Boy in the Water

And had there been anyone that she hadn’t known? She thought about this. After all, they’d seen many people that night. But maybe there was this one guy Buddy used to know and was surprised to see. He’d just come and gone. You know how it is standing at the bar—someone comes up and you say a couple of words. Buddy hadn’t introduced her. He’d joked with the guy but it had only been for a few seconds. She couldn’t remember what he looked like—just a young guy, regular-looking. Buddy had known him in Manchester. Did he have a name? Maybe it had been Fred, maybe it had been Frank. Had she seen this Fred or Frank outside? No. She didn’t remember anything outside. For that matter, she wasn’t even sure his name had been Fred or Frank.

Neither name had any special meaning for Fly

But this morning Leo Fly

Then on Friday the medical examiner in Boston had been using Sal to show his students what to look for in drowning victims and, lo and behold, it seemed Sal Procopio hadn’t drowned after all. Further exploration turned up the mess in his brain—the cone-shaped slice an ice pick can make. They even found the hole at the base of the skull, nearly swollen shut by Sal’s time in the water. By then the troopers were left with egg on their face, which was why they had gotten more active with the Revere cops than usual, tracking down Procopio’s chums and bar pals. And this had led to the second detail that caught Fly

In the meantime, Leo Fly

—

The girl sat on the chrome counter, kicking the heels of her bare feet against the wooden door of the cabinet beneath her, making an iambic drumlike sound that echoed against the kitchen’s metal surfaces. She was watching Frank LeBrun pummel a heap of bread dough about the size of a beer case, hitting it hard, then picking it up, spi

“I don’t see why you can’t call me Misty,” the girl said. Her peroxided hair was in two pigtails and her figure was hidden by an oversized University of New Hampshire sweatshirt.

The man laughed, keeping his back to her. “It’s not your name.”

“Maybe not legally, but it’s still mine. It’s the name of my soul.”

“That’s pretty dumb.”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to be called something other than Frank?”

“People call me all sorts of stuff. My grandmom called me François. My old lady called me Francis.” He hit the mound of dough with his fist, then he took a quick look at the girl over his shoulder. He was gri

“Well, I’m Misty.”

“You ever hear what they call a Canuck with an IQ of 167?”

The girl gave an artificial yawn. “A village?”

“For Pete’s sake.” LeBrun gave the mound of dough another punch. “You know why a woman’s got two holes so close together?”

“Why?”

“So you can carry ’em like a six-pack.”

“That’s disgusting.” Jessica glanced out the window toward the trees. Then she looked down at her toenails, which were painted bright green. “Call me Misty.”

“Your name’s Jessica.”

“That’s what the jerks call me. I don’t want you to call me that.”

“Don’t start that possessive shit. I don’t even know you.”

“Then why’d you talk to me the other day?”

“I talk to everybody, I’m a friendly guy.” LeBrun stopped kneading the bread and turned toward the girl, wiping his hands on his apron. “You know how to catch a Canuck?”

“How?”

“Slam down the toilet seat when he’s taking a drink.”

“What do you have against Canucks?”

“My grandmom used to say they were New Hampshire’s colored problem. So why’d she marry a guy named LaBrecque, I’d ask? What was she, Irish? Nah, her name was Gateau—a fucking Canuck as well. She was nuts, is all. She didn’t know what the fuck she was. I’d visit her in the nursing home and I’d say, ‘Hey, Grandmom, why’d Canucks wear hats?’ And she’d say, ‘So they don’t flap themselves to death with their big ears.’ And we’d laugh till the nurses complained. The lousy bitches, they fuckin’ robbed her blind.”

“You think I could hire you to do something?”

“You couldn’t afford me.” LeBrun turned back to the pile of bread dough.

“Maybe I could. There’s something I need you to do.”

LeBrun turned to face her. “Are we talking about real money?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

LeBrun’s face had become still as he watched Jessica. Then he said, “Aren’t you going to be late to class?”

The girl glanced around at the clock on the wall behind her. She pursed her lips and jumped down from the counter. The bell must have rung without her hearing it. She scooped up her backpack from the floor. “Maybe we can talk after di

LeBrun shrugged. “I won’t hold my breath.” As the door swung shut, he returned to his bread dough, right jab, left jab. He opened a drawer and removed a bag of chocolate chips. Taking one bit of chocolate, he inserted it deep into the bread dough. Then he reached in the drawer again and took out a silver-colored tack, which he buried as well.

He patted the dough. “Something nice, something nasty.” LeBrun liked that. It made him laugh.

As Jessica hurried across the dining room, she looked at her watch. She had thirty seconds to get to her two o’clock Spanish class on the third floor and the other side of the building. Reaching the corridor, she broke into a trot. A few kids were still in the hall but most were in class. Above the wooden paneling of the walls hung rows of photographs dating back into the nineteenth century, showing formally posed groups of Bishop’s Hill boys—graduating classes, baseball teams, chess club, debating club. All wore coats and ties, except for the athletes. She happened to notice the graduating class of 1950, the same year her father had been born. He was born in March in Portsmouth in the midst of a snowstorm; this graduating-class picture was probably taken in May or June. She didn’t have time to study it, but she found herself calculating how old those boys probably were today—somewhere in their midsixties—and how they were probably alive while her father was dead.