Swan Dive

the drugs, about the... whore.”
    ”Eleni, Chris was—”
    ”No! I do not want to talk about what he was. You I know, you a good man to help Hanna and the child, but that Marsh, he was a bad man. I could tell the first time I see him, and I tell you when I see you. But Chris does not kill Marsh because of what Marsh did, because of the pig he was. No, Chris kills Marsh because he was scared.”
    ”I think you’re being too hard on yourself. And on him. Chris was a good man.”
    ”A good man does not visit the whores! I was a wife to Chris as long as I could. The... sickness takes me, John. Chris know what I know, that the days, there are not so many left. Still, he goes to the whore, like all the men in Greece I leave to come here.”
    ”Eleni—”
    ”Chris was weak! Too weak to help the woman and child, too weak to be faithful to his wife, too weak even to do the right thing.”
    ”What do you mean?”
    ”After you leave, and he tell me all the things, he lie awake, he cannot sleep, he say he will never sleep again. He say he will go crazy when the other lawyers find out what he did and take away his practice. He say he will go crazy in prison. He see the right thing, in front of him, and still he is too weak.”
    ”I don’t follow you.”
    ”The suicide, John. The suicide, the right thing, and he too weak even to do that. He so weak, in the end I have to help him.”
    I just stared down at her.
    She said, ”You a man with honor, John. You know what I mean.”
    God help me, I was afraid I did.

When you’ve been around death too much, I think you try hard to watch for encouraging signs of life. As I came over the Tobin Bridge, a dozen pleasure boats were making their way through the locks on the Charles River and out to the harbor. Winding along Storrow Drive , I paralleled couples strolling, kids playing, joggers striding. Even a few wind-skaters sailed by, twisting and dodging around the slower walkers and runners.
    The day was brightening as much as I’d let it when I reached the condo’s parking space. Along the street, an attractive woman was loading a picnic cooler into her hatchback, while a man holding his child’s hand was stopped by a pair of nuns, traditionally hooded and graciously accepting the money he dropped into their woven basket. That struck the only jarring note; you’d think the church would have gotten its share at Mass in the morning.
    I started walking around the building, but not fast enough. I could hear the nuns coming up behind me as I got to my front steps. One said, ”Sir?”
    I turned around and looked from the basket into Salome’s not quite angelic face. Niño glared at me from under the other hood, a .357 magnum with a three-inch barrel pointing out from where rosary beads should dangle.
    Niño said, ”Inside. Now.”

    ”You give me a reason.”
    I said, ”To shoot or not to shoot?”
    Niño didn’t answer. He stood in the center of my living room, headdress on the table but gun in his hand. His eyes could have pinned me to the couch. I heard Salomé at the refrigerator. She poked her head around the corner of the kitchen doorway, saying, ”All you got is this Killian’s shit?”
    ”Sorry.”
    She opened two, brought one in for Niño. She took a sip and a chair. Niño held the bottle by the neck and downed half of it.
    He wiped his mouth and said, ”I wanna hear just what the fuck you think you doing, man.”
    ”You might want to sit down. It’s going to take a while.”
    ”Maybe you don’t got a while. Talk.”
    I brought him up to date, quickly, since he already knew most of it.
    ”So Marsh use my Angel to set up the Greek lawyer.”
    ”That’s right.”
    Salomé said, ”Fucken shithead.”
    ”And you can’t get J.J. to take the heat off the wife and kid.”
    ”Uh-huh.”
    His voice rose. ”So you fucken call me, and then call J.J., and tell both of us that his snow in one of those fucken pipes at the project.”
    ”Yes.”
    ”You motherfucken cocksucker! You set me up to get wasted, man.”
    ”Not the way it worked out.”
    ”Worked out? I start in that tunnel at the end you and me came out, just like you tell me to, and fucken Terdell, he coming from the other side, where him and J.J. have you before I save you cojones. I’m coming up on meeting him somewhere in the middle, and if it ain’t for the fucken stink rolling ahead of him maybe five yards he waste me.”
    ”I can’t believe it was that close.”
    Niño slung the beer