Brighton

by Michael Harvey

“Enlighten me.”

  “I was fifteen and the guy killed my grandmother. Cut her open and left her on the floor of her apartment. I went after him and Bobby followed.”

  “He wound up doing the killing?”

  “I pushed when I shouldn’t have and the dominoes just started falling.”

  “Tides shifted, lives changed. Your buddy became what he became. Shakespeare already wrote the fucking play.” Lollipops slipped the gun from his belt and placed it flat on the table. “I’m sixty-three years old. Killed almost two hundred men, mostly for money. I came here to kill your pal. And if I find him, that’s what I’m gonna do. You know why?”

  “Cuz someone’s paying you.”

  “We don’t push dominoes. We are dominoes. Me, you, Bobby Scales. We get pushed, we fall, and there’s not a damn lot any of us can do about it.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you believe. It doesn’t matter what you choose, or what you think you’re choosing. The dominoes are gonna fall like they fall. People live, people die. And we all go kicking and screaming, even the ones who don’t say a word. Now leave and don’t come back. Otherwise, I drop you in the trunk.”

  Lollipops got up and opened the door. Kevin wanted to stay, but his feet carried him into the hallway, then down the stairs. He walked numbly across the street and slid behind the wheel of his car. The passenger’s door opened and Gemele Harper got in beside him. She pointed straight ahead.

  “Drive.”

  From the high window, Lollipops watched the two figures in the front seat of the car. He hadn’t been able to see who climbed in but hoped it was a woman. He hoped they were talking about getting on a plane. Somewhere warm. Drinks at sunset by the pool, late breakfasts, long lunches, walks on the beach. He hoped for all of that but read something different in the reporter’s face. Something Lollipops knew all too well. Brake lights flickered and the Volvo pulled away from the curb in a soft prowl. Lollipops took down the tag number, then let the shade drop. The kid with the Yankees hat was wrapped in plastic and stashed in the tub. Lollipops would have to wait until dark to move him. The professional unbuttoned his coat and sat down again at the table, sipping at his coffee and enjoying the peace and quiet.

  40

  GEMELE WALKED through Fidelis like it was her backyard, taking the same crooked path to the same brick building Kevin had visited two days prior. They passed through the empty lobby and up two flights. Kevin counted footsteps as they went.

  “Where are we headed?”

  She stopped at an apartment and opened the door. The room had a single window with a table and two chairs beneath it. Kevin walked in and felt the walls exhale. He rubbed the heel of his hand against his forehead and thought about blood pooling and soaking, filling dark cracks in the linoleum floor.

  “Sit down.” Gemele swung the door shut and took a seat—her neat, sturdy figure limned in a final rush of sunlight pouring through the window. Kevin sat across from her.

  “We could have met at Electric Avenue.”

  She shook her head. “This is better. This was the apartment Curtis died in.”

  “You knew Curtis Jordan?”

  “He was my uncle.”

  He searched her face, eyes older than age, smile creased like worn leather.

  “You wanna hear about it?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “It was the fall of ’75. I was fourteen and lived across the hall. My moms had gone out.”

  “No kidding.”

  “Police talked to me. I told ’em I saw nothing, but that wasn’t true. I heard a big bang. Two or three in a row. When you live in Fidelis, you get used to the bangs.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “What we always did. Got away from the doors and windows, hid under the bed. There was a lot of running, then it was quiet. After a couple of minutes, I went to the door and stuck my head out. That’s when I saw this skinny white boy come out of Curtis’s apartment. About my age. Eyes big and round as dinner plates.”

  Kevin studied the curve of her mouth as she spoke, the high cut of cheekbone and slightly turned-up nose. His mind subtracted years and added braids, ones with pink and white bows in them. And then he was there, standing in the hallway, face-to-face with fourteen-year-old Gemele Harper.

  “When did you know?” he said.

  “First time you showed up at our door and wanted to investigate James’s case. You got pretty eyes, Kevin. Nice and soft. Women gonna remember them.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. I knew you were the white boy I saw that day.”

  “And you didn’t care?”

  “You wanted to help James. That was enough for me. Besides, when you came out of this apartment, you didn’t have no gun in your hands so I knew you didn’t shoot Curtis.”

  “You heard about the cop that was killed the other day? Black woman?”

  “Saw it on TV.”

  “The gun that was used in that crime was also used to kill your uncle.”

  Something naked moved in her face. “Guns floating all over the place. Don’t mean nothing.”

  “If you gave a statement in Curtis’s murder, you’re probably gonna be questioned again.”

  “You worried I’m gonna talk? Tell ’em I saw you?”

  “Did I say that?”

  “Uncle Curtis used to have a guy, only job was to take care of the cash. He’d set up right here in this room with an ironing board. Iron twenty-dollar bills all goddamn day. Then we’d stack ’em and wrap ’em. Bundles of twenties rubber-banded in plastic grocery bags.” She got up and walked behind Kevin, to the spot where Curtis Jordan was sitting when he caught two slugs in the chest. “Curtis stored the bags right here.” Gemele pointed to the ceiling above her. “He’d give me a twenty every time I went up. But the money wasn’t for climbing into the ceiling.”

  “It was for keeping your mouth shut.”

  She circled back and sat down again.

  “What’s going on, Gemele?”

  “You know James loved you.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I run the show here. All the dope in and out. James was in it before me. And before that, Curtis.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Rosie used to work for James. Everyone in the projects worked for James. And now they work for me.”

  “What about Electric Avenue?”

  “Living simple keeps me off the radar.”

  “And your kids don’t know what you do.”

  She leaned forward, small, hard hands planted on small, hard knees. “They’re gonna have a life, Kevin. A real life. You don’t like it, then fuck you, too. Now, you gotta leave. And don’t come back.”

  “A cop was killed, Gemele. There’ll be others, asking more questions. Harder questions.”

  “You were there. If anyone knows who shot Curtis, it’s you.”

  “Is that why you brought me here? Just to warn me off?”

  “I sent a kid looking for you.”

  “He never found me.”

  She raked her lips with her sharp teeth and clenched and unclenched her fists.

  “Say what you need to say, Gemele.”

  “Then you leave?”

  “Then I leave.”

  “I know about your grandmother. I know Curtis robbed her. And I know he killed her.”

  “Everyone in the neighborhood knew that.”

  “My uncle got his information from a white kid. Older than me, desperate for a bag. Told Curtis where your grandmother kept her money, the hours she worked, all that stuff. I was here when he told Curtis. Right here in this apartment.”

  “You got a name?”

  She shook her head. “Lemme finish. The people who killed your cop are pushing dope into the suburbs. Causing a lot of problems. Lot of people getting smoked. But you probably already heard all about that?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “Whoever’s running that show keeps a low profile.
They do that cuz they’re smart like me.”

  “So you don’t know who they are?”

  “No, but I know who they’re gonna hit next. Yesterday I saw his picture. Been a couple of decades but I damn straight recognized the face.”

  Outside, the sun was all but gone and Kevin could just make out a pale moon bathed in a pink froth of sky. He pulled a photo from his pocket. It was the snap of himself, Bobby, and Finn in the bleachers at Fenway. Gemele studied it without touching it.

  “You a smart boy, Kevin.”

  “How smart?”

  “I’ll tell you cuz it was your grandmother and cuz you deserve to know.” She tapped the photo with a finger. “That’s him right there. The one who told Curtis where your gram kept her money. The one who’s gonna get clipped himself. Real fucking soon, too.”

  Kevin held up the photo in the first flush of evening and stared at the smiling face of Finn McDermott.

  41

  KEVIN DROVE back to his apartment and sat in his living room, thinking about Finn and whether he deserved to die. And whether the bloodlust of killing someone hadn’t been what Kevin had wanted all along. Around midnight, he thought about the snub-nosed revolver. He’d gotten it from a Boston detective named Barry Fitzpatrick. One night Kevin was drinking in a Dorchester bar called the Eire when Fitzpatrick came in and sat down beside him. He was lean, with a heavy Adam’s apple and blue stubble providing cover for pitted cheeks. When he spoke, he kept his head down and his voice low. Kevin found himself leaning forward on his stool and still only catching every other word. Fitzpatrick wanted to talk about a feature Kevin had written on a young female detective who’d been shot and killed in the line of duty. The detective had been Fitzpatrick’s partner and he carried her death in worn eyes and the tired rag of a smile he flashed whenever he mentioned her name. Six months after their drink, Fitzpatrick would put his service weapon in his mouth and pull the trigger. That night, however, it was just talk. And booze. Their first drink became three. Three became five and a round of shots. Pretty soon they were closing the place. Kevin was feeling it and decided to grab a cab home. Fitzpatrick seemed none the worse for wear and insisted on giving him a lift. Fitzgerald parked in front of a hydrant on Cambridge Street. Before Kevin could get out, the detective reached across and pulled the snub-nosed from his glovie. He said it was a throwaway. Unregistered. Cold. Something to keep in the apartment just in case.

  Kevin found the piece wrapped in a towel on a shelf in his bedroom closet. He took it back to the living room and laid it down on the coffee table. Kevin drank a beer, two beers, stood under a hot shower, and slept for three hours with the gun beside his bed. He woke at three thirty and went for a drive along the river, rolling down the back windows and letting the cold air blow across his scalp. The steering wheel moved smoothly under his hands, the car knowing what turns to make and where it needed to go. He pulled quietly to the curb and killed the engine. Then he called Mo Stanley.

  “What time is it?”

  “Four thirty, five.”

  “In the morning? Fuck, Kevin.”

  “You got a pen?”

  “What?”

  “Get a pen.”

  He listened as she hunted around, then came back on the line. “What?”

  “Take down this name. Curtis Jordan. J-O-R-D-A-N.”

  “Got it. Who is he?”

  “He was a drug dealer. Lived in Fidelis Way. Shot and killed in nineteen seventy-five.”

  “And?”

  “He ties into the Patterson thing. Tallent, as well. I’ve written it all up. Everything I know. Even more that I don’t.”

  “Why would you do that, Kevin?”

  “Just wanted to get it down on paper. I e-mailed a copy to you at the newsroom. Don’t trust anyone on it. Especially the D.A.’s office.”

  “Your girlfriend works for the D.A.”

  “Just keep it to yourself.”

  “Where are you, Kev?”

  “In my car. In front of my apartment.” He looked out his windshield at Finn McDermott’s building, stuck on an ugly corner a half block from Brighton Center.

  “You been to bed?”

  “I caught a couple of hours.”

  “What’s going on? And why should I care about Curtis Jordan?”

  “Read what I wrote. Then we’ll talk.”

  “Let’s talk now.”

  “Later, Mo.”

  “You’re scaring me a little.”

  “Go back to bed. I’ll call you.”

  He cut the line and turned off his phone. A bird jumped on a wire. A rat hopped out from behind a Dumpster and scooted across an alley. Kevin checked the snub-nosed for the third time to make sure it was loaded and thought about Finn in Tar Park, touching Kevin’s shoulder, offering condolences about his grandmother. He stuffed the gun in his pocket and reached for the door handle.

  The lobby of Finn’s building smelled like Fidelis. Seemed about right. Kevin walked up a flight of stairs and knocked lightly on the door to 2B. The hair on his arms lifted as the door swung open. Kevin took out the gun.

  “Finn. Hey, you here?” His voice rang off the flat walls and boomed and echoed in his ears. He walked through the living room, taking note of a framed picture of Bobby Orr flying through the air as the B’s won the Cup. Beside it was a photo of Finn standing outside Fenway with Luis Tiant. They both had cigars stuck in their mouths. A coffee table was littered with empty beer bottles. Nearby two full ones were taking a bath in a cooler full of half-melted ice. Kevin sat on a stool in the kitchen and stared at his gun on the counter, listening to his blood cool and thinking about a twenty-two pressed to the forehead of a dead man, the pop it made and the way the smallest of sounds can echo up and down the corridors of a person’s life. He stuffed the snub-nosed back in his pocket and walked down the hall to Finn’s bedroom. His sheets were in a tumble and there was a blue condom wrapper crumpled on the floor. The rest of the room was curtained in shadow. Kevin was turning to leave when he heard a soft thump. He crossed over to the room’s only window. It let out onto a fire escape that overlooked an alley of blank brick walls. Finn hadn’t left town. At least not in the conventional sense. He was on the fire escape, hanging from a rope by the neck, staring blindly through a black tangle of iron at eternity and beyond. Outside a siren whooped once and a police car rolled up to the mouth of the alley, sealing off the exit. Kevin took a final look at Finn’s bare feet, spinning slowly in the pink and blue light. Then he turned and ran.

  42

  Today was her tenth birthday. No one had gotten her a cake. No one sent her a card. And that was just how she wanted it. Bridget sat in her bedroom, listening to the slop of soap and water coming from the bathroom, bright bubbles of laughter floating and popping all around her. She waited for the noise to subside before lazing across the hall and stopping in the doorway. Colleen sat in the tub, seven years old, giggling and unashamed of her nakedness. A breeze blew in through an open door, furrowing the milky green water and carrying the smell of smoke. Mom was out on the back porch, sneaking an afternoon cig. Bridget swung the bathroom door closed and knelt by the tub. Colleen grabbed for a rubber boat floating just out of reach. Bridget pushed it back to her. Colleen ducked the boat under the water and laughed as it resurfaced. Bridget played with a lock of her sister’s hair, then slipped her fingers around the back of her neck, jamming her under the water until her forehead scraped bottom. At first Colleen thought it was some sort of game. Stupid Colleen. Then she realized it wasn’t and tried to fight back, squirming and sliding along the bottom of the tub before slipping out of Bridget’s soapy grip and managing a single, suds-filled scream. Footsteps pounded down the hall and their mother was there, filling the doorway, staring at Bridget, who was sitting on the toilet as Colleen wailed. Maybe she was afraid to ask. Maybe she was just ashamed. Shame had always been Mom’s strong suit. Either way, nothing was ever said. Nothing done. Until the day they decided to teach Bridget a lesson.

  She tugge
d a comb through her hair, watching in the mirror as the teeth dug straight rows across her scalp. The bedroom was achingly hot. She walked over to a window and cracked it, letting the fresh air wash over her face, inhaling it in tiny sips. A full-length mirror hung on the back of her closet door. Bridget took off her clothes piece by piece until she was naked in front of the glass. The puckered scar ran in a thick diagonal across her back, from left shoulder to right hip. Bridget twisted in the mirror and traced it with her eye. They’d burned her that winter—the winter of her tenth year—with a pot of hot coffee. She remembered it, black and scalding, a waterfall of pain that beat her to the floor where she curled up in a ball and screamed inside her head, never offering more than a mutter for public consumption. Her mother had pulled the nightgown off her back, taking sheets of flesh with it. Her father loomed in the background, eyes sweating and staring until she looked at him and he turned away. Someone found a stick of soft butter to rub across her back, already cooked with blisters. Bridget just lay there, withered like a stillborn rotting away in an old woman’s womb. She’d done it on purpose. Her mother. Bridget was certain of it. As for her father, he was there for the pain. And any morsel would do. Flesh and limb. Even one’s own child. Bridget knew. Her brain was tuned to the same radio station that had played nonstop inside her father’s head so of course she knew. And even understood.

  She pulled a silk shirt she’d bought at Filene’s off a hanger. The blouse was followed by a pair of black linen pants and flats. Up on the shelf of the closet was her old copy of Gray’s Anatomy. The diagrams in it were covered with pencil mark slashes and childhood doodles. Bridget ran her fingers across a few of the creased pages, closed the book, and hid it at the back of the closet. She sat down again in front of the dresser mirror, piling up her hair with her hands, then holding up a pair of teardrop earrings, turning this way and that to see how they splashed in the light. It was her time now. Hers and Bobby’s. They’d live here, in the house on Champney. Take over the first two floors and rent out the top. Or maybe they’d just keep the entire place for themselves. Bobby would have to disappear for a while. There wasn’t much way around that. Or was there? The truth was anything could be arranged. At the end of the day, all you needed was a plan and the stomach for it. Bridget put on the earrings and stood up, giving her clothes a final brush in the mirror. Then she left the stifling space of her room, hurrying out of the apartment and up the back stairs to her appointment on the roof.