Vengeance in Death (In Death #6)(80)

“Your snotty side’s showing, Peabody.”

“Not nearly as much as it could be. No transmissions have come through, so our boy’s taking a break from mayhem. McNab is staying here at your home office tonight in case there’s a send. I’m staying, too.”

“You and McNab are staying in my office tonight?”

Her mouth moved perilously close to a pout. “If he’s staying, I’m staying. Besides, the food’s superior.”

“Try not to kill each other.”

“I’m showing admirable restraint in that particular area, sir.”

“Right. Is Summerset behaving himself?”

“He went to some art class, then out for coffee and brandy with his lady friend. I had him shadowed. It was all very dignified according to the report. He got back about twenty minutes ago.”

“See that he stays in.”

“I’ve got it covered. Any progress there?”

“That’s debatable. We have a list of potentials, which was shorted by half during interviews. I’m going to take a closer look at six,” she said, rubbing her tired eyes. “One’s in New York, and one’s supposed to be in Boston. I’ll run them when I get in tomorrow. We should be back by noon.”

“We’ll keep the home fires burning, Lieutenant.”

“Find that damn van, Peabody.” She disengaged the ‘link and ordered herself not to wonder, or worry, about where Roarke could be.

He knew better than to go home. It was foolish and fruitless and irresistible. The shanties had changed little since he’d been a boy trying to crawl his way out of them. The buildings were cheaply constructed, with roofs sagging, windows broken. It was rare to see a flower bloom here, but a few hopeful souls had scratched out a stamp-sized garden at the doorstep of the six-flat building where he’d lived once.

But the flowers, however bright, couldn’t overcome the odor of piss and vomit. And they couldn’t lighten the air that lay thick with despair.

He didn’t know why he went in, but he found himself standing inside the dim lobby with its sticky floors and peeling paint. And there were the stairs his father had once kicked him down because he hadn’t made his quota lifting wallets.

Oh, but I had, Roarke thought now. What was a kick and tumble compared to the pounds he’d secreted away? The old man had been too drunk, and often too stupid, to have suspected his whipping boy of holding back any of the take.

Roarke had always held back. A pound here, a pound there could make a tidy sum for a determined boy willing to take his licks.

“He’d have given me his fist in my face in any case,” he murmured and gazed up those battered stairs.

He could hear someone cursing, someone else weeping. You would always hear cursing and weeping in such places. The odor of boiled cabbage was strong and turned his stomach so he sought the thick air outside again.

He saw a teenage boy in tight black pants and a mop of fair hair watching him coolly from the curb. Across the street a couple of girls chalking the cracked sidewalk for hopscotch stopped to watch. He walked passed them, aware there were other eyes following him, peering out of windows and doorways.

A stranger in good shoes was both curiosity and insult.

The boy called out something vile in Gaelic. Roarke turned, met the boy’s sneering eyes. “I’m going back in the alley,” he said, using the same tongue, found it came more easily to his lips than he’d expected, “if you’ve a mind to try your luck on me. I’m in the mood to hurt someone. Might as well be you as another.”

“Men have died in that alley. Might as well be you as another.”

“Come on then.” And Roarke smiled. “Some say I killed my father there when I was half your age, sticking a knife in his throat the way you’d slaughter a pig.”

The boy shifted his weight, and his eyes changed. The sneering defiance turned to respect. “You’d be Roarke then.”

“I would. Steer clear of me today and live to see your children.”

“I’ll get out,” the boy shouted after him. “I’ll get out the way you did, and one day I’ll walk in fine shoes. Damned if I’ll come back.”

“That’s what I thought,” Roarke sighed and stepped into the stinking alley between the narrow buildings.

The recycler was broken. Had been broken as long as he could remember. Trash and garbage were strewn, as always, over the pitted asphalt. The wind whipped his coat, his hair, as he stood, staring down at the ground, at the place where his father had been found, dead.

He hadn’t put the knife in him. Oh, he’d dreamed of killing the man; every time he’d taken a beating by those vicious hands he’d thought of pounding back. But he’d only been twelve or so when his father had met the knife, and he’d yet to kill a man.

He’d crawled out of this place, out of this pit. He’d survived, even triumphed. And now, perhaps for the first time, he realized he’d changed.

He’d never again be like the mirror image of himself who had challenged him from the curb. He was a man grown into what he had chosen to be. He enjoyed the life he’d built for itself now, not simply for its opposition to what had been.

He had love in his heart, the hot-blooded love for a woman that could never have rooted if the ground had remained stony.