“Those two hoodlums?”

“Maybe.”

“Or someone else,” Rita said. “I see it in your eyes.”

“One step at a time.”

“You were going to call me on this case anyway,” she said. “Play toward my liberal guilt.”

I drank the second half of my beer. The bartender brought me a second Brick Red without me asking. Professionalism.

“Having me bust you out of jail was just fortuitous,” she said.

“You did get lunch in pleasant company.”

“Dinner,” Rita said. “Dinner is much more intimate.”

“Aren’t you going to eat?”

Rita uncrossed her legs and smoothed down her skirt over her thighs. “I have a date.”

“Lucky man.”

Rita finished her martini and stood. “You better believe it,” she said. “And if you weren’t so damn pussy-whipped, you’d find out how lucky.”

She slipped into her trench, knotted it, and strutted away. I watched her until she disappeared on Union.

I made a low wolf whistle.

33

I had forgotten about Mattie. I’d been spending some quality time with Agent Connor and his pinkie ring when I was supposed to pick her up. And now it was nearly six p.m. and dark. I called her four times from my apartment without an answer. So I decided to drive back to Southie in the rental.

It was nearly seven by the time I knocked on her door in the projects. She came to the door, looked me over, and walked back inside. The apartment seemed as cold as the hallway.

The twins were curled up on the sofa under a knitted blanket, watching a reality show. They turned in unison, bright light flicking over them in darkness, as I took a seat at the kitchen table. Not interested, they returned to the woman in a bikini eating a bowl of hog entrails.

“Where’s Grandma?” I asked.

Mattie shrugged.

“PTA?” I asked. “Confession?”

Mattie shrugged again. She took a seat in a chair facing the television and tucked her legs up into her arms.

“You mad?”

“I waited around for like two hours.”

“I was unforeseeably detained.”

“No biggie,” she said. “But if you ain’t comin’, you coulda let me know. I felt like a fucking idiot standing there.”

“You walk?”

“My math teacher gave me a ride,” she said. “Her car smelled like cat pee.”

“A hazard of being a math teacher.”

I smiled at her. Mattie looked at the television.

The bikini woman retched. The redheaded twins laughed. Vomiting was obviously comedy gold. Mattie craned her head to look at me. “Ain’t like I’m payin’ you. You don’t owe me nothin’, okay?”

“I got arrested.”

“No shit.”

“No shit,” I said.

She looked impressed. “You beat up someone?”

“No.”

“Shoot ’em?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Sorry. Long story.”

Mattie sprung off the chair and walked back to the kitchen. She was wearing a black Mickey Mouse sweatshirt beneath an old Army jacket, blue jeans, and thick wool socks with holes at the heel. More eye makeup, poorly drawn, outlined her eyes. If the goal was to make her look older, it had failed. She looked like a kid playing dress-up.

“I think I got Mickey Green a new lawyer,” I said. My hands were deep in my peacoat pockets.

“He any good?” she asked.

“She is.”

“The lawyer is a lady?”

“You have a problem with lady lawyers?”

“She tough?”

“When she was a prosecutor, she made hardened criminals suck their thumbs.”

“Mickey wants us to come out to Walpole and see him again.”

“He have something new to say?” I asked.

Mattie shrugged and sat on top of the table. She played with a St. Christopher’s medal, sliding it back and forth on a silver chain. I felt very foreign in the kitchen. The room smelled of cheap fried food and harsh disinfectants. There was something vaguely institutional about it.

“There may be some DNA evidence,” I said.

“What?”

I took a breath. I could hear a cold wind shoot around the edges of the old apartment house. One of the twins yelled out to Mattie from the sofa.

“Shut up,” Mattie yelled. She turned back to me. “What evidence?”

“Some blood,” I said. “Fingernails.”

“Mickey’s fingernails?”

“Your mom.”

She nodded. Her face tightened a bit.

“Don’t they test all that shit before the trial?”

“They should,” I said.

“Will it tell us who did it?”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “Just more stuff to check out. A good lawyer will help.”

“Is this gonna take forever?”

“Maybe.”

“I’m getting sick of it.”

“This is how it works.”

Mattie shook her head with disgust. Her legs kicked back and forth under the table like a pendulum. “Sometimes I think I should just leave it alone,” she said. “My grandma says all the women at church think I’ve gone nuts. People sayin’ I should be on medication.”

“People say I’m nuts,” I said. “Then I realize it’s just me, talking to myself.”

I smiled at her. She stared at me.

“You know it’s okay to laugh,” I said. “It won’t go to my head.”

“Say something funny.”

“You’re a hard woman to please, Mattie Sullivan.”

She rolled her eyes and shrugged. The universal communication of the teenager. When I’d first met Paul Giacomin, he’d been a champion shrugger.

“Is there anything that pleases you?” I asked.

“I know what you were trying to do last night with your friend Susan,” she said. “She wanted me to start crying and say that my life is all a mess.”

“That wasn’t really the plan.”

“But talking about my feelings and crap doesn’t do jack.”

“Does for some people.”

“I’m not the one who got killed,” she said. “I’m not crazy for wanting to know what happened.”

“Why don’t you let me handle the gumshoe work and you handle just being a kid,” I said. “I’m a professional. You did the right thing finding me.”

She stopped playing with the medal.

“You can take some pride in that,” I said.

“I’m not unhappy, you know,” she said. “Just ’cause you only see me when I’m talking about my mother.”

“So what does make you happy?”

“That’s a real corny question, Spenser.”

“Okay, then. What’s your favorite food?”

“I don’t know. I like pizza. I got a birthday cake one time at Tedeschi’s. That was pretty good.”

“When life is tough, take pleasure where you find it,” I said. “That doesn’t make you soft. It means you’re taking care of yourself.”

She shook her head.

“Don’t make life tougher than it already is,” I said. “You could not stop what happened to your mother. You couldn’t stand up for Mickey. But you’re doing everything possible to make that right. Like it or not, you’re a kid, and you need some practice at being a kid.”

“This is what I got.”

“What about a ball game?” I asked. “You like the Sox, right? Would you go to Fenway with me sometime?”

She eyed me. There was strength there, something very solid. The twins called out again.

“Yeah?” she asked.

“Yep.”

She nodded. I nodded back. One of the twins cried out that they were hungry, really stretching out the last word for emphasis.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said, yelling back. “They get grouchy if I’m late on dinner.”

“You mind if I help you cook?” I asked.

“You cook?”

“Like a bastard,” I said. “And I promise to clean up.”

“Okay.” She shrugged. “But we ain’t got much. Grandma was supposed to bring some things home two days ago.”

“I’ve been known to perform miracles.”

She tilted her head, keeping her place on the kitchen table. Her pendulum legs continued to rock and swing. She stopped playing with the medal.

I opened the refrigerator to find a nearly empty milk carton, a foam box with stale french fries, half an onion, an opened bag of very old carrots, and an open roll of cookie dough. The dough was so old it looked like wood putty.