McNulty’s apartment had the look and feel of a wake. In the front room, guys from the job milled around with beer bottles tight in their hands.
Along the wall, scraps of cold cuts and shards of potato chips littered a white plastic tablecloth that covered a foldaway banquet table. In the air, the aroma of coffee hung thick.
Foxx shouldered his way through the crowd. Some of the guys nodded, others grunted hello. Most eyed him with vague uneasiness as if suspecting something about him they could not quite articulate. In the kitchen, Prete and LaBate huddled at a small round table.
“He still with us?” said Foxx.
“Yeah,” said Prete. “Says he’ll talk only to you.”
“So it’s about goddam time you got here,” said LaBate.
Prete grunted in assent.
At least they agreed on one thing, thought Foxx. He hooked a sharp left out of the kitchen and walked down the hallway that led to the bedroom. McNulty lay flat on his back, an oxygen tube clipped to his nose and an IV stuck in a raw space among the sharp tendons and gnarled veins on the back of his hand. Gina, small in the chair beside the nightstand, set her knitting on the floor. Foxx liked her weathered beauty, especially the lines around her mouth and the redness about her eyes. He pecked her on the cheek.
“Sorry I’m late.” He stared until McNulty’s chest rose with a breath. “Prete and LaBate. I can’t stand them.”
“Boys will be boys.” “Boys will be assholes,” said Gina. “They don’t have my sympathy when he’s all I have.”
She and McNulty had been together for many years without getting married. McNulty, Foxx knew, never said no but never said yes, maintaining instead an endless discourse on the subject, like the King of Munster keeping Queen Elizabeth at bay with his blarney.
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