This time it was he who dreamed, as he rarely did, of the alleyways of Dublin. Of himself, a young boy, too thin, with sharp eyes, nimble fingers, and fast feet. A belly too ofte
n empty.
The smell of garbage gone over, and whiskey gone stale, and the cold of the rain that gleefully seeped into bone.
He saw himself in one of those alleyways, staring down at his father, who lay with that garbage gone over, and smelled of that whiskey gone stale. And smelled, too, of death—the blood and the shit that spewed out of a man at his last moments. The knife had still been in his throat, and his eyes—filmed-over blue—were open and staring back at the boy he’d made.
He remembered, quite clearly, speaking.
Well now, you bastard, someone’s done for ya. And here I thought it would be me one day who had the pleasure of that.
Without a qualm, he’d crouched and searched through the pockets for any coin or items that might be pawned or traded. There’d been nothing, but then again, there never had been much. He’d considered, briefly, taking the knife. But he’d liked the idea of it where it was too much to bother.
He’d stood then, at the age of twelve, with bruises still fresh and aching from the last beating those dead hands had given him.
And he’d spat. And he’d run.
He was up before she was, as usual. Eve studied him as she grabbed her first cup of coffee. It was barely seven A.M. “You look tired.”
He continued to study the stock reports on one screen and the computer analysis of potential locations on another. “Do I? I suppose I could’ve slept better.”
When she crouched in front of him, laid a hand on his thigh, he looked at her. And sighed. She could read him well enough, he thought, his cop.
Just as he could read her, and her worry for him.
“I wonder,” he began, “and I don’t care to, who did me the favor of sticking that knife in him. Someone, I think, who was part of the cartel. He’d have been paid, you see, and there was nothing in his pockets. Not a fucking punt or pence on him, nor in the garbage hole we lived in. So they’d have taken it, whatever he hadn’t already whored or drank or simply pissed away.”
“Does it matter who?”
“Not so very much, no. But it makes me wonder.” He nearly didn’t say the rest, but simply having her listen soothed him. “He had my face. I forget that most times, remember that I’ve made myself, myself. But Christ, I have the look of him.”
She slid into his lap, brushed her hands through his hair. “I don’t think so.” And kissed him.
“We’ve made each other in the end, haven’t we, Darling Eve? Two lost souls into one steady unit.”
“Guess we have. It’s good.”
He stroked his cheek against hers, and felt the fatigue wash away. “Very good.”
She held on another minute, then drew back. “That’s enough sloppy stuff. I’ve got work to do.”
“When it’s done, why don’t we get really sloppy, you and I?”
“I can get behind that.” She rose to contact Darcia and get an update on the manhunt.
“Not a sign of him anywhere,” Eve told Roarke, then began to pace. “Feeney took care of transpo. Nothing’s left the station. We’ve got him boxed in, but it’s a big box with lots of angles. I need Skinner. Nobody’s going to know him as well as Skinner.”
“Hayes is his son,” Roarke reminded her. “Do you think he’d help you?”
“Depends on how much cop is left in him. Come with me,” she said. “He needs to see us both. He needs to deal with it.”
He looked haggard, Eve thought. His skin was gray and pasty. How much was grief, how much illness, she didn’t know. The combination of the two, she imagined, would finish him.
But, she noted, he’d put on a suit, and he wore his precinct pin in the lapel.
He brushed aside, with some impatience, his wife’s attempt to block Eve.
“Stop fussing, Belle. Lieutenant.” His gaze skimmed over Roarke, but he couldn’t make himself address the man. “I want you to know I’ve contacted my attorneys on Hayes’s behalf. I believe you and Chief Angelo have made a serious error in judgment.”