Chapter 6: Sunday

The first Sunday in February came in cold and bright, and I was still alive.

I sat at Irena's kitchen table at seven with a canvas bank bag in my lap.

My tea went cold in front of me, because I was too tense to drink it.

Frank's deadline was the end of that day.

"Today he comes?" Irena asked, scraping eggs onto my plate.

"He won't come on Boston Street," Marek said. "No Cullinane has ever walked into this house without being asked."

"Let him ask," said Irena. "I will make him wait on the porch."

I ate every egg.

At nine we left in Marek's pickup to do the Sunday round.

I had done that round for eight years, with Brendan's name on the paper and my hand on the pen.

Two small family bars besides Cullinane's, one in Savin Hill and one in Southie, each kept a weekend envelope under the register.

A gray sedan pulled out of a side street behind us and stayed three cars back.

Two men sat in it.

I knew neither of them, which meant Frank had brought in new ones.

At the first bar the bartender put the envelope in my hand without a word.

I wrote him a receipt, held for the chair, and signed it, and he folded it into his shirt pocket.

At the second bar, the owner's brother came out from the kitchen and said, "Frank told us to give it to him."

"Then give it to him," I said, "and explain why the widow's receipt is in the safe."

He looked at the paper in my hand.

He looked at Marek, who filled the whole doorway, and at the gray sedan across the street.

He gave me the envelope.

I wrote the receipt.

Marek never said a word in either bar.

He stood where I could see him, and that was all he did.

When we drove out of Southie, the sedan followed us down Day Boulevard, past Castle Island and the long frozen curve of the bay.

At the Neponset bridge it slowed, and then it turned back.

Boston Street was Polish, and they would not follow us there.

Marek kept driving.

He took the marsh road along the river, a dead end of frozen reeds and old pilings.

He stopped the truck at the last pull-off and shut off the engine.

The heater ticked.

The sun was low and white on the ice.

"It's the first Sunday in February," I said.

"It is," he said.

"I'm still here," I said.

"You are."

I looked at him.

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