Patrick blew a breath through his lips. “So he’s set on it.”

“The way he sees it, either we’re partners or I’m disrespecting what I owe him.”

“You don’t owe him shit.”

Danny shrugged. “Not the way he sees it.” Which left Danny in a bad spot. The first times they’d met, there had been awkwardness and even a little fear, but also a faint and reserved fondness. They’d grown up together, suffered Sunday school together. Shared swiped menthols to impress fifth-grade girls in leather jackets and too much hair spray. Watched the sunrise from the top of a parking deck, twelve-year-old Evan afraid to go home, his eye blackened from stepping between his parents. They had history.

But when he’d walked in to find Evan at his kitchen table, fear was all he’d felt, a gnawing in his belly that grew as he listened. His friend had come out of Stateville changed. This man followed him. Spied on him. Broke into his house. And if he’d done all that, what was to stop him from doing worse? Danny shivered. “I’ve got to find a way out of this.”

“Why’s he need you at all?”

“I know Richard. I know his routines, I’ve been in the house. I even know his finances. Plus,” Danny said, “figuring out how to do things, that’s what I was good at.”

“Evan always was just muscle.”

Danny shook his head. “He likes you to think so. He’s got a temper, and he doesn’t give a damn for anybody in his way, but he’s…” He trailed off, searching for the right word. “Cunning. Even so, yeah, he knows his odds are better with me planning it.”

Patrick nodded, lit a cigarette. “You could always,” he paused, “I mean, you could always do the job.”

Danny spun. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Well, just for discussion. It would be easy, no one gets hurt, and Evan is off your back.”

“You really don’t get it, do you?”

“I know, you’re out, I’m just saying-”

“‘Just this once,’ right? Only bullshit, it doesn’t work that way. Everybody always goes down on the last job. You know why? Because if they don’t go down, they do another. Besides, we walked into a pawnshop at midnight, nobody even in the place, and still, somehow, we end up…” He paused, collected himself. Sighed. “I don’t want to go back to that world.”

Down on the street, a cab held his horn, the blare lasting five seconds, six, eight. Someone yelled back angrily. Overhead, indigo clouds moved against a dark sky. Patrick turned away from the railing, his boots rattling the metal grille of the fire escape. “I’ll talk to him for you.”

The words yanked Danny from his thoughts. “What? No.” All he needed, Patrick getting wrapped up in this. He already had enough asses in need of covering, enough liabilities.

“Look, this still is my world. Let me help.”

“No way,” Danny said. “I’m telling you, this isn’t the Evan we grew up with.”

“Yeah, well, I’m all grown up too.”

“Listen.” Danny used his most rational voice. “I know you’re trying to help, and I appreciate it. But that’s a bad play.”

Patrick stared back, like he was thinking of protesting further. Then he shrugged, turned, and flicked his cigarette off the balcony. “Your call.”

Danny nodded, went to stand beside him.

“What are you going to do, then?”

“I have an idea, but I really don’t like it.” Danny paused. “You remember Sean Nolan?”

“Sure. I felt up his sister on the playground behind St. Mary’s. He chased me for a week. Would’ve kicked my ass, too. He’s a cop now, still in the parish. Why?”

Danny just stared at the sky, let Patrick work it out. Funny, though the answer was perfectly obvious, it ran so counter to the lessons of Danny’s old world that it took a minute.

“Jesus,” Patrick said, pronouncing it “Jay-sus,” surprise revealing the edges of his father’s accent. “Going to the cops?”

“Just one cop. A guy we grew up with, from the neighborhood.”

Patrick whistled.

“Yeah. I’m not sure yet. Just thinking about it.”

“But-”

“What are you boys up to out here?” Karen stepped out smiling, carrying three beer bottles in one hand with practiced ease. She turned to close the door, and Danny shot Patrick a quick warning look. He hadn’t told her about Evan’s visit, convincing himself he hadn’t wanted to scare her, knowing that was only part of the truth.

“Just watching the drunks,” he said.

“And the girls, right?” She smiled, handed a bottle to each of them. “Speaking of which, Patrick, I have a friend you’ve got to meet. She’s a nurse.”

Their eyes met, locked. Patrick started first, then Danny, the laughter bubbling up from within, loud, ceaseless peals of it, each fueling the other until it turned to sobbing for breath, their sides hurting as they fell into deck chairs.

Karen looked at them funny. “What’d I say?”

It was enough to get them going all over again.

13

The edge of the switchblade already glowed with a liquid shimmer, but he’d broken out the whetstone anyway. Patrick held the knife at thirty degrees and stroked it in a practiced motion. Once, twice, three times. And with each stroke, he remembered last night, and got angrier.

“He pulled a piece on you?”

“Just let me see it, like it was an accident. Then he asked when Karen would be home.”

Poor Danny had been trying to play it cool, but it hadn’t been hard to spot the fury beneath his words. But there was something else there, too. A weird kind of helplessness it killed Patrick to see. He knew what it was; Danny was a civilian now.

And civilians were prey.

He’d raised a burr on one side of the knife, so he flipped it over and began work on the other edge.

After Karen had come out they’d had another couple beers, all three of them, the conversation on safe topics. Patrick had told them a story about this girl he’d met a couple years ago, a twenty-year-old chick who told him she lived with her daddy. They’d had a few drinks, one thing led to another, and then they were back at her house, ending up on the kitchen counter, of all places.

“You know, we’re going at it, everything’s good. And then I hear a door open. So I panic, grab for my clothes, thinking I better get out a window before her father comes at me with a shotgun, right?” Danny had laughed, and Karen had rolled her eyes. “Only you know what she says?”

“What?”

“She says, ‘It’s okay – daddy likes to watch.’” He’d held the pause, dragged it out till he had them both on the edge of their seats, then gave it up. “This whole time she’d been talking about her sugar daddy. Guy’s a sixty-year-old broker likes to see his pet stripper with other men.”

That’d cracked them up, and from there the conversation had gone on like normal, stories and jokes. Danny had sat down in one of the chairs, and Karen had taken the arm and leaned back into him, looking perfectly happy, two halves of a greater whole. And Patrick, he’d had to watch the glow in Karen’s eyes, the fear in Danny’s, and pretend like nothing was going on. That had been bad enough.

But then it had gotten worse.

He was leaving, and they’d both walked him down to his bike, October winds knocking bare branches against one another, the clouds skidding dark overhead. He reached for his keys in his jacket pocket and realized he wasn’t wearing it, that he’d left it upstairs. Danny volunteered to grab it, and left him and Karen alone.

“Listen, thanks again. The only time I get a meal isn’t cooked in a restaurant is when you guys have me over.”

She laughed. “Don’t worry about it.” She’d wrapped her arms around herself against the cold, and smiled. One of those silences had fallen. Just one of those moments that happen between two people who are used to the presence of a third, and who don’t really know what to say to each other alone. He’d brushed at a spot on the chrome of his bike, and she’d looked at the sky. And then, out of nowhere, she surprised him.