The City Below

by James Carroll

  At home, the phone rang even before she'd removed her plastic rain hat or checked on the kids. Given that timing, she shouldn't have been surprised at whose voice she heard.

  "Is that you, Deirdre?"

  "Hello, Ma."

  "But is it you?"

  "Of course it's me."

  "I called before, and where were you?"

  "Molly is eighteen years old, Ma. Old enough to babysit while I go to novena."

  "Is Jackie there? I'm calling for Jackie."

  "He's not here. Why would he be here?"

  "He gives me my medicine. I can't go to bed without my medicine. You know that."

  "Did you call the Harp?"

  "He said he was going to the flower store when he left here, to see Nick."

  "When was that?"

  "Before dinner. He never came home for dinner. I made meat loaf."

  "Ma, it's nearly ten o'clock at night. The store's been closed for hours."

  "But that's where he said he'd be."

  "So call there."

  "Nick doesn't like it if—"

  "Nick doesn't care," Didi said, so wearily.

  "Is Nick there? Is Nick home?"

  "No, he isn't here, Ma." Didi thought of the placard Thy Will Be Done. Had that been her mistake, praying such a thing? Asking for it? Let this perfect emptiness swallow me?

  "So would you check?"

  "What, Ma? The store? Check the store for Jackie?"

  "Tell him to come home. I need him."

  Oh, brother. The poor dope, living with her still. Didi was in danger suddenly of feeling blessed.

  ***

  Terry and Bright parked the car on Main Street, near the church, two blocks away. They walked quickly in the light rain to the Common and cut into it. All the way across the deserted patch of grass, benches, and trees, they watched the building on the far corner. It was dark, rising in the mist, in Terry's mind, like the bow of the Spanish galleon it had been to him. Terry knew that the upper floors of the bowfront triple-decker were unoccupied, and that because of the staid character of the surrounding streets, especially on a night like this, there was no particular boldness in their coming before midnight. On the contrary, the neighborhood, with its light-sleeping elders and relendess busybodies, would be less suspicious of dark figures now than later.

  Both wore windbreakers, baseball hats, and tennis shoes. They moved across the footpath soundlessly, and except for a rare tire-hissing speedster on Winthrop Street, no one else was out Bright carried his hands in his pockets, as if to show as little as possible of his black skin. He was feeling like an interloper as they approached the flower store, not first because this was the Town, but because it was Terry's. In more than twenty years of feeling closer to him than to anyone, he had never been here, and the outrage of that was ambushing him—the violation of any real meaning their friendship had had. But then, of course, he quickly saw, as he often had before, that it was on his account, more than anything, that Terry had cut himself off from this root—or, rather, cut through this root inside himself.

  At the door of the shop, as if it only then hit Bright what they were doing, he took Terry's sleeve. "Jesus, how do we get in?"

  And Terry held up a single key in the glow of his broad grin. "You'll never guess where I got this."

  "Where?"

  "My grandfather himself. As I entered the seminary, presumably never to come home again, he slipped this into my hand and he said, 'Charlie, this is yours. Never hesitate to come home.' But do you know what the kicker was?"

  Bright waited.

  "His calling me 'Charlie' meant, really, he could only see me as his chaplain."

  "Jeez, Terry, you always took that name so personally. It was just—"

  "What finished me with Gramps was Cushing. When Cushing died that next year after I walked off the altar, Gramps said I killed him. I gave him his heart attack."

  "But he didn't take the key back?"

  "Shit, he'd forgotten."

  "And you held on to it, I notice. Was that nostalgia, or hope?"

  Terry shook off the question and put the key in the slot.

  Bright said, "Here's hoping it still fits."

  "This is the Town. You don't change locks in the Town."

  "No alarm? You white folks are trusting motherfuckers."

  "Aren't we, though?"

  Inside the store, with the door closed, Terry took out the small Swiss Army flashlight he'd borrowed from Max, but he didn't turn it on yet The plate-glass windows admitted ample light, and they stood there taking in the shapes of the room.

  "Flowers," Bright whispered. "Smells nice."

  "This is nothing compared to what it was. Gramps had flowers and potted plants all over the floor, with just an aisle." Terry made out the form of the old captain's chair in the corner, next to the brass cash register. He could feel the warmth of the old man's affection. "When he smiled on you, it was like being smiled on by the ancient king of Ireland, or by God himself. I wanted his approval more than anything."

  "But not enough to kneel to Cushing."

  "I was an arrogant fool," Doyle said calmly, as if to the vacant chair.

  "Not to me, you weren't It matters, what you—"

  "What matters is finding the tapes Squire made of you, and getting our butts out of here."

  "Lead, kindly Light."

  "Squire has offices upstairs now, where we used to live, but my hunch..." Doyle crossed the room. The muslin curtain that had hung in the doorway, blocking customers from seeing into the cluttered back, was gone now. The doorway was simply open, but the darkness from the rear room seemed wall enough. Going through, Terry tripped on the threshold, stopped, and moved the loose board back in place. Then he snapped on the narrow beam of his son's flashlight.

  The old roll-top desk, the massive worktable, the elaborately paneled walnut door of the walk-in cooler; as the cone of light swept the room, Terry half expected to see, lounging in those corners among flowerpots and flats, his grandfather, his brother, his brother's friend. He made another sweep of the room.

  "There it is," he said, aiming at the floor safe next to the desk Terry moved past some cartons to get to it. "My grandfather bought this thing from a salesman he felt sorry for. He was afraid he'd the and no one would know the combination. He made us both memorize it, and he used to make us open it, to be sure we could." Doyle laughed. "But whenever he got up to a hundred bucks, he put it in the bank"

  "Smart man."

  "But it became part of the routine anyway, part of what made the place his, like the brass cash register. I knew Squire would keep it, and I bet he uses it for more than a hundred. Here." Terry handed the flashlight over. Bright aimed the beam at the safe's handle. Terry knelt and began to finger the dial, but he'd blocked the light and had to wait while McKay adjusted.

  "Shit," he said a moment later, when his jerk on the handle budged nothing. He bent and tried again. This time, when it worked and the massive door swung smoothly open, he bowed, as for applause.

  Terry took the flashlight back The safe's open shelves held bundles of bills and rolled coins and several packs of envelopes banded together, no tapes. "This door," he said, fingering the small inner compartment, its keyhole, "was never locked. I didn't know it could lock. Shit" He stood, reining an impulse to kick the thing. He felt, oddly, that Squire had locked the inner door expressly against him. He was turning toward Bright when the lights went on in the main part of the store behind them. After the stutter of the ceiling tubes, the garish illumination flooded in on them.

  There was no time to think of hiding.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  In the threshold stood a large woman in a raincoat and a plastic rain hat that shielded her face.

  Terry snapped the flashlight off and guiltily slipped it into his jacket pocket, unconsciously protecting Max.

  When the woman raised her arms to remove her head covering, Terry supplied the snarling face of a busing protester. He wa
s caught in Charlestown with a black man.

  "Didi!" he said when he recognized her. He took his Red Sox hat off. "It's me, Terry."

  "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Terry, what are you doing here, besides giving me a heart attack?"

  "You didn't seem that intimidated, Didi. Look who else is here."

  "Hey, Didi," Bright said. "Long time."

  "Bright?"

  He held his hands out.

  To everyone's surprise, surely including her own, Didi threw herself on McKay, embracing him. "I've thought of you a million times," she said.

  "I've thought of you too, Didi." Bright kissed her forehead, and, shy suddenly, she pulled away from him. She looked at Terry and only shook her head. "And you, my old sweet T. You son of a bitch, you were going to come and visit Your wife and I were going to become friends."

  Terry said nothing.

  "So what the hell are you doing here?"

  Terry pointed to the safe. "Squire has something that belongs to us. I was trying to open this last door."

  "What? What does he have?"

  McKay said, "Tapes, Didi. Tapes he made of meetings with me."

  "Wait That's something I don't want to know about."

  "It's important."

  "And you can't find them?"

  "This inside door is locked. I don't have a key."

  She looked at Bright "These tapes...?"

  "Will put me in jail."

  She stared at him, then looked at Terry mournfully before crossing to the roll-top desk. She flicked open one of the small drawers, took the key out, and held it up. "This?"

  Terry took it and knelt at the safe. Now the door opened. He saw the cigar box and took it out. He opened it There they were, ten small cassette tapes—no, eleven. He looked up at McKay. "How many?"

  "We met three times."

  Each cassette was labeled, numbers and names. Flipping through them, Doyle read, "Farrell-Joyce, Farrell-Joyce, Amory, Farrell-Joyce, Amory, Amory, Amory." Then, in succession, he read, "McKay, McKay, McKay," and finally "Mullen."

  He took Bright's three out, closed the cigar box, and slipped it under his arm. He held one of the cassettes up for Didi. "See?"

  "Show me, Charlie," a voice said from well inside the other room.

  Didi's eyes locked on Terry's, and he saw, like a bolt in the dark, her absolute fear. It was Nick. Terry put the three cassettes in his jacket pocket.

  Even before Squire appeared in the doorway, the stench of alcohol wafted into the room. Yet when he stepped into view, he appeared as self-contained and erect as ever, dressed as always in neat, dark clothes. He said, "Am I invited?"

  He made a show of taking in the sight of the open safe, of the cigar box under Terry's arm.

  Terry said, "You have Bright on tape. The meetings you had about Amory. That's what we came for."

  Squire looked at Bright. "So you told him." He paused for a sly wink "Did you tell him everything?"

  "In point of fact, Nick, your brother is the one who told me."

  "That so?" Squire entered, pointedly ignoring his wife. He was not quite as steady on his feet as it first appeared. He made his way to the safe, closed the heavy door, spun the dial, then settled his haunch on the bulking steel cube, so that his face was at the level of his brother's chest He smiled up at him. "So you remembered the combo."

  "I guess so."

  "I didn't think you were one for remembering, Terry."

  "Some things."

  "Ma called," Didi said. "Jackie never came home. Was he with you?"

  Squire slowly faced her. She was standing a few feet in front of the walk-in. She looked frumpy and disheveled in her raincoat and canvas shoes. "Meeting Terry," he said, "I'd have expected you to do something with your hair."

  "I wasn't meeting Terry. I was looking for Jackie. Where is he? Do you know?"

  "No."

  Bright said, "We should go."

  Squire ignored him, still eyeing Didi. "But you showed him the key."

  "Nick," Terry began.

  But Squire held up his hand. "Didn't you?"

  "Yes."

  "How did you know where I kept the key?"

  Didi shrugged wearily. "I have no idea how I knew that"

  "You just knew."

  "I guess."

  "She walked in on us," Terry said. "She didn't know we were here. I made her show us the key."

  "Made her? You made ber? How did you do that, Charlie?"

  "He didn't make me. I was glad to show him. Whatever it is you're doing, I'm on their side."

  Squire took her statement in, his face a chillingly impassive mask.

  "Let's go, Terry," Bright said.

  Squire stretched his hand toward his brother without looking at him. "Give me my box."

  Until that moment, it had not occurred to Terry to keep the cigar box—the other tapes, Amory's as well as Joyce's and Farrell's. But this defiance, so long in coming, had to be total. "I'm holding on to your whole collection," he said calmly. "It all implicates us."

  "This doesn't involve you."

  "When you involved McKay, you involved me," Terry said. "Once he's out, I'm out. That's why we're here. To shut down your sting. Isn't that what your handlers call it? Sting?"

  "I should think you'd be proud of me, Charlie. After all these years. My doing what's right."

  "What? A gangster's two-bit gofer finally sells out his patrono?"

  "Jackie sold me out, get it?" Squire's knuckles were white with the downward pressure he was exerting on the safe. "Sold me out!"

  Didi stepped between them. "Where is he?"

  "Get home," Squire said sharply. He came to his feet and grabbed her arm. "Get home, you bitch."

  Terry took his brother's arm just as fiercely. "Let go of her."

  "Jesus Christ," he said coolly. "Look at this, will you? I mean, will you fucking look at this, or what? Aren't you a little late, asshole?"

  "Let go of her, Nick."

  Squire did, but shoved her roughly. "Get home."

  Didi caught herself at the doorjamb. She looked back at Terry, and with a sudden plaintiveness asked, "Do you have a favorite song?"

  Terry released Squire. "What?"

  "A song. A favorite song."

  Bright and Squire looked at Terry, as if only his answer could make sense of her question.

  Terry knew at once what she wanted to hear. Without understanding how it could be a weapon, he knew it was, and so he gave it to her. "The Everly Brothers, 'Dream, dream, dream.'"

  Didi looked triumphantly at her husband; it was the song she still drove him crazy with. How many times had he come in on her listening to it, singing it even? "When I want you..." In the old days she would dance around the bedroom, a hand on her hip, flaunting her nakedness while Squire watched, as if the song had reference to him. Before they'd stopped having sex, she had even hummed it sometimes in the drifting moments after orgasm.

  She started to leave, but Squire said, "Wait." He hooked his fingers, stretched them palm side out. He tried for a cocky nonchalance but fell short, his voice quavering somewhat when he said, "So it's to be Trivial Pursuit, is that the game? Twenty Questions? Truth or Consequences? Will the real asshole please stand up?" He faced Bright, his eyes hooded, head nodding like a car toy. "Do you have a favorite night spot, Nightspot?" His eyes bulged open, a stagy imitation of William E Buckley. "The wet spot on your sheets, perhaps? Sheets—there's a good idea!"

  Bright touched Terry. "I really think we should leave."

  But Squire reached out and grabbed his brother's coat. "And you, Charlie, now that we know your favorite song, perhaps you'll tell us who your favorite basketball player is."

  "You're drunk, Nick."

  "No, really. Was it Bean Nicolson?"

  "What about Bean?"

  "That coon embarrassed the hell out of BC, remember? When their all-time high scorer went to the slammer?"

  Terry took a fistful of his brother's sweater. They each held the other now. "Was tha
t you? You bastard!"

  "My trained animal. Two years. We made a fortune off that baboon."

  "You fuck. You ruined him! That was you?"

  "You betcha."

  "It crossed my mind, Nick. When the scandal broke. But you know what? I dismissed the thought because I was sure you wouldn't do that to me. What an asshole I am, huh?"

  "You think that makes you an asshole, Charlie? Bean Nicolson, that's nothing. That's just fucking basketball. That's sports." He let his eyes go wide again and tried to do that Buckley thing with his tongue. "Let's move on to the world of fine art. Perhaps you'll tell us your favorite statue. Something by Michelangelo, perhaps?"

  Terry took a step toward the door. But Squire, jerking forward, grabbed him again. "Or ask Joan."

  "What?"

  "Ask Joan what her favorite statue is. She'd say Mick-elangelo, of course, as if the wop was Irish. Why do they do that? Why do they say Mick instead of Mike? Ask her for me, will you?"

  "No." Terry answered coldly. But he remembered Mullen sprawled on the street behind Fenway, desperately calling, "Ask Joan!"

  "Ask her for me, okay?"

  "There's nothing I need to ask Joan, Nick. Nothing." Terry did not move out of his brother's grasp.

  Didi said, "You're a bastard, Nick."

  Squire smiled to have scored on her. He dropped Terry's arm, as if finished. "Two can play your game, babe." But then Squire swung back to his brother. "Well, if you won't ask Joan, ask Max. The clue is Michelangelo. See if maybe Max has some unconscious feeling for—"

  "Jesus," Didi said in disgust, and she started to leave.

  "Didi!"

  She stopped and faced Squire again.

  He said, "If Jackie still isn't home, tell your mother she should call in. She should report him missing. Tell her to call Captain Lundgren and report Jackie missing."

  "I saw him this morning, Didi," Terry said. "He wasn't in great shape."

  Didi looked from one to the other. "What are you telling me?"

  Squire smiled weirdly. "Truth or Consequences, babe. Trivial Pursuit."