Free The Drop by Dennis Lehane

decade ago.”
    Torres stopped looking for the sock for a moment. He looked up the bed at her. “No shit?”
    She reached behind her back, returned with something he couldn’t quite make out. She flicked her wrist and his sock landed by his hip. “Kid named Richard Whelan walked out of there one night, no one ever saw him again. If you solved a ten-years-cold 187, Evandro?”
    “I could make it back to Homicide.”
    She frowned. “You’ll never make it back to Homicide.”
    “Why not?”
    “Ne-ver.”
    “Why not?” he said again. He knew the answer but he was hoping it had somehow changed.
    Her eyes bugged. “Because Scarpone runs it.”
    “And?”
    “And you fucked his wife, you shithead. Then drove her home drunk on duty, and smashed up the fucking unit you were driving.”
    Torres closed his eyes. “Okay, so I’ll never make it back to Homicide.”
    “But you solve this kind of cold case, you might make it to Major Crimes.”
    “Yeah?”
    She smiled at him. “Yeah.”
    Torres put on his sock, liking that idea a lot.
    I was lost, he’d say on the day of his transfer, but now am found.
    MARV WALKED OUT OF Cottage Market with two coffees, a bag of pastries, the Herald under his arm, and ten Big Buckaroo scratch tickets from Mass Millions in his coat pocket.
    A long time ago, in the proudest but hardest moment of his life, Marv had walked away from cocaine. He’d fallen into some money unexpectedly and he’d done the right thing—paid off his debts and cleaned the fuck up. Until that day, however, he’d been a fucking degenerate with no dignity and no control. But once he paid off that debt and walked away, he took his dignity back. Since then, he may have let his body go to the point that only pros would fuck him, and it was probably true he’d burned more relationships than most people had hair, but he had his dignity.
    He also had ten scratch tickets that he’d parcel out to himself slowly tonight while Dottie watched Survivor or Undercover Boss or whatever fucking “reality” show was teed up for the evening.
    As he stepped off the curb, a car slowed in front of him.
    Then stopped.
    The passenger window whirred as it descended.
    The driver leaned across the seat and said, “Hey.”
    Marv glanced at the car, then the guy. Car was a 2011-or-so Jetta. Kind of car college kids or ones just out of college drove, but this guy was in his early forties. There was something memorably forgettable about him, a face so bland you couldn’t place the features when they were swimming right in front of you. Marv got a whiff of earth tones off the guy—light brown hair, light brown eyes, tan clothes.
    The guy said, “You tell me where the hospital is?”
    Marv said, “You need to bang a U-ey, go back two–three miles. It’s on the left.”
    “On the left?”
    “Yeah.”
    “My left.”
    “Your left.”
    “Not yours.”
    “We’re both facing the same direction.”
    “We are?”
    “Generally speaking.”
    “Okay then.” The guy smiled at him. It could have been a smile of thanks, but it could have been something else, something off-kilter and unknowable. Impossible to tell. His eyes still on Marv, he pinned the wheel and executed a perfect U-turn.
    Marv watched him go and tried to ignore the sweat running down his thighs on a thirty-degree day.
    BOB SHRUGGED INTO HIS coat, ready for another day at the bar. He went into the kitchen where Rocco was chewing the hell out of a rawhide stick. He filled Rocco’s water bowl, looked around the kitchen until he spied the yellow duck chew toy Rocco carried everywhere. He laid it in the corner of the crate. He put the water bowl in the other corner. He snapped his fingers lightly.
    Bob said, “Come on, boy. Crate.”
    Rocco trotted into the crate and curled up against the yellow duck. Bob petted his face, then closed the door.
    “See you tonight.” Bob passed down the hall to the front door and opened it.
    The guy on the porch was thin. Not weak-thin.