Deadly Diamonds by John Dobbyn

boys—Matt Ryan, Dominic Santangelo, and Lex Devlin—had run like brothers in the youthful assurance that they owned the world. They lived and breathed as one through every moment of Matt’s ascendancy through the rankings of professional light heavyweight boxers. The memories of those days seemed to rise like mist from the streets. They made the mission Lex was on almost unbearably bitter.
    Lex pulled up in front of a gym in one of the old sections of Charlestown whose character had not been bulldozed by urbanization. The gym had always looked to him like an enduring symbol of Matt’s fighting spirit. Now it looked tired. Lex noticed the cracked paint and sagging door for the first time. It stood, but it showed the scars of decades in a hard-times neighborhood.
    In the ring in the center of the gym, Lex saw two scrawny, wiry boys with oversized gloves dancing around each other like a couple of tentative pit bulls. A large man in sweats was leaning on the ropes, yelling alternate jibes and encouragement.
    â€œTimmy, do you think you’re on
Dancing with the Stars
? What the hell are you doin’? For the love of the saints, will you plant yourself? This is not a road race. Kevin, when I said a moving target, I didn’t mean a fifty-yard dash. That’s the stuff, Timmy, now jab! Kevin, get those gloves up! Protect that pretty face or your mother’ll have my scalp.”
    Lex came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s talk, Matt.”
    Matt called the match and sent the boys to the showers after extracting a promise of two miles at a fast jog. He accepted Lex’s invitation for a beer and a sandwich at the pub around the corner.
    When they walked through the crowd of noon customers, it was “Hi, Father.” “What’s up, Father?” “Can I buy you one, Father?” down the entire length of the pub. On another day, Lex would have basked in the reverence and affection for his pal. Today each word bit like a scorpion, knowing that when the word got out, the tide would turn viciously.
    They took a table at the rear of the pub where their words would be drowned out by the buzz of voices.
    Lex hardly knew how to start. Matt saved him the agony.
    â€œI can see by that sour puss on you you’ve heard the word from the cardinal.” Matt grabbed Lex’s shoulders and straightened his slouch into a straight-up position. He used the same tone he had used on his teenage boxers. “Would you look at you, you old grouch? Are we going to have a good lunch or attend my wake?”
    Lex forced a smile. Matt leaned closer, but the tone was the same. “Let’s get this over with before the beers come so I can enjoy your good company. I’ll write the scene. First you say, ‘Matt, my old friend of forty some years, or should I say Right Reverend Monsignor Ryan, by any chance did you commit the worst and most disgusting and vile breach of the confidence these good people have placed in you?And did you do it over and over again to a boy who you picked up off the streets and treated like a son when his own father was too deep in the sauce to care about him? And if you did, how could you keep such a despicable secret all these years from your best friend who’s about to buy you a grand lunch? Give me an answer, Monsignor Ryan.’
    â€œAnd I’ll say in reply that no two of God’s creatures know the heart and soul of each other better than you and I, Lex. And if for one single second you could think that the answer to any of that crap is ‘yes,’ then I’ll say to hell with you, Lex Devlin, and I’ll buy my own lunch. Is that clear enough?”
    The forced smile on Lex’s face was now genuine. “You are one piece of God’s work, Matthew Ryan. But it changes nothing. There never was, and there never will be, a fraction of a second that I’d believe ‘that crap,’ as you call it. So your