The Lovers: A Thriller by John Connolly

Author:John Connolly [Connolly, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Horror, Suspense, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781416569558
Amazon: 1416569553
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2011-03-29T05:00:00+00:00

IV

Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead.

—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN (1706–1790), POOR RICHARD’S ALMANACK

CHAPTER NINETEEN

JIMMY GALLAGHER MUST HAVE been watching for me to come, as he answered the door before I even knocked. I imagined him, for a moment, sitting at his window, his face reflected in the gathering dark, his fingers tapping on the sill, anxiously seeking the one whom he was expecting, but as I looked into his eyes I saw that there was no anxiety, no fear or concern. In truth, he appeared more relaxed than I had ever seen him. He was wearing a T-shirt over a pair of paint-stained tan trousers, topped off by a Yankees hooded top and an old pair of penny loafers. He looked like a man in his twenties who had suddenly woken up from a nap to find that he had aged forty years in appearance while still being forced to wear all the same clothes. I had always believed him to be a man for whom appearance was everything, for I could never recall him without a jacket and a clean, starched shirt, often finished with a tasteful silk tie. Now, all formality had been stripped from him, and I wondered, as the night drew on and I listened to the secrets pour out of him, if those strictures he had placed on his dress had merely been one part of the defenses he had constructed to protect not only himself and his own identity, but the memories and lives of those about whom he cared.

He didn’t say anything when he saw me. He just opened the door, nodded once, then turned around and led the way to the kitchen. I closed the door behind me and followed him. A pair of candles burned in the kitchen, one on the windowsill and a second on the table. Beside the second candle stood a bottle of good—maybe very good—red wine, a decanter, and two glasses. Jimmy tenderly touched the neck of the bottle, stroking it as though it were a beloved pet.

“I’ve been waiting for an excuse to open it,” he said. “But these days, I don’t seem to have too many causes for celebration. Mostly, I go to funerals. You get to my age, that’s what you do. I’ve been to three funerals already this year. They were all cops, and they all died of cancer.” He sighed. “I don’t want to go that way.”

“Eddie Grace is dying of cancer.”

“I heard. I thought about going to see him, but Eddie and me—” He shook his head. “All we had in common was your old man. When he went, Eddie and me had no reason to talk.”

I recalled what Eddie had said to me before I left him, about how Jimmy Gallagher had spent his life living a lie. Maybe Eddie had been referring, however obliquely, to Jimmy’s homosexuality, but I knew now that there were other lies to be uncovered, even if they were lies of omission.

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