Small Mercies

“Fear’s a weakness.” He holds his hand back up to the sun. “I don’t like weakness.”

“Maybe it’s not weakness. Maybe it’s just a kind heart.”

He checks to see if she’s serious. Once he decides she is, he lets out a bark of a laugh. “Well, I mean, fuck that, then.”

She looks over at him for a bit and finally understands him after all these years. “I get it now. You don’t have the anger, George. You just have the hate.”

Neither says anything for two traffic lights.

As she turns onto Congress Street, Mary Pat says, “Why did they keep her body?”

“Huh?”

“If Frank Toomey did kill my daughter in that house, why did he leave her body there?”

“It’s being watched.” He shrugs. “That’s what Marty’s been told, anyway.”

“Watched by who?”

“DEA.”

“How does Marty know?”

“He’s got someone in the FBI.”

“No shit?” She can feel her eyes widen and hear an involuntary whistle leave her lips.

“Yup,” George says. “That why he’s untouchable.”

She turns that over in her head a bit.

“Where we going?”

“I’m taking you to your drugs.”

“Yeah?” He only half believes her.

“We had a deal. I’m holding up my end.”

“I didn’t promise I wouldn’t say anything.”

“You mean to Marty? About me jacking your drugs?”

“Yeah.”

“I know you didn’t. It’s all fine, George.”

He can’t seem to compute that.

“Here we go,” she says, and pulls over on the Congress Street Bridge by the harbor.

He looks at the red clapboard building that overlooks the water. At the gangway that descends to the harbor. At the yellow boat at the bottom of the gangway. “What’re we doing here?”

“Do you know what that boat is?”

“Yes,” he says irritably.

“Tell me.”

“It’s a replica of the ship.”

“What ship?”

“What’re we, in grammar school?”

“Humor me, George.”

He gives her teenage-girl eye rolls. “It’s a replica of the ship the Sons of Liberty boarded when they chucked all the British tea into the harbor back in seventeen seventysomething.”

“Very good!” She claps his knee. “And why did they do that, George?”

“To protest taxes. Can you just—”

“Not taxes,” she says. “Taxes without representation. That was the key part, George. They paid the British, but the British just took the money and didn’t do a damn thing for them. So they chucked their precious limey tea right into the harbor. The point they were making, George, is if you take from me, then I fucking take from you.”

He looks across the seat at her. “What are you on about?”

She gestures with her chin at the water. “That’s where Marty’s drugs are, George.”

He doesn’t get it. “On the boat?”

She shakes her head. “In the water.”

George’s mouth opens in a wide O. He stares through the windshield and blinks repeatedly. People walk by on the sidewalk outside the car, oblivious to the destruction going on within.

George finally speaks. He says, “Come on. No.” His voice is small and pleading and cracks on the final word.

“I stood right up there in the middle of the bridge last night...”

“Please?” George stares through the windshield at the harbor.

“And I cut open the bags, one by one.”

“Just... stop,” he whispers.

“And I rained all those pills and powder down into the water.”

He whispers something.

“What, George? I can’t hear you. Speak up.”

He makes a sound that falls somewhere between a grunt and a moan. “I’m dead.”

“Without your drugs?”

“I’m fucking dead.”

“Yeah,” she agrees, “you certainly are.”

She places the muzzle of the .38 into his midsection and reaches across his body to unlock the handcuff from the seat belt latch plate. She digs the muzzle farther into his abdomen, looks in his eyes, their noses only half an inch apart. She takes his wrist and swings it across their bodies and snaps the cuff into the driver’s wheel.

She sits back and places the gun back under her shirt. “I look at you now, George, and I see a little boy who’s scared, who wants a second chance. But they don’t hand out second chances when you’re an adult. Not around here. As a mother, I want to hold you in my arms. I want to whisper ‘Shh’ in your ear and tell you everything will be all right.”

He’s looking at her wildly, like maybe she’ll do these things. “So, so, help me, Mrs. Fennessy. Please.”

“I’d love to, George. I would.” She caresses the back of his head and presses her forehead to his for a moment. When she speaks, her voice is kind and motherly. “But then? Then I remember that you sold my son the drugs that killed him, you murdered that poor black boy who just wanted to get home, and you helped bury my daughter in a basement.” She removes her forehead from his, holds his hateful gaze with her own. “So I don’t give a flying fuck, really, whether you die tonight or live a long hellish life in prison. I just know if I never look on your face again, it’ll be a blessing from God Himself.”

He repeatedly yanks the handcuff against the wheel as she exits the car.

She stops at a pay phone beside the Tea Party Museum and dials the number on the card she was given last week.

He answers on the third ring. “Detective Coyne.”

She tells him where to find George Dunbar and hangs up.

24