Prayers For Rain Part 8

"What is?"

"Why I went on the boat, I guess. The not knowing-all the not knowing in this f.u.c.king life, you know? It gets to you. Makes you crazy. You just want to know."

"Even if you can't fly?"

Tony smiled. "Because you can't fly." you can't fly."

He patted the gate between us with his palm. He burped again, then excused himself. He curled up on the floor and sang the theme song to The Flintstones The Flintstones very softly. very softly.

By the time we reached Boston, he was snoring again.

4.

When I walked through his front door with Tony Traverna, Mo Bags looked up from his meatball and Italian sausage sub and said, "Hey, f.u.c.ko! How ya doing?"

I was pretty sure he was talking to Tony, but with Mo sometimes you couldn't tell.

He dropped the sub, wiped his greasy fingers and mouth on a napkin, then came around his desk as I dropped Tony in a chair.

Tony said, "Hey, Mo."

"Don't 'Hey Mo' me, sc.u.mbag. Give me your wrist."

"Mo," I said, "come on."

"What?" Mo snapped a cuff around Tony's left wrist, then attached the other end to the chair arm.

"How's the gout?" Tony seemed genuinely concerned.

"Better'n you, mutt. Better'n you."

"Good to hear." Tony belched.

Mo narrowed his eyes at me. "He drunk?"

"I don't know." I spied a copy of the Trib Trib on Mo's leather couch. "Tony, you drunk?" on Mo's leather couch. "Tony, you drunk?"

"Nah, man. Hey, Mo, you got a bathroom I can use?"

"This guy's drunk," Mo said.

I lifted the sports page off the pile of newspaper, found the front page underneath. Karen Nichols had made it above the fold: WOMAN JUMPS FROM CUSTOM HOUSE. Beside the article was a full color photo of the Custom House at night.

"Guy is f.u.c.king drunk," Mo said. "Kenzie?"

Tony belched again, then began singing "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head."

"Okay. He's drunk," I said. "Where's my money?"

"You let him drink?" Mo wheezed like a chunk of meatball had lodged in his esophagus.

I picked up the newspaper, read the lead. "Mo."

Tony heard the tone of my voice and stopped singing.

Mo was too fired up to notice, though. "I dunno here, Kenzie. I don't f.u.c.king know about guys like you. You're gonna give me a bad rep."

"You already have a bad rep," I said. "Pay me."

The article began: "An apparently distraught Newton woman jumped to her death late last night from the observatory deck of one of the city's most cherished monuments."

Mo asked Tony, "You believe this f.u.c.king guy?"

"Sure."

"Shut up, f.u.c.ko. No one's talking to you."

"I need a bathroom."

"What'd I say?" Mo breathed loudly through his nostrils, paced behind Tony, and lightly rapped the back of his head with his knuckles.

"Tony," I said, "it's just past this couch, through that door."

Mo laughed. "What, he's going to take the chair with him?"

Tony unlocked the cuff around his wrist with a sudden snap and walked into the bathroom.

Mo said, "Hey!"

Tony looked back at him. "I gotta go go, man."

"Identified as Karen Nichols," the article continued, "the woman left behind her wallet and clothes on the observatory deck before leaping to her death..."

A half-pound hunk of ham hit my shoulder and I turned to see Mo pulling back his clenched fist.

"The f.u.c.k you doing, Kenzie?"

I went back to reading the paper. "My money, Mo."

"You dating this mug? You f.u.c.king buy him beers, maybe get him in the mood for love?"

The observatory deck of the Custom House is twenty-six stories up. Dropping, you'd probably glimpse the top of Beacon Hill, Government Center, skysc.r.a.pers in the financial district, and finally Faneuil Hall and Quincy Marketplace. All in a second or two-a melange of brick and gla.s.s and yellow light before you hit cobblestone. Part of you would bounce, the other part wouldn't.

"You hearing me, Kenzie?" Mo went to punch me again.

I slipped the punch, dropped the paper, and closed my right hand around his throat. I backed him into his desk and pushed him onto his back.