I saw the car slow next to me as I ran down the street.
I knew who it was. How could I not when he’d called almost three dozen times in the last two days?
He apparently didn’t get it.
Running faster, I missed my turn toward the house, running instead around the block once more, the wind pushing through to me, filling my lungs with the air that smelled like coffee and bagels. My heart pounded against my chest, out of synch with the sounds around me: people rising from their beds, throwing out the trash, talking on their phones. I preferred swimming for this reason. I didn’t want to hear anyone. I didn’t want to smell anything. I sure as hell didn’t want the goddamn mayor tailing me.
Stopping, I took another deep breath, checking my watch before walking into the local corner deli. The old man behind the counter glanced up from his tablet, tilting his head down to look over his small framed glasses. Realizing it was me, he nodded and picked up his tablet, heading toward the back.
“Kitty, you know where the damn newspaper app is on this thing?” he yelled out as he went. A few seconds later power lights beside the camera switched from green to red.
Grabbing a basket, I went to the fridge with the milk in it. No sooner did I move that the bell chimed behind me.
“Two percent or whole?” I asked him, staring at the milks.
“Wife usually says two, but I’m a whole kind of man,” his deep voice said, and I reached for the two.
“Can’t be going against the wives, now can we, Takahashi?” I looked at the gray-haired man who stood beside me with dark eyes, almost eye level with me. “How is Kyoko?”
“Good. She’s taken up pottery,” he said.
“Pottery,” I repeated, moving to see the cereals and he, of course, followed. “Interesting hobby.”
“It’s the only thing that relaxes her now…now that…”
“Your son has died.” I finished for him, taking the cornflakes and placing it in the basket. “Well, that’s good for her.”
“She took up arts. I took up the job of protecting the people of Boston. To make sure no one else would lose their child to drugs—”
“Spare me the speech, Mayor,” I cut him off, looking between the chicken and chunky tomato soups. “I already voted for you…I mean, I got the votes for you. Chunky tomato or chicken?”
He didn’t reply or even bother looking at the cans.
“To hell with it. I’ll live a little and get them both,” I answered, throwing them into the basket also.
“And in return for that vote I’ve made sure your business has run smoothly in and out of the city,” he shot back. I paused in the middle of the aisle. “However, whatever is going on is starting to cause the bodies to pile up far too quickly.”
“Mayor.” I did my best to keep calm. “You were brought into the fold to spread the usual bullshit, not for you to start eating it too.”
“This new drug, Ethan, it—”
“IT IS MR. CALLAHAN!” I snapped, turning back to him. “Everyone has forgotten their place, Mayor, and I will take the blame for that. I’ve allowed you all to take credit for my achievements, my family’s achievements, for so long you’ve all begun to believe they are yours. Before me you were nothing but a detective, so in debt you would roll over and play dead for a few grand, with an unfaithful manic-depressive wife and a junkie for a son. I picked you out of the gutter, I dusted you off, I gave you that shiny pedestal you now stand so proudly on. You didn’t allow my business to do anything, it supersedes you! Whatever happens here, you are to do as you are told—”
“I will not let people die—”
Dropping the cart, I grabbed him by the neck, shoving him up against the glass doors and squeezing.
“Never interrupt me, Mr. Takahashi. I’m up to my neck in disrespect and I won’t take it from you too. You will go back to your office, you will sit in that nice big chair of yours, you will remember who bought you that chair, and you will wait as patiently as I am being with you until you get your orders. Am I being clear?” I squeezed tighter, forcing his chin up. “Am. I. Being. Clear?”
“Y...es…”
Letting go, he coughed and gasped for air, bending to the side as I moved back to my cart. “People like your son will always die. You didn’t lose your child to drugs. Yoshiro lost to himself. People like you always come around, always saying they will clean up the cities and will choke the drug supply, forgetting that it is the very same people in those cities who are letting the filth get in. Why?” I asked, bending down to reach for the jelly. “Because they cannot cope. Whether the pain is physical or mental it doesn’t matter. They want to escape so badly they’ll take anything. You cannot stop drugs from coming in until you stop the pain. And pain never stops. I thought you understood that. I thought you understood that we supply the safest poison and therefore respected your role. But I thought wrong. You, too, think that the evil begins and ends with the Callahans. So watch well and see how this city, the city I gave you, changes when I’m not the gatekeeper.”
I walked to the front counter, placing my basket on the counter and ringing the bell. I turned back when I heard him walking toward the door, adjusting his neck tie. “When this is over I just might have to get a ring so you can kneel down to kiss it out of gratitude.”
Pushing the door open, he said, “Have a good day, Mr. Callahan.”
“I always do.”