Kevin remembered thinking his grandfather must have been a heck of a guy. His grandmother let him think it until he didn’t. And now she was here. Her turn in the basement at McNamara’s. And his turn to mourn. Except he didn’t know how. And didn’t have anyone to teach him. She’d been his world, his beginning and end, his sense of who he was and who he might become. And no one had ever told him it could end so soon.
He forced himself to look at her face. It was all wrong. Lips stretched tight, cheeks too red and sunk into pockets of bone. He waited for her to open her stitched eyes and tell him it was a bad dream. They’d laugh at the job the hacks had done, cancel the wake, and head home for a cup of Barry’s and toast. He noticed the way they’d arranged her hands on her chest. When he was eleven, he’d saved up money and gotten her a Madonna pendant made from mother of pearl and matching earrings. They’d ripped the pendant off her neck when they killed her. Taken it along with the cash in the strongbox. But they didn’t get the earrings. Now she’d wear them for eternity and Kevin couldn’t fathom it. There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs that wound down from the public areas of the funeral home, then, a voice.
“How the fuck did you get in here?”
Kevin looked up at Bobby filling the doorway.
“I told them it was my grandmother. They made me sit upstairs for a while, then let me down.”
Bobby moved closer before circling away. Kevin hadn’t talked to him since that morning, another face lost in the blurred rush of images—cops and neighbors standing on the sidewalk in front of the house in small circles; his father sitting in the hushed darkness of their living room, phlegmatic eyes shining white and watching him as he crept in, then pushing him back down the hallway; his mother collapsed on the bed, weeping uncontrollably and caving in on herself until there was nothing left but rubble and tears and dust; Colleen in the kitchen, holding his left hand with her fingers and asking if she could have cereal for dinner; Bridget, alone in her room with a wound in her side and the door closed tight. Bobby took a seat on the other side of the body and picked up the cold, stiff fingers. Something passed there that was alive and breathing and Kevin felt his soul move in its too young, too hard shell. Then Bobby released the hand, and the corpse again became a corpse. He looked at Kevin with eyes gone soft around the edges.
“I’m sorry, pal.”
And then the dam burst and Kevin started to cry for what felt like the first time in his life, wrenching sobs that came from a place he never knew existed, a place that had no bottom and no dimension other than pain and pity and the insatiable greed of loathing. Bobby pulled his chair around and held him in his arms and Kevin told him about the apartment, her face in the awful God-light, silent eyes and thin line of lips, the blood and vomit and dripping blue gray of the entrails, and all the rest. Bobby held him until he’d finished. And then he held him some more.
“I don’t know what to do,” Kevin said, his head buried in the thick knot of Bobby’s shoulder, words all blurred and messy.
“You don’t have to do nothing, bud. Don’t have to do nothing at all.” Bobby spoke in a hushed, even cadence, like the hum of a prayer in church. Kevin pulled back, wiping his nose on his sleeve. Bobby gave him some space, and they sat with her in the basement.
“How’s everyone?” Bobby finally said, turning toward Kevin and at an angle to the body.
“What do you think? Fucked up as usual.”
“Your old man bothering you?”
“He’s fine.”
“Your mom?”
Kevin just shook his head. Bobby leaned in.
“You gotta step up, Kev. Be there for her and your sisters. You know what I mean?”
“I think so.”
“Listen, the fucking old man is what he is. Nothing you can do and there’s no point getting into it. But your mom and your sisters, they’re gonna need you to be there. Nothing heroic or anything like that. Just be there.”
“I got it, Bobby.”
“Do you?”
Kevin glanced past him to a small window set at ground level and looking out at an alley that ran alongside McNamara’s. A clock ticked somewhere, and there was the murmur of movement upstairs. McNamara’s ghouls pushing around wax flowers and frozen corpses.
“She thought the world of you, Kev. Talked about your future all the time, the things you were gonna do. None of that’s changed. Not a fucking bit.”
Kevin studied the flat, white wall that ran underneath the window and felt himself nod.
“All right, bud. You wanna get out of here?”
“Think I’m gonna hang for a bit.”
There was the scrape of wood as Bobby stood, his presence looming over Kevin and the body on the table. “Don’t stay too long.” He squeezed Kevin’s shoulder, then leaned in and touched her powdered cheek with the back of his hand, whispering something close before disappearing back upstairs.
Kevin waited until the footsteps had died off and he was alone again. He stared at a twist of plastic rosary beads they’d wound between his grandmother’s fingers and thought about her prediction. There’d be a void, she’d said. And it was human nature to want to fill it. Kevin traced the hard outline of the gun in his pocket and conjured up the face he’d seen running from the three-decker, the person who’d killed his grandmother. He touched the trigger and began to mumble a Hail Mary. The words tasted like ash in his mouth and his tongue was cast into stone.
11
IT HAD taken Bobby Scales less than twenty-four hours to discover the name of the man who’d run out of Mary Burke’s apartment. Curtis Jordan was black and lived somewhere in Fidelis Way. Bobby didn’t know the exact address, but Fidelis wasn’t that big of a place. He parked across the street from the projects and walked down the block until he found an empty doorway with a view.
The wake was this afternoon. Funeral, tomorrow morning. Bobby wouldn’t be there. He’d already said his good-byes to the closest thing he’d ever had to a mother. Now, it was all about protecting her grandson. Bobby had talked to Mary Burke many times about what would happen after she died. Neither of them expected this. But Bobby was ready to hold up his end.
He leaned a shoulder against the jamb, arms folded across his chest, and considered his options. If he knew about Jordan, Kevin probably did as well. Even if he didn’t know, someone, someday, would whisper the name in his ear. And then what? Bobby felt a cold flutter in his chest. All things being equal, he’d be happy turning Jordan over to the cops. But where would that lead? Bobby had a friend inside Station Fourteen, a mick cop named Quigley. He could see Quigley’s face now, a long stretch of pale marble, studded with black eyes and cracked in all the places you’d expect. Take care of it yourself, Bobby, Quigley would say. That’s the way you handle these sorts of things. We understand it. The D.A. understands. Everyone understands. Quigley had a point. If Bobby didn’t take care of it, who would? Kevin would. And that could never be. Still, it was a bridge to cross. A turn in the road. A running jump off a fucking cliff. Bobby looked up. A streetcar rumbled past, and he caught a flash of brown hair. Bobby knew that head, the angular features and slouched walk. He hustled across Commonwealth Avenue and up a short hill. Kevin was maybe twenty yards ahead, moving quickly, eyes on the pavement, right hand in his jacket pocket. Bobby was about to yell when Kevin turned a corner and disappeared into the projects. Bobby began to run.
Curtis Jordan was sitting behind a long wooden desk when Kevin pushed in the door. Jordan’s eyes swiveled left, right, then reached behind Kevin before relaxing.
“You a long way from home, white bread.”
Kevin inhaled the room in huge, heaving gulps. A stack of money on the table. A gun beside it. Jordan’s fingertips humming, but not yet moving for the piece. There was a scattering of other objects on the table, but they all faded to black once he saw it, a pale gleam caught in a slash of light from the window. Kevin pulled out the shiny twenty-two and watched the barrel shake as he raised it. Until the very end,
he thought he’d just talk. Ask why. Try to understand. Then he saw his grandmother’s pendant on the desk and his world went red. Curtis Jordan swung his piece up as Kevin started to squeeze back on the trigger. The gun flew out of his hands and there was a blast in his ears, followed by a second. Jordan was jerked from his seat, like a puppet being lifted by some huge invisible hand, except this puppet fell back to earth in a bloody, boneless heap. Kevin got a glimpse of blank eyes peeking back at him from under the desk. Then he was being dragged down the hallway, feet skipping across the ground as he went. It was Bobby, a black revolver in his fist, sticky gray tape wrapped around the grip and the muzzle pointed to the ceiling. He pulled Kevin through a set of fire doors and glanced up and down the stairwell. Kevin twisted free and sprinted back down the hall, Bobby hissing at him to stop.
A slick of blood was already creeping across the tiled floor of the apartment. Kevin almost slipped as he scrambled behind the desk. It was layered with the cash, a set of keys, and two bottles of pills. The pendant had rolled off the desk and into a corner. Kevin grabbed it, wiping off a tiny necklace of blood with his thumb. Then he picked up the gun he’d dropped.
Curtis Jordan’s body was all twisted up under the desk, one arm flung over the top of his head like he was trying to scratch his opposite ear. Kevin rolled the body onto its back and took a good look, carving the image onto the surface of his brain in quick, deft strokes. Then he dropped to a knee, pressed the gun against Jordan’s forehead, and pulled the trigger. The twenty-two barely made a sound and left behind a dry, puckered hole. Kevin stuck the gun in his pocket and ran out of the apartment, straight into the hollow gaze of a black girl. She was standing stock-still in the middle of the hallway, a finger in her mouth and pink and white bows in her hair. Their eyes locked for a moment before Kevin sprinted for the fire doors. Bobby pulled him down two flights and into the basement of the building. The hallway smelled like stale piss, and a dark slick of grease ran along the base of the walls where rats had rubbed themselves against the yellow brick. Bobby pointed to what looked like a janitor’s closet.
“There’s probably a sink in there.”
“I had to get the gun.” Kevin pulled out the twenty-two. Bobby stashed it inside his jacket.
“We can’t be here when the cops arrive. Now, go wash up.”
Kevin looked down at his hands. They were smeared with blood. He also had some rimming the soles of his shoes.
“Now, Kevin. Go.”
He walked into the janitor’s room and turned on the faucet. The pipes groaned and the water ran like rust. Kevin waited a few seconds and it began to clear. Somewhere in the distance, a police siren howled. All told, they’d been in the building less than seven minutes. In other words, a lifetime.
PART TWO
2002
12
AT LEAST he wasn’t taking a leak. Kevin had read somewhere that’s what Mike Royko was doing when they told him he’d won the Pulitzer Prize. True or not, it’s one of those stories print reporters love to tell. Kevin’s moment wasn’t nearly as memorable. Just standing in line at the Registry of Motor Vehicles. The woman in front of him was eating an Egg McMuffin and talking on her cell phone, telling her friend that no, she hadn’t slept with Joey DeTucci and that Cindy was a fucking bitch who was going to get her ass kicked across Chelsea if she didn’t shut her fucking mouth. The guy behind him was thumbing through the Herald, breathing garlic and peppers down Kevin’s neck and pushing up against his shoulder every chance he got. That’s where he was when he got the call from his boss at the Globe.
“Done deal,” Jimmy Edwards said, laughing his fat man’s laugh. “Done fucking deal.”
Edwards was a member of “The Cabal,” a group of newspaper editors who made it their business to sniff out the Pulitzer’s annual list of nominees. This year Edwards had done one better. It wouldn’t be official for another few days, but he’d gotten the word from a source Edwards called “bulletproof.” Kevin turned off his phone just as it buzzed again. He’d moved somehow, at least two feet out of line. The ranks had already closed, Mr. Herald’s newspaper firmly tucked up against the sloping back and greasy hair of the girl from Chelsea. People in line stole quick glances Kevin’s way, anticipating his counterattack. After all, he’d put in his time, shuffling forward a foot or two every couple of minutes for the better part of an hour. And yet he felt none of the unarticulated and consuming rage that was the province of Boston and its proud inhabitants. Instead, he wandered ten more feet, then twenty, past the end of the line and out the door. So what if he didn’t have a valid driver’s license from the Commonwealth? He was the Pulitzer Prize winner for best investigative piece of the year, 2001. That would be the first line in his bio. The first sentence in his obituary. His career would never be the same. His life, forever changed. At least that was the hype. Why, then, didn’t he feel any different? Or, for that matter, anything at all?
13
HE DROVE west on Soldiers Field Road, the Charles River twisting and turning alongside, afternoon sun glancing daggers off his windshield. Kevin exited at Market Street and climbed the long hill toward Brighton Center. He’d avoided driving through the center for more than two decades and wasn’t sure why he was making the detour now. The storefronts of his youth had mostly disappeared, Woolworth’s and Brigham’s gone, five or six bars and half as many packies history. There were still plenty of places to get lit, but they looked cleaner now, safer, gentrified. And probably not nearly as much fun. Kevin drove past Daniel’s Bakery, where his sisters had spent their youth frosting cakes for minimum wage. Next to it was an Indian take-out place that had once been the Blue Bayou. Kevin had been a month shy of eleven and hanging around outside the Bayou one Sunday afternoon when Shakey Callahan walked in and fired a gun between Sean Bryant’s legs. Bryant pissed himself and fainted dead away off his bar stool. Shakey rifled Sean’s pockets, left a few dollars on the bar for the tab, and walked out whistling. After the cops left, Kevin and his pals snuck into the bar and took turns sticking their fingers in the bullet hole Shakey had left in the stool’s green padding. All in all, not bad for a Sunday. Just past the Indian joint was Mandy and Joe’s deli, Fleet Bank, and a CVS. Kevin pulled into the bank’s parking lot, slid a MEDIA placard onto the dashboard, and walked into the CVS for a pack of gum. He listened from the next aisle as an old man explained to a female clerk how he had to put a two-by-four under the toilet seat to prevent his balls from taking a bath. He was unbuckling his pants to show off the low-hangers when Kevin left. Outside, traffic was snarled for a block and a half. People leaned on their horns and hollered at anyone who’d listen while no one went anywhere. Kevin walked over to the cause of the tie-up—a homeless man wrapped in a long rubber fireman’s coat and lying on his side in the middle of the street. A woman came out of the CVS, took one look, and crossed at the light. More people walked past as Kevin rolled the man over. He was wearing leather suspenders with no shirt under the coat, and his eyes were nailed wide open.
“You okay?” Kevin said.
“I don’t know.” The man blinked once and looked at Kevin as if to say “What next?” Just then a siren whooped, traffic cleared, and a squad car pulled up. A cop with a meaty Irish face got out, took one look at the man on the ground, and started cursing. Kevin was pushed to the periphery of the crowd and watched as an ambulance arrived. The homeless man departed on a stretcher, waving at his fans and trying to shake hands with the cop. There was a pleasant buzz now, everyone happy to have another person’s misfortune to talk about. That much, at least, hadn’t changed. Kevin walked back to his car and drove down Parsons Street, headed toward Electric Avenue. Already he had a headache.
Electric Avenue bellied up to the Mass Pike before curling off into a dead end that was more of a mercy killing. Kevin parked in front of the main office for L&G Radiator and listened to the cars whistle overhead. He walked past two boarded-up buildings, three cats, and a rat that looked like it could eat the cats for breakfast, l
unch, and dinner. Kevin stopped in front of a skinny three-decker, shoehorned between a factory that made screen doors and an abutment for the highway. A Puerto Rican leaned his head out of a second-floor window and asked if Kevin wanted to buy some rum. Kevin said no. The Puerto Rican told him to come back on Sunday when the packies were closed and he’d give him a deal. Kevin walked up three steps of poured concrete and knocked on the door to the first-floor apartment. She opened it on the chain and stared out at him.
“Yeah?”
“Gemele, it’s Kevin. Kevin Pearce.”
A child yelled for mom from somewhere behind her. Gemele Harper unchained the door and left it open. Kevin followed her in. Gemele was small but sturdy. And she needed to be. She lived with her four kids, aged twelve down to six, in a one-room apartment with a kitchenette and table in one corner and a foldout bed in the middle. Three of the kids were sitting around the table, watching Kevin from under sleepy eyelids. The youngest, a girl named Natalie, sat on the far side of the bed, scribbling with crayons on the wall.
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