“Turn around,” Jim commanded quietly.
I turned and pressed my back against the door, my legs liquid. I gripped the door handle to keep me on my feet.
He stood at the top of the stairs, the gun tucked into the front of his jeans. Hands crossed in front of him, a man at leisure.
“Where’s that wink of yours, Doll Devine?” he said. “Where’s your song?”
“If you’ve hurt Alex…” My voice twisted away from me. “I will rip your tongue out of your mouth and write a song about it.”
He made a fake impressed face. “Not bad. Look, it didn’t have to come to this, kid. I never laid a hand on your boyfriend.”
“Alex isn’t my boyfriend. He’s…”
I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth, and would the words do anything at all to save me, or Alex, or anyone? They were just words.
I had heard a small noise somewhere behind me in the apartment. Who could be left to be inside? I was out of friends.
“You don’t know what Alex is to you, either?” Jim said with a grin.
Not Oona—
Then I heard that huffy, deep bark of warning Bear always used to start a conversation.
The dogs.
The dogs were still in the apartment. I could hear the tap of their nails as they shifted their weight paw to paw and waited.
Now I had to worry about thedogs, too?
“Alex is my best friend,” I said.
“Isn’t that sweet? Anyway, I meant the banjo player,” Jim said. “That wasn’t me.”
He stepped back to include the moaning pile of Ned below us. “Your short-order cook down there is the one who got the banjo kid involved. He did the killing and he did the desecrating of his corpse.” He straightened his shoulders. “I’m only guilty of suggesting Ned find another place for the body. Couldn’t have the cops nosing around.”
“You didn’t count on our landlord bringing Joey’s body back. Being the same kind of scum as you.”
“Ialwayscount on people being scum,” he said, somehow filling out, filling in. “If it’s one thing I’ve learned,” he said, “humanity is a failed experiment.”
Something I’d said had touched a live wire against his spine, and I could see him, the real him. Taller, wilder, more dangerous. This manwas no longer the empty shell of a Jim. He was someone specific. Someone come alive, fueled and filled by hate. What a waste.
“No,” I said. “That’s not true at all.”
“Oh, because of music, right? Art? You think just because people can bang on drums, that’s some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card? It’s not enough. Look around at this society we’ve built, kid. It’s all set up to make you believe you’re swimming in a warm pond. But it’s piss.” His arms spread wide to encompass everything around us, and beyond. “You think music is enough to make up for the rest of it? You’re still a believer, huh? You still believe there’s some big net below to catch us? If there’s war, you’ll be spared? If there’s disaster, you’ll be saved? You can’t possibly be on the losing end, not you. Your health, your job. Your family, yourfaith. Faith in your fellow man, in doctors, in your government, insystems. You think you’ll always have a soft place to land?”
Something in this diatribe sounded true. Earned. Silent Jim—but that wasn’t his name.Mike, Ned had called out to him. Mike wasn’t singing someone else’s song. This was a riff on the conversation he’d had with Quin the day I’d left the bar unlocked—the conversation Quin hadbaitedhim into having, about his troubles. His job. His injury. His—
“You’re not special,” he said now, leaning close enough that I caught the meaty, masculine stench of him. Of desperation. His eyes were black, barren. “One slip down the ladder of life, and they’ll forget they ever heard of you. The only people looking for you will be the people you owe money to and the goons they send to your door.”
Alone in the pub the other night, someone pounding at the door. Carpets pulled from the floors and doors yanked from their hinges. How much of that had been Edith’s client trying to convince Alex to sell the pub, and how much was it this guy bringing his creditors to the front door of McPhee’s?
“Mike,” I said. “Mike Jordan.”
He blinked and the hand at his side twitched in surprise.
“Did you have your mailforwardedto the pub?” I asked.
The old fury came roaring back. “One of the ex-wife’s little jokes,” he said. “She can afford them now that she has a new husband, new name. New dad for our kids. It’s all laughs for her. She can start over, that’s fine. But she didn’t have to tell my boys—” His voice cracked.
