Bronx Noir

That was the thing: It had simply happened. We had not counted on evening services, the sodality of tiresome bleating women leaving just as we’d arrived, the priest closing up, finding us at the statue, panicking at the sight of us at a time when the neighborhood had transitioned downward and dangerous, shouting, hitting me with the bronze candlestick he’d grabbed from the nave. Jimmy had hit him in turn after grabbing the candlestick from him, and being stronger, had brained him. I could see the screaming, leaching gash on the priest’s bald skull, and Jimmy, not realizing I was dazed, had thrown me the gun, which slipped and revenged the priest right there, the shot resounding like a chorus through the church. “Run,” he had said, always my protector and often my temptation, pushing it amid his shock and gasping, hot and smoking to me, and I did run, hoping to hide it, and myself, and had stumbled back bruised and bloody up the aisle toward the chancel where we’d just broken in and hidden the stolen cash. I’d tripped at the altar rail, like Cagney stumbling through the bleeding snow in The Roaring Twenties, and fallen finally in the sanctuary, victim at last to the ferocious bashing the priest had inflicted upon me. The adrenaline had kept me aloft until then, but at last I had collapsed, unconscious, while Jimmy lay dying and the priest lay dead. I was supposed to have kept watch while Jimmy hid the key under the statue for us to find later, I was supposed to have prevented the priest from finding him, I was supposed to have made sure the church had been quiet. No one was supposed to die.

“You two together were an accident.”

“You were always led astray,” Ma said.

“As if Davey needed coaxing. Always the easy way, always too smart to work.”

“I told you. I’ve changed.”

“If you’d changed, you’d have stayed away. You want something.”

“I had to make amends to you.”

“Don’t, Davey. Just don’t. Spare us having to believe you and regretting it later. I’ll fix you something and you can be on your way. I’ll give you some money to tide you over, how’s that? I’m sure you’ve got some chippie stashed away somewhere, or some prison pal’s pad you can crash at, right?”

“I don’t want your money, Bella. You’ve been too generous already.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have sent you a thing. You might have never come back. How stupid I was to soften even for a moment.”

“I’ve never had a chance to tell you how sorry I truly am. About Jimmy. About what happened.”

“Apology accepted.” Which meant it wasn’t.

“It’s been a long time,” Ma said.

“We’ve gotten used to the peace, Ma and me, haven’t we, Ma? We’ve gotten used to knowing where you were, and not being a danger to us.”

“So then. I see. Look, I never hurt you, or never meant to. And you’ve never left.”

“You don’t just leave, Davey. Oh, you do, but I like it here, all of the mix.”

“It was getting rough.”

“We lasted though, didn’t we, Ma, didn’t we? The Bronx is in our blood, just as it’s in yours, along with something else.”

“Jimmy hated it.”

“Jimmy was a fool. A criminal like his father.”

“Bella!”

“Ma, enough. A criminal like you. I expected more from you, after the scholarship to Prep. But a little learning is a dangerous thing. It gives you ideas.”

“I always had ideas, Bell.”

“You had a fool for a counselor, Davey, and that was your brother, and when it wasn’t him it was yourself. Things came too easily. You never had to work for them.”

“You think prison was easy.”

“Maybe you learned a little about yourself.”

I had. That didn’t mean I’d actually changed.

“You can sit there proud, Bella, and look down on me from your moral mountain, but I don’t hear you. I served my time. I did my obligation to society. I regret what happened, but we all make mistakes, some of them larger than others. You’re no one to talk about Jimmy. He can’t defend himself against your slander. He had more life than you’ll ever have, dead though he’s been these ten years. So we took a few easy steps. It wasn’t as if you hadn’t left hints about all the security problems at that cheesy job of yours. Jimmy told me you were going on so about the idiotic systems there—you were practically begging us to rob it, you might as well have given us the key to the front door and the combination to the safe, which both were easy enough to find, and you think you’d be more trusting, wouldn’t you? But you’ve got more there going on underneath your stuffed shirt than you let on, don’t you? You’re your father’s daughter too, you know. So don’t act all high and mighty with me.”

“Unlike you, I worked for every penny I’ve ever got.”

“And resented every minute of it too. So I’m a dreamer.”

She snorted.

“So sue me. I’m sure Jimmy did his magic on you too. Don’t say he didn’t. You look for someone to blame, and never look inside.”

“Oh, please, you with your holier-than-thou act—you’re a con, and you always will be.”

“Ex. And at least I owned up to my part in things.”