Small Mercies by Dennis Lehane

Author:Dennis Lehane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-04-25T00:00:00+00:00

16

Bobby comes out the back of the BPD headquarters to find Mary Pat Fennessy sitting on the hood of the ugliest fucking car he’s ever seen, just past the back of the parking lot. Bobby takes the T to and from work, and the exit of the parking lot leads to an alley that unwinds in a lazy curve to the rear of the subway station. Mary Pat and her “car” are parked right at the mouth of the alley, clearly waiting on him.

Bobby stops by the car and lights a cigarette. “Is this thing street-legal?”

“Hundred percent,” Mary Pat says.

Bobby walks once around the car. It has the look of something that if you blow on it, even slightly, it’ll come apart like in a cartoon. He smiles at the tailpipe—cooking twine is definitely not legal to secure a tailpipe—and marvels at the complete lack of tread on the tires. A baby’s ass was never so smooth. He bends, looks under the chassis, can’t see any engine parts or brake pads dangling down there. So, that’s something. He returns to the front and Mary Pat. “Hundred percent, huh?”

She gives him a tiny smile. “Maybe ninety.”

“Try sixty,” he says.

As he gets closer, he sees her face looks like she was attacked by live trees in a fairy tale. They just whacked at her with their thin branches until she reached the other side of the haunted forest. She sports a large flesh-colored bandage that almost blends in with her neck. Her hands are bruised, the knuckles swollen. She wears a sleeveless white-and-yellow-checked blouse over blue jeans rolled up at the cuffs and low-top canvas Converse sneakers. When she looks back at him, her eyes are a little too bright for Bobby’s taste. It’s a brightness he’s seen before in the eyes of people who can’t be reached.

He eyes her cuts, her bruises and bandages. “Happened to you?”

She shrugs. “You should see the other girls.”

“Plural?”

She nods. “Never could respect bitches who forget that if you start a fight you should damn well fucking know how to finish one.”

He feels the smile find his face a second before he thinks to pull it back. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Fennessy?”

“Call me Mary Pat.”

“What can I do for you, Mary Pat?”

“I was wondering if you were still looking for my daughter.”

“You betcha. Happen to know where she is?”

Something dislodges in the brightness of her eyes for a moment, a flash of uncertainty and pain, but then it disappears, and the brightness returns.

“I don’t,” she says.

“So why are you here?”

“It might help me find her if I knew—really knew—why you were looking for her.”

He cocks his head at her, waits her out.

“What?” she asks.

“You know why I’m looking for her.”

“Because you think she was on the platform when Auggie Williamson died.”

“It’s gone a little beyond ‘think.’”

“Okay,” she says. “So how come no one has been arrested?”

“Because there are laws against just arresting people willy-nilly without hard evidence.”

“But you can bring them in for questioning.

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