking monster. He makes me look like a parish priest.” He laughed again and it was a shrill, awful sound. “You think that gypsy cab he keeps out front always takes people where they want to go?”
I remembered that night in the bar, the drunk kid who Gerry sent into that cab with ten bucks. Had he made it home? And who was the cab driver? Evandro?
Bubba and Phil had come down the alley by this point and I looked at them as I removed the gun from Kevin’s head.
“You guys know this?”
Phil shook his head.
Bubba said, “I knew Gerry was a little shady, ran some blow and some hookers out of the bar, but that’s it.”
“He duped your whole fucking generation,” Jack said. “The whole pack of ya. Jesus.”
“Be specific,” I said. “Very specific, Jack.”
He smiled at us and his old eyes danced. “Gerry Glynn is one of the meanest motherfuckers who ever came out of the neighborhood. His son died. You know that?”
I said, “He had a son?”
“’Course he had a fucking son. Brendan. Died in ’sixty-five. Had some bizarre hemorrhage at his brain stem. No one could ever explain it. Kid was four years old, he grabs his head, drops dead in Gerry’s front yard while he’s playing with Gerry’s wife. Gerry snapped. He killed his wife.”