I shook my head. "No next time, Vinnie. Joe's going to deal."

Vinnie started to speak and Broz said, "Vinnie."

We were all quiet. Hawk motionless at one end of the bridge, the thin guy at the other. Me leaning on the rail. Vinnie looking a little taut in front of me. Broz looking at my face like he was trying to memorize it.

"What's changed?" Broz said. "Why should I deal?"

"For one thing, when you tried to burn me and missed, it got the cops into it. Marty Quirk. You know him?"

"I know Quirk."

"I hear he's taking a special interest in this case."

Broz shook his head impatiently. "f.u.c.k Quirk," he said. "What else?"

"I've had time to make arrangements. Anything happens to me the whole story on your kid goes to the cops and the papers. Pictures, names, everything. And if nothing happens to me, I'm going to stay on the kid's a.s.s until I get the tapes back and Alexander's out from under."

"What else?"

"You didn't need to try and scare Alexander off. He's not going to get elected. He's a joke. He can get elected in his district, but he can't win a statewide election here. When he talks about crime in the streets he means tight pants on women."

"Don't tell me what I know. What have you got?"

"I leave Browne in place," I said. "He's in your pocket, but somebody always will be. He gets elected. You tell him what to do. Alexander goes home to Fitchburg and gets into bible study."

"Anything else?" Broz said.

"No," I said. "That's the package. One way you got aggravation, profit loss, embarra.s.sment, cops in your hair. The other way you don't lose anything. You don't want Alexander anyway."

All of us were quiet. There was no wind. The moon was out. And the stars. n.o.body crossed the footbridge. The occasional stroller who approached it detoured when he saw us.

"Okay," Broz said.

Vinnie snapped his head around and looked at Broz. "Joe," he said.

Broz shook his head. "No, Vinnie. I'm going to deal."

Vinnie was quiet.

Broz kept looking at me. "You know why I'm going to deal?"

"My charisma," I said.

"Because of the kid. I'm responsible for the kid. For how he acts. You unnerstand? Joe Broz's kid is supposed to know how to act."

I was quiet.

"He's not just some f.u.c.king college boy. He's Joe Broz's kid." Broz shook his head. "He's done this on his own. The whole thing, the c.o.ke trade, the videotapes, the two a.s.sholes in Springfield. Vinnie got them for him. I don't blame Vinnie. Vinnie was trying to cover for the kid, trying to... never mind. I know why Vinnie done it. But things were done using my name and I didn't know about it. And it was stupid." He shook his head again. And stared at me some more. n.o.body else said anything. "First time you come around and told me this I was mad. I didn't get to be Joe Broz by letting some punk like you squeeze me. I told Ed to hit you. Vinnie said no. He said Ed wasn't good enough and it was a bad idea anyway. But I was mad, you unnerstand. You was trying to squeeze Joe Broz. You were f.u.c.king with Joe Broz's kid."

The traffic sounds from Boylston Street were clear in the silence. On the path that circled the lagoon a couple was walking with a German short-haired pointer on a leash.

"Okay. If Ed had done it right, maybe it would have worked. But he didn't. So you got a deal. But not because you squeezed. You unnerstand that? Not because you squeezed Joe Broz. Because... because my kid was wrong."

"And now it's even," I said.

"Yeah... Vinnie, go to the car and get the tape."

Chapter 33.

It was Christmas Eve. Susan lay beside me in her bed at her house in Smithfield. Paul was in the living room with Paige watching Singin' in the Rain on the late late movie.

"Won't Paige's mother and father be mad that she's not home for Christmas?" Susan said.

"They'll drive down tomorrow for Christmas dinner," I said.

"Gee," Susan said. "An empty nest."

"I'll think of something to pa.s.s the empty hours," I said.

"Will I like it?"

"Ecstasy," I said.

"Gee, is Bloomingdale's open on Christmas?" Susan said.

"That's not what I meant."

"Oh." Susan was reading a book called The Road Less Traveled. She had closed it on her index finger to hold the place. I was reading a review of the Gail Conrad Dance Company by Arlene Croce in The New Yorker. I was trying to learn about dance. I returned to it. The room was quiet.

I glanced at Susan. She still held her book on her lap, leaning back against the sit-up pillow, looking at me.

"A good Christmas for the Alexanders," she said.

"Maybe," I said.

"And she never knew?"

"Nope. She doesn't know anything about what he knows."

"That's insane," Susan said. "He's got to deal with her. He can't just go on waiting for her to do it again. Wondering what she's doing when she's not with him. That's crazy; he can't do it."

"Yes he can," I said.

"For the rest of his life?"

"Until she does something that makes the papers." I put my magazine down and turned a little on my side toward Susan.

"And then what?" she said.

"Then he drops out of public life, if he hasn't already. And tries to put it back together."

"He doesn't leave her?"

I shook my head.

"How can you be so sure?"

"He won't," I said.

"He should. Or he should find professional help. For both of them."

I nodded.

We were both quiet with our book and our magazine in abeyance.

"How are you?" Susan said. I knew she didn't mean my leg.

"I'm all right," I said.

"And how are you feeling about me?"

"Pretty good," I said.

"Better than you did?"

"Yes."

We were quiet again.

"The thing is," I said, "that to be what I am, I need to feel the way I do about you. No matter how you feel about me."

"I feel good about you," she said. "I do love you, you know."

"Yeah. But even if you didn't. The way I feel about you is my problem, not yours. And it's absolute. It can't be compromised. It could exist without you."

"Dead or alive," Susan said. In her face was that quality of serious amus.e.m.e.nt that so often invested her, "Probably," I said.

"I wonder what you'd be like as an adult," Susan said.

"I'm post-p.u.b.escent," I said. "I can prove that,"

"Even with a bullet wound?"

"Sure," I said. "It's almost healed."

Susan dog-eared the page in her book and put it on the nightstand beside her.

"Show me," she said, and edged over beside me and closed her eyes.

Later, early Christmas morning, I was still awake, and Susan was asleep, on her back, with her mouth open slightly. I looked at her face. Her eyes moved slightly behind her eyelids. I watched her sleep; watched her while she dreamed in some remote incorporeal place away from me; watched her with the growing certainty that some of her would always be remote, away from me, unknowable, un.o.btainable, never mine. Watched her and thought these things and knew, as I could know nothing else so surely, that it didn't matter.

The End