Brighton

by Michael Harvey

  Five minutes later, he slipped back into the river, sliding like an eel toward the boat. His teeth chattered with the cold as he took shelter under the bow then dove, untying the anchor rope that held his sister fast and watching her body spiral down until it was lost from sight. Kevin surfaced at the stern, wiping his eyes clear and looping an arm over the gunwale. The plan was simple. Bobby would disappear and Kevin would cut a deal with Lisa. He’d give her the knife if she forgot about Bobby . . . and Curtis Jordan. Kevin knew his ex well enough to know she’d jump at the chance to clear the Patterson murder. In her world, it was all that ever really mattered. Kevin looked over his shoulder at the far bank of the river. He could just make out Bobby standing there and waved him to his car. Bobby didn’t move. On the Boston side of the river, a gas guzzler in two tones of brown had pulled off Storrow Drive at a service exit and made its way to a small parking area in the shadow of the BU Bridge. Lollipops got out wearing a long coat and carrying what looked like a rifle. Kevin dove again, surfacing in a screen of weeds near the edge of the bank. The killer had threaded a path along the river and nestled in a copse of trees about twenty feet away. He braced himself against the trunk of a small pine and raised the rifle, pressing his cheek against the wooden stock and sealing his eye to the scope. Across the water, Bobby dropped to his knees, arms spread as he tipped his face to the sky. Kevin crawled closer until he could see the second hand on Lollipops’s watch and the blue burn of his beard. Lollipops moved his finger onto the trigger then stopped, taking his eye off the scope and squinting at his target. The professional had hesitated—an act with its own reason, a domino with its own destiny, a sin with its own consequence. Kevin unzipped his jacket pocket and pulled out the snub-nosed revolver. The gun was cold and hard and wet in his hands. He shook it once and held it in front of him. The river lapped all around and the soft mud squelched underneath as he shifted to get a better angle with the gun. He noticed the set of the killer’s jaw and the crook of his arm as he dropped the rifle another fraction and rested his finger on the metal guard, studying his prey as Kevin studied his, alive now until Kevin pulled the trigger and then the man would be no more and everything else would remain and nothing would change, except for Kevin. For Kevin, everything would change. That was how Bobby said it would be, and if anyone knew, it’d be Bobby. Kevin steadied the gun with two hands and felt his heart thump against the riverbank until the two were one. A bird screamed overhead, flitting across the water and sailing into the trees. Kevin squeezed the trigger twice. Lollipops grunted in surprise, the rifle slipping from his hands, his bulk sliding down the bank until he came to rest a few feet away. He stared at Kevin along the plane of the gun barrel, eternity resting on his tongue and not a word escaping his lips. Kevin fired twice more, then pulled himself up, crawling across the skin of grass to where the body lay and dragging it into the river. Everything was easier in the water, Lollipops leaking crimson clouds of blood and staring blankly at the sky as Kevin steered him toward the boat. Halfway there, Kevin let the weight sink, watching the killer’s mouth fill with water, then pushing down with his feet. The snub-nosed revolver followed, both trailing Kevin’s sister to the bottom. By the time he reached the boat Bobby was gone, a wink of brake lights marking his passage as he disappearead down Memorial Drive. Kevin climbed over the gunwale and sat on the wooden bench, listening as the sirens returned, watching as a parade of blue flashers worked their way down both sides of the river. He slid the oars into their slots and started to pull, slowly and steadily, for shore.

  49

  HE SAT at his desk with the windows open, a fresh breeze running uphill and blowing through the apartment. The place was bare, walls scraped clean, everything he owned boxed up and shipped off to its new home. All that was left was a blue-and-white Nike bag he’d parked by his feet. And the FedEx package. He opened it and pulled out a manila envelope from the office of the Suffolk County District Attorney. KEVIN was written across the front in Lisa’s beautiful cursive—cursive that was chock-full of the future, her future, if only everyone cooperated. It had taken all of three weeks for Lisa to take Frank DeMateo’s job. At a hastily called press conference, he announced he was stepping down to spend more time with his family. In return for his abdication, Lisa quietly agreed to support him if he ever put together a run for attorney general. Of course, there was every chance she’d be his opposition, but that particular shiv would have to wait for another day to find its way into the Republican’s ample back. For now, Lisa was calling the shots.

  Kevin broke the seal on the envelope just as his phone rang. Lisa’s name flashed up on caller ID. Kevin pulled out a thick sheaf of papers and began to pick through them. The first page covered the money and the business. They’d found nearly two million dollars spread across four bank accounts, all of them linked back to Bridget. Between the cab office and the cellar of the apartment in J.P., another quarter million in cash and product—cocaine, heroin, hashish.

  Kevin turned to the second page. A list of Bridget’s dead.

  Finn McDermott. The person she kept closest and someone to take the blame when things went south.

  Rosie Tallent. Tasked by James Harper to find out who was cutting into Fidelis’s drug trade. Asked the wrong questions and paid with her life. It was Harper who’d eventually be convicted of Rosie’s murder—not part of Bridget’s plan but still ironic as hell.

  Sandra Patterson. The one that counted. Lisa’s office took a statement from one of Bridget’s rank-and-file couriers, a student at BC who had a bad feeling about Sandra and passed his suspicions up the food chain where, the D.A. surmised, they came to Bridget’s attention.

  Chrissy McNabb. Bridget’s grade-school classmate and a good customer. Did she make the wrong remark to her school pal? Rely on that old connection a little too heavily? In the end, it didn’t really matter. She was dead all the same.

  Seamus Slattery. An Irishman whose one good eye turned out to be too big for his stomach.

  Scott and Colleen Carson. A manager at the Royal identified Bridget as the woman who’d knocked on Scott’s hotel room door. Scott had been pushing dope for Bridget and thus a loose end that needed tying up. As for Colleen, Lisa assumed Bridget was going to frame her for Scott’s murder but still hadn’t figured out why Colleen had written the note they’d found in her pocket. Kevin could have helped with that. More than anything his baby sister had always wanted Bridget’s approval and would do anything for it, right up until the moment Bridget threw her off a roof.

  The phone rang, two, three, four more times. Kevin turned to the last item in the package, a set of pages stapled together and covered by a clear plastic cover. Bridget’s autopsy report.

  The official cause of death was at the top of page two. SUICIDE. No mention of the rope marks around Bridget’s neck. No mention of Lollipops’s body, pulled out of the water by a police boat in the dead of night after the camera crews had left and the river had gone dark. No mention of Bobby. And no mention anywhere of Curtis Jordan. Damn the accountants. The books were being balanced, then closed for good. Better for the new D.A., better all around.

  Kevin collected the paperwork and slid it back in the FedEx sleeve, setting it on the desk between his hands. The phone had stopped ringing. Downstairs, Mo Stanley was waiting patiently in a car packed for Chicago. He zipped open his bag and shoved the FedEx package inside. At the bottom of the bag were the dozen or so notebooks Bridget had kept detailing her crimes, including how she killed her grandmother. Kevin’s grandmother. At the very bottom of the bag was a loaded thirty-eight with gray tape wrapped around the grip. A final gift from his ex. The one with the killer smile. She sure as hell didn’t want it and probably figured he’d take care of it as well as anyone. He pulled out the gun and held it in his hands. It was the alpha and the omega. The beginning and the end. For Kevin they’d always be one and the same. He jammed the piece back in his bag, closed the windows in the apartment, and left. The phone started ringing again until it stopp
ed. Then, it was quiet.

  Acknowledgments

  If my bones are Chicago, my blood is Boston, and specifically Brighton. It’s where I grew up, a place most of my family still calls home, and, like any childhood neighborhood, an integral part of who I am. It was a lot of fun returning to those streets and setting this novel there. Hope you enjoy it.

  Thanks to my editor, Zachary Wagman, who believed in this book from the beginning and pushed to make it all it could be. Thanks to his boss, Dan Halpern, as well as all the folks at Ecco who have been so passionate and worked so hard to get this book into the hands of readers. Thanks also to my agent, David Gernert, and my early readers, Garnett Kilberg Cohen from Columbia College in Chicago and Patrick Sviokla. Thanks to my family and friends in Boston, Chicago, and all points in between.

  Finally, thanks to my wife, Mary Frances, for her unending patience and support. Love you.

  About the Author

  MICHAEL HARVEY’S six previous novels include The Chicago Way and The Governor’s Wife. He’s also a journalist and documentarian whose work has won multiple news Emmys, two Primetime Emmy nominations, and an Academy Award nomination. Raised in Boston, he now resides in Chicago.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Michael Harvey

  The Governor’s Wife

  The Innocence Game

  We All Fall Down

  The Third Rail

  The Fifth Floor

  The Chicago Way

  Credits

  COVER DESIGN BY ALLISON SALTZMAN

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH: SIEGEL EGGS / HAYMARKET / BOSTON 1973 © JOHN GOODMAN (DETAIL, ORIGINAL BELOW)

  TITLE PAGE ART ©MILOJE/SHUTTERSTOCK

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  BRIGHTON. Copyright © 2016 by Michael Harvey. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN 978-0-06-244297-0

  EPub Edition JUNE 2016 ISBN 9780062443021

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