Free Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

her, then looked away when it didn’t, only to come back to it a second later. She reminded me of a kid with no money standing in a group of kids with plenty at an ice cream truck, as if she were watching cones and chocolate eclairs pass over her head into other hands, and half of her knew she’d never get one, and the other halfheld out hope that the ice cream man might hand her one out of error or pity. Bleeding inside from the embarrassment of wanting.
    I pulled out my wallet and extracted a business card.
    She frowned at it, then looked at me. Her half-smile was sarcastic and a bit ugly.
    “I’m fine, Patrick.”
    “You’re half in the bag at ten in the morning, Kara.”
    She shrugged. “It’s noon somewhere.”
    “Not here, though.”
    Micky Doog stuck his head out the door again. He looked directly at me and his eyes weren’t as bleary, emboldened by some blow or whatever else he was selling these days.
    “Hey, Kara, you coming back inside?”
    She made a little movement with her shoulders, my card dampening in her palm. “Be right in, Mick.”
    Micky seemed ready to say more, but then he patted the door in a drum beat, nodded once and disappeared inside.
    Kara glanced at the avenue, stared at the cars for a long time.
    “You leave a place,” she said, “you expect it to look smaller when you come back.” She shook her head and sighed.
    “It doesn’t?”
    She shook her head. “Looks just the fucking same.”
    She took a few steps backward, tapping my card against her hip, and her eyes widened as she looked at me and rolled her shoulders elaborately. “Take care, Patrick.”
    “You too, Kara.”
    She held up my card. “Hey, now that I got this, right?”
    She tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans and turned toward the open doorway of The Black Emerald. She stopped then, turned and smiled at me. It was a wide, gorgeous smile, but her face seemed unaccustomed to it; her cheeks quivered around its edges.
    “Be careful, Patrick. Okay?”
    “Careful of what?”
    “Of everything, Patrick. Everything.”
    I gave her what I’m sure was a quizzical look and she nodded at me as if we shared a secret, and then she ducked into the bar and was gone.

8
    My father, even before he entered the arena himself, had been active in local politics. He was a sign holder and a door knocker, and the bumpers of the various Chevys we’d owned throughout my childhood and adolescence had always borne stickers attesting to my father’s partisan loyalty. Politics had nothing to do with social change to my father, and he didn’t give a shit what most politicians promised in public; it was the private bonds that drew him. Politics was the last great tree house, and if you got in with the best kids on the block, you could roll the ladder up on the fools below.
    He’d supported Stan Timpson when Timpson, fresh out of law school and new to the DA’s office, had run for alderman. Timpson was from the neighborhood, after all, a comer, and if things went right, soon he’d be the guy to call when you needed your street plowed or your noisy neighbors rousted or your cousin put on the union dole.
    I vaguely remembered Timpson from my childhood, but couldn’t completely separate where my own recollection of Timpson differed from the one I’d seen on TV. So when his voice filtered through my phone receiver, it seemed strangely disembodied, as if it were prerecorded.
    “Pat Kenzie?” he said heartily.
    “Patrick, Mr. Timpson.”
    “How are you, Patrick?”
    “Just fine, sir. How about yourself?”
    “Great, great. Couldn’t be better.” He laughed warmlyas if we’d shared a joke I somehow missed. “Diandra tells me you have some questions for me.”
    “I do, yes.”
    “Well, fire away, son.”
    Timpson was only ten or twelve years older than I was. I wasn’t sure how that made me son .
    “Diandra told you about the photo of Jason she received?”
    “She sure did, Patrick. And I got to tell you, it seems a bit