“Nah. Hold on. I have some things for her. But I’ll just give ’em to you. It’ll be better that way.”
Malone paused, and Darby O’Shea closed the distance between them. He looked both ways, as if making sure they didn’t have an audience. The streets were dead, but he lowered his voice to a murmur anyway.
“You can quit looking for Dr. Frank, Malone. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?”
Malone waited, not answering, but his heart had quickened.
“He’s dead,” O’Shea said, voice so flat it floated like a paper plane and landed with a whisper.
“How do you know for sure?”
“When he wasn’t in his . . . clinic . . . I checked somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I can’t really say. You know how it is. One shanty looks like another.”
“Huh.”
“He wasn’t dead when I found him,” Darby hedged.
“No?”
“No. He was passed out. Snoring like a bear. And . . . he had these in his pockets.” Darby reached into his trousers and pulled out a small stack of papers, covered in Dani’s handwriting. “I thought maybe Dani would like them back. They’re hers, ain’t they?”
“Yeah. They’re hers,” Malone said, unable to pull his gaze from the pages.
O’Shea handed them over like he was glad to be rid of them. “Why does she do that?”
“You know how Dani is . . . don’t you?” Malone asked. Maybe he didn’t.
“You mean when she touches cloth . . . she knows things?” Darby said, shifting uncomfortably. “Yeah. I know. She’s been doing stuff like that since she was a wee one.”
Malone fingered the sad pages. “She has a gift. And she uses it to give names to the unknowns brought into the morgue. It’s how she gives the dead obituaries, how she keeps a record so that if someone ever comes looking for them, they can be found.”
“She takes care of people,” O’Shea said.
“Yeah. She does.” Malone tucked the papers away. He didn’t know what Dani would do with them, but she would be glad to have them back.
“George was like that. Never forgot a name. Never made people feel small. Never made me feel like garbage. I always have been . . . but he still took care o’ me.”
Darby reached into his pocket again and this time he took out a dangling chain with a medallion hanging from the center. “This is for Dani too. You’ll give it to her for me, won’t you? She gave me her St. Christopher medal, the one I gave her after her parents died. She was worried about the Butcher coming after me.” He snorted as if he found that ironic. “But I lost it . . . somewhere.”
“You lost it?” Malone asked.
“Yeah. I did.” O’Shea’s eyes were level, unflinching, unapologetic. “So I bought her another one. A new one. You can give it to her for me.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a St. Christopher man,” Malone said, taking it. His hands didn’t shake.
“I’m Catholic. Just like you. I don’t go to Mass. Don’t confess. But we need the saints—like Dani. Like St. Christopher. The world needs ’em. And maybe the world needs men like us too, Michael Malone. To save the saints and the angels from the demons. I don’t know. But someone put Frank Sweeney out of his misery. Put the Run out of its misery too. And it needed to be done.”
“Someone?” Malone pressed.
“Yeah. Someone. A nobody.” Darby O’Shea enunciated each word.
“Why are you telling me this, O’Shea?” Malone whispered. “Any of it? You know who I am. Who I work for. Who I . . . worked for,” he amended.
“You get fired?”
“I quit.”
“Well . . . you ain’t a copper anymore then. And you won’t say nothin’。”
“How do you figure?”
“’Cause it needed to be done.”
They were silent then, the truth hanging between them, and Malone could not deny it.
“I wouldn’t have said anything either,” Darby muttered. “But I figured you needed to know. So you’d stop lookin’。 A man like you’s got plenty else to lie awake over. To watch his back over.”
Darby O’Shea lit a cigarette and offered one to Malone, who shook his head. Maybe he’d enjoy a cigar when he got home. A celebration.
“What now?” Malone asked softly after O’Shea had enjoyed several long draws. Darby ground out the cig on the pavement, blew the ashes away, and dropped the butt into the little front pocket of his vest, ostensibly for later. Times were hard. Nothing went to waste.