I didn’t have an answer. He got the keys from the ignition, walked around to the trunk, unlocked it. He came back and picked up Andy’s corpse without any apparent effort and carried him on his shoulder, then laid him gently in the trunk and slammed the lid. The noise when it swung shut was sharp and sudden on that dark and silent country road.

“No choice at all,” he said, “and I swear I didn’t want to do it.”

“I didn’t think you were going to,” I said. “Not then, at any rate. You took me by surprise.”

“And him as well, I shouldn’t wonder. I wanted to give him a bit of hope, you know, and put him at his ease. It’s fear that’s hardest on a man, and I wanted to spare him that. As it was, there must have been an instant when he knew what was happening, and then it was over. Ah, Christ, it’s a bad old world.”

“It’s that, all right.”

“A hard life in a bad old world. He was as close as I’ll ever come to having a son. Paddy Farrelly got himself a son, as like as not by forcing himself on the Dowling bitch, and his boy’s painting the city with blood to avenge his father’s memory. And my son’s helping him do it.” He steadied himself, drew a breath. “Except he’s not my son and never was. Just a decent lad who never added up to much. A good steady hand, with a dart or a steering wheel. Do you think I should have let him live?”

“I can’t answer that.”

“What would you have done yourself? You can answer that, can’t you?”

“You could never trust him,” I said.

“No.”

“Or rest easy, knowing what he’d done. All those people, all that blood. Being the man you are, I don’t see how you could have acted differently.”

“Being the man I am.”

“Well, you’ve never been one to forgive and forget.”

“No,” he said. “I never have. And too old to learn new tricks, I’d have to say.” He bent down, picked up a pack of Marlboros Andy had dropped. “A clue,” he said ironically, “and now it’s got my prints on it. And who gives a fuck, anyway?” He flung the pack across the road bent down again and came up with Andy’s Zippo lighter. I thought he was going to throw that as well but he frowned at it and stuck it in his pocket. Then he reached to scoop up a handful of gravel and hurled that after the cigarettes.

I waited while he leaned against the side of the car and let the fury drain out of him. Then in an entirely different tone of voice he said, “What they don’t know is there’s another way onto the property. It backs up against state land, you know. And there’s a back road goes into the state land, and then you can walk through a few acres of woods and you’re on my land out behind the old orchard. They’ll only know to watch the driveway, and they’ll be waiting for three men in a car, not two men on foot.”

“That gives us a little bit of an edge.”

“And we’ll need it, as there’s two of us and who knows how many of them. I should have asked him how many they had, but would he even have known?”

“There were the two who mugged me. Donnie Scalzo and the one whose face I never did see. The Vietnamese is dead, but his partner Moon Gafter’s still around, and he’ll probably be on hand for the finale. That’s three, and Dowling makes four, but there could be one or two others we don’t know about.”

“Four at a minimum,” he said. “Very likely five, and possibly six. All arrayed against the two of us. They’re defending and we’re on the attack, which is to their advantage, but we know the ground better than they do. We’ve a bit of the home field advantage.”

“And the element of surprise.”

“And that,” he agreed. “But, you know, I’m presuming something, and I’ve no right to. Because you don’t have to be a part of the rest of it. You can go home.”

I just shook my head. “It’s too late for that,” I said. “Unless we both go home. They set a trap and you figured it out and walked away from it, and took out the man who set it. You could walk away and let them figure out what to do next.”

“I’d rather deal with them now, while I’ve got them all bottled up in there.”

“I agree. And I’ll be there with you.”

We got in the car. He started it up. I found myself trying to determine if the car felt any lighter now that we didn’t have Andy with us anymore, and then I remembered that the weight was the same. He’d been behind the wheel before, and now he was in the trunk.

 

“I had a feeling, you know.”

“About Andy.”

“From early on, it must have been. After the trouble at the bar, I made sure I dropped him off and kept the car. I didn’t want him to know where I was staying. And I didn’t let him have the cell phone number.”

“I don’t know about the second sight,” I said, “but I’d say you have good instincts.”

“And that may be all it is,” he said, “but I don’t know. Let me concentrate now, we’ve got our turn coming up and it’s an easy one to miss. Ah, will you look at that!”

Ahead of us, a whole herd of deer bounded one after another across the narrow road. I counted eight of them, and I may have missed one.

“They’re hard on crops and shrubbery,” he said, “and a fucking menace on the highway, but what a beautiful sight they are. Why the hell would anybody want to shoot them?”

“I’ve got a friend in Ohio, a cop named Havlicek, who’s always trying to get me to go out there and hunt deer with him. He can’t understand why I’m not interested, and I can’t understand why he is.”

“It’s enough of a strain killing people,” he said. “I’ve no time to waste on deer.”

He found the back road he was looking for and we made our turn. Half a mile in there was a chain across the road with a sign on it announcing that access was forbidden except to authorized personnel. I got out and unhooked the chain. He drove through and I replaced the chain and got back in the car.

We followed the one-lane road through the woods. I couldn’t say how far we drove. We crept along slowly, rarely going over ten miles an hour. I kept waiting for more deer to explode out of cover in front of us, and God knows the woods were full of them, but we didn’t see any others.

Eventually the road ran out in a small clearing. There was a little cabin there, and a canvas-topped 4WD utility vehicle parked not far from it. Mick reached into the back of the Chevy and went through the leather satchel, selecting some of its contents and adding them to a dun-gray canvas sack. He took mostly guns and extra ammunition, and left behind the money and papers from the safe. He’d already grabbed up a red plastic flashlight from the glove box, and on a hunch I checked the utility vehicle. It was unlocked, as I’d figured it would be, and it had a flashlight mounted on a clamp above the passenger door, encased in hard black rubber and twice as bright as the one from the Caprice.

“Good man,” Mick said.

I didn’t see any way out but the way we’d come in, but Mick struck off to the left, and the beam of his flashlight revealed a path. He had the canvas sack in one hand and the flashlight in the other, and I was carrying the second flashlight and had my other hand free. I had the revolver he’d given me in my shoulder holster, and the little .22 automatic in my pocket. And I’d kept one of the guns I’d taken from Andy, another automatic, this one a 9mm. I was carrying it as he’d carried it, under my waistband in the small of my back.

The air was cool, and I was glad of the Kevlar vest if only for the warmth it provided. The ground was soft underfoot, the path narrow. Our own footfalls were the only sound I could hear, and it seemed to me we were making a lot of noise, although I couldn’t see how it mattered. We were well out of earshot of anybody at the farm.

After a long silence he said, “He didn’t have a priest. I wonder if it matters. We used to think it did, but there’s much that’s changed with the years. I doubt he cared whether he had a priest or not. Priest or no priest, he’ll be seeing it now.”

“Seeing . . .”

“The picture of his life. If that’s what happens. But who knows what happens? Though I suspect I’ll find out soon enough.”

“We both may.”

“No,” he said. “You’ll be all right.”

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s the next thing to it,” he said. “You’ll be home soon enough, sitting in your kitchen drinking coffee with your good woman. I’ve a strong feeling about that.”

“Another feeling.”

“And there’s a twin feeling alongside of it,” he said. “About myself.”

I didn’t say anything.

“’You’ve the second sight,’ my mother said, ‘and right now it’s a wonder to you, Mickey, but you’ll find it’s as much a curse as ever it was a blessing, for it will show you things you’d sooner not see.’ There were things she was wrong about, by God, but that was never one of them. I don’t think I’ll live to see the sun up, man.”

“If you really believe that,” I said, “why don’t we turn around and go home?”

“We’ll go on.”

“Why?”

“Because we must. Because I’d have it no other way. Because if I’m not afraid of the men and their guns, whyever should I be fearful of my own thoughts? And I have to tell you this. I don’t mind dying.”

“Oh?”

“Whoever would have thought I’d last this long? You’d think someone would have killed me by now, or I’d have died of my own recklessness. Oh, I had a good old run of it. There’s things I did and wish I hadn’t, and there’s others I wished I’d done and never will, but I wouldn’t change the whole of it if I could. And just as well, because you never can, can you?”

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it . . .

“No,” I said. “You never can.”

“I’m lucky to have had what I’ve had, and if it’s over then it’s over. And I’ve seen too many men die to fear the act of dying. If there’s pain, well, there’s pain enough in life. I’m not afraid of it.”

“When you were in Ireland that time,” I remembered, “I had to trade a suitcase full of money for a kidnapped child, and I had to walk right up to a couple of guns in order to do it. The men with the guns were unstable, and one of them was crazy as a shit-house rat. I figured there was a very good chance I’d die then and there. But I honestly wasn’t afraid. I know I must have told you that, but did I ever tell you why?”

“Tell me.”

“It was a thought I had. I realized I’d lived too long to die young. And I don’t know why the hell I found that reassuring, but I did. And I wasn’t afraid.”

“And that was a few years ago,” he said, “and I’m a couple of years older than yourself.” He cleared his throat. “I won’t have a priest myself,” he said. “You know, I have to say that bothers me.”

“Does it?”

“Not the lack of some whey-faced lad in a dog collar to touch me on the forehead and send me fluttering off to Jesus,” he said. “I don’t care about that. But I always had it in the back of my mind that I’d get a chance to make a full confession before I died. I thought I’d die easier with the weight of the sins off me.”

“I see.”

“Do you? You probably don’t, not being brought up in the Faith. It’s hard to explain Confession to someone who’s not Catholic. What it is, and what it does for you.”

“We have something like it in AA.”

“Do you?” He stopped dead in his tracks. “But I never heard that. You have a sacrament of Confession? You go to priests and bare your souls?”

“Not exactly,” I said, “but I think it amounts to essentially the same thing. There’s a program of suggested steps.”

“Twelve of them, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Not everybody pays attention to them, especially at first, when it’s hard enough just staying away from the first drink. But people who work the steps seem to have a better chance of staying sober in the long run, so most people get to them sooner or later.”

“And confession’s a part of it?”

“The fifth step,” I said. “The precise language of it—but do you really want to hear all this?”

“Indeed I do.”

“What you’re supposed to do is admit to God, to yourself, and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs.”

“Your sins,” he said. “But how do you decide what’s a sin?”

“You figure it out for yourself,” I said. “There’s no authority in AA. Nobody’s in charge.”

“The lunatics are running the asylum.”

“That’s about it. And how you approach the step is open to interpretation. The advice I got was to write down everything I ever did in my life that bothered me.”

“By God, wouldn’t your hand be cramped up by the time you were done?”

“That’s exactly what happened. Then I sat down with my notes in front of me and talked it all out with another person.”

“A priest?”

“Some people do it with a clergyman. In the early days that was the usual way. Nowadays most people take the step with their sponsor.”

“Is that what you did?”

“Yes.”

“And that was the Buddhist fellow? Why can I never remember the poor man’s name?”

“Jim Faber.”

“And you told him every bad thing you ever did.”

“Pretty much. There were a few things that I didn’t think of until later on, but I told him everything I could remember at the time.”

“And then what? He gave you absolution?”

“No, he just listened.”

“Ah.”

“And then he said, ‘Well, that’s it. How do you feel now?’ And I said I thought I felt about the same. And he said why don’t we go get some coffee, and we did, and that was that. But later I felt . . .”

“Relieved?”

“I think so, yes.”

He nodded. “I’d no idea your lot did any of that,” he said. “It’s a good bit like Confession, but there’s more ritual and formality our way. No surprise, eh? There’s more ritual and formality to everything we do. You’ve never done it our way, have you?”

“No, of course not.”

“’No, of course not.’ There’s no ‘of course’ about it with you, is there? You’ve been to Mass with me. More than that, you took Holy Communion. Do ye even remember that?”

“I wouldn’t be likely to forget it.”

“Nor I myself! By God, what a strange fucking time that was. The two of us fresh from Maspeth with blood on our hands, and there we were at St. Bernard’s at the Butchers’ Mass, staying put as we always did while the others went up to take the wafer. And all of a sudden there you are, on your feet and on your way to the altar rail, and I a step behind you. I with decades of sins unconfessed, and you an unbaptized heathen altogether, and we took Communion!”

“I don’t know why I did it.”

“And I never knew why I followed you! And yet I felt wonderful afterwards. I couldn’t tell you why, but I did.”

“So did I. I never did anything like that again.”

“I should hope not,” he said. “Neither did I, you may rest assured of that.”

We walked a little ways in silence, and then he said, “Ritual and formality, as I was saying. ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,’ is what I’d say as a way of starting. ‘It has been forty years and more since my last confession.’ Sweet Jesus, forty years!”

I didn’t say anything.

“And then I don’t know what I’d say. I don’t think there’s a commandment I’ve not broken. Oh, I’ve kept my hands off the altar boys, and that’s more I guess than some of the priests can say for themselves, but I can take no credit for that as it’s been lack of inclination that’s spared them. I suppose I could go through the list, commandment by commandment.”

“Some people do the Fifth Step by going through the list of deadly sins. You know, pride, greed, anger, gluttony . . .”

“It might be easier. There’s seven sins, and that’s three fewer than the commandments. I like your way, though. Just saying the sins that are weighing on your soul. Well, I’ve enough of those. I’ve lived a bad life and done bad things.”

A twig snapped underfoot, and I heard something scurry in the brush, some small animal we’d startled. Off in the distance I heard what must have been the hooting of an owl. I don’t think I ever heard one before. He stopped walking, leaned his back against a tree.

“One time,” he said, “I was trying to get this man to talk. He had money hidden and he wouldn’t say where it was. Hurting him only seemed to strengthen his will. And so I reached in and took his eye out, plucked it right out of his head, and I held it in the palm of my hand and showed it to him. ‘Your eye is looking at you,’ I said, ‘and it can see right into your soul. Now shall I take the other one as well?’ And he talked, and we got the money, and I put the barrel of my gun to his empty eye socket and blew out his brains.”

He fell silent, and his words hung in the air around us, until the breeze could waft them away.

“And then there was another time,” he said. . . .

 

I’ve forgotten almost everything he said.

I can’t explain how that happened. It’s not as though I wasn’t paying attention. How could I have done otherwise? The wedding guest could have more easily ignored the Ancient Mariner.

Even so, the words he spoke passed through my consciousness and flew off somewhere. It was as if I was a channel, a conduit for his confession. Maybe that’s how it is for priests and psychiatrists, who hear such revelations regularly. Or maybe not. I couldn’t say.

We walked and he talked, sometimes at great length, sometimes quite tersely. There was a point when we reached a clearing and sat on the ground, and he went on talking and I went on listening.

And then there was a point when he was done.

 

“A longer walk than I remembered it,” he said. “It’s slower going at night, and we stopped now and then along the way, didn’t we? The stream’s my property line. It’s just a dry ditch in the heat of summer, and a regular torrent when the snows melt in the spring. Let’s find a place to cross it where we won’t get our feet wet.”

And we managed, stepping on a couple of rocks.

“After he heard you out, your Buddhist friend,” he began, and caught himself. “Jim Faber, that is to say.”

“You remembered his name.”

“There’s hope for me yet. After he heard you out, was that the end of it? He didn’t absolve you of your sins. Did he at least give you any penance? Any Aves to say? Any Our Fathers?”

“No.”

“He just left it at that?”

“The rest was up to me. The way we do it, we have to forgive ourselves.”

“How, for God’s sake?”

“Well, there are other steps. It’s not penance, exactly, but maybe it works the same way. Making amends for the harm you’ve done.”

“However would a man know where to begin?”

“And self-acceptance,” I said. “That’s a big part of it, and don’t ask me how you do it. It’s not exactly my own area of expertise.”

He thought about it and nodded slowly. The corners of his mouth turned up the slightest bit. “So you won’t grant me absolution,” he said.

“I would if I could.”

“Ah, what kind of a priest are you? The wrong kind entirely. Knowing you, you’d probably change wine into water.”

“The miracle of Insubstantiation,” I said.

“Wine into Perrier,” he said. “With all the tiny bubbles.”