Small Mercies

“Not unless we catch some big breaks. Pretty sure we know who did it. But knowing it and proving it, you know, big difference.”

“Well, give us a heads-up if you think you’re gonna bust anyone white from Southie anytime near the first day of school. Cuz this city is about to go boom.” She refills her glass of wine.

“I dunno,” he says, suddenly weary.

“You don’t know what?” his sister Diane asks. Coming down the front hall now, just off her shift at the public library in Upham’s Corner. Goes immediately to the stove and turns on the kettle for her tea.

“We’re talking about the kid got killed at Columbia Station,” Nancy says.

“You caught that?” Diane asks Bobby.

“I did.”

“I heard Marty Butler’s guys were involved,” Claire says.

“Eh. More like wannabe — Marty Butler guys. But” — Bobby thinks of George Dunbar for a second — “if he takes a personal interest, he could cause headaches, sure.”

The Butler crew has a lot of cops on their payroll. At both a local and a state level. Even if you’re not a dirty cop, you’re reluctant to cross or expose the ones who are (or could be; you rarely know for sure). If you do go forward and make a case against Marty or one of his boys, evidence has a way of vanishing, witnesses contract acute amnesia, and the cases tend to die a quick death in open court. Whereupon the cops at the center of them have a history of being demoted or reassigned. So, if you take a run at the Butler crew, you cannot fucking miss. Not if you’re fond of the little things — a living wage, a pension at the end of it, or a roof over your head. Shit like that.

Claire knows the ins and outs of police culture the way the rest of them don’t. She pats Bobby’s hand and says, “Be careful. No one’s life is worth your own.”

Bobby has fought a war — okay, a “police action” — in a country nine thousand miles away trying to prove the opposite.

Nancy, always the first to go for the jugular, chimes in. “And you gotta think about Brendan.”

Brendan is Bobby’s son. He’s nine and lives with his mother except on weekends, when he comes here and spends forty-eight hours with his father, five crazy, doting aunts, and gentle, bleak-hearted Uncle Tim, the failed priest. Bobby loves Brendan in a way that defies every notion he ever had about love before his son entered the world. He loves him beyond all capacity for rational thought. He loves him more than he loves all other people or things or dreams — including himself, including his own — combined.

“Nobody,” he says to his sister, “not even Marty Butler, is crazy enough to come after a cop. And even if he was, he sure as shit wouldn’t come after a cop’s kid. Not if he wants to see the next day of his life. Where do you come up with this shit, Nance?”

Nancy, never one to admit a mistake, pivots. “I wasn’t talking about physical harm, Michael, I was talking about you losing your job, your pension. And then what will that treacherous cow you used to be married to do to our weekends with Brendan?”

“It’s a fair point,” Diane says, and even Bridget nods in agreement.

Bobby’s family loves his son almost as much as Bobby does. Even Tim, floating in a fog of bitterness and the most esoteric reading material Bobby’s ever come across, manages to visibly lighten on weekends. And it’s not just because Brendan is the sole nephew (or niece). Brendan is, simply put, a wonderful individual. Nine years old and he’s thoughtful, empathetic, profoundly curious, funny as fuck, and warm. It’s as if he somehow inherited the best traits of his blood relatives but none of their damage. Yet, anyway.

His sisters would say, “That’s only because Shannon doesn’t have him all to herself,” but the truth is that Shannon is a good mother. Terrible wife and didn’t come highly recommended as a daughter or sibling, but she loves her son, and she’s dedicated herself to his upbringing in a way she never dedicated herself to anything or anyone in her life.

“I won’t lose my job or my pension or my boy,” Bobby tells his sisters now.

“As long as you don’t fuck with Marty Butler.”

“He’s a fucking criminal,” Bobby says. “I’m a cop.”

“He’s a connected criminal,” Claire reminds him.

It isn’t just fellow cops Marty Butler has in his pocket. There are judges for sure, probably at least one congressman or state senator, and maybe, just maybe, the darkest of the dark whispers say, someone or maybe a half-dozen someones in federal law enforcement. Over the years, far too many potential witnesses against Marty or his associates — whose identities were kept under lock and key, mind you — have vanished or been killed.

“I know,” Bobby assures them all. “It was kids chased Auggie Williamson into the station. And no matter what I find out, it’s not looking like first-degree murder. Might not rise much higher than involuntary manslaughter.” He yawns into his fist, exhausted. “I’m gonna hit it, ladies.”

He puts his beer can in the trash, gives each sister a peck on the cheek, and heads up to bed.