Free Hurt Machine by Reed Farrel Coleman

The state bird was the Subaru Outback and you could get a thousand different varieties of granola or cheddar cheese at the local convenience store.
    I thought about what Rico Tripoli, Paul’s biological father, would have made of all this hoopla, of French wines and country clubs. Rico, like me, had grown up a poor schmuck in Brooklyn. In that Brooklyn, the Brooklyn of immigrant parents, sewer to sewer stickball games, and ring-a-levio, you didn’t dream of country clubs or black tie weddings. Well, maybe Rico did, which is probably why his appetites destroyed him. That was the thing about Rico, he could never tell you exactly what he wanted, only that he wanted more of it than he already had. It was why he sold his soul several times over and so cheaply. The first time it was for his gold detective’s shield. Then he sold that for cocaine gang money, and, eventually, for the cocaine itself. Funny thing is that when he wound up in prison, he somehow blamed me. I suppose I should forgive him for that. By then he had been so long without a soul that he had forgotten the meaning of love and friendship.
    Bordeaux in Brooklyn on Montague Street was our second wine shop and the only one I really cared for at all. The wine business paid my bills, sent Sarah to college and helped buy her vet practice, yet even now, it meant very little to me. The business had been my brother’s dream, not mine. All I did was invest some money and go along for the ride. I hadn’t ever really invested, not emotionally. Over thirty years in the business and I didn’t give a shit. And if I hadn’t cared up to now, dying wasn’t going to make me see the light. All I could see was the time I’d wasted, the things I hadn’t done. When I was gone, all that would be remembered of me was that I had been a shopkeeper. Does anyone dream of being a shopkeeper? Does anyone dream of dying as one?
    I’d done a lot of thinking lately about the
what
ifs
in my life. What if I hadn’t slipped on that piece of carbon paper in the squad room in 1977 and torn my knee to shreds? That was the
what if
that really haunted me. Of the many things that had befallen me, that one careless step changed my life more than any other single incident before or since. Owing to my wrecked knee, the NYPD forced me into early retirement. From that day forward I limped down the road previously not taken until that road had taken me. Where would I be? Who would I be? What would I be? See, it’s like what I said about asking
why me?
Once you start, you can never stop asking. Signs that read
Watch Your Step
meant more to me than a simple warning.
    The trucking company arrived soon after I finished checking the wine order. I watched it loaded into the semi’s box, then watched it disappear down Montague Street into the wilds of Cadman Plaza and beyond. I thought about heading back into Manhattan—only a very short ride over the nearby Brooklyn Bridge—and over to the High Line Bistro. Since, in spite of my better instincts, it seemed I was buying into the connection between Robert Tillman’s death and Alta Conseco’s murder, I supposed it was time to look into that aspect of things. But no, I wasn’t up for it today. I wasn’t up for pretending, for lying to people who would invest their trust in me when I told them I was a cop or an insurance man or a PI employed by the lawyers representing the Tillman family.
    I’m not one of those people who much believes in the truth as an imperative or an elixir. If anything, it had been my experience that the plain truth often made things worse, much worse. It sure as shit didn’t set you free. But I’d come to think that there
was
a price to be paid for lies. Not a price come judgment day with God as the cosmic accountant, having kept the ledger of sins great and small. Nor am I saying there’s any individual cost to the liar him-or herself. It’s a common cost, a price we all pay. Each uncovered lie is a corrosive thing, eating