to find Mitch standing in his boxer shorts.
Helen said a silent prayer. Deliver me from evil.
So did Mitch. Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin.
The sex was incredible. They did it on top of the washing machine, in the shower, on the floor in the living room and, finally, in Pete Connors’s bed. Afterward, Mitch lay slumped back on the pillows, replete with happiness. He tried to feel guilty but he couldn’t. He was in love.
Helen sat bolt upright.
‘Don’t tell me you want it again?’ Mitch groaned.
‘No. I heard something. I think it’s your father!’
Helen was in her clothes in a flash. Rushing into the kitchen, she started scrubbing pots. Mitch, whose lower body suddenly seemed to have developed advanced Parkinson’s, stumbled around the bedroom in blind panic. The front door opened.
‘Mitch?’
Shit. There was nothing else for it. Stark naked, Mitch dived into the built-in closet, pulling the door closed behind him. At the back of the closet, against the wall, was a trapdoor leading into a crawl space in the roof. Mitch had barely managed to squeeze his six-foot frame through it when he heard Pete Connors’s footsteps in the bedroom.
‘MITCH!’ It was a roar. The old man wasn’t stupid. The combination of Helen’s flushed, guilty face and the rumpled sheets must have given them away. Mitch heard the front door open and close. Helen, sensibly, had made a run for it. How Mitch wished he were with her!
The closet door opened. A shaft of light appeared under the trapdoor to the crawl space. Mitch held his breath. There was a pause. Shirts being ruffled on hangers. Then the closet door closed.
Thank you, God. I swear I will never screw a woman in my father’s bed ever again.
Pete Connors’s footsteps receded. Then, suddenly, they stopped. Mitch’s heart did the same. Hey, c’mon, God! We had a deal!
The closet door opened again. Then the door to the crawl space. As Pete Connors looked down at his naked son, an unmistakably fishy waft of sex hit him in the face.
‘Hey, Dad. I don’t suppose you know where I could find a towel?’
Two minutes later, Mitch was out on the street. He never saw his father alive again.
‘I want to get married, Mitch.’
Helen and Mitch had been living together for three years. Now almost twenty-one, Mitch was making good money tending bar. Helen had cut back on her charity work to do three days a week as a trainee librarian, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was pushing thirty and she wanted to have a child.
‘Why?’
‘Why? Is that a serious question? Because we’re living in mortal sin, that’s why.’
Mitch grinned. ‘I know. Hasn’t it been fun so far?’
‘Mitchell! I’m not kidding around. I want to have a baby. I want to make a commitment, to start a family, to do this right. Isn’t that what you want, too?’
‘Sure it is, baby.’
But the truth was, Mitch didn’t know what he wanted. Growing up watching his parents rip each other apart had put him off the idea of marriage for life. He loved Helen, that wasn’t the problem. Or maybe it was the problem. Being with someone so good, so perfect, made him feel uneasy. He had too much of his father in him. A natural-born scammer, flirting was in Mitch’s blood. Sooner or later I’ll let her down. She’ll learn to hate me, to despise me for my weakness. Helen was the mother ship, but Mitch needed lifeboats: other girls who he could keep as backup should Helen see the light and realize she could do a whole lot better than a barman from Pittsburgh.
‘Next year,’ he told her. ‘Once Dad’s come around to the idea.’ He said the same thing the following year, and the year after that. Then, in the space of a month, two seismic events took place that were to change Mitch’s life changed forever.
First, Helen left him.
Then his father was murdered.
Two weeks after Helen Brunner walked out on Mitch, Pete Connors was stabbed to death outside his apartment. He lost his life for a fake Rolex watch, a cheap, nine-karat gold wedding ring and twenty-three dollars in cash. Mitch’s mom flew in for the funeral. Lucy Connors looked glamorous and suntanned and not remotely grief-stricken. Then again, why should she?
She hugged Mitch tightly. ‘You okay, sweetie? No offense, but you look like hell.’
‘I’m fine.’
I’m not fine. I should have been there. I abandoned him, and now he’s dead, and I never got to say I was sorry. I never told him how much I loved him.
‘Try not to be too upset. I know it sounds harsh, but if this hadn’t happened, the booze would have gotten him soon enough.’
‘It does sound harsh.’
‘I saw the autopsy report, Mitch. I know what I’m talking about. Your father’s liver was like a pickled walnut.’
‘Jesus, Mom!’
‘I’m sorry, honey, but it’s the truth. Your father didn’t want to live.’
‘Maybe not. But he sure as hell didn’t want some deranged junkie to stick a steak knife in his heart. He didn’t ask for that! He didn’t deserve that.’ Mitch’s mother raised an eyebrow as if to say, That’s a moot point, but she let him finish. ‘And what about the police? What the hell have they been doing? They just let whoever killed Dad walk free. Like his life didn’t mean anything at all.’
‘I’m sure they’ve done all they can, Mitch.’
‘Bullshit.’
It was bullshit. The Pittsburgh police had done the bare minimum, grudgingly completing the paperwork on Pete Connors’s murder without lifting a finger to attempt to track down his killer. Mitch made a bunch of complaints, all of them politely ignored. That’s when it dawned on him.
People like my dad don’t matter. In the end, he was no different from those poor housewives he used to scam with promises of a better life and white-collar jobs. There’s no justice for people like that. The underclass. No one cares what happens to them.
Two weeks after his father’s funeral, Mitch telephoned Helen.
‘I’ve made some decisions.’
‘Uh-huh?’ Her voice sounded weary.
‘I’m going to become a cop. A detective.’
It wasn’t what she’d been expecting. ‘Oh.’
‘Not here, though. I need to get away from Pittsburgh. Start afresh. I thought
