Small Mercies

But his wife, Agnes, a thin woman with a birdlike face and shoulders, is quite active in ROAR, the sister group of SWAB. Restore Our Alienated Rights was formed by Louise Day Hicks, a member of the Boston School Committee, to protect the “vanishing rights of white citizens.” The only reason SWAB and ROAR haven’t folded into the same organization yet is because Carol Fitzpatrick, the leader of SWAB, and Louise Day Hicks, the leader of ROAR, hate each other, dating back to some spat they had in kindergarten. Rumor has it the source of the lifelong animosity is a broken crayon, but that’s never been confirmed. SWAB is in disarray at the moment anyway, in no small part because Mary Pat knocked out some of the members’ teeth and broke at least one nose, so the ladies of SWAB don’t look particularly “match fit,” as her grandfather used to say, for a rally. But ROAR has been planning their rally for a month. And Agnes Toomey has utilized the manpower of all her husband’s underlings in the Butler crew to get the word out. So Agnes, who’s spent her life in the shadow of her fearsome husband, is taking her place front and center at tonight’s rally. And since the Butler crew has spent endless man-hours getting the word out, it’s possible — not probable, mind you, but possible — that Frankie will show up to support the Cause.

Mary Pat uses some of the blood money Marty gave her to go shopping at Filene’s Basement. She buys a pair of large oval sunglasses that remind her of Jackie O’s. She adds a black wig and a tan kerchief to her cart. She buys a powder blue gabardine pantsuit, a white blouse, and a pair of white nursing shoes. She treats herself to some lipstick, rouge, foundation, and false eyelashes that match the black of the wig. She splurges on a new purse for her gun.

After purchasing everything, she takes it to the dressing room and transforms herself. She’s a little surprised the nursing shoes bite at her heels; the whole point of nursing shoes, she’s always heard, is that they’re comfortable and you don’t have to break them in. Other than that, her shopping spree is a grand success. She looks in the mirror of the ladies’ dressing room at Filene’s Basement, and a stranger stares back at her. It’s a bit disconcerting how easily she vanished. She takes the glasses off, and okay, there she is, if someone got up close and personal, those are Mary Pat’s blue eyes for sure. But with the glasses back on, she has to peer hard at her profile to identify herself. And straight on, forget about it — she’s another person entirely.

Last year, right before they ended, she and Ken Fen went to the movies at the Bug House on Broadway and saw a spaghetti western, My Name Is Nobody, with Henry Fonda and Terence Hill.

That’s who she is now as she looks in the mirror: nobody.

A ghost.

With a gun.

After Filene’s, she walks a few blocks and turns onto West Street for her appointment at the law offices of Anthony Chapstone, better known as Tony Chap. Tony Chap had been Dukie’s attorney and did well by him, never billed him for so much as a paper clip unless he could point to the papers he’d clipped with it. It was Tony Chap who’d helped her get Dukie declared legally dead so she could marry Ken Fen in the church and, just as Dukie had said, his rates proved reasonable and without any hidden surprises.

Seeing him in his little office after the passage of half a dozen years, she’s struck once again by what an odd and solitary figure he has always cut. She knows of no wife, no family. The only framed photographs in his office are of small dogs and places she presumes he’s visited — leafy, mountainous places. He is, as always, impeccably dressed, but in a style at least fifteen years out of date — narrow lapels on his suit jacket, suspenders underneath, a silk bowtie. He’s a courteous man, kind-eyed, and she’s long since stopped questioning whether he has integrity, but knowable he is not. She doesn’t even know how old he is — somewhere between forty and fifty-five, his face still as smooth and unlined as a light bulb.

He guides her to a chair and expresses his condolences for Jules. He assures her that all the paperwork is prepared and brings in his secretary, old Maggie Wheelock, been with him his entire career, to witness and notarize everything.

When it’s all done — everything signed and initialed in triplicate — she removes some pocket change for herself from the bag of blood money and leaves the bag with Tony Chap.

She would have thought it would have given her pause to leave that bag of cash behind. In truth, she feels a hundred pounds lighter. And cleaner. Like she just took a bath in a baptismal font.