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CHAPTER 20
Dean and Guthrie stopped at Tracks to grab a beer. The sun was already creeping low in the sky, its bright smudge its only notable trait. Dean was ready for spring, to see some green beyond the firs and spruces and white pines. Anything besides unrelenting gray.
Guthrie poured his Budweiser into a glass and rubbed his chin before taking a large drink. “What the hell is Zorn doing? Why’s he throwing Alex at us like that?” He took a drink. “Hell, why’d Alex throw McCord at us?”
Dean leaned back in the chair, rubbed the back of his neck, and looked at the ceiling. “The question is, what does this have to do with William’s murder?” He leaned forward and put his arms on the table. “If we assume it is drug related, then William—from what we know so far—was killed because of his proximity to Alex. Either he knew what Alex was doing or he helped Alex. So that presumes Alex is doing something illegal. But I don’t think Alex just gets into the drug trade alone. No. So he’s working for one of those two, Zorn or McCord.”
“Zorn, right, if he threw McCord at us?”
“Maybe. But Zorn threw Alex under the bus.” Dean waved his hand. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We don’t know if Alex was involved in anything illegal or not.”
They finished their beers and ordered a second round. Guthrie asked who Dean liked in the upcoming Super Bowl. Given the drubbing the Cowboys inflicted on the Rams, Guthrie was convinced Dallas were going to win. Dean cautioned that in a fight between the Steelers and Cowboys, he would pick the Steelers. They paid their bill, returned to the station, and typed up their reports. Dean read Guthrie’s quickly, counter-signed the document, and they slipped everything into the growing folder. After Guthrie left the station, Dean called the Beacon and left a message for Paige that Billy’s car had been found but revealed nothing interesting. He pressed the hook switch and cradled the handset. He dropped the handset to his other hand and put it on the hook.
When he picked up Jenny, his mom sent him home with a container of turkey tetrazzini, piling in extra bits of the burnt cheese crust that he favored. While he heated up the casserole in the oven, he found a bag of frozen peas and dumped them in boiling water. While sucking in spaghetti noodles, Jenny regaled Dean with the day she spent with her grandmother. Another puzzle, but she had also begun to learn to sew dresses for her dolls. Dean let his mind wonder how soon his daughter would grow out of playing with dolls.
They played scopa—a game Dean had learned from Eugene Deluca during a rainy day on base in sixty-eight. As he considered which card to discard, Jenny asked if he was mad at Uncle Tony.
“Why do you ask about Uncle Tony?” asked Dean.
“He was over at Grandma’s again today. Grandma said you and him haven’t seen each other for years.” She emphasized the last word, stretching her hands wide.
“You can’t take that four-of-coins and two-of-cups ’cause a six-of-clubs is there.”
Jenny replaced the two cards and picked up the six-of-clubs.
Dean looked at his cards. He shook his head at what his mother had said. It was not accurate even if it had the sense of accuracy, but it was not as if they spoke of Tony often. “I’m not mad at Tony, but it might’ve appeared that way.” He discarded his knight-of-coins. “But we don’t see him often, that’s for sure.”
“Why don’t we?” Jenny showed her knight-of-clubs and swept up the knight-of-coins.
“It’s a grown-up story.” He led with that, not knowing what else to say, praying she would accept that and move on. But it was his daughter.
“So we’re not allowed to see him?”
“Mmmm…that’s not it. I mean, you’ve seen him a couple of times now. Nothing wrong with that.” He paused, unsure of how to talk about the history, the context. “You know you had another uncle, right? Uncle Nolan? Mom’s told you that?”
Jenny shook her head, and Dean almost cursed Cindy aloud. But then he had never brought up Nolan either.
He set his cards down. “Hold on.” He walked to the kitchen and poured a tumbler of whiskey. “Milk?” He looked over the counter at Jenny, who nodded. He poured a tall glass of milk and pulled out the chocolate syrup, which he squeezed in and stirred around with a knife. He handed her the glass. “So you know I was in a place called Vietnam, right?”
Jenny nodded.
“Well, you had an Uncle Nolan who was there, too. But he didn’t come home.”
“He died there?”
Dean took a drink. “Yeah, he did. It was after I left there. Well, Uncle Tony didn’t go to Vietnam. And that upset some people. So it makes it hard to be around him sometimes.”
“Are you mad at him?”
“Mad at him? No. I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s hard to see him and not think of Uncle Nolan. So it’s easier to just not see Uncle Tony. Does that make sense?”
She put her finger to her lips—a gesture so reminiscent of Cindy that he thought he was looking at her twin. “I guess so, but can I see Uncle Tony, right?”
Dean took a drink. “Of course.” He smiled at her. “But I want you to know. My not seeing Uncle Tony wasn’t the right thing. Just because it’s easier that’s, well, that’s not a good enough reason.”
In the end, Jenny beat Dean at scopa. They watched some TV. After he tucked her in, he sat on the couch with the volume turned low and drank whiskey, thinking of Tony and Nolan and the war. And how he hated to think of the war but he could never not think of it. He had brought it home and, like a delayed-fuse bomb, it had gone off years later, severing limbs but leaving him alive—if barely.
Once he was in homicide at the NYPD, his drinking really took control. Cindy put up with it far longer than he had any right to expect, but even that bastion of strength had fled—or he had exhausted it, forced it away. She had found him too often on the couch in the middle of the night with an empty bottle in his hand, raging at the shadows of the war. He could never tell her. Or he could never find a way to tell her. Tell her how excited battle made him, the frenzy of killing, the explosions, the guns, the adrenalin. In those moments, fear washed over him with ecstasy and he imagined this was what the saints in the desert found as they approached God. How could he explain that to his wife? To anyone who had not been in battle? And then follow that up with how awful he felt about the NVA boy-soldier he shot from six meters. The three blood-spattered bullet holes rising up from the right-lower gut to the left shoulder. Killed as they stormed a hill. Kill or be killed. He did the right thing, but that boy haunted him. Those three growing spots of red and the swaying of the tree leaves behind him as the bullets rose up from the repeated recoil. He could never explain it, so he drank, but the drink stopped numbing it. And Cindy left him. And she needed to. He did not deserve her. He trudged on, but then he had messed up the Kerensky investigation, and the brass could not ignore the issue anymore. Sacked him. And he came crawling back home to his dad, who pitied him and gave him a job. And Dean could not forgive himself for his fall. So he drank, knowing it could not bring light to the darkness.
