The Wrong Man

“Fuck you,” O’Co

Murphy tapped the gun barrel against O’Co

O’Co

“You’re not a cop, are you?”

“You know cops, do you, Mike-y boy? You’ve sat across from a cop more than once or twice, haven’t you?”

O’Co

“Well, you’re absolutely fucking one hundred percent correct,” Murphy said, smiling. He had known this question was coming. “You should wish I was a cop. I mean, you should be praying right now to whatever God it is that you think might just listen to you, praying, ‘Please, Lord, let him be a cop,’ because cops, they’ve got rules, Mike-y boy. Rules and regulations. Nope. Not me. I’m a lot more trouble than that. Much worse. Much much worse. I’m a private investigator.”

O’Co

Murphy smiled. “I shouldn’t have to explain these things to you, not someone who thinks he knows his way around like you do, Mike-y boy. But, just for the sakes of our little discussion this evening, let me explain a few items. One, I was a cop. Put in more than twenty years fucking with folks a whole lot tougher than you. Most of those tough guys are sitting in stir, cursing my name. Or else they’re real dead, and not thinking too much about yours truly because they probably have much more significant problems in the hereafter. Two, I am duly licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the United States federal government and fully authorized to carry this weapon. Now, you know what those two little things add up to?”

O’Co

“Shit!” The word burst out of O’Co

“When I ask you a question, Mike-y boy, please respond.”

Murphy pulled back his hand again, and O’Co

Murphy gri

O’Co

“Good. Understanding, they say, is the path to enlightenment.”

O’Co

“Let me just repeat this so that we are completely clear: I am free to do anything I might think right, including send your sorry little life straight to kingdom come or more likely hell. You get this, Mike-y boy?”

“I get the picture.”

Murphy started to walk around the chair. He kept the barrel of the automatic in contact with O’Co

“This is a really crummy place you’ve got here, Mike-y boy. Pretty rundown. Dirty.” Murphy stared across the room and saw a laptop computer on a table, making a mental note to take a handful of O’Co

So far, things were going more or less as Murphy had anticipated. O’Co

“Not much of a life, is it, Mike-y boy? I mean, I’m not seeing much of a future here.”

“It suits me.”

“Yes. But what is it about this that makes you think for a single second that Ashley Freeman would want to be a part of it?”

O’Co

“I love her. She loves me.”

Murphy slapped him again. “I don’t think so, you low-life, bottom-dwelling slug.”

A thin line of blood came from O’Co

“She’s a class act, Mike-y boy. Unlike you, she’s got possibilities. She comes from fine folks, and she’s well educated and filled with all sorts of big-time potential. You, on the other hand, come from shit.” Murphy accentuated the last few words by smacking the younger man hard. “And you’re going to end up in shit. What? Prison? Or do you think you can manage to stay out?”

“I’m okay. I haven’t broken any laws.”

The repeated blows were taking effect. O’Co

“Really? You want me looking at you any closer?”

Murphy had come full circle, and once again he tapped the gun barrel against the bridge of O’Co

“No.”

“Didn’t think so.”

He grabbed O’Co

“Please stay out of my life,” O’Co

“Well, I’d like to. I’d genuinely like to. So, Mike-y boy, just looking at it all, objective-like, don’t you think it would be a really, really good thing for you to absolutely make sure that I’m not in your life anymore? That this little get-together, friendly as it might be, is the absolute last time you and I ever see each other? Right?”

“Right.” O’Co

“I need to be persuaded, don’t I?”

“Yes.”

Murphy smiled. Then he patted O’Co