Small Mercies

He looks around the parking lot. She can see through Dukie’s binoculars that he’s putting something together — the drugs that were stolen yesterday and now this. He’s realizing that 1 + 1 = someone’s targeting him.

He puts his hand against the outside wall of the garage.

He throws up. Twice.

When he finishes, he wipes his mouth. He bends and slowly rolls the garage door up.

His face relaxes a tad when he sees the Nova in there, just as he left it. He rushes to the back of it.

Mary Pat puts Bess in gear and rolls her up to a point about twenty feet from the garage door. She gets out. Leans against the hood. Waits. She can hear him in there as he rummages around the mostly empty trunk. He makes frantic squeaky sounds.

He closes the trunk. He comes toward the garage door with his lips moving, mumbling to himself. And then his eyes fall on her.

And he knows.

He doesn’t know how he knows yet, but he knows.

He charges. He runs straight for her with his arms out like Frankenstein.

She pulls his own gun on him and places the muzzle to the center of his chest. “I can pull this trigger right now, and no court in the country will convict me. Probably give me a fucking medal. So, George, how would you like to proceed?”

He lowers his hands.

In the garage, with the door down, she pats him down for a weapon, but he’s not carrying this morning. She notices a work light encased in orange plastic hanging in one corner and plugged into an extension cord. She gets it and hangs it from a hook above the hood of the car and watches George regain some of his confidence. It shows in his eyes first — and it’s less a flowering than a recession — the way they go flat, stripped of everything but self-regard. Confidence was a quality she noticed in him way back, when he was best friends with Noel and used to come over their apartment all the time, back before drugs, before girls, even. Back when they talked about sports nonstop and argued over trading cards. Even then George had a self-possession that was noticeable. He seemed unconcerned what anyone thought about him and felt no need to express himself. An inability to express oneself wasn’t uncommon in kids from Southie, but George’s reticence didn’t stem from inability; it stemmed, Mary Pat always felt, from will. And an internal arrogance. George, since as long as she could remember, seemed secure in the knowledge that he was better than anyone else — smarter, shrewder, less sentimental. With his lean features and close-cropped blond hair, eyes as green and cold as the land of his ancestors, George Dunbar’s innate stillness gave most who knew him the disconcerting feeling that he was smarter and shrewder. He was better.

George has been doing the act so long, she can see that he believes it himself.

George says, “This must have been fun for you.”

She gives him a quizzical look.

“The fantasy you had of how this would play out.”

“And how did I think it would play out?”

“You’d steal my product, and I’d tell you what I know about your daughter.”

“That’s my fantasy?” She makes a show of considering the idea.

“But here’s how it’s really going to go.”

She waits, an agreeable smile on her face.

He leans back against his car, not a care in the world, head tilted toward the ceiling. “You’re gonna give me back my product, or my suppliers will kill you by the end of the day. And then it won’t matter what you find out about your daughter.”

“You keep calling her ‘your daughter,’ like you don’t know her name.”

He sighs. “But if you give me back my product, I won’t say a word to my suppliers.” He comes off the car, his eyes open yet unkind. “And you can go back to your... life.”

“By ‘suppliers,’ you mean Marty.”

He grimaces. “Whatever.”

“So your deal is you let me live and you don’t tell Marty I jacked your drugs because... you’re a nice guy?” She closes some of the distance between them. “Or because if Marty or any of his crew found out you lost two loads in one day, well, George, I mean” — she chuckles — “your life will be fucking done.”

George meets her chuckle with his own, his gaze darting a bit, though. “Okay, I’ll grant you my job would go away. But I’ll just go back to college.”

“Oh, George. George.” She shakes her head softly. “You failed Marty twice. Plus, you can help the police prove he’s the reason drugs are getting into Southie. You know his routes, his suppliers, I’ll assume. You probably know at least a few of the cops on his payroll.” She can see her words have landed like body blows. She gets close enough for him to feel her breath on his face. “George, if you live for twenty-four hours after word gets out that you lost Marty’s latest supply, I would lose all faith in the way the world works.”

“My mother is—”

“Marty’s piece of ass, yes. I know. It won’t be enough to save you. Marty likes pussy but not as much as Marty loves money.”

He says nothing for a minute. He looks down at her hands. “If you didn’t have that gun...”