Empire Falls

worried about, don’t bother. He’d have to sober up to cause any trouble, and he’s shitfaced over at the Lamplighter every night.”
    Actually, Miles was aware of this development. Among the many newspaper clippings his brother had sent him through the winter, most having to do with the new Knox River Restoration Project, there were several detailing Officer Minty’s travails, and they came with annotations in Charlene’s small, careful hand. Not long after the shooting, which was national news until an even worse incident had occurred out West, Jimmy’s wife showed up in Empire Falls with her new fiancé and a downstate lawyer, who served her husband with divorce papers containing allegations of emotional and, in one instance, physical cruelty, the exact nature of which she threatened to make public if he chose to contest either the divorce or the custody arrangements detailed in the supporting documents. A week later, when she returned to Seattle, where she now lived, she took her son, Zack, with her.
    Minty might have fought this had another problem not presented itself simultaneously. Bright and early one morning, before he’d even finished shaving, the county sheriff arrived at his door with a search warrant and a team of uniformed officers who apparently knew exactly what to look for. In record time they found several items—expensive stereo speakers, a new microwave, a VCR—for which Minty could provide no proof of ownership, and from which the identifying serial numbers had been expertly removed. He claimed he’d paid cash for the items in question down in Portland and hadn’t saved receipts, and he was highly insulted by the suggestion that items of identical description had disappeared in a series of nocturnal thefts from several local merchants. This story might’ve worked if he hadn’t missed one I.D. number on the inside of a laser printer, the very one stolen from Knox Computer a couple of months earlier. Investigators also confiscated the key-making machine they found in his basement, along with a key ring bristling with what were described as master or skeleton keys. While he hadn’t been indicted, the allegations turned up in the newspaper, after which he resigned from the force. According to David, he’d put his home on the market in hopes of covering his legal fees and was presently living as a caretaker at the Whiting hacienda.
    “He came into the tavern a couple of weeks ago, actually,” David added. “Said Zack had written wanting to know how Tick was. He also said to tell you no hard feelings.”
    Again Miles had to smile. “That’s awfully good of him. He kicked the shit out of me.”
    “True,” David conceded. “His nose didn’t heal right, though. He looks like he misplaced his own and borrowed the one he’s got now off a corpse. It’s kind of gray. Still, I think if you were to lie and tell him you’re sorry, that’d be it.”
    “I am sorry,” Miles said, though he had reservations about Jimmy Minty’s capacity for forgiveness. “I keep telling you, it’s not Minty. I know her, David. Maybe it’s taken me a lifetime, but I do.”
    “Okay, then,” David said, “explain it to me.”
    Miles had no intention of doing so, well aware of how paranoid it would sound. Among the other clippings he’d received from his brother was a story about the purchase of St. Cat’s by a Massachusetts investment group, which planned to convert the church into four three-story condominiums. The most extravagant of these featured a Jacuzzi in the steeple Miles had never worked up the courage to paint. Architectural plans illustrated the future purpose of the building where Miles and his mother had attended Mass, and there were small photos of Father Tom (pre-dementia) and Father Mark, both of whom were now residing at Sacré Coeur. Perhaps there was no justification for Miles’s belief that the real buyer of the church was Mrs. Whiting, or that she would maintain a residence in one of the condos, so as to spend at least part of the year living in the heart of something he’d loved before she managed to seize and corrupt it. Power and control, again. And no matter how little basis he could claim for this belief, he truly did believe it.
    “Look,” David said, “I’m glad Tick’s getting better. But has it occurred to you that you’re getting worse?” When Miles didn’t respond, he continued. “It’s not going to be much of a victory if you save her and destroy