Bobby walked around the neighborhood for nearly an hour, but his restlessness only increased. Usually, walking helped to calm him, but it wasn't working this time. He stopped at the bar five blocks from the house. He'd been there before, after work a few times when he really needed to unwind before he went home. Barb was very good about his moods, but sometimes, he felt the need to spare her from a particularly dark mood after a very difficult day.
Friday nights were busy in any bar, and this one was no exception. There were three empty stools on the far side of the bar, and he chose the one in the middle. He did not feel like conversation or company. He just wanted to be alone with his thoughts. He ordered a double scotch and let his mind wander, chasing down elusive memories that he knew had to be in there somewhere.
He was halfway through his third drink when someone slid onto one of the empty seats beside him. He paid no attention until a hand closed on his arm. He turned suddenly, a dark look on his face, which lifted as soon as he recognized her. "Eames, what are you doing here?"
"Looking for my idiot partner because his better half is worried about him."
He patted his pockets, looking for his phone. "I guess I left my phone home."
"You did. We called you and it rang in the living room."
He looked at his glass and ran his finger around the rim. "Is she upset?"
"No, though she ought to be. I called her already and told her you were here. Teddy is there playing chess with Brian, so I'll sit here with you. Barb insists we stay in the guest room tonight."
The bartender stopped in front of them and she ordered a bourbon and coke. He prepared the drink and topped off Bobby's glass. Eames took a drink and asked, "So what's going through that head of yours?"
"Not much. I keep trying to remember what happened. It's got to be in there somewhere."
"Bobby, he kept you drugged. You're not going to remember."
He tipped his head to one side, a thoughtful look on his face. He looked at the deep rich mahogany of the bar. The memories were in there. They taunted him in his sleep, slipping away when he woke. "Memory," he murmured thoughtfully. He looked at his partner. "The brain is always forming memories. Long term, short term...it's always working. Even when it's impaired, it's always working...just not in the same way."
"So something that happens when you're drunk or stoned still gets filed away."
"Yes, but in a different way than when you're sober." He rubbed his chin. "That's why I can almost get there when I'm sleeping. It's an altered state of consciousness."
"So you think if you drink enough scotch, maybe you'll remember? Do you really want to do that? What do you think you'll gain by it?"
"I need to know what kind of threat Carlo poses to my family, Eames."
"Maybe the threat isn't to them."
"Either way, I need to know. He grabbed me for a reason, and it wasn't just to prevent me from testifying. He isn't stupid. He had to know that Carver's case against Rico did not rest solely on me. There was another reason for him to do what he did. I have to figure out what that reason was."
"Suppose there is no deeper reason. What if he really did nab you to prevent you from testifying?"
Bobby shook his head. "No. If that was all he wanted, his gorillas could have messed me up in the parking garage. Carlo wanted to see me, to talk to me. He had a message to give me."
Eames watched him for a moment. "What good is giving you a message you can't remember?"
"I doubt Carlo thought of that."
Slowly, Eames nodded. "All right. See what you can find at the bottom of that bottle. I promised Barb I wouldn't leave you alone."
He hated that Barb worried, but he realized that worry was a price you paid for love. Reluctantly, he shifted his thoughts from Barb to Don Carlo, and he raised his glass to his mouth.
Eames stopped after three drinks, switching to plain cola. She listened when Bobby spoke, but he wasn't making much sense to her. Hopefully, talking about it all after he was sober would help. She cautioned him not to drink so much that he wouldn't remember anything, which would be totally counterproductive. That made him laugh, but she hoped he took her seriously. And she wondered if it would be enough for her to recall the disjointed phrases he directed her way.
He lost track of how much he had to drink. He was chasing the thoughts in his mind, hoping to grasp the right ones. Gradually, memories began to flicker in his head, like an old time movie reel, black and white but faded, skipping around just out of reach. Every few seconds, words or images would jump into focus, only to retreat before his mind got a good grasp of them. Occasionally, an image or a string of words would wander too close, and he could grab it. They were isolated, but they were much closer now, and he continued to search for anything that Carlo might have said to him that would solidify the threat he read in the note from the mob boss.
Carlo's gruff voice echoed and rolled around in his head, but the phrases he did remember meant little to him taken out of context.
Do you have children?
A nice-looking boy...married...unattached...be a father...
Eight...Eight...Eight children...my Rico...my Berto...
Barbara Weaver...her child...
What do I do with you...with you...
A worthy...too worthy...adversary...
Family...Family...Family...
He scrubbed his face and ran his hand along the back of his neck. Dammit! What the hell did it all mean? What had Carlo told him? He signaled the bartender for another drink.
As the night wore on, the bar gradually emptied. The bartender stopped in front of them. He looked at Eames. "Can I call you guys a cab or something?"
She shook her head. "No, thanks. Home's not far."
He looked from her to Bobby, who was not paying attention to him. He refilled her cola and then half-filled Bobby's glass. "Last call," he said. "My treat."
"Thanks," Eames said with a smile.
Bobby looked up at him as he lifted his glass and propped his chin on his other hand. "There's always a tomorrow," he said.
The bartender nodded in agreement. "Yeah, there is. Be careful. Don't walk out in front of any cars on your way home, and you'll see the next one."
Bobby laughed. Walk out in front of a car...
He took a drink, setting the glass on the bar and turning it around slowly as another voice rattled around in his head. Not Carlo's...one of his hirelings...but Bobby couldn't picture the man. All he had was the memory of a voice.
Get him out of the car, Sal...
Make sure you do the job right, Marco...Don Carlo will tank us if we screw this up...
Screw this up...
Bobby downed the last of his drink and slid off the bar stool. He took a moment to be sure his legs were under him. "Ready, Eames?"
"Ready when you are."
The night was warm and humid. Typical city summer. Before too long, it would cool off as fall approached. The partners walked away from the bar into the night. Bobby looked around. The city streets were never completely dark, but the night was so very different from the light of day. All manner of the strange and unusual came out at night. He never feared the night. He always felt that he fit in with the nighttime denizens of the urban jungle.
Somehow, he found the courage to put a voice to his deepest fear. "Do you think Barb really loves me?"
"Of course she does. She puts up with you."
"So do you."
"Yeah, but she does it because she wants to, because she loves you enough to overlook everything and not get pissed over the stupid shit you do. I care about you in a different way and I do get pissed over the stupid shit you do."
He nodded slowly, accepting her explanation."And that's a good thing."
"Of course it is."
He rolled that around in his head for a bit. "Good, bad, evil..." he muttered, chasing his mind on a different tangent. He held his hands out in front of him, palms up. "Good..." He raised one hand higher than the other. Then he changed them up and said, "Bad. There's good out there and there's bad out there." He closed the hand that represented 'bad' into a fist. "And then there's evil. But it's not the same as bad."
She nodded, not sure where he was going with the comparison. She made sure to steer him away from the curb as she listened. He raised his index finger from the fist. "I never believed in evil. Not when I was little. Then...then Mom got sick, and she beat it into me that there is evil out there, and it was out to get us." He tipped his head to one side and he drifted toward the curb again. Eames nudged him back toward the houses that lined the street. He didn't seem to notice. "When she started screaming that I was evil, she only confused me."
Usually, when he talked about his childhood, he was trying to get a confession from a suspect, to make some connection based on similar experiences. Sometimes, she wasn't sure what to believe. Bobby could bluff with the best of them. But he wasn't bluffing right now. His guard was way down; he was vulnerable. And he was opening up to her. This was a rare conversation for them.
He still held his closed fist in front of him. "I began to understand her disease when I was a teenager, and I realized that the evil she feared, the evil she saw, was all in her head, part of her delusions. So I started to wonder if evil really does exist."
"What did you decide?" she asked, steering him around a corner as they got closer to home.
"I didn't have to decide anything, Eames." He waved his index finger in the air. "I found evil. It does exist. Sometimes, people make mistakes. It's part of being human. But sometimes, it's not a mistake. Sometimes people kill because they get something from it, some kind of thrill, a rush of pleasure. And I understand that, Eames. I understand the minds and the motives of people who kill for the rush. I get why they do it, and that worries me." He waved his hand in the air and pointed in the distance. "Because...I...I can get into their heads. Because...there...there but for the Grace of God, and some odd quirk of fate, go I."
"Bobby, you are the best cop I've ever worked with."
He stopped in front of the house with his hand on the gate. He gave her an odd look of satisfaction. "I understand the criminal mind, Eames. I can put myself in their places. It's only because of a handful of circumstances that I am your partner and not your quarry." He held up a hand, his thumb and forefinger held only millimeters apart. "It was close," he murmured, leaning over to bring his face level with hers. "It was this close, Eames." He leaned against the gate when his balance faltered. "We're different, you and I. You were raised to be a cop. Me...I was raised to be a criminal."
"You are a good person," she insisted quietly.
He snickered. "I suppose I am...but I have no idea how that happened."
He took his weight off the gate and opened it. They stepped into the front yard, well-tended by Barb's loving hand. At the porch, Alex hopped up onto the second step and turned, her face almost level with his. She held out a hand, pressing it against his chest, stopping him. She met his eyes. "Don Carlo," she said.
After all he was the reason for this little experiment in inebriation. He leaned into her hand as he looked up at the house, dark except for the light in the foyer. "I can't be sure, but I don't think he's after them. I think I'm the one he wants." He stopped trying to force the memories and they flooded into his head in a sudden rush. "Family," he murmured, his eyes half closed. "He talked about family, how important they are. He told me to cherish them. An-And he promised...that Barb would watch her baby grow up." He looked around, finally settling his gaze on her face. "But he never promised that I would."
He took a step back, away from her, and stumbled a few more until he caught his balance. Moving forward, he weaved past Alex and climbed the steps onto the porch. She only had to steady him once.
After a few attempts, he got his key in the door and opened it. Alex closed and locked it behind her. She heard a muffled, almost inaudible sound on the stairs as she turned away from the door, followed by a soft 'mew' as Storm charged down the stairs and threaded herself in and around Bobby's legs. "Dammit, Storm," he growled, trying not to step on her. Alex stifled a laugh, grabbing his arm as he tripped over the kitten and hit the wall with his shoulder. He waved a hand at the little troublemaker. "Go on upstairs, before I do step on you."
She was halfway up the stairs when he added, "And don't wake anyone."
On the top step, she turned and waited for him. Alex was trying to keep her laughter quiet. Halfway up the stairs, he turned to look at her and nearly lost his balance. She pressed her hands against his lower back to keep him on the steps above her. "Just keep moving, Goren, or we'll both end up on the floor at the foot of the stairs."
The bedroom door was barely open, but it was enough for Storm. She vanished into the bedroom. Bobby paused outside the door and looked at his partner. "Thank you, Eames."
"For what?"
"For...giving up your Friday night for me."
She smiled. "Anytime, partner. Good night, Bobby."
He watched her walk down the hall to the spare bedroom where Teddy slept. He turned to the door Storm had vanished behind and paused. It had taken some time for him to adjust to thinking of Barb's home as his, too. It had taken even longer for him to get it set in his head that her bedroom was also his, that it was theirs. He didn't deserve this...this contentment—he hesitated to label it happiness for fear it would vanish in a puff of smoke—and yet, here it was, just beyond the door in front of him, in the bedrooms just down the hall. It was all around him, like a warm and comfortable cocoon.
He pushed the door open so he could enter the room. Closing the door, he pulled his shirt up over his head, stumbling sideways into the dresser. The corner of it jabbed him in the ribs. "Shit," he growled, rubbing his side.
He sat on the bed and worked off his shoes. A cool hand came to rest in the middle of his back. "Did you solve anything?" she asked as she stroked her hand over his skin.
He shrugged. "I-I think..."
His mind turned blank when she began to kiss his neck. She gently tugged on his shoulders, easing him back, guiding him onto the pillows. She moved along with him and closed her mouth over his. He lost himself in her kiss.
When she drew back, he watched her from under heavy lids, and she knew this was not the time for any kind of conversation. She settled her head onto his shoulder and ran her fingers over his chest and stomach.
The room spun in one direction as his head spun in another. It was an odd though pleasant sensation. He half-smiled as he rested his cheek against her head and drifted to sleep.
