The Drop by Dennis Lehane Read Free Book Online Page A

“But I know this guy. Moment I know him? I know him. I try to explain to him when he come to me to do some business that he must have a moral center. Eh, Bob? You understand?”
    “A moral center,” Bob said. “Sure, Mr. Umarov.”
    “A man who has a moral center knows what he knows and knows what has to be done. He knows how to keep his affairs in order. A man with no moral center, however, does not know what he does not know and you can never explain it to him. Because if he knew the thing he did not know then he would have a moral center.” He looked at Marv. “You understand?”
    “I do,” Marv said. “Absolutely.”
    Chovka grimaced. He smoked for a bit.
    In the van, the construction worker whimpered and the Chechen on his left slapped the back of his head until he stopped.
    “Somebody robbed my bar?” Chovka said to Bob.
    “Yes, Mr. Umarov.”
    Chovka said, “You call my father ‘Mister Umarov,’ Bob. Me you call Chovka, hey?”
    “Chovka. Yes, sir.”
    “Who robbed our bar?”
    “We don’t know,” Cousin Marv said. “They wore masks.”
    Chovka said, “The police report said one wore a broken watch? You tell the police this?”
    Marv looked down at his shovel.
    Bob said, “I answered without thinking. I’m very sorry.”
    Chovka looked back at the construction worker for a bit and smoked and no one said anything.
    Then Chovka asked Marv, “What have you done to get my father’s money back?”
    “We’ve got the word out in the neighborhood.”
    Chovka looked over at Anwar. “The word is out there. Like our money.”
    The guy in the van shit himself. They all heard it, and they all acted like they didn’t.
    Chovka closed the van doors. He knocked on the door with his fist twice and the van pulled away from the curb.
    He turned to Bob and Marv. “Find our fucking money.”
    Chovka got back in the Escalade. Anwar paused at the door, looked at Bob, and pointed at a spot of snow Bob had missed. He followed his boss into the SUV, and both Escalades pulled away from the curb.
    Cousin Marv saluted them as they reached the stop sign and turned right. “And a Happy Fucking New Year to you as well, gents.”
    Bob shoveled for a bit in silence. Marv leaned on his shovel and watched the street.
    “That guy in the van?” Marv said. “I don’t ever want to talk about him or hear about him. We good on that?”
    Bob didn’t want to talk about him either. He nodded.
    After a bit, Marv said, “How we supposed to find their money? If we knew where their money was that’d mean we knew who robbed us which would mean we were in on it which would mean they’d shoot us in the fucking face. So how we supposed to find their money?”
    Bob kept shoveling because it was the kind of question there was no answer for.
    Marv lit a Camel. “Fucking Chechneyans, man.”
    Bob stopped shoveling. “Chechens.”
    “What?”
    “They’re Chechens,” Bob said, “not Chechneyans.”
    Marv didn’t believe it. “But they’re from Chechneya.”
    Bob shrugged. “Yeah, but you don’t call people from Ireland ‘Irelandians.’”
    They leaned on their shovels and stared up the street for a while until Marv suggested they go back inside. It was cold, he said, and his knee was fucking killing him.

CHAPTER 5
Cousin Marv
    I N LATE 1967 , WHEN the good people of Boston elected Kevin White mayor, Cousin Marv’s voice was deemed so beautiful he was plucked out of third grade to sing at the inauguration. Each morning, he attended Saint Dom’s. But every afternoon, after lunch, he was bused across the city to train with a boys’ choir at the Old South Church in Back Bay. The Old South Church sat at 645 Boylston Street—the rest of his life, Marv never forgot that address—and had been built in 1875. It sat diagonally across a plaza from Trinity Church, another architectural masterpiece, and within spitting distance of the Boston Public Library Main Branch and the Copley Plaza Hotel, four buildings so majestic that