Chapter 51

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

“Granddad, can I ask you something?”

They sit eating ice cream at Baskin-Robbins, chocolate dripping down Davie’s hand. Davie licks the messy combination of cone and hand without concern for germs or social etiquette, the way only a twelve-year-old can.

“Sure, buddy. Somethin’ wrong?” Chaz has sensed a melancholy all morning. Usually Davie’s upbeat, delightfully squirrelly.

Davie looks down at the drops of melted ice cream on the table.

“What is it? You can tell me anything.”

It’s true, this boy could confide his worst inner thoughts—not that he has any—and Chaz wouldn’t judge. He experiences a brief melancholy of his own, wishing he’d been this way with Patrick. It’s hard to believe it’s been five years. Chaz dreads the day when they identify Patrick as one of the bodies in the car in that lake.

Davie looks up, tears building in his eyes.

“What is it, buddy?”

“There’s this kid, Stanton Funkney.”

He waits, but he knows what’s coming. Davie is a gentle boy, the kind who makes an easy target. While the other kids attend sports or outdoor camps for the summer, Davie is at acting camp. He takes after his mother, which is a good thing. His father wasn’t the kindest man. Davie’s mom, Sylvia, hasn’t remarried. Chaz thinks she’s dating again but afraid to tell Chaz. Good for her. She should have a life. For herself, for Davie. He’s just thankful she’s kept him in Davie’s life.

“Funkney?” Chaz makes a face at the name. “This kid picking on you?”

Davie nods, looks at the table again, ashamed.

“Look at me.”

Davie’s eyes move up to his grandfather.

“I was bullied,” Chaz lies. Back in the day, no one would dare take on Chaz Donnelly.

“You?” The boy says this as if his grandfather is the toughest man in the world, which leaves Chaz’s heart melting like the ice cream. Davie bites into the cone.

“Oh yeah, this kid they called George the Giant would torment me.”

Davie’s eyes light up, and he smiles at the made-up name. “What did you do?”

“I got a lot of advice. ‘Don’t take any crap,’ ‘hit him back harder than he hits you,’ that kind of stuff. But he was a lot bigger than me, and I didn’t think that would stop him.”

“What did you do?” Davie repeats the question, eager for advice.

“You’re not gonna like this.”

Davie listens.

“I talked to my mom. She knew what to do. And it stopped. Just like that.” Chaz snaps his fingers.

Davie looks deflated.

“Have you told your mom about this?”

Davie shakes his head.

“Would you like me to talk to her or this kid’s parents?”

“Is it okay if I think about it, Granddad?”

“Of course, buddy.”

Davie’s eyes are to the table again.

“But trust me, pal, this is going to stop. I promise.”

Davie’s eyes bounce up. He believes Chaz. He knows his grandfather will never let him down.

A text pings. Chaz takes out his reading glasses, scans the phone. “You mind coming on an errand with me?” he asks Davie.

Davie is wiping the table with the miniature ice-cream-store napkins, smearing chocolate over the tabletop. “Sure.”

“The stuff I ordered from the gardening center is ready for pickup.”

At City Planter on North Fourth, Chaz finds some sharp shears, a pair of gardening gloves, a bucket.

“Ooh, I’ve been wanting one of these,” he says, scooping up a plastic rain poncho. “It’s supposed to rain tonight.” At the register, there’s a refrigerator filled with soft drinks and bottled water.

“Want a soda, buddy?”

Davie shakes his head. “Mom doesn’t like me to drink soda.”

“Smart. Especially after ice cream. Can you grab me two of those waters? The big ones.”

Afterward, he pulls up to the curb of Davie’s house. Sylvia waves to them from the front door.

Davie says, “Thanks for the ice cream. See you next week?”

“I wouldn’t miss it.”

Davie opens the car door.

“Hey, buddy,” Chaz says.

Davie turns.

“Don’t you worry about this Funkney kid, okay? It’s gonna work out, I promise.”

Davie offers a fleeting smile and heads to the door.

After two quick beeps of the horn, Chaz heads out.

He checks his phone for the address again. Twenty minutes later, he pulls in front of the place. It’s a boarded-up row house in Tioga-Nicetown.

He gets out of the car, taking his garden-center purchases with him.

At the front door, he knocks, and a small-framed man answers. Inside, Chaz opens the bag for the rain poncho and puts it over his suit. “Is he talking yet?”

The other man—his name is O (yes, the guy’s full name is the letter O)—shakes his head. O is what, back in Chaz’s day, they’d call a mute. Chaz suspects there are more politically correct terms now.

Before Chaz retired, O’Leary had him train the guy. Every organization has a succession plan. O’Leary always had a thing for picking up neighborhood strays. Rumor was that O got his name from the tag on his crib at the Russian orphanage—the American adoption agency labeled the cribs from A to Z.

Shane O’Leary called Chaz out of retirement for this job. Chaz doesn’t mind, it’s not merely business. As they say in movie trailers, this time it’s personal.

O looks at Chaz with his scary ice-blue eyes through large protective glasses that are speckled with red. He leads Chaz to the man who is tied to a chair that sits on top of a sheet of plastic. Chaz removes the pruning shears from the bag. He peers at O.

“I see you already got to work.” The man tied to the chair has bloody stumps for hands. He’d taught O well.

But this is one tough dude. Before O grabbed the guy last night, Chaz researched the sheriff of Leavenworth and learned that he’d been in the military. Two tours in Iraq. Probably had torture training. Name, rank, serial number, and all that.

O is good, but he looks tired. Understandably: The guy gets off an international flight from the UK, grabs up this guy in Kansas, and drives all night to bring him to Philly.

Chaz says, “Get me a cloth and fill up that bucket.” He points to the bottles of water he bought at the gardening store.

The sheriff starts screaming through the rags jammed in his mouth. He knows. Nobody can sustain waterboarding. Nobody.

And for the next half hour, the sheriff writhes in pain. Chaz had studied the best technique for waterboarding—a forty-second pour, lift the rag from the face, then a twenty-second pour, lift, then a ten-second pour, lift, repeat. But this sheriff somehow holds strong.

When it’s clear further efforts will be futile, O walks up behind the sheriff, takes the ends of the garrote in each hand, then pulls it tight around the sheriff’s neck. Sheriff Walton bucks and kicks, but O’s grip is tight.

Once the man stops moving, Chaz says, “Maybe that was premature. We got nothing.”

O shakes his head, holds up the sheriff’s cell phone. It’s a cheap burner. Beyond his interrogation skills, O is something of a tech whiz. If the sheriff has communicated with the accountant, Michael Harper—whom the citizens of Kansas knew as Michael Lane—O will find him.

Before the cleanup crew arrives, Chaz says, “I wondered if you can do me a favor?”

O is washing his tattooed hands in the bucket, the water a sickly pink. He looks at Chaz, waits. Chaz has never asked him for anything personal, so O seems curious.

“There’s a kid who’s been bullying my grandson…”