I shook Barrett’s hand and thanked him before driving south on Dorchester Avenue, passing a big sign welcoming me to South Boston in English and Gaelic.

5

The Mary Ellen McCormack had been built back during the Depression, endless rows of squat brick buildings surrounded by black iron fencing. Old snow had been scraped and banked along the sidewalks and around an open basketball court, where a little boy rode a tricycle. A woman in a tattered ski hat stood nearby, smoking a cigarette and keeping watch. A patch of brown grass poked out of a bare spot beyond the court. Old twisted trees in the courtyards loomed barren and skeletal.

I parked off Kemp Street, in front of an official-looking building with an open wrought-iron gate and quickly found her second-floor unit. A television played inside as I knocked.

Mattie opened the door, a bit surprised to see me. She was wearing a black sweatshirt, faded jeans, and a silver tiara. She swiped the tiara from her head and nodded me in, through the kitchen. I spotted in front of the television an assembled pink play castle, where twin girls crawled out from a door flap, waiting for Mattie to return. Mattie tossed the tiara onto the kitchen counter by some dirty cereal bowls and an open carton of milk. Her face was flushed.

“I can come back,” I said. “You look busy.”

“Just babysitting and crap until Grandma gets up.”

A gaunt woman lay asleep on a flowered sofa, one bony arm across her eyes, mouth open, a knitted blue blanket over her feet. She had a tattoo on her forearm of praying hands holding a rosary with the word JULIE beneath it. Grandma looked to be in her late forties.

“What’d you find out?” Mattie asked. She placed her hands on her narrow hips.

“May we sit?” I said, looking to the small kitchen table.

“I’d rather stand.”

“Grandma have a rough night?”

“Are you kidding?” she asked. “She just got in.”

“Night shift?”

“Yeah. The night shift at the pub.”

“We all must serve God’s purpose.”

“Listen, let’s get to it,” Mattie said. “I got to get the girls cleaned up and ready for a birthday party over in the next building. It’s Dora the Explorer. They love freakin’ Dora.”

The twins rattled around in the pink castle. Occasionally one would emerge and then crawl back inside. They both had short reddish brown hair but wore different pajamas. One kid was Dora and the other was a Disney princess. I didn’t know which one. I used to really be up on the latest Disney princesses.

“I read your mom’s file,” I said. “I talked to some cops.”

“They’re idiots.”

“Maybe. But they had a pretty solid case on Mickey Green.”

“If I just wanted the cops’ side of things I wouldn’t have dragged my ass up to the Back Bay to hire you,” she said. “I already know what they think, and that’s not worth shit to me.”

The furniture in the room that wasn’t slipcovered looked to be from the late 1960s and well worn. A stack of folded kids’ clothes sat in a laundry basket next to a pile of towels. There was a bicycle chained to a radiator and three plastic milk crates filled with dolls and toys. On one wall hung a framed picture of the Pope, a charcoal etching of Fenway, and a framed picture of an attractive young woman with bright red hair wearing a bright red sweater. It was the kind of studio portrait they take at shopping malls or discount stores. On closer inspection, I noted it was a senior portrait taken for South Boston High School.

“She was pretty before she fucked herself all up,” Mattie said, coming up beside me. I could tell she was biting the inside of her cheek. She blinked hard three times. “That crap ages you. Makes you nuts. After a while, even your friends quit on you.”

She was breathing like someone trying to steady herself.

“I can’t promise anything,” I said.

Mattie Sullivan studied my face before nodding. I was glad to see she’d cleaned the dime-store makeup off her eyes.

“I know she looked cheap, and I know the cops thought she was a whore. But that was bullshit. She loved us. She was trying to get clean. She was going to rehab when they came for her. They never even gave her a chance to make things right.”

“What things?”

“Everything.”

“Money?”

“I don’t know,” Mattie said. “Probably.”

I nodded.

“She was a mess. She knew she had to do better. She was trying.”

Mattie didn’t look at me. She looked at her mom’s picture, at the pink castle teetering with play, then down to her grandmother on the couch. “I didn’t ask you for a miracle. Okay?”

“Amen,” I said.

“The cops didn’t do a thing but point to Mickey Green because he was easy,” she said. “Meanwhile, the two animals who did this to my mother are still out there.”

“How long have you been friends with Mickey?”

“Did I say he was my friend?”

“You said you visit him in prison.”

“I’ve been a few times,” she said and shrugged. “He was a screwup. But he wouldn’t kill anyone. Especially my mom. He had feelings for her. That’s why he hung around and tried to help.”

“Does he write?”

“Yes.”

“May I see the letters?”

“You mind me askin’ if that’s okay with Mickey?”

“Not at all.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Mattie said. “But I’m not a retard. Okay? You find Pepper and Moon, and you’ll find the men who did this. What the cops did to Mickey wasn’t right by him or my mom.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Like I said a hundred times, I seen these two guys push my mother into their car. She was fighting them and yelling. Next thing I know the papers are saying Mickey Green did it. I’m thinking, Mickey Green? All he did was help my mom out with groceries and work on her car.”

“Were they together?”

“You mean was she boinking him?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe. He was kinda sweet and goofy.”

“You remember the car they were driving that night?”

Mattie shook her head.

“Grandma see anything?”

“We weren’t living with her then. Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Okay like you’re done with me? Or okay like you’re going to start doing some real detective work and quit just listening to the cops?”

“You’re a tough boss.”

Mattie looked me over. She almost smiled. “I got to be tough,” she said. “If I wasn’t, the twins would run wild and this place would turn to shit.”

I nodded. Besides the toys and pile of towels, the apartment was very clean. The twins looked to be socialized and up on their shots.

“You have some more pictures?” I asked. “Anything from the last year of her life?”

“Sure,” Mattie said. “But she looked like shit.”

“Where’d she hang out?”

“Four Green Fields. She went to happy hour like it was Mass.”

Mattie turned to the dinette table and reached for her parka and pink Sox cap. The twins had again pushed aside the flap of the play castle and watched their big sister with hands under their chins.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

“With you.”

“That’s not how I work.”

“Too bad.”

“What about the birthday party?” I said. “Who gets the twins ready?”

“I can help,” she said. “You need me. Hey, Grandma?”

Mattie walked over and pushed at the gaunt woman’s shoulder as she brushed past me to the door. Grandma stirred. I thought of a hundred ways to lose her or to explain just how I did my job. I could force the issue.

Mattie stood outside the door and pointed to the center of my chest. “Whatta you want? Me to hold your hand? C’mon.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

6

Four Green Fields looked like a hundred bars in Southie. There were neon and mirror bar signs, Sox and Celtics posters, two electronic dart boards, a video boxing game, and two ragged pool tables back by the toilets. I was pretty sure Philippe Starck had not designed the space. A well-worn barfly sat at a long row of empty stools, while a pale skinny guy with tattoos curling from shoulder to wrist beneath his sleeveless black T-shirt tended bar. He had a narrow patch of hair on his chin and a gold ring in one eyebrow. He looked up from a cutting board where he was slicing lemons. “No kids,” he said.