“Go on. Survive. It could be worse. You could be dead.”
Mark smiled sadly. “Like David Baskin?”
“Sort of.”
“Once you’re dead, the pain is over. Isn’t that what they say?”
“Some.”
“Then he’s pretty well off, isn’t he?”
“Maybe he is,” T.C. said. “Who knows?”
“Oh, cut the crap. You can be as bad as your friends at the FBI.”
“Meaning?”
“All of this Mark shit when we’re alone. It’s not necessary.”
“Don’t you remember what I told you in June?”
“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” Mark began. “You said that if we went through with this whacko idea, we would have to do it right. That means that we have to make David Baskin dead, really dead, even in our minds.”
“And even in private,” T.C. added. “David Baskin is dead.”
“But he’s not dead,” Mark said. “We’ve given him a new name, changed his face, his voice, his eye color. But we haven’t killed him. He still lives. He still wants to play basketball. He’s still your best friend. And most of all, he still . . . ”
“Loves Laura?” T.C. finished.
Mark nodded. “So let me hang on to David when we’re alone. You’ll be the only one who knows he’s still alive. I don’t want him to die, T.C. I don’t want to be just Mark Seidman. Mark Seidman is some fictional character I still don’t understand. He barely even knows Laura.”
T.C. shook his head. “You have to accept him. You have to let go of your past.”
“I’m not Mark Seidman, T.C. There is no such person. You can perform all the cosmetic surgery you want, but you can’t change me into a man who does not love Laura.”
“As a brother?”
Mark chuckled sadly. “Touché.”
“David Baskin was a hell of a guy,” T.C. continued. “He loved Laura like no man has ever loved a woman. But David Baskin also learned the unpleasant truth. And accepted it.”
“We could have made it work. It would have been difficult but we loved each other.”
“You want to give it a try?” T.C. asked. “You want to tell her the truth now?”
Mark thought for a moment and then shook his head. “No.”
“I didn’t think so.”
“So what now?”
T.C. shrugged. “Let’s get out of here. I’m freezing.” “You go ahead. I’ll be home in a little while.”
“You sure?”
He nodded.
Without another word, T.C. turned and left.
Mark did not take his eyes off the fog floating above the river like a bad special effect from an old horror movie. Thoughts of what might have been, of what should have been scurried across his mind. The present and the past merged into one obscure reality. Only one thought remained clear and in focus: Laura.
SERITA dropped Laura off in front of her apartment building. “Do you want me to come in?”
“Thanks anyway. Why don’t you head home and get some sleep?”
“Are you sure?”
Laura nodded. “I need time to just sit and sift through this.”
“You’ll call me if you need anything? Even if you just want to shoot the shit at four in the morning?”
“You’ll be the first to know. You’re a good friend, Serita.”
Serita gunned the engine. “The best.”
Laura moved past the security guard. The elevator was already on the ground level. She stepped in, pushed the button, and watched the door close. A minute later, she was on the eighteenth floor. Her key unlocked the door. She pushed it open and entered her apartment. The room was dark, except for the lamp in the corner. The lamp shone on a sight that made Laura inhale sharply.
“Laura?”
Laura ran across the room. Gloria’s lips were thin, her eyes hollow and wide. “What’s the matter? What happened?”
“Oh, God, oh, please. . . .”
Laura wrapped her arms around her sister in much the same way she had when Gloria’s sleep had been plagued by those terrible nightmares during their childhood. For a moment she understood what her mother had meant when she discussed the bond between sisters. They might fight or disagree or be from completely different worlds, but they were eternally linked in a way that they could never hope to understand.
“What’s wrong?” Laura asked gently. “Did Stan do something?”
Gloria looked up. Her bleak eyes were swollen and red. “He’s dead.”
Laura thought she had misunderstood. “Dead?”
Her sister nodded. “He was shot in South Boston tonight. I just got back from the police station. They say they’re going to investigate, but nobody cares, Laura. They think Stan was just a punk and a gambler who played games with the wrong people and got a bullet in the chest for his troubles. They’re not even interested in finding out who murdered him.”
Laura said nothing. There was indeed a curse on the Baskin men. Three of them were dead now, all tragically killed in their youth. But what about the curse on the women they left behind? What about the broken hearts and shattered dreams they left scattered about?
“He stopped gambling, Laura. I know you don’t believe me. I know he did some terrible things to a lot of people . . . including you. But he had stopped. He was getting better. A few days ago, one of his old bookies called because he had not placed a bet in such a long time.”
Holding her sister, Laura started to cry.
Gloria snuggled closer. “You never got to know him, Laura. I barely got to know him. He was the most unhappy person I have ever met. But Stan was changing. You could see it, feel it. And I’m not just talking like some blindly optimistic girlfriend. Stan was finally getting his chance, his one last shot to lead a normal, happy life. Someone took that away from him.” She fought back more tears. “And someone took that away from me.”
“I’m so sorry.”
Gloria closed her eyes as though she were summoning up some hidden strength. “His death has something to do with what’s going on lately, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I but I’ve had a little while to think this through and here’s what I know: Aunt Judy wanted to speak to you about the drowning. Before she died, she handed you a thirty-year-old picture of Sinclair Baskin. Only one person witnessed Sinclair’s murder and could identify the killer. Stan. Now he, too, has been murdered. It’s all tied together, Laura, isn’t it? All the deaths are connected—Sinclair, Judy, Stan . . . and even David.”