Rinsky noticed Adam reading the certificates and muttered, “Eunice insisted we hang them up.”
“She’s proud of you,” Adam said.
“Yeah, whatever.”
Adam turned back toward him. “So tell me about the mayor’s visit.”
“Mayor Rick Gusherowski. Busted him twice when he was in high school, once for drunk driving.”
“Was he charged?”
“Nah, just called his old man to pick him up. This was, what, thirty years ago. We did that more back in those days. Considered drunk driving a minor offense. Stupid.”
Adam nodded to let him know that he was listening.
“They’re real strict with the drunk-driving stuff now. Saves lives. But anyway, Rick comes to my door. Mr. Mayor now. Got the suit, with the American flag in the lapel. Don’t join the military; don’t help out the little guy; don’t take in your tired, your poor, your huddled masses—but if you wear a little flag, you’re a patriot.”
Adam tried not to smile.
“So Rick comes in with his chest out and this big grin. ‘The developers are offering you a lot of money,’ he says to me. Goes on and on about how generous they’re being.”
“What do you say?”
“Nothing yet. I just kinda stare at him. Let him bloviate.”
He signaled to the kitchen table for them to sit. Adam didn’t want to sit in Eunice’s chair—it felt wrong somehow—so he asked, “Which chair?”
“Any’s fine.”
Adam took one. Then Rinsky sat. The vinyl tablecloth was old and a little sticky and felt just right. There were still five chairs here, though the three boys he and Eunice had raised in this very house were grown and gone.
“Then he starts in on me with the good-of-the-community stuff. ‘You’re standing in the way of progress,’ he tells me. ‘People will lose their jobs because of you. Crime will increase.’ You know the deal.”
“I do, yes,” Adam said.
Adam had heard it before many times, and he wasn’t unsympathetic. Over the years, this downtown neighborhood had gone to seed. Some developer, getting a ton of tax breaks, had come in and bought up every building on the block on the cheap. He wanted to knock down all the dilapidated homes, apartments, storefronts, and build shiny new condos and Gap stores and tony restaurants. It wasn’t a bad idea, really. You could make fun of the gentrification, but towns needed new blood too.
“So he keeps talking, about the shiny new Kasselton, how it will make the neighborhood safe and bring people back and all that. Then he comes up with his big pot sweetener. The developer has new senior-living housing in the heights. And then he has the gall to lean across and give me the sad eyes and say, ‘You need to think about Eunice.’”
“Wow,” Adam said.
“I know, right? Then he says I should take this deal because the next one will be worse and they can throw me out. Can they really do that?”
“They can,” Adam said.
“We bought this house in 1970 off my GI Bill. Eunice . . . she’s fine, but sometimes her mind isn’t on the track it’s supposed to be. So she gets real scared in strange places. She starts to cry and shake even, but then she gets home, right? She sees this kitchen, she sees her creepy figurines or that rusty old refrigerator, and she’s okay again. Do you understand?”
“I do.”
“Can you help us?”
Adam leaned back. “Oh yes, I think I can.”
Rinsky studied him for a few moments, his eyes penetrating. Adam shifted in the chair. He could tell what a great cop he must have been. “You got a funny look on your face, Mr. Price.”
“Call me Adam. What kind of funny look?”
“I’m an old cop, remember?”
“Of course.”
“I pride myself on reading faces.”
“And what are you seeing on mine?” Adam asked.
“That you’re cooking up a badass, killer idea.”
“I may be,” Adam said. “I think I can end this quickly if you have the stomach for it.”
The old man smiled. “Do I look like I’m afraid of a fight?”
Chapter 12
When Adam got home at six P.M., Corinne’s car wasn’t in the driveway.
He didn’t know whether that surprised him. Corinne was usually home before him, but she probably wisely figured that there might be a scene if they met up at home before their Janice’s Bistro dinner, so it would be best to avoid him. He hung up his coat and placed his briefcase in the corner. The boys’ backpacks and sweatshirts were strewn across the floor, as though they were debris from a plane crash.
“Hello?” he shouted. “Thomas? Ryan?”