“What are you looking at?” Sam sets a French press on the floor beside me, grounds floating to the top like grate-trapped sewer water.
“I think someone’s scoping your apartment.” I point out the windows.
“It’s nothing to get excited about. Her name’s Sheila; she bartends at the Pour House.”
“I don’t think it’s a woman.”
“Then it’s her boyfriend. They like to fuck with the lights on and the shades up.”
Which explains why the couch faces the window. Ew!
“You getting paranoid on me, Zesty?”
“Paranoid?” I pour the coffee and take a bite; it’s not half bad. “You tell me.”
I recount my day for Sam, squinting as a bolt of pain shoots over my right eye, making it feel like the stitches are about to pop free. Only as expected, Sam’s interest centers mainly on the prescription I’d handed him, which he tears into tiny pieces and deposits over his shoulder.
“That’s insane. I sprinkle Tylenol and codeine on my cornflakes, for fuck’s sake.”
“Which accounts for your always lucid demeanor,” I say.
“Which accounts for your being here, dickweed.”
“Good point,” I concede. Because MIT has long held the reputation as Boston’s premier Geek University, it might come as a surprise that on any given day, a sizeable portion of its student body can be found counting cards in illegal Chinatown casinos or figuring out unique ways to blow shit to smithereens. Sam’s specialty happens to be boutique pharmacopeia, and therefore I tend to defer to his wisdom, his nondegree status notwithstanding.
“Your recommendation, Professor?”
“You could start by biking better. Other than that, I think I have something that’ll do the trick. How’s the noggin?”
“Hurts, but no more than anyplace else. I’m hearing music, though.”
“Right now?” Sam concentrates in the direction of his Bose box, trying to pick up vibrations. If he were a pointer, his ears would be sticking straight up. As it is, it’s just his hair.
“No. Now it’s just static, like the HBO opening credit. It comes and goes.”
“Like bad reception?”
“Exactly. And then music floats in behind it. Good tunes so far.”
“Familiar?”
I run down the playlist.
“Maybe you’re channeling Pandora. Anything else?”
“Body pain. Soreness. You have a theory on the music?”
“Just what I know from reading some Oliver Sacks. There’s a condition that can take the form of musical hallucinations, which sounds like something you might be experiencing. Only it’s rare and I don’t remember anything suggesting it can be triggered by brain trauma. Stroke maybe. Seizures. Lightning. You black out?”
“Just for a few seconds. Twice I think.”
“You tell them that at the ER?”
“Hell no.”
“Because…?”
“What’re they gonna do, stick me in a hospital bed, wake me every couple hours to shine a light in my eyes, and then sic their bill collectors on me? I took a pass.”
“Explain how you figured you were only out a couple seconds.”
I have to concentrate for a moment to answer that question. “The money was still blowing when I came to the first time.”
“And the second?”
“I’m not so sure, but I don’t think it was long. You should’ve seen the responding EMT. She was capital H, caliente.”
“You tell her that?”
“I tried.”
“Big shocker. Score digits?”
“No.”
“What, she wasn’t into piñatas? Don’t answer that. Let me hook you up with what you came for and then I’ll run a search, call a neuro buddy of mine at Harvard, see what he says about the music. You have plans rest of the day?”
“I was thinking about checking into the office, see if maybe I can scare up some gear.” There’s always a mishmash of bike frames and parts lying around that I could piece together, augment my backup bike at home, maybe score another Motorola and a spare bag. And while I’m at it, I’ll check in with Martha to see if she’s heard anything from Gus, give Zero a heads-up he might be getting a visit from Boston’s Finest, though something tells me he already knows.
“Eighty-six that. I’ve got your afternoon right here.” Sam shakes a blue gel tablet from a plastic Advil bottle. “Don’t be fooled by appearances.”
I throw back the pill with the last of my coffee, my headache, I realize, already neutralized by the caffeine. How out of balance can a body get? Bulldozed by a two-ton gas-guzzler but suffering more from caffeine withdrawal.
“There’s a good boy.” Sam is only too happy to break down what I just ingested; the bogus gelcap contains a less than homeopathic blend of painkillers and muscle relaxants, certainly nothing I can’t handle, considering my checkered resume.
“That’s it?” It’s not that I’m ungrateful, only Sam’s grinning like an idiot.
“Well … maybe with a smidge of hallucinogen thrown in for fun.” Sam is never as happy as when he gets to spread his chemical joy among friends. “Relax, Ace, it’s nothing out of your league. As for your other problems, the one thing I can offer you is the spot where your girl from Black Hole crashes.”
“You know her? Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Because I’m popular?”
“That’s only because you’re a drug dealer.”
“What’d I just say? Anyhow, I don’t really know her per se, but I’ve been to a couple after-hours at her place up around Mission Hill, right past the spot where that Stuart prick shot his wife? You can’t miss it, seeing how the city planted some monster oak out front. All the bodies dropped in this town; one white lady gets killed in a black neighborhood, and they plant a tree in her memory? Fuck, Zesty, they do that for everyone, the damn city be Sherwood Forest by now. You could go camping in Mattapan, tap maple syrup in Roxbury. Be like Boy Scout heaven. Anyhow, her house is a two-family with double front porches out front, sagging like Dolly Parton’s tits if she didn’t get them lifted every year.”
“Hey, I like Dolly Parton.”
“What’s not to like? I’m just saying.”
“This girl got a name, Sam?”
“Britta … something. Gus would know. He was pretty sweet on her.”
“They were an item?”
“What do I look like, the scorekeeper for eHarmony? Listen, Zesty, don’t make me regret giving you the heads-up on this. My advice: Let this shit work itself out. Don’t go looking for trouble.”
“I’m not sure I can do that,” I say.
“Why, because you think somehow your brother’s got skin in this game?”
“What? What’re you implying?”
“Come on, Zesty, wake the fuck up. You make it rain on Boylston, and next thing you know, a couple of homicide cops are flashing you pictures of this Wells Fargo guard? Do the math.”
“Zero’s not a killer,” I say, with a little too much edge in my voice. Trying to convince Sam or myself?
“Nobody’s saying he is. But you’re not listening, Z. Britta laid it on Martha that you no-showed, she’s either working her own thing or just following orders, right? Long as nobody’s coming after you for the money, wherever it came from, I’d say you’re in the clear. So stay that way. And as for Gus, I’m no hypocrite; we all have to make a little side-scratch to live in this town.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re not hearing me, Zesty. Enough with the questions. All you have do right now is sit back and enjoy the ride. You think you can do that?”
I tell Sam I can do that, but while I still have my head about me, I start in with the telescope again. The shades are still drawn across the way, the Charles Street foot traffic thickening as the tourists and swells tumble down from the billion-dollar Beacon Hill town houses. The black Pathfinder pulls away before I can focus on the driver’s-
side window. A messenger I don’t recognize weaves nimbly between cars, a silver canister wagging side to side as he navigates the stop-and-go flow; the tube probably holds blueprints or plans of some sort, and he’s maybe heading downtown to a design studio or architecture firm. I doubt it’s stuffed with hundred-dollar bills. Chances are he won’t get run over by a gold Buick. Ten to one he won’t be grilled by a couple of murder cops. Is that static on the horizon?
No. Sam’s closed the bathroom door. It’s the shower I’m hearing, only why so loud?
I start pulling out newspapers—the Globe put the Wells Fargo heist on Wednesday’s front cover. I give the story a quick read, but it’s getting hard to concentrate, the words falling off the page like they’ve been greased, Sam’s magic pill starting to take effect. What am I looking for?
Sam has the papers stacked consecutively, and I run through them in order. The robbery got kicked to the Metro-Region section on Thursday, was buried deeper by Friday. But I’m not interested in any of it, not the robbery, not Collin Sullivan, who as far as I’m concerned is somebody else’s headache. I’m just the messenger in the middle, and I didn’t even deliver any of the bad news. Hell, I didn’t deliver anything. What am I looking for?
I’m going the wrong way, that’s the problem. I tip the pile, papers fanning out onto the floor, pull magic on my first try. I’d avoided reading the story as long as I could, only I knew I’d have to get to it sometime. As my father was fond of saying, There are only so many loose threads you can ignore before you’re standing naked in the wind. I blink at the page and read:
FREEDOM FOR LEILA MARKOVICH:
MASSACHUSETTS PAROLE BOARD GRANTS RELEASE AFTER TWENTY-ONE YEARS
Boston—Reopening a chapter in the history of Massachusetts and American radicalism, the Massachusetts Board of Parole yesterday voted to release Leila Markovich, 62, the 1980s radical and former cofounder of the Sparhawk Brigade. Ms. Markovich had been serving a sentence of twenty years to life after her conviction for her role in the 1986 robbery of the Allston branch of Bank of Boston and concurrent bombing of District 14 Headquarters that left a retired policeman and a bank manager dead and two officers severely wounded. Ms. Markovich is due to be released sometime this week, said Martin Flinck, a spokesman for the State Division of Parole.
The decision to grant Ms. Markovich parole came after two previous reviews by parole board commissioners, who had denied her parole request. It remains unclear what prompted the board’s change of decision, but upon its announcement, Governor Gregory Hibert denounced the determination to free her. “This is a travesty of justice,” Mr. Hibert said. “And certainly not a decision I would have made. The cold-blooded killings of Edward Kelleher and James Sheehan were horrific crimes and ones that should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.” Aides to the governor, who had appointed both commissioners during his first term, vowed that he would actively explore ordering a recission hearing to appeal the decision.
Ms. Markovich’s imminent release leaves only one surviving member of the Sparhawk Brigade yet to serve time behind bars, Diane Meyers, who remains underground and is still wanted on murder and armed robbery charges in connection with the same 1986 robbery. Ms. Meyers has been a fugitive from justice since March of 1981, when she was implicated in a bomb explosion on the campus of Harvard University that severely injured two administrators. Rachel Evans, the bank teller planted inside the Bank of Boston, had also eluded capture but died in a fall from a Delray Beach hotel balcony in 1988.
The FBI believes Ms. Meyers has used a variety of aliases during her time on the run, including the identity of one Jane Orr, who was murdered in Los Angeles in 2002, her body discovered beneath a highway overpass, her mouth crammed full of bills later traced to a 1979 Boston armored car robbery attributed to the Lockwood Brothers Gang that had operated out of South Boston. Johnny and Jimmy Lockwood were murdered in 1980, allegedly by Richard Ritter, Devlin McKenna’s former triggerman, in a dispute over what is believed to be tribute payments related to that robbery.
There’s more to the article, but I can’t make out the words as they fall off the page, the paper dropping from my fingers. Collin Sullivan, Leila Markovich, my infamous mother, Jane Orr, Rachel Evans, Devlin McKenna and the Lockwood Brothers, banks and armored cars, blood, history, memory, a loose constellation falling from the sky.
I lie back on the couch, my legs dangling off the end. I wonder for a moment about who nabbed my gear and whether they’re smoking my weed. I wonder if Britta has a steady boyfriend, and if she does, I wonder if he could kick my ass. Right now, I wonder who couldn’t.
When the walls start breathing, I’m not alarmed. When a neon waterfall spills behind my eyelids, I go with the flow. When the neon splashes letters, the letters morphing into red hot words, the words forming an address, I know I should write them down, but my arms are on vacation and I can’t feel my hands. I’ll tell Sam the address when he’s done with his static shower. He’ll remember it or write it down for me. Sam’s a good friend. I love Sam. I’ll have to tell him that too. He can also write that down if he wants. It’s good to keep a record of things.
A lot goes missing around here.
TWELVE
Will lets his mind drift because concentrating only draws the black tide faster. Leila Markovich is not the same person she once was. How old are his sons? What is his wife’s name? Goddammit, where the hell is Van Gogh? Will’s hands shake, but he manages to still them by visualizing a deck of cards, the feel of them on his fingertips, the way the pack fits snug in his palm. Silence doesn’t bother him, nor does it seem to bother Leila Markovich. Silence is a commodity they recognize; they’ve both traded on it for a long time.
“Why are you here?” Will finally thinks to ask. And from the grateful look on Leila’s face, what’s left of her face, he knows that it’s the right question to break this silence, the only question.
“You don’t know?” Leila studies him a moment before nodding, a different question left unasked, but answered nonetheless.
How could Will not know? He’s been calling him, hasn’t he, his voice like broken glass over the line. Yes, of course Will knows, it just takes him a moment. “Devlin McKenna,” he says, the name acid on his tongue, bile in his throat.
“Yes.”
“Devlin McKenna,” he repeats, not because he likes the taste, but because it has a taste. And taste for him is memory. “He calls me.” Will points to the rotary phone; Leila registers the severed cord, the ghost line to nowhere.
Nonetheless: “Do you talk to him?”
“No, I just listen. It feels like he’s close.”
“I think he is. What does he say?”
“He wants his money.”
“Yes, the money,” Leila Markovich says. “Do you have the money, William?”
“From the robbery?”
“Yes, from Bank of Boston. Do you still have it?”
“No,” he says. “Yes,” he says. No? Yes? What money? Which money? Whose money?
“I don’t remember,” he says.
“That’s all right,” Leila says, petting the gun in her lap. “Yes or no, it doesn’t matter. He’s back, but everything’s changed, as he must realize. Still, money or no money, he will come for us. You understand that, don’t you, William? He’ll try to kill us like he killed Rachel, and Michael Drain, and Tara Agostini. He will try to finish my face, as it were.”
Yes, Leila’s face, what a poker face! To have a face nobody could bear to read. Only Will does; there’s a lot of life left in that face, those eyes.
“Yes.” Will understands McKenna will try to kill them both again. But what he is also thinking is that this time everything will be different. Because this time, Will has decided, he will kill McKenna first.
THIRTEEN
I wake up in my own bed. It’s dark and the cat is curled beside me, asleep and snoring lightly. It looks like my cat. It has the same black body and white paws, the same easy and gentle snore that
says, I’ve never worked a day in my life and never will, which is why I roll over him, my eyes adjusting to the darkness; everything in my room is as I left it or has been replaced by ingenious replicas, part of some diabolical plot meant to lull me into a false sense of security.
Just in case, I sit up vigilantly, try to piece together how I got home from Sam’s Charles Street apartment. I remember swallowing what looked like Advil and then …
Never mind.
According to my wind-up Mickey, it’s almost nine, making it roughly six hours since whatever I ingested put my nervous system on ice, which, even by my highly refined slacker standards, qualifies as a pretty long nap. My head feels spongy and the throbbing above my right eye is back, but the static between my ears is gone and I’m no longer picking up classic hits radio on my fillings.
As I snap, crackle, and pop my way to the bathroom, I pause long enough to pull the hall-light string but get nothing in return for my effort. I do the same in the bathroom, get the same nothing, strip, and shower in the dark, my cuts stinging like fresh knife wounds under lukewarm water. My mouth is sticky as a Roach Motel, so I brush twice for good measure and gargle with something I’m almost sure is mouthwash. My hair’s a tangled, blood-clotted mess and there’s no conditioner, so all I can do is run water through it before using a little leftover olive oil to help tie it back in a high samurai ponytail.
Banzai!
Back in my room I fumble through shelves, pull down boxer briefs, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, grope the fuse box, and expend my sum knowledge of electricity flipping switches.
The loft stays dark.
I can only assume it has something to do with those bills stacked on my desk, specifically the envelopes marked TIME SENSITIVE in red ink. It’s the red ones you have to look out for. The blue ones just mean they’re on to you. The red ones mean the fix is in. All of which means I neglected to pay Boston Edison again, only life’s too short to stress these sorts of things. Not the least because it’s due to nothing beyond attrition and the vagabond nature of roommate situations that I’ve ended up responsible for most of the bills and anything related to the lease. Obviously, I use the word “responsible” loosely, but it’s a more complicated matter than meets the eye because the loft is strictly commercially zoned and therefore unfit for residential occupation. Same goes for the bulk of properties on nearby Randolph and Albany Streets; ditto for parts of Bristol and Harrison Avenue, all of which exist in a no-man’s-land of former manufacturing and industrial warehouses a stone’s throw off the Central Expressway on the South End’s outer border.
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