God Save the Child

He came at me again. I stepped in toward him like a lineman on a pass rush and came up against the side of his head with my forearm, my whole body behind it, driving off my legs. Harroway straightened up and fell over on his back without a sound. The shock of the impact tingled the length of my arm and up into my shoulder No one said anything. Kevin stood by himself opposite his mother and father, with Harroway between them lying on his back in the sun.

Kevin said, “Don’t, Vic. Get up. Don’t quit. Don’t let him beat you. Don’t quit.”

“He didn’t quit, kid, he’s hurt. Anybody can be hurt.”

“He let you beat him.”

“No. He couldn’t stop me. But there’s no shame in that. It’s just something I know how to do better than he does. He’s a man, kid. I think he’s a no-good sonova bitch. But he didn’t quit. He went as far as he could, for you. In fact he went a lot farther than he could, for you. So did your mother and father.”

Now that it was over I was shaky. My shirt was soaked with sweat. My arms trembled and my legs felt weak. I took the bullets out of my pants pocket and reloaded the gun while I talked. “How far have you gone for anybody lately?”

The boy still looked at Harroway. In the distance I heard a siren. Somebody had called for the buzzers, and here they came. Kevin started to cry. He stood looking at Harroway and cried with his hands straight down by his side.

“I don’t know what to do,” he said. Roger Bartlett got his feet under him and stood up. He put out his hand and helped his wife up. He fumbled a handkerchief out of his hip pocket and gave it to her, and she held it against her still-leaky nose. The two of them stood looking at Kevin who stood crying. Then Marge Bartlett said, “Oh, honey,” and stepped over Harroway and put her arms around the kid and cried too. Then Bartlett got his arms around both of them and held on for dear life. Harroway sat up, painfully, and hugged his knees and looked at me with his one slightly open eye.

“Slut?” I said. He looked at me without comprehension. I said, “A couple of days ago you called Susan Silverman a slut.” He still looked blank. “Never mind,” I said.

26

It was supper time before we got things cleaned up with the Boston cops and I got back to Smithfield. Boston would hold Harroway on an assault charge until they straightened out with Healy and Trask the kidnapping, murder, extortion, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and procuring charges that seemed likely. Kevin went home with his mother and father, and I went to Susan Silverman’s house to see if there was any cassoulet or champagne or whatever left around and to soak my hands in ice water. She gave me bourbon on the rocks with a dash of bitters in a big glass. We sat on her couch.

“And was it Vic Harroway all along?” she said.

“Nope, not entirely. According to Harroway it was actually Croft that ran things. He got them drugs, set up the prostitution customers, kept things cool with the local fuzz.”

“Chief Trask?”

“Maybe. Harroway says he doesn’t know. He knows only that Croft said the cops wouldn’t bother him.”

“Did he kill Maguire?”

“Yeah. Harroway says it was an accident. He and Kevin were going to get some of Kevin’s things. Harroway was lifting some booze while they were at it, and Maguire caught them. Maguire panicked, grabbed for the poker, and Harroway hit him too hard.”

“And the kidnapping and the sick jokes and everything?”

“That’s not too clear. Harroway seemed to have two reasons. First, practical: he thought that they could finance ‘a new life together’ — that’s what he called it — by putting the arm on the old man for the ransom money. And he says then he thought once they got the dough that they’d have a little sport with the straight world. Kevin says it was his idea, but Harroway says no, it was all his own doing. He also says that Kevin was upstairs in his room when Maguire got killed, but Kevin says he was there. Harroway seems to be protecting him, and Kevin’s not entirely coherent. You can imagine. He’s torn apart. He found out he still had some feelings for his mother and father he didn’t realize he had, and it’s all over for Harroway, and the kid knows it.”

Susan said, “I wonder if it was good or bad for him to see Harroway beaten.”

“I thought it would be good. I hope I was right. Harroway represented something solid and safe and indestructible; you know, a kind of fantasy superhero to insulate Kevin from the world, to be everything his father wasn’t and his mother wouldn’t let him or his father be.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe it’s a glib generalization that won’t hold. I guess we’ll have to wait awhile and see how therapy works. Psychological truth usually isn’t that neat.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but I didn’t have time to wait and see out there in the field.”

She said, “I know. You do what you have to. And besides, he insulted us once, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” I said, “there’s that.”