The Ancient Rain by Domenic Stansberry Read Free Book Online Page B

you,” she said. Outside, a car negotiated the turnaround. The passing light rose and fell through the big window overlooking the porch. “When he posts bail, we will have a get-together for the defense. All of his supporters, here. You’ll come, won’t you? You and Marilyn?”
    â€œOf course,” said Dante.
    The car was gone now, the headlights passed. The bamboo rustled in the long shadows by the fence.
    *   *   *
    When Dante and Marilyn drove home that morning, it was just past dawn. There was extra security at the bridge—police and fire vehicles flanking the sides and emergency workers everywhere in yellow slickers. There was a line at the toll longer than made any sense.
    A bomb on the bridge … an abandoned pickup truck … unauthorized personnel on the catwalks … On the radio, a talk-show host repeated rumors picked up by callers off the citizens band. The rumors were repeated by the men inside the traffic copters, then retracted, and later repeated like words in a dream.
    A policewoman in yellow gear waved them through.
    It was a damp morning, and on the other side of the bridge, in San Francisco, there was an antiwar vigil going on. Protestors dressed in skeleton suits. Death masks. Angels holding swords. Sheets covered with blood.
    Don’t fight their war.
    Women on their knees, over dead children.
    Or these were the images in Dante’s head, later, as he tumbled toward sleep, in Marilyn’s bed. He nuzzled up close to her. Over the mudflats, the sky was gray. The flocks were diminishing, wheeling away. His grandmother had once told him the story of the fishermen who lived with the pelicans out in the Calabrian rocks … the fishermen, with the big noses, who followed the birds out to sea. Birds who lived in the rocks, birds with brown eyes, beaks in the shape of fish, shoulders hunched like peasants.
    Marilyn ran her fingers over his nose. She grabbed his dick.
    When she touched him, he forgot about the birds. He forgot about Owens, in his orange suit down at the Hall of Justice. He forgot about the little boy with his raw fingers and his weeping teenage sister, and forgot, too, the woman who’d been shot to death in the bank.
    â€œLet’s go somewhere far away,” said Marilyn.
    â€œOkay.”
    She blew in his ear. The sound of it was like the sound of the ocean inside a seashell.
    â€œDon’t leave me,” she said. “Promise me.”
    â€œI won’t.”
    â€œPromise me you’ll love me forever.”
    â€œI will.”
    They made love. Afterward, she got up and checked her answering machine. There was a man’s voice on it. Dante thought he heard the faintest wistfulness in that voice, or that’s how he would remember it later. But he could not be sure. Because he was already on the shore again, out on the mudflats. The skies were empty, and the tide was rolling in.

PART TWO
    The Explosion

SEVEN
    As of yet, Guy Sorrentino was not concerned with Dante Mancuso. There was no reason why he should be. He had known Dante, from their time on the force, and it was true their paths had intertwined briefly. It was true, too, that they were about to get intertwined again, but neither man knew this yet.
    Whatever violence lay ahead—whatever enmity—neither man was aware.
    Maybe Sorrentino, himself, had felt a flash of recognition when he’d seen the hawk-nosed man milling around in the crowd in front of the Federal Building. But he had not put the face with the name, and had no way of knowing that Dante might have a connection with the Younger case.
    And the Younger case was the only thing Sorrentino was concerned with these days.
    Sorrentino had met Elise Younger three years ago. She was like a daughter to him, and it was on account of her he pursued the case.
    Or so he told himself.
    It was on account of her, on account of the case, that he had been fishing around North Beach