Brain, once again, conquered brawn. Minds subdued hearts.
To rush in like a Celt, shoot Desiree in the knee, and expect to get results, was stupid. Desiree was a tactician. Desiree was a Roman.
My raging blood chilled to ice as I sat in my idling car, the dark waters of the Charles rolling along on my right. My heartbeat slowed. The tremors in my hands disappeared.
This wasn’t a fistfight, I told myself. Win a fistfight, all you are is bloody, your opponent slightly more so, but he’s usually ready for another fight if the mood hits him.
This was war. Win at war, chop your opponent’s head off. End of story.
“How are you?” Desiree said as she came out of Whittier Place, ten minutes late.
“Fine.” I smiled.
She stopped by the car, appraised it with a whistle. “This is gorgeous. I wish it were warm enough to put the roof down.”
“Me, too.”
She ran her hands along the door before she opened it and got in, gave me a quick peck on the cheek. “Where’s Miss Gennaro?” She reached across and ran her fingers along the wood-finish steering wheel.
“She decided to stay in the sun a few more days.”
“See? I told you. You wasted a free plane ticket.”
We shot across to the expressway on-ramp, cut into the lane for Route 1 with several blaring horns going off behind us.
“I like the way you drive, Patrick. Very Bostonian.”
“That’s me,” I said. “Beantown to the core.”
“My God,” she said. “Just listen to this engine! It sounds like a leopard’s purr.”
“That’s why I bought it. I’m a sucker for leopard purrs.”
She gave me a deep, throaty laugh. “I bet.” She crossed her legs, leaned back in the seat. She wore a navy-blue cowl-neck cashmere over painted-on blue jeans and brown soft leather loafers. Her perfume smelled like jasmine. Her hair smelled like crisp apples.
“So,” I said, “you been having fun since you’ve been back?”
“Fun?” She shook her head. “I’ve been holed up in that apartment since I landed. I was too afraid to stick my head out until you came.” She pulled a pack of Dunhills from her purse. “Mind if I smoke?”
“No. I like the smell.”
“An ex-smoker?” She pushed the dashboard lighter in.
“I prefer the term recovering nicotine addict.”
We pulled through the Charlestown Tunnel and rode up toward the lights of the Tobin Bridge.
“I think indulging addictions has been given a bad rap,” she said.
“Is that so?”
She lit her cigarette and sucked back on the tobacco with an audible hiss. “Absolutely. Everyone dies. Am I right?”
“As far as I know.”
“So why not embrace the things that’ll kill you anyway? Why single out certain things—heroin, alcohol, sex, nicotine, bungee jumping, whatever your predilection—for demonization when we hypocritically embrace cities which spew toxins and smog, eat rich food, hell, live in the late twentieth century in the most industrialized country on the planet?”
“You got a point.”
“If I die from this,” she held up the cigarette, “at least it was my choice. No excuses. And I had a hand—I had control—in my own demise. Beats getting hit by a truck while jogging to a vegetarians’ seminar.”
I smiled in spite of myself. “Never heard it put quite that way before.”
We cruised up on the Tobin Bridge, and the span reminded me of Florida, the way the water seemed to physically drop from underneath us in a rush. But not just Florida, no. This was where Inez Stone had died, screaming as bullets entered her flesh and vital organs, as she looked into the face of madness and matricide, whether she was aware of the latter or not.
Inez. Had her death been part of the plan or hadn’t it?
“So,” Desiree said, “is my philosophy nihilistic?”
I shook my head. “Fatalistic. Marinated in skepticism.”
She smiled. “I like that.”
“Glad I could oblige.”
“I mean, we all die,” Desiree said and leaned forward in her seat. “Whether we want to or not. Just a simple fact of life.”
And she reached over and dropped something soft into my lap.
I had to wait until I passed under a streetlight until I saw what it was because the fabric was so dark.
It was a T-shirt. It bore the words FURY IN THE SLAUGHTERHOUSE in white letters. It was ripped at the point where it would fall over the wearer’s right rib cage.
Desiree dug a pistol into my testicles and leaned in to me until her tongue flicked along the outer edge of my ear.
“She’s not in Florida,” she said. “She’s in a hole somewhere. She’s not dead yet, but she will be if you don’t do exactly what I say.”
“I’ll kill you,” I whispered as the bridge peaked and began its curve toward the other side of the river.
“That’s what all the boys say.”
As we looped around Marblehead Neck, the ocean boiling and belting against the rocks below, I cleared images of Angie from my head for a moment, quelled the black clouds of worry that threatened to suffocate me.
“Desiree.”
“That’s my name.” She smiled.
“You want your father dead,” I said. “Fine. Makes a certain amount of sense.”
“Thank you.”
“For a sociopath.”
“Such a sweet tongue.”
“But your mother,” I said. “Why’d she have to die?”
Her voice was thin and light. “You know how it is between mothers and daughters. All that pent-up jealousy. All the missed school plays and arguments over wire hangers.”
“But really,” I said.
She drummed her fingers on the barrel of the gun for a moment.
“My mother,” she said, “was a beautiful woman.”
“I know. I’ve seen pictures.”
She snorted. “Pictures are bullshit. Pictures are isolated moments. My mother wasn’t just physically beautiful, you dick. She was elegance incarnate. She was grace. She loved without reservation.” She sucked in a breath.
“So, why’d she have to die?”
“When I was little, my mother took me downtown. A day for just the girls, she called it. We had a picnic in the Common, went to museums, had tea at the Ritz, rode the swan boats in the Public Garden. It was a perfect day.” She looked out the window. “Around three o’clock, we came upon this child. He was my age—probably ten or eleven at the time. He was Chinese and crying because someone had thrown a rock from a passing school bus and hit him in the eye. And my mother, I’ll never forget this, held him to her chest and wept with him. Silently. The tears rolling off her cheekbones and the boy’s blood staining her blouse. That was my mother, Patrick.” She turned from the window. “She wept for strangers.”