“But I wasn’t distributing,” Quinn said. In conference, the defender wondered aloud if, given the amount of powder found, and the amount estimated to have been dumped, if he had the constitution of a plow horse. Yes, Quinn apparently did. The defender waited until he was sure that wasn’t an effort at humor, then began talking about a one-year probation and mandatory drug counseling. The defender didn’t know he was coming off heroin. The anxiety and down moods that came with it, and Quinn’s struggles to keep it together while voluntarily off smack and forcibly off coke, led to certain conclusions in town. Mainly, that he had killed Botelho. He was, to most, visibly stewing in his own guilt. The theory was relentlessly peddled by Botelho’s woman. The key piece of evidence seemed to be, at the moment Botelho evaporated, the convenient absence of the kid who had crewed with them. The new guy had truthfully noted that Quinn and Botelho had been at odds before the man disappeared. About pay.
Fact was, Quinn still had no idea what had happened. The traps were all in the water, so he wasn’t pulled over by an outgoing line; the sea was moderate that night, so he wasn’t taken by a rogue wave. How he could have gone over was something Quinn rolled over in his head, constantly. He must have just slipped, which no one was ever going to believe. He must have had an absent moment, when he took that one step where nothing firm rose up to meet his boot.
The search for the body, working on a too-generous 900-square-mile grid, had been the usual pointless exercise. Botelho was not a dolphin, and the currents didn’t move that fast, and his life vest was still on the nail in the wheelhouse. Quinn sat in his small cell before bail, and waited for someone to tell him what was going on, which no one did. In those first days back on land, he stalked the small space as an animal would, and slept without realizing it. He’d lie on the bunk staring at the ceiling, and in a blink he was in a dark room. The mere notion of any drug-running was a joke. You didn’t buy product on land and take it that far out to sea. But that much presumed powder (the primary evidence was the size of the bags from which it had been dumped) and a vanished man (and the imprecise claims he must have just fallen off the backside) meant something had to be made to stick.
Quinn understood that. He wanted it done fast. They’d already seized his crumbling boat as part of the initial distribution charge; he was ready to let it go, and try for a new boat and new escape, back Out There. On a Monday morning, he was driven by Robbie to the federal courthouse in Providence. There seemed now a distance from the matter of Botelho’s disappearance, for which no evidence existed. He went into federal court and blurted his guilty plea on possession. The judge, a middle-aged woman, looked at him narrowly over the tops of her reading glasses. His clothes were soaked through with flop sweat, and he was long unshaven. She seemed to come to certain conclusions. Thirty-six months in federal prison, twelve months to serve, is what had turned out to be on her mind.
“Jesus,” Robbie said aloud from the back of the courtroom. They remanded Quinn right then, another surprise. As the handcuffs and shackles went on him, he said to Robbie, “Winters are slow anyway. Three years means a year, and twelve months means six. I’ll be ready to work by next spring.” It didn’t even bother Quinn that much. It was no better or worse than anything else, he thought.
5.
SHE’D SAID HELLO AS HE SAT UPON HIS STOOL, MINDLESSLY watching a women’s college basketball game on the big TV over the bar. She was sidling up for drinks for herself and her girlfriends, over in the corner. And in the way it happens when there’s some attraction, she’s now sitting here while her girlfriends keep a wary eye from their table. Jean seems okay, as far as he can tell. She’s tall, with blond hair that may be holding off the gray with some chemical intervention. Fortyish, he guesses. The talk has been tame enough, and he’s made that mistake that happens when you’re starting to like someone, which is to foolishly confide one’s most assailable opinions.
“When I was young, girls playing sports seemed stupid to me,” Robbie says, to her narrowing gaze.
“Is that so?”
“But let me continue.”
“Go on.”
“So now I have a daughter. Seven years old. And what I’d love is for her to play every sport she can. Hockey, even. I see the utility now of any of that. It would be the only thing I’d ever imagine we’d have in common. Except she’s shown no interest at all.”
“No boys?” Jean says.
“No. Just the one girl. My brother has two girls, too. Our older sister—she lives down South now—has a girl. The name seems to end there.”
“What’s the name?”
“Boyle.”
“Don’t worry, I think there are plenty of those left. How old is the niece?”
“Senior in high school. I just saw her today.”
“That’s nice, for a family to be close enough to see each other so much,” Jean says. He lets it lie there.
“You?” he says. “Kids?”
“A daughter, too. She’s thirteen.”
“And where is she?”
“Home, I hope!” Jean says. “It’s been a little bit of an adjustment. But this is where the company sent me and that’s why I’m here.”
“And the father?”
“He didn’t leave me in the classic sense, just an hour at a time. We almost never saw him. When we packed the rental truck, he showed up to talk me out of it, but seemed half-hearted. He also had a girl in the car. He said she worked for him and he was driving her home. He owns a restaurant. That’s a tough business, where monogamy is concerned.”
He supposes it is; he’s listening but also confounded about why she apparently likes him. He’d abandoned all hope after the divorce from M.; she’d weakened him, and his faith in himself. In the office he’d often tell the younger guys, “Marriage—a contract for idiots!” That played as a punch line, but he was dead serious.
“Do you know her?” Jean is saying.
“Huh?” Robbie realizes how far adrift his unmoored mind has gone. “Who?”
“The woman shouting at you from over there.”
“I didn’t hear her.”
“So you didn’t hear her screaming ‘Hey, asshole’? Everybody else did . . .”
He turns, and looks. Oh. It’s Botelho’s widow, clearly drunk, her eyes ablaze.
“Yeah, that’s right,” the woman is yelling, “the brother who helped cover up the murder, right over there!”
“Well, I really should run,” Jean says.
“And who could blame you?” Robbie says.
“Nice meeting you,” Jean says, standing. “And good luck with all that about a murder . . .”
Nothing like the mention of murder to scare a woman off! Probably better off; for a man without a woman, Robbie seems well-weighted with woman problems. Walking home, he ponders not just the specter of M., but also the prodigal return of a girlfriend he’d thought he’d not see again.
Dawn is back up from Florida, to Robbie’s mixed regret. She’d been in Orlando trying to do the real-estate turn, but the recession has apparently driven her back. She’s had scant success in a place where half the houses are in foreclosure. Dawn, forever the victim of bad timing, such as when connecting with a man who has just come out of a marriage vowing never to marry again. She was the rebound relationship, unfortunately for her.
He’s followed her fortunes indirectly, via that ethereal network of small-town talk and well-meant reports. He’d hoped, badly, she’d succeed. He regrets she hasn’t, both because he actually likes Dawn, a lot, but as well because