What Have We Done (30)

“She will.” Benny gazes at the house with the dead lawn and bedsheets for curtains, his expression not matching his words.

“What if there’s bad guys in there?”

“Don’t worry.” Benny lifts his shirt, revealing the gun tucked in the waistband.

“I thought you got rid of that.” Donnie’s mind flashes to the shallow grave, the grisly scene from last night, something that he’ll never be able to scrub from his memories no matter how high he gets.

Benny doesn’t answer. He walks up the cracked sidewalk, opens the front door, which isn’t locked. There’s a hole where the knob used to be. The door creaks open and the place is dark.

Someone groans from the light coming in.

Nico had stolen their files from the cabinet in Mr. Brood’s office. This is the address on Donnie’s paperwork, but maybe it’s the wrong place.

There’s a stench in the air. Benny takes the lead, pretending not to be terrified.

Bodies litter the floor. They’re not dead but might as well be.

Why would his mom live in such squalor? He knows why but wants to pretend he doesn’t.

Benny crouches over and says something to a man sitting on the floor. His legs are crossed, hands in a prayer position, like some insane Buddha.

The man doesn’t say anything but points upstairs.

Benny walks slowly up the creaky steps. They’re soft from damp and rot. Donnie looks up and sees there’s a section of the roof missing. The drywall has mostly been removed from the walls.

Copper pipe bandits.

Benny looks at Donnie like he’s having second thoughts. “You know what? Let’s get out of here,”

Benny says. “She’s probably not here.”

Donnie doesn’t believe him. “I want to say goodbye before we go.”

They’re leaving Chestertown for Philly to start over. Donnie leads the way upstairs, light from a hole in the roof illuminating the stairwell. When he enters the bedroom, he sees something that brings him back to when he was a young boy. The tattoo on the nape of the woman’s neck. A butterfly.

But today he’s not lying beside her, spooning, cuddling. He’s watching the head bob up and

down, the butterfly folding with the movement of her neck as the woman kneels before the man with his pants at his knees, his eyes closed, head back.

Benny turns, takes Donnie by the elbow to guide him out.

But before he’s ushered away, Donnie says, “Mom. It’s me, Donnie.” She doesn’t reply, so he says it again. “Mom.”

The woman’s head continues to bob, the man’s hand gripping her hair.

“Mom!” Donnie says louder.

But the word is foreign to the woman.

As it should be.

Donnie tries to shake off the memory as he brushes aside another question from Reeves Rothschild about his family.

It’s nine in the morning and they’re sitting in a cabana near one of the eight elaborate swimming pools on the grounds of the Fontainebleau. As always, it’s a beautiful morning in Miami: blue sky, sunshine, eighty degrees. “I told you, I don’t wanna talk about my childhood. Next question.”

The young writer frowns. He’s hunched over his laptop, looking peaked, a man who’s experiencing his first hangover from a Car Bomb. “I get it, I do. But I think it adds some color if we can say how a kid from Fort Payne, Alabama, ends up in Chestertown, Pennsylvania. And how that led you to Philly and then Los Angeles with Tracer’s Bullet.”

Donnie is spared having to answer when one of the hotel workers—he thinks they call them cabana boys—appears. He’s holding a small box.

“Mr. Danger, you have a delivery.”

The man hands him the package.

“Hot damn. For once, Mickey came through for me. A new phone.” It’s the first time the band’s manager has ever given Donnie concierge treatment, saving most of it for Tom. Donnie opens the box.

He turns on the device, a flip phone that’s already activated.

“He must’ve had a time machine to find you that,” Reeves says.

Donnie gives him a narrow-eyed smile.

“Maybe you should call the FBI about that lady from last night.”

Donnie made the mistake of telling Reeves about the woman from the beach. “What’s the point?

I’m not sure it’s the same lady the agent showed me. I wasn’t in the best frame of mind.…”

Reeves looks clammy himself, so that part he clearly gets. “Still, it could help with your friend’s case.”

He’s right. And Donnie knows he’s avoiding thinking about Benny. He fights the grief and pain by wiping his mind of the matter. He’s always been good at denial or compartmentalization or whatever they called it at that treatment center. And the truth: Whenever he thinks about Benny, he feels a weight in his chest, an insatiable need to get high. It makes him ashamed, since that’s the opposite of what Benny would want.

“They already arrested somebody, so I’m not sure it matters.”

Reeves frowns.

“All right, all right. Damn, Hemingway, you’re a pushy SOB.”

“I’m sorry, it’s not my place to—”

“Lighten up, amigo. You’re right.” So much so that Donnie decides that he can’t avoid it any longer. He needs to reach out to Mia, Ben’s widow.