“What I mean is, I’ll be free. To do anything you want.” I started buttoning my shirt and searching around for my shoes. “We could go somewhere. The islands. That sound good?”
“Sure, it sounds good.” Tess smiled, a little hesitantly.
I gave her a long kiss. One that said, Thank you for an amazing afternoon. Then it took everything I had to get out of there, but people were counting on me.
“Remember what I said. Don’t move. Don’t even blink. That’s exactly how I want to remember you.”
“What’re you planning to do, Ned Kelly, rob a bank?”
I stood at the door. I took a long look at her. It was actually turning me on that she would even ask something like that. “I dunno,” I said, grinning, “but a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”
Chapter 4
NOT A BANK, I was thinking as I hopped into my old Bonneville convertible and headed onto the bridge to West Palm, floating on cloud nine. But Tess was close. A one-shot, can’tmiss deal that was going to change my life.
Like I said, I’m from Brockton. Home of Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Rocky Marciano. Ward Four, Perkins Avenue, across the tracks. There are neighborhoods, anyone from Brockton will agree, and then there’s the Bush.
Growing up, people said Brockton ’s a quarter black, a quarter Italian, a quarter Irish, a quarter Swedish and Polish, and another “quarter” no one wanted to mess with. Hardscrabble neighborhoods of run-down row houses, churches, the ruins of closed-up factories.
And the Bush was the toughest. We had gangs. We got into fights every day. You didn’t even call it a fight unless someone broke a bone. Half the kids I knew ended up in reform schools or juvie detention programs. The good ones took a few courses at the junior college or commuted to Northeastern for a year before they went into their father’s restaurant or went to work for the city. Cops and firefighters, that’s what Brockton seems to breed. Along with fighters.