The City Below

by James Carroll

  And therefore to Bright. The last time he'd seen McKay was on television, at that funeral, in a pew behind the senator.

  At the Parker House, Doyle went through the revolving doors. He crossed the broad lobby toward the stairs in the corner near the elevators. The stairs led to the Grill Room, where Didi had slain the college boys by outchugging them. But also, Doyle remembered, the stairs led to the telephone booths.

  "This is a collect call for Neville McKay. My name is Terry Doyle."

  He listened to the hollow reverberations as the operator put the call through. The sound made him think again of the ocean. "Ripples" —it was the famous quote from Bobby's South Africa speech —"which build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance ..."

  "Hello?"

  "...a call for Neville McKay ..."

  The person who answered was a woman, and from the cloud in her voice as she asked the operator to repeat, Terry realized she'd been asleep. In panic, he looked at his watch. But it was two in the afternoon. Who would be asleep —?

  "Just a minute."

  An eternity passed. Doyle was sure that the muffled sounds he heard were bed linens being tugged at, pillows shuffled. He thought of hanging up, but he'd already given his name.

  "Terry?"

  "Neville McKay?" The operator was steadily officious. "Will you accept —?"

  "Sure. Terry?"

  "Bright? Is that you?"

  "Hey, Terry! My man! How you doing?"

  "Jeez, Bright, it sounds like I called you a little early."

  "What time is it?" The fog was in Bright's voice too, but in fact the happiness in his greeting had dispelled Terry's embarrassment.

  "Just after two."

  "In daytime?"

  "Open the curtains, Bright. Start the coffee."

  "Don't shit me, Charlie."

  Bright associated the nickname with Charlestown, not Chaplin. Because of the history it implied, Terry liked the name when Bright was the one using it.

  "Listen, buddy, I know I've caught you at a had time."

  "Why'd you call me here? How'd you know I wasn't at work? Christ, did you call —?"

  "No, no. I called you there because it's Saturday."

  "We work on Saturday in the capital of the Free World."

  "Yeah, I noticed. Some work. Look, I need to talk, but if now is a had time —"

  "We can talk. What's up?"

  "You've got your friend there."

  "She's gone. I mean, she went to the bathroom. Then she'll be in the kitchen. We have our little routine."

  "Christ, Bright, you haven't changed."

  "Have you?"

  "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

  "You know me, Terry. Anytime I get a crack at talking you out of —"

  "You're just a PK antícleric. That's your problem."

  "Not my problem, my solution."

  "Well, I do have a problem. I'm serious."

  "What?"

  But all at once Terry fell silent. Why in hell was he calling McKay, the one person guaranteed to have no sympathy whatsoever for his situation? Then he remembered why. "I'm at the Parker House."

  "Getting laid, I hope."

  "No. But I was thinking about our time down here together. About Kennedy." What made us friends, he added to himself.

  "The offer stands, Terry. I know I can get you something. We have two new subcommittees coming our way, with staff positions on each."

  "Bright, I'm being ordained a deacon next week. A week today."

  "I know that I'm coming, remember? So are the Rev. and Mrs. Bishop. You invited us."

  "You're coming? All the way from D.C.?"

  "I told you I would if I could. It's all arranged. It amazes me, though, what you'll do to get me to come to church. My father is ecstatic. What I will remind you both of, however, is that I'm coming for you. I'll even take Communion if it'll embarrass you not to."

  "I'm really glad you're coming. And your father. He's agreed to vest and sit in the sanctuary. I saw him in his purple at an interfaith peace service. Cushing was there."

  "The war's over, then. What chance does the Pentagon have against Canterbury and Rome?"

  "When the cardinal hugged him, your father disappeared."

  Bright said, "Aha, back in the fold! All Dad told me was that His Eminence was cordial."

  "Cushing loves your father. He loves not having to deal with a Brahmin."

  "You mean, he loves finally having a bishop of the Episcopal Church he can feel socially superior to."

  "Jesus, Bright." Terry leaned back against the wall of the booth. Whoa. Was that true? He could not touch it.

  "So what's up, Charlie? You said 'problem.'"

  Terry had the feeling that he'd just put his finger in a socket. The rank matter-of-factness of McKay's statement had both made it seem true and made it so outrageous. His problem? It had just become: How do I go on with this conversation? But he had to say something. "Like I said," he began. "I was thinking about Kennedy. Your Kennedy."

  "He's the only one left, Terry." Bright's sadness coursed through the phone like a wind.

  "I was thinking of his eulogy for Bobby. The ripple of hope and all that. I never asked you —did you help write that?"

  "No. Terry, I write his letters. To the old ladies in tennis shoes. The speeches are written by the geniuses. That one was Bill Shannon, the Times guy, except the Aeschylus, which was Richard Goodwin. The senator had told them what he wanted, though. That speech was his own."

  "He's going to be president, Bright. That's what we all thought out here, watching TV In case you wondered."

  "You called me up to talk about Senator Kennedy's political prospects?"

  "No."

  "Why, then?"

  Terry had been absently running a finger along the scratches in the wall of the phone booth. Only now did he read them as words. Cock sucked? Call Bob at ... He closed his eyes. "What Kennedy said about standing up for an ideal?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Versus, well, the need to sometimes just stay in your seat a little longer, for the greater good. You know what I mean?"

  "We all have to eat some of the brown stuff, Terry."

  "They want me to eat a big one, Bright. I don't know if I —" He stopped. To hear himself discussing his situation in this way appalled him.

  Bright said something.

  "What?"

  "I wasn't talking to you. Eloise just brought my coffee."

  "What a life you have, you bastard."

  "Eloise has a sister, Terry. Don't you, El?"

  Terry said nothing.

  "Charlie?"

  "Yes? I'm here."

  "God, I'm sorry, Charlie. I'm no help at all, am I?"

  "No, none."

  "So tell me what the fuck they want."

  "No, never mind. It's too complicated. Really, I think I just wanted to touch base..."

  "Cold feet? Is that what it is? Cold feet is normal if you're on ice, Terry."

  "Maybe that's exactly what it is. Maybe that's all it is."

  "Do you have somebody up there you can talk to? What about that priest'"

  "Father Collins?"

  "Yeah."

  "Sure. I can talk to him."

  They were silent again. Terry began fingering the graffiti once more, the foul words, the profane.

  "Because, if you needed to, you could always talk to my father."

  "Your dad?"

  "You know how much he likes you. He sees you as my one chance."

  "I don't know, Bright."

  "Just think about it You're at the Parker House, you said?"

  "Yes."

  "His office is five minutes away. On Joy Street."

  "One doesn't just drop in on the Episcopal Bishop of Massachusetts, Bright."

  "I would, and so can you. I know that's how he feels. You want me to call him up?"

  "No, no. It's helped just talking to you, buddy. I'm glad you're coming up. Wh
ere are you staying? With your foils?"

  "No." The sound of McKay's voice changed, indicating he'd cupped the phone. "Claudia's. I'll be at Claudia's. You call me, because I can never penetrate that monastic phone system of yours. You still have her number?"

  "You are a bastard, you know that?" Doyle laughed, hard. Humanae vitae. Humanae fucking vitae.

  A few minutes later he was approaching the subway kiosk at Park Street Women in short skirts that showed their thighs, or in jeans that clung to their asses, kept cutting him off. Shoppers with large bags from Filene's and Jordan's entered the small building and disappeared in the smooth downward glide of the escalator. He intended to join them.

  But then he stopped. He watched the women for a minute, watched them as women, their snappy hairdos, their swinging shoulder bags, their clacking high heels, the curves of their flesh —minis everywhere, and loose breasts leaping against cotton T-shirts. Shit, man.

  He looked up at the clock on the white spire of the Park Street Church. The sun glinted off the weathervane. The sky beyond was the blue of someone's eye. The clock showed that he had a couple of hours before the class meeting he had called, the meeting he was expressly forbidden to convene.

  Kennedy's question: What am I going to do?

  He saw a bank of phone booths and now remembered another time he'd slipped into one —at Georgetown, to call Nick when their mother had died. It was out of the question, calling his brother now. But still, he felt the old longing, how he'd never really grown accustomed to life not so much without her, but without him. Nick. Squire. His brother would not remotely understand. But who would?

  Instead of heading down to the subway, he cut into the Common and began angling toward Joy Street. It was an uphill trek, but he took it quickly, hardly breathing, allowing himself the barest sidelong glances at the couples here and there on the grass, holding hands, kissing. Sinking, he had felt He was sinking. Into what? Into sex? Into shame? The feeling was of an old enemy that had him by the ankle and was pulling him down.

  The headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts was half a block up from Beacon Street, in a mansion that was set off from its neighbors by the ecclesiastical flag poking out from the lintel of the second-story bay window. The serenity of the shaded brick façade failed to work its charm on Doyle as he stopped across the street. Beacon Hill was a point around which the city pivoted, but he had rarely crossed into the neighborhood proper. There were no bodies here, no women, only bricks and trim shutters, rooflines, chimneys, and polished brass door knockers. Proud buildings like this lined Monument Square on Bunker Hill, the same bowfronts. But in the Town, otherwise a neighborhood of three-deckers and projects, such buildings always seemed ostentatious, and therefore phony. Here they seemed the height of understatement, completely real.

  But what am I going to ask him? What am I going to say? Doyle's questions came quickly. Would crossing this street be disloyal? But Bright's father was a priest He always wore his collar. He believed in the Real Presence and in the Seal of Confession. In lengthy conversations over leisurely Sunday dinners, Doyle had often heard Father McKay, now Bishop McKay, describe his own deep longing for reunion with Rome, his respect for the pope's effort to ride the crest of change, his intuitive preference for what some of his own confreres derided as RC Cola.

  Bishop McKay was like his son in his wiry, thin handsomeness, although he was smaller. He was like Bright in his high-pitched, rolling laugh and in his kindness. Like Bright, he loved to touch your hand when he was telling a story. But he was unlike Bright in his clipped British accent, his utter lack of cynicism, and, more to the point, his wanting so very much —and saying so —for Terry to be ordained. Ordained by Cushing.

  As Doyle crossed Joy Street he told himself, No one at St John's will ever know.

  He went through the spiked wrought-iron fence and up the stairs. Doyle deflected his anxiety by imagining a history of the place, that it had once been home to a Brahmin abolitionist, his poet daughter, and his son, a hero of the Civil War. But had it also perhaps belonged before that to a wealthy merchant whose stock-in-trade included slaves?

  It seemed strange to pull open the heavy brass-studded door without ringing a bell first, waiting for a maid, explaining himself. These were offices now. Doyle mustered an air of casual efficiency, entirely counterfeit, as he went in, aware of the house suddenly as a place in which Irish had lived —and to which even now were admitted —only as servants.

  Doyle was exquisitely attuned, in other words, to the chaotic implications of what he was doing, turning for help —despite the man's tide and High-Church preferences —to a Protestant; turning for help —was this the real disloyalty? —to a black man.

  8

  THE CONVERTED WAREHOUSE behind the Rancho Diner was a long place-kick off the ramp that led down from the elevated highway, part of the swooping approach to the Mystic River Bridge. The innocuous building was a favorite stopping place for truckers off 95 or Route i or the terminus of 93. They could eat at the Rancho, use its showers in back, leave their rigs in the diner lot. Hitching up their pants, blowing their noses with their fingers, they would walk over to Daisy's, as it was known, although no sign identified the door.

  This part of Charlestown was called the Flat, and it was hemmed in by the railyards, the MTA tracks, the double-barreled highway, and the river. It was a rough district with dozens of single-story cement-block structures, each with its loading ramp. They were plumbing suppliers and glass wholesalers, a tidy trade-only lumberyard, a scrap-iron dealer, a welding shop, and numerous unstaffed storage buildings. There was nothing to attract the close attention of outsiders, so the Flat was effectively cut off, not only from the rest of the city, but from the hilly neighborhood that abutted it Patrons could come and go from Daisy's at all hours, and did, and not worry about drawing the notice of anyone inclined to wonder what went on in there. Everybody who had reason to drift through the Flat knew, and, at least now and then, they all went in.

  Daisy's was, in the truckers' argot, a joint, a trap, a crib. It was a casino, named not for a voluptuous Irish moll, a figment predictably conjured by roadrunners from out of town, but for the actual flowers that were always on display, sprays and bouquets, cut greens, and especially daisies —all slightly wilted, like Daisy herself would have been if she existed. By the carton and bundle and tubful, blossoms were brought over every few days, the unsold but still piquant stock from the Flower Exchange, near the cathedral. The flowers sat on florist's stands and mesh pillars between banks of slot machines that were arranged in three long aisles. There were flowers against the walls behind the craps, pool, and poker tables. The former warehouse had not been decorated for its new use, so the flowers and the tin artist's lights bouncing indirectly off the whitewashed cement walls gave the place what ambiance it had, cheerful enough and clean. It wasn't Vegas, but neon and cheap plush were not what truckers stopped here for.

  The lack of windows meant that the number of players, not the length of shadows, was the accurate indicator of the hour in this realm. Now it was late afternoon, a slow time. Half a dozen men in baseball hats, checkered shirts or green jackets with names stitched on the pockets, and the newly ubiquitous American flag patches on their shoulders were scattered among five times that many slots. The craps and poker tables were vacant, but at one of the two pool tables the room's lone young woman was playing eightball with a man. Periodic bursts of arrhythmic clack-clacking punctured their otherwise rigid silence, indicating a heated contest.

  The woman was a striking, out-of-the-bottle blond, her hair short, framing her face like a pouting French movie star's, and if she was as cheap looking as she was pretty, it seemed somehow deliberate. She moved around the table from shot to shot with quick authority, as if completely aware, and in charge, of the impression she was making. She wore tight hip-huggers and a halter that left much of her back bare, not quite up to the job of containing her breasts when she bent over to shoot. Her blue jeans fla
red at the ankle over a pair of green snakeskin cowboy boots. Her opponent stood back, chalking his sock, frankly enjoying her run for the way it let him watch her. He was a large, well-muscled man, a cigarette permanently at his lip, sending a ribbon of smoke into his squinting left eye. Though it was warm in die room and though, in his mid-twenties, he seemed too old for it, he wore a leather-sleeved high school jacket. Charlestown, it read across the back He was Jackie Mullen.

  One end of the game room was taken up by a bar, a long counter but without stools. Liquor in front, a bumper sticker posted above the bottle shelf read, poker in back. Behind the bar was a large campaign poster, a hazy photograph of a fat-jowled matron in a frilly hat. Louise Day Hicks far Mayor, it said. You Know Where She Stands.

  At the bar two men nursed drinks, one a beer, the other a Coke. The first was wearing the dark blue, shiny-assed trousers of a Boston cop. As a gesture of his customarily minimal but sufficient discretion, his tan poplin jacket was zipped to his throat so that his collar insignia did not show. He wasn't a large man, but his thick neck, strong jaw, big ears, and hair cropped like a Marine's gave him an intimidating air. His jacket also hid the sergeant's stripes on his shirt sleeves. He was Sonny Murtaugh, a lownie —one of several from the City Square precinct house, including a lieutenant, who were the owners of Daisy's, which was why the place was never tipped over.

  He spoke in bursts, with punching gestures, but he kept his voice low. "I don't give a shit what that wop bastard said. We keep loansharking and enforcement out of here. This is where the suckers play. Everyone can spot Tucci's juice collectors. No fucking way. We keep the system as is or we shut it down." He poked his companion, Squire Doyle, too hard for friendliness, but Doyle did not move for a moment, or react.

  Finally he laughed. "You shut this place down, Sonny, and Frank just opens a truckers' joint himself."

  "In the Town? Let him try."

  "The highway goes north and south, sport It brushes Somerville and Chelsea. It cuts right through Revere and Everett. All his territory."