Small Mercies

“And then you left?” he asks Seamus Riordan.

Seamus Riordan’s laughter trails off. “Yeah, I left.”

“And a kid died.”

Something catches in Seamus Riordan’s eyes. A glint of shame, perhaps. Or maybe Bobby’s just being hopeful.

Because in the next breath, Seamus shrugs and says, “Wasn’t my kid.”

12

After his shift, Bobby has a few pops with a couple of Robbery detectives at JJ Foley’s and then heads home to the house on Tuttle Street where he lives with his five sisters and his brother, Tim, the failed priest. None of the Coyne siblings is married. Three, Bobby among them, tried and failed. Two came close to the altar but didn’t make it the whole way there. The other two have never even had a long-term relationship.

This is a source of great mystery in the extended family of Coynes and those families the previous generations married into — the McDonoughs and Donnellys and Kearneys and Mullens — as well as to the neighborhood at large, because several of the Coyne girls were real lookers, or had been in their youth, anyway.

The house is one of the last of the sprawling single-family Victorians that’s stayed a single family on Tuttle Street. Most of the rest of them, built for large Irish families between the big wars of the first half of the century, have been converted into two-family houses. Some have even been cut up into multiple-unit buildings. But not the Coyne house. It remains exactly as it was when they all grew up here, learning its creaks and hiding places and the source of its sad groans on heartless winter nights.

He finds Nancy and Bridget sitting at the kitchen table, nursing their nightly highballs and smoking their cigarettes — Parliaments for Nancy, Kents for Bridget. He grabs a beer from the fridge and a fresh ashtray and joins them at the table. Nancy, who works in urban planning, is bitching about a coworker to Bridget, who’s an ER nurse at City. Nancy, still a stunner in her early forties, can talk paint off a wall; Bridget, meek and mousy and perpetually pickled when not working, barely utters a full sentence in a given day.

Nancy finishes her rant about someone named Felix and the coffee maker in the break room and flicks her eyes at Bobby. “You need to lose a few pounds, Michael. Don’t you think he needs to lose weight, Bridge?”

Bridget looks down at her knees.

“That’s a rather unkind way to greet a man.” Bobby peels back the tab on his beer.

“I want you to live a long life.”

“You used to tell me I was too skinny.”

“But that was the heroin.”

The word “Oh!” pops out of Bridget’s mouth in horrified surprise.

“Well, it’s not a secret!” Nancy says.

“Actually,” Bobby says, “it kinda is.”

“To the outside world.” Nancy waves at the windows. “Not in here.”

Claire comes through the side door off the driveway and hangs her umbrella on a hook. “What’s not in here?”

“We’re talking about Michael’s problem.”

“The drug thing?” Claire pulls the cork from a bottle of red, pours herself a glass. Kisses Bobby’s head lightly as she comes around him to take a seat.

“Yes, the drug thing,” Nancy says. “He thinks we’re going to blab it to the world.”

“Why would we do that?”

“No one said you would,” Bobby says. “I just find it uncomfortable to talk about.”

“You’re a fucking hero,” Claire says, and Bobby is touched to see Bridget look at him with wide eyes and an emphatic nod. “You know how many people kick that shit?”

“Very few,” Bobby admits.

“But you did.” Claire raises her glass to him and drinks.

“I was just telling him he could lose a few pounds,” Nancy says, “and it turned into this thing.”

“What thing?” Bobby says.

“See, he’s getting upset.”

“I’m not getting upset.”

“Yeah, you are.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Like I just said. Upset.”

Bobby sighs and asks Claire how her day was.

“We,” Claire says, turning her wineglass in a small circle on the table, “have a real storm of shit coming. I don’t think anyone realizes yet.”

Claire is a secretary at the Metropolitan District Commission Police barracks in Southie. MDC cops work the beaches and the parks and leave the project crime to city cops. So most city cops think MDC cops are pussies, but Bobby’s always found them to be the most knowledgeable source of information for all things Southie.

“This the busing thing?” Bobby asks.

Claire nods. “We’re getting some ugly intel. Mass-unrest kinda ugly.”

“It’ll blow over,” Bobby says, just to be optimistic.

“I don’t think so,” Claire says. “You’re working that colored kid’s death, right?”

“I am.”

“Was he a dealer?” Nancy wants to know.

Bobby shakes his head.

“Well, what was he doing there?”

“Car broke down.”

“He shoulda taken better care of it.”

“Oh, so it’s his fault,” Claire says with a roll of her eyes.

“I’m not saying it’s his fault,” Nancy says, “just that if he’d taken better care of his car, it wouldn’t have broken down and he wouldn’t have died.”

Claire says, “Sounds like you’re saying it’s his fault.”

“I said the exact opposite!”

Claire turns to Bobby. “You making arrests soon?”