Chapter 2

“You heard me. Carlo came to my apartment when he heard about the shooting. He’s going to help me with the legal mess. I’ll take that security job with you, Keith, if the offer is still open. Now that I’m going to have a child, I need steady work that doesn’t require me to place my life on the line.”

“Of course the offer is still open.” Bobby put his arm around Jack. “Are you okay?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it. They’re holding a note for me from Beau at his lawyer’s office.”

“Do you need any baby things? I have Kitty’s things, although they’re not the best quality,” Jason offered.

“I have to get some stuff from their apartment. Meredith probably bought things for the baby. I’ll need to purchase a house. My apartment has only one bedroom.” Jack’s face scrunched up in worry.

“Do you need money?” Reggie asked.

“I don’t know Reg. I promise I’ll let you know.”

“The two bedroom across the street from us is for sale. It’s small, but there is plenty of property if you want to expand later,” Jason said. “Stella is going into Assisted Living.”

“I might be interested. Carlo needs to look at Beau’s finances. I’m going to visit her at the hospital now. They’re keeping her for a while, she’s underweight.”

“How much underweight?” Bobby asked.

“She weighs only three pounds even though she was full term. Although she’s finally breathing on her own and just started sucking the bottle, they told me she can’t go home yet. Meredith wasn’t eating much. She wanted to keep her figure,” Jack said, the disgust plain on his face.

Bobby’s jaw dropped. “What a bitch.”

“Carlo’s coming with me. The Billy mess is cleaned up, now I have one of my own.”

Bobby reached out and touched Jack’s arm. “You don’t have to take her. An infant girl is greatly prized on the adoption market. She’d get a home quickly.”

“I have to keep her. She’s all I have left of Beau. I’ve got to go,” Jack choked on a sob. He left with Carlo and the door closed behind them.

“Goddamn Beau, he’s sabotaging Jack’s relationships from the grave,” Jason cursed.

“It’s clear that he’s not going to change his mind about keeping her. Carlo was doing more than a flyby here. I wonder how he feels about this.” Keith poured more coffee.

“Not you, baby, you’re on medication, remember, Greg said limit your caffeine,” Reggie told Mark. “Have juice with Bobby. He’s on meds too.”

“We’ll all have to help him do this. The little girl is an innocent, she can’t help that her father was a lying, cheating, son of a bitch,” Bobby said eyes moving from Jason to Reggie.

“It isn’t like we haven’t taken care of little girls before, we have Kitty-cat. As far as Carlo is concerned, he was interested. We’ll find out how invested he is now. Let’s see how this all plays out.” Reggie moved to the sofa and sat down in a huff.

Bobby lifted his juice. “A toast to Billy’s fortunate demise. As for Beau, may he rest in peace, if that’s possible for a liar and a cheat whose only good deed was offing himself?”

“Here, here…” They men clinked their coffee cups and glasses.

“We’ll know more about what Jack wants to do once he and Carlo take care of the legalities,” Keith observed.

“I don’t know about you, but to me it looked like Carlo was all in,” Zach noted.

Jason’s face was rife with speculation. “I believe you’re right.” 1

The morgue

Thursday, early June, 9:30

The morgue was kept at a lower temperature than the rest of the hospital. Jack shivered. Carlo put his arm around Jack and pulled him closer for warmth. The technician opened the drawer. Jack looked down at the body. “Yes, that’s Beau James Stewart.” Jack turned away from Carlo seemingly to wipe his eyes.

The attendant closed the drawer and Jack and Carlo followed the technician to an anteroom.

“Do you want his personal effects?” the technician asked.

“Let me look at what you have, I’m sure you can discard most of it.”

The technician brought out a plastic bag and dumped the contents on a steel table. On the table was change, a few crumpled bills, a wallet and a set of keys.

Carlo picked up the wallet. “Let me look through this, caro. You shouldn’t have to do this.”

Carlo opened the billfold and looked through the plastic sleeves. Driver’s license, social security card, voter ID, no credit cards but there was a well-worn, creased picture of Jack. It’s not in my interest to show Jack this, nor is it in Jack’s. Carlo slipped the driver’s license out of the protective sleeve for the address, and put the picture back in the wallet. He looked in the money compartment and found a wad of bills totaling five thousand dollars and a hand written note, Use this money to buy something for the baby.—B.