All detectives are looking for themselves. They’re no different from fruit flies and antelopes. The genetic imperative is to mate, to populate, replicas of the One made many by the great Dao. The ancients knew the little game we play here is just a distant echo of the one cast by the gods. The stars map the route and meaning, and the cosmic dice of karma spit their bounty and benison upon the sleeping children in paradise. They turned it to hell.
Mickey Modine was a treasure to his Irish mother. She loved the bejesus out of his pearly blue eyes. He got one to five for assault and battery and started his vacation on Deer Island. At twenty-three Mickey had been a man for the last ten years and the scars of the streets were there for those who could see. Every scratch was a marker for the god of suffering. Mickey, like one or two other Bostonians, was a follower of the man in Rome.
The meet-up room was full of the usual. In the business of violence, you have to wear a shield. You know what the taste of a fist to the face looks like, smells like. You know by the hairs on the back of your neck what colour armour to sprout. After a while it becomes unconscious. You turn into a chameleon that sits up and begs and knows when to turn left when all the other dicks turn right.
I sat and waited in a cheap plastic chair under a cheap plastic table. There’s something about prison décor that makes the gastric juices try to escape. After ten minutes that lasted the whole Jurassic period, Mickey strolled in with the big smile and grabbed the Lucky Strikes in front of me. I threw him the matches and he smiled a bit more. Some of the other guests eyed him over with death rays and I wondered if he’d live past the first week.
‘Detective MacFarlane, always a pleasure. Have you seen my old mammy at all? Will you give her a kiss for me and tell her not to worry over her errant son. He’ll be out in no time, pruning her roses.’
I let him go for a while and took a Strike but didn’t light it. He was as cocky as a bull in a Buick and I had to find a few things, so I cut some slack. For the time being.
‘They want to pin it on you, Mickey.’ ‘They can kiss my Irish backside.’
‘They can do that and more.’
He started to laugh at that. He laughed all the way to ‘Is that all you’ve got copper?’, only it wasn’t so grand and was spattered with a plethora of choice, guttural expletives.
Mickey was a dumbass who thought thug life was a passport to redeeming his old man’s death at the hands of the White Chapter. Patrick Modine was a good man and personal friend who tried to live the ordinary way. It used to be a dream we had here when Mickey Mouse was just a cartoon. He was killed on the beat. Another patrol officer who stumbled into just another brawl and ended up in another box. That damned cookie never stops crumbling.
‘It doesn’t have to be this way, Mickey.’
‘Yeah. The sun doesn’t have to shine. Did you catch the fight, detective?’
‘He took his time. Hearns should have buried him in the twelfth.’
‘Sure, you’ve no heart at all, Danny boy. Sugar Ray was just messing with the man. Is there anything I can do for you, or are you being neighbourly?’
He took another Strike, lit it with his butt, crumpled the ember slowly with thumb and forefinger.
‘I need some names, Mickey. I can put a word with the DA. You could be in Caesar’s in a year watching from ringside.’
‘You’ve been in the job too long, Danny. You’ll end up with the old feller pushing daisies and me and the mammy’ll bring flowers every Sunday. Sure, your names’ll be glorified by every low life in the 23 neighbourhoods.’
‘The word is out, Mickey. They need a payment for the ghost. You don’t stand a chance. Give me something and I’ll see what I can do. There’s an open unit in Frisco that’s a walk in the park. Listen kid, I don’t have to sweat a bead. I owe your old man.’
He was about to open his mouth when he stopped. His eyes showed his guts for a split second. It wasn’t nice. I let him die a little and twisted the knife a bit deeper.
‘You’re too young, Mickey.’
When you leave a pen, a funny thing happens to your weight. For about ten minutes or so you lose a few pounds. They go somewhere, up with the fairies I guess, and you know the bliss of the angels. As the monkey said to the gorilla who stole his banana, ‘This too will pass.’
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