Blood and Bone (27 page)
UNCLE MAX WAS SITTING at the bar of the Olde Pig Snout, smoking a cigarette, nursing a beer, watching the local news on the television as his life ticked away swallow by swallow. When the door opened, he palmed his cigarette and turned his head to get a look at who was walking in. He instinctively smiled when he saw it was Kyle. And then the smile froze on his face, as if something in his nephew’s eyes made it clear that this was not simply a sweet familial visit.
“Kyle, what a surprise,” said Max. “And in a suit, no less. Who died?”
“No one,” said Kyle. “Yet.”
“Want a drink?”
“We need to talk.”
“What, you dress like that just to break up with me?”
“Over there,” said Kyle, pointing to a booth.
“Sure thing, Kyle. No problem. Let me get us a round, first.”
Max waved Fred the bartender over. Fred smiled crookedly. “How you doing there, Kyle?”
“Not so good,” said Kyle.
“What happened?” said Fred.
“I’ve been betrayed,” said Kyle.
Max’s head swung toward Kyle as if his ear had been yanked, but Fred just kept on nodding and smiling. “Good, good. You still playing ball?”
“Not anymore.”
“Just keep swinging. Anything I can get you?”
“A beer.”
“Two,” said Max. “With a couple shooters.” Max glanced back at Kyle’s stone face. “On my tab.”
“Good,” said Fred. “So everything’s good, Kyle?”
“Yeah,” said Kyle. “Everything’s just swell.”
“Good,” said Fred. “That’s good.”
“Have you ever noticed,” said Kyle when they were in a booth with their drinks, “that no matter how terrible the news, Fred always tells you how good everything is?”
“That’s about the extent of his charm,” said Max, “but somehow I find it comforting. Everything’s always good at the Olde Pig Snout, except the food, the beer and the company. So what climbed up your butt?”
Kyle looked away, let his eyes harden, and then turned back to stare at his Uncle Max. “I want to know,” he said, his teeth clenched, his voice suddenly low and hard, “how you could do it to my mother. Forget about me, a twelve-year-old kid forced to go to his father’s fake funeral, forget about how your little trick twisted my life into knots. I want to know how you could do it to my mother, your sister, how you could do it to her.”
Max stared at Kyle for a long moment, lit a cigarette, took a draw, downed his shot while smoke leaked out his nose, and then promptly burst into tears. It was not a tidy little cry, it was red and wet and full of sob and self-fury. Max’s cheeks burned, his bulbous nose turned red and ran, his beady little eyes squeezed out bucketfuls, and in the middle of it he slammed his forehead on the table once and then again, before grabbing Kyle’s shot, downing that, too, and sobbing some more.
Kyle was unmoved.
“I thought,” said Max, his broken voice coming in gasps as the sobs stole his breath, “I thought . . . I was doing the . . . right thing.”
“How could a betrayal like that ever be the right thing?”
“Because . . . because . . . because he was no damn good for her,” said Max, catching his breath now between words. “Because he seduced her and impregnated her and then just left her there in that crappy little house. And she wouldn’t move on, she wouldn’t date, she wouldn’t do anything but wait for him. It broke my heart.”
“So you faked his death.”
“I helped him do it. Yeah, I admit it. But she was still pretty, still young. I thought with him out of the way, she’d find someone new. I thought you’d end up with a real father. I thought—”
“You thought wrong.”
“I know. God, I know. But she deserved better. And so did you. You don’t know how many times I tried to set her up. She wasn’t interested. She did nothing but mourn the bastard. And you did nothing but mourn him, too. And every time I saw you both after that, it broke my heart.”
“Fuck you and your broken heart,” said Kyle.
“You’re right.”
“Just go to hell.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Good.”
Max pulled his cigarette to his lips with shaking hands, took a drag, and then wiped his eyes with his other palm. Kyle drank from his beer and looked away.
“Is that it?” said Max.
“No.”
“There’s more?”
“Yeah.”
“Christ. Okay, whatever you want, Kyle. I’ll do anything. Anything to make it up to you.”
“You can’t.”
“I know.”
“Damn right you know.”
“I was afraid you might find out when you started nosing around into what happened to your dad.”
“Then why’d you tell me to look?”
“Because I wanted you to know what he was really like, to take your blinders off.”
“You put them there when you fake-killed him.”
“You think I don’t know that? You think I don’t know?” Pause. “How’d you find out anyway?”
Kyle searched for some suspicion in Max’s eyes, found nothing but Max’s own tortured memories. “A cop,” Kyle said.
“Jesus. Are they coming after me?”
“No, they just think my father was murdered and the certificate was forged to hide the fact. But I figure if you were involved, there was no murder. You’re a jerk, but you’re not a killer.”
“You got that right. Of everything I am, I’m not that.”
“I still have some questions, though.”
“Okay. Sure. Whatever you want to know.”
“How did it happen? When exactly did you guys start planning this thing?”
“Can I get another beer before I tell you?”
“No.”
“Please?”
“Talk.”
“Okay,” said Max. “It started when I still had my truck and was working for the funeral home. They had me delivering these bodies up to some place in Jersey for embalming. I could tell that something was wrong, there was too many bodies going up, and it was too hushhush. So I did some asking and found out they was stealing body parts and faking death certificates. The whole thing scared the hell out of me. So I decided to talk it out with a lawyer.”
“My dad.”
“Yeah, well, he was available, and he wouldn’t charge me, you know. I told him everything, and he told me to quit, but I ignored him and kept driving, because . . . hell, the money was good. I thought that was the end of it. But then, later, he came back to me with some questions.”
“When was this?”
“A week or so before the funeral. Over the phone. And then he mentioned the possibility of him getting one of them fake death certificates.”
“Did he tell you why?”
“He said he was in this real-estate thing, with a partner who was going to dissolve the partnership with a gun. And he had fallen into something that might be real money, but he didn’t know if he’d be alive to keep it. And there was other stuff. He just wanted to get away. I asked about you, and his Frenchie wife. He said he had taken out insurance, that everyone would be better off. I told him he was crazy. I told him to forget about it. But then . . .”
“He offered you money.”
“Yeah.”
“How much?”
“Does it matter? I didn’t do it for the money. I did it to get him the hell out of her life. Kyle, he was no damn good, I’m telling you. Anyone who would run like he did . . . well, I thought you was both better off without him.”
“So when you put the file cabinet in the house, you already knew he was going to fake his death and run away.”
“Yeah, he just wanted some stuff kept safe for after. Just in case.”
“How much did he pay you for the whole thing?”
“Fifteen.”
“In cash?”
“Yeah.”
“You sold yourself cheap, Max. Did he pay you up front?”
“Nah. I wanted it that way, but he said he was working on a couple things and could only make the payment right at the time. So he gave me the envelope on the ride up. My share and the twenty the doctor demanded. Thickest envelope I ever got in my life. I had some dead alky’s body in the back of the truck, someone who I was supposed to take to get dumped in some pauper’s grave. I just did the switcheroo and had them burn it. Simple as that.”
“Did my mother ever know?”
“Nah. I tried telling her once, after I realized there wasn’t going to be anyone else, but I chickened out. And then she got sick. And then what was the point?”
“You sold her out, Max.”
“Kyle, I didn’t do it for the money. I ended up giving her the fifteen anyway, and more. Plenty more.”
“Why?”
“For you. She had too much pride to ever ask for anything for herself, but she’d swallow it to ask for you. And the insurance money she got was less than she needed to keep going. Those braces you got, when you busted your arm, the money you needed for school after the scholarship went kablooey.”
“She would rather have had my father than the money.”
“Kyle, it wasn’t my idea. I just helped. He’d deserted her before, he was deserting her again. I thought finally getting rid of the creep would be good for her, is all. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t know how sorry.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” Kyle felt his anger subside and fought to keep it boiling. “You said there was other stuff that made him want to leave. What kind of other stuff?”
“I don’t know. Women stuff.”
“What are you talking about, Max?”
“Well, you know, there was his wife and your mom and—”
“Someone else?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter? There was always someone else, that’s just the way he was. And he said it was getting too complicated. He’d said he do them all a favor with the insurance and start over.”
“Is that what he said?”
“Yeah.”
“He was a son of a bitch, wasn’t he?”
“That’s what I been telling you. I thought it would work out for the best.” Pause. “So we still good?”
“No.”
“Okay. We’re still not good,” said Max. “We’ll never be good.”
Kyle took a peek at his uncle. “Maybe not never.”
“Not never, maybe, but not for a while,” said Max. “I know. I got it coming.”
“Damn right.”
“Damn right is right.” Another drag. “How you doing, Kyle? Really.”
“I don’t know. Good, I guess.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good that you’re doing good.”
“Yeah.”
“Good that everything’s good.”
Kyle stared at his uncle for a moment, then turned his head to look at Fred, smiling like an idiot behind the bar. “You want to know something, Uncle Max? I hate this fucking place.”
KYLE BYRNE WAS drunk with whine.
It might also have been the beers he had consumed at Bubba’s and at the Olde Pig Snout that intoxicated him, or the growl of the engine between his legs, or the bugs caught in his teeth, or the way his tie snapped behind him as he sped recklessly on Skitch’s motorcycle through the wilds of West Philadelphia. But more than anything else, it was the whine.
Yet who the hell had more of a reason to whine than Kyle Byrne? Everyone blames his parents for purposely screwing up his life, but Kyle now had absolute proof. His father had deserted him not out of fear for his own safety or for the safety of his only son, as he had claimed, but out of greed and lust. The truth of it filled Kyle with anger and resentment, with a sour consolation at being proved right all along, and with a feral sadness that tore through him like choked sobs. Betrayal to the left of him, betrayal to the right, and here he was stuck in the middle, stuck in this nightmare, stuck in this life.
For a time he pretended not to know where he was headed, imagined he was just accelerating into the setting sun, feeling the wind in his face and the pumping of the pistons through his bones. Speed was what he was after, raw speed, as if he could outrun the emotions that were overwhelming him. But he wasn’t running away from the source of his pain, he was running to it, inexorably. He was like the noble salmon jumping up the falls as it returned to its childhood home. Except he wasn’t a fish. And he wasn’t going to spawn. And he didn’t go well with a beurre blanc and a risotto, though being poached that very night was a real possibility.
It wasn’t long before he was back in the old neighborhood, back on the old street, sitting on the bike and surveying the charred ruins of house and car. And at the sight of it, the sadness nearly overwhelmed him, until he transmuted it into raw bitterness. Aimed at his father.
Liam Byrne was responsible for this, for everything about this. The fire, yes, of course, because of his ruthless pursuit of the O’Malley file for his own damn profit. But even before the fire. The loss of the house, because of the way he had left Kyle and his mother practically destitute. And the loss of his mother, as if the sadness of Liam’s fake death had metastasized into the cancer that failed to respond to any treatment and overwhelmed her body. And the ruinous choices in Kyle’s own life that had led him to where he was at this moment, without anything to claim as his own but the suit on his back and the target on his forehead.
He was wondering how to play the next few hours, but the sight of the burned wreckage made everything clear. He was going to do whatever he needed to betray his father the way his father had betrayed him. Ashes to ashes, baby.
He looked up and saw a police car slip onto the street, and suddenly he remembered all the trouble he was in. With his toe he tapped the gearshift into first as he popped the clutch, lurching off down the street, speeding away, a left, a right, losing the cops when he made another left. He didn’t think it mattered where he was headed, but it did. Because he was traversing a course that had become familiar in the past year. Up City Line, down Lansdale Avenue, up State Road, along the low stone fence to the cemetery. The same cemetery where his father’s fake funeral had happened fourteen years before and where his mother’s real burial had taken place just about a year ago.