Bosstown

by Adam Abramowitz

  I stick a couple of pictures into my bag and sit in the center of the room, where the destruction is minimal, to think this mess through. Somebody was looking for something, and judging by the noise they must have made tearing the place apart, knew nobody was coming home anytime soon. But how did they get in? Definitely not the way I did. And how is it both the front and back doors are locked solid, showing no signs of being broken or picked?

  A key would do the trick, I suppose. There aren’t any outward signs of a struggle, by which I mean no blood or holes punched in the walls, not that there would be necessarily. Which leaves what? An opportunity to drink beer. Boredom. The realization that just because I sit posed like Rodin’s Thinker doesn’t mean that anything brilliant will materialize between my ears. Not a damn thing. Except for the squawk of shoulder-mounted walkie-talkies.

  Shit.

  I wedge my chair under the knob of the front door, peep out the window to see the old woman standing on her porch, pointing toward the side of the house. From Britta’s room, I hear gravel crunch, one of the cops passing under the open window where I left my bike.

  The cruiser came with lights flashing but the siren off. There are two to a squad car, meaning they’ve split up, one in back and one in front to squeeze me out. Chances are they already have their service revolvers drawn, and I’m not digging the bad karma circle, the Carol DiMaiti memorial tree out front in early bloom giving me the heeby-jeebies.

  Aside from the possibility of getting shot, this is not a situation I want to be caught up in, my father’s influence too long gone, and detectives Brill and Wells probably only too happy to have me tied tighter to whatever mess I’ve been yanked into. They’ll think I tore the place apart, and they’ll hold me at least until Britta turns up.

  I hear glass break in the back stairwell, shards tinkling as I lose the beer and throw on a shirt that was lying on the floor. It fits just fine. It’s black and on the front in bold red letters says PARADOX IS THE THRESHOLD OF TRUTH. I have no idea what that means, but this is no time to be choosy.

  I’m hanging from my fingertips, halfway out the window, when the old woman lets loose a high warbling scream. I push off with my feet to clear my bike and land awkwardly, my ankle on fire, but instead of flying the short route out front, I run-hop the bike around back, hoping the second officer is still navigating the darkness after smashing the glass to get in.

  No such luck. “Stop!” He’s on the porch, gun and flashlight out. “Police!”

  “I know!” I break the light beam, mounting on the run as I turn the corner alongside the gold Buick. “Don’t shoot! White guy!” I yell, aware it’s a shitty thing to say but preferring a karmic rebuke to a bullet in the back.

  “He’s out!” The cop tears after me but manages to hold his fire. “Stop!”

  “Okay!” I yell, one foot in the clip as Cop Two comes crashing off the front porch, my wheels skidding a cutback toward the broken section of the bush-propped fence. The cop’s knees buckle as I cut behind him, kicking the flashlight out of his hand as he tries to shove it between my spokes.

  I make the street as the cop from the rear hurdles his fallen partner but can’t land the quick-shuffle footwork to do the same over the fence: His back foot catches the top of a post, and his gun skitters toward my front wheel as he tastes tar for his efforts. I scoop the gun on the go and shove it down the front of my shorts, dipping into the descent of Calumet Street, turning once to see the fence-hurdling cop on his knees, a rivulet of blood gushing from his mouth, his partner barking into his shoulder walkie as the old woman comes off the sidewalk waving in my direction, my Mercury Couriers business card flapping between her fingers.

  Brilliant.

  FIFTEEN

  I’m a bullet off Mission Hill. One bad pothole and I’m toast, the only upside being that if I crash and manage not to shoot my privates off, I can always euthanize myself, save the police the trouble.

  I burn brake pads toward the bottom, a genie puff of smoke lifting off the wheel as I scrape the corner onto Huntington, destination downtown, the cover of evening crowds and one-way streets. On Huntington I hit a minor downhill grade, my chain red hot as I crank it through the derailleur, my ankle on fire begging for mercy, the world liquid in my periphery.

  There’s a break in the tracks if I cut hard onto Louis Street, but that road’s a straight shot into the Fens, risky if more cars join the hunt from other directions. My only choice then would be limited to jumping the grass into the Fenway’s tall blow-job weeds, a notorious gay cruising ground within walking distance of the Ramrod, Boston’s toughest gay bar. How do I know these things? Open mind. Got to keep an open mind. Banking right’s not an option either; I could try ditching the cruisers on the Northeastern campus, but the university’s stocked with retired police who’d be only too thrilled to join the chase, break up the monotony of disbanding keg parties and confiscating bongs.

  Squad cars race toward me, but they’re stuck on the outbound side of the MBTA tracks until they hit Museum, and I’m almost where I need to be, the Christian Science pool and Prudential Center within sight, packs of Northeastern students crossing carelessly, the glow of phones—ghost faces, radioactive hands—more visible than their bodies. I stay locked on Huntington, sometimes no choice being the best choice of all.

  Pedestrians pose a daily threat to my safety, but momentum has its distinct advantages. You just have to accept up front that Boston biking is less a matter of whether than when. A car door is out there waiting for everyone, and if the flippers don’t get you, the swerve into traffic will. Downtown especially, there’s a flow to the hustle, a metronome rhythm that can be tapped into with experience even as the untrained eye sees nothing but all hell breaking loose. Reacting is never enough, though; you have to be a visionary, see the future before it strolls into the crosswalk with its head up its ass.

  You gotta feel it.

  They come in all forms: The Crosswalk Wanderer. The Car Sobber. Or worst of all, the Squirrel Crosser, who starts to dance, one step forward, one step back. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, you know the rest.

  Anticipate.

  Blue disco lights arc across my bike, glint off my wheels. A Huntington train, students stacked at the rear and middle doors, stops in front of the Y where I play my hardcore pickup basketball games.

  See the future.

  The accordion doors wing open. I squeeze my brakes, but they’re useless, melted to slag on the Mission Hill plunge. The cars in front of me tap brake-light Morse code, unsure of what to do with the sirens bearing down behind them. One car veers to the right, burns rubber in the crosswalk; the other guns through, the YMCA pack crossing in its wake.

  Speed kills, but indecision maims.

  “Pull over!”

  I flip the squad car the finger behind my back, lock onto a solitary redhead jabbering into her phone.

  Timing. Front? Back? Front! My right hand out and open, I clip the phone so fast, her last words are delivered into thin air.

  I kamikaze through the horns and curses of Mass Ave., cut upstream toward the South End, counting on the cruisers that had been stuck on the Museum side to hit the underpass hoping to head me off before I make Copley Square. I jump the sidewalk and roll across Columbus, dropping the phone into my bag, blending into the South End flow, outdoor cafés and young professionals pushing five-hundred-dollar baby strollers past gay couples and packs of mixed-race teenagers, the old and new coexisting like a city planner’s dream.

  I cruise onto Tremont, the sirens moving off in the distance, my adrenaline sweat drying in the warm breeze, plenty of other bikes to attract the eye, a spoke in a haystack, far too many to start pulling people over.

  The door to the black Pathfinder comes almost as a relief. There’s no way to avoid it, no point in even trying, and lord knows I can use the rest. Black leather interior, tinted windows rolled most of the way down; at least glass won’t be an issue.

  Anticipate, I remind myse
lf as I fold into the impact. See the future.

  Only problem is, the future’s black.

  SIXTEEN

  “Do you remember Rachel Evans?”

  “No.”

  “No? You saved her life once.”

  “Okay.”

  “And then McKenna found her. I don’t know how, but he has his ways; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been able to evade capture for so long. And poor Rachel was never really cut out for the life, was she?”

  “No,” Will says, and leaves it at that, though Leila’s words grate on him like a bounced check. Life as he’s always seen it boils down to a test of wills, how many times you’re willing to get up after being driven to ground. He doesn’t wish to be cruel, but sizing people up was his gift, and Rachel Evans, Will knew from the moment he laid eyes on her, was a puppet waiting for someone to come along and cut the strings.

  “I know I’m not being fair to you, William. Perhaps forgetting is a gift sometimes and all I’m doing is dredging up things you’d rather forget.”

  Fair? What’s fair? The phone rang and he answered it. Devlin McKenna was calling. Somebody else called too, who was it?

  “When he found Rachel, I knew he’d find me next. We’d been in contact, prearranged times and locations, new places, new identities, but the same life. Life on the run is a prison of its own kind, and once McKenna had Rachel, I realized the only safe place for me anymore was inside those prison walls. The irony wasn’t lost on me. And as it turns out, I was wrong anyway.”

  Relax. Let it come, Will thinks. He’s already checked his hole cards, no need to peek at them again; they haven’t changed.

  “Diane,” he says aloud, his wife’s name spinning to him like the odds-defying river card filling his full house, his inside straight.

  Leila looks up at him, confused.

  “Diane,” he says again, delighting in the sound off his lips, the happy tell sparking his eyes. When you’re holding the nuts, who gives a fuck what people think?

  Leila is expectant, waiting for more, but doesn’t speak.

  “My wife, Diane,” Will explains. “She called.”

  But in his pot-raking contentment, Will’s mistaken the look on Leila Markovich’s face, and suddenly it’s come apart at the seams, tears leaking from her eyes, reminding him of a high-stakes game he used to run out of Narcissus, where one of the players had kept a worn picture wedged under his chips that he would gaze at, his eyes perpetually wet and unreadable. The man played winning poker, but Will remembers thinking, at what cost?

  Yes, Diane called. Why did Will think Leila would be happy to hear this news?

  “Don’t cry, Leila,” he says, noting an iridescent sheen sliding down Leila’s gun barrel. “Why are you crying?”

  “Because Diane is dead, William.” Leila has turned to sobbing, and really, Will can’t understand why. Diane disappeared, and now she’s dead. It all makes perfect sense to him.

  “Yes,” he says. “Diane’s dead. I know that.”

  “You know? How is that possible that you know?”

  Actually, Will thinks, the better question is: How could it be possible he wouldn’t know? But that’s not what he says. What he says, in a whisper as if to a child that needs to hear hard things softly, is “I told you, Leila. She called. She told me so herself.”

  SEVENTEEN

  “Got-damn muthafucka!” A voice echoes off the walls of a blacked-out tunnel.

  “Shit.” A different voice responds minus the reverb. “That ain’t nuthin’.”

  A triangle of iridescent light consolidates into a shapeless smudge somewhere in front of my face.

  “Nuthin’? Nigga, you call that nuthin’?”

  “I’m okay,” I mumble, looking vertically at a soggy street-lamp above me. “I’m all right.”

  “Just use some of that, whatchamacallit, Armor All spray, wipe it down. Be good as new.”

  “No spray,” I say. “No new.”

  “Didn’t you say you was about to trade it in anyhow?”

  “Resale value, son. This shit’s gotta shine.”

  “So get Loppy to detail it for you.”

  “No detail too small,” I say still looking at black, only this time in the form of Brick standing over me, his enormous frame shielding me from street view, the car double-parked, taking care of the sidewalk. “Just a scratch,” I say to him. “I’ll be all right.”

  Brick spits into his hand and wipes a spot on the interior door leather.

  “See?” I say, sitting up. “Good as new.”

  “See?” Brick’s partner is switchblade thin, shiny dark. Shaka Zulu in Adidas sweats and black flat-billed Red Sox “B” cap. He leans across the front seat from the passenger side. “Good as new.”

  “New, huh?” Brick turns and kicks me hard in the chest, knocking me back to the street.

  “Totally unnecessary,” I wheeze, curling up in a ball, the police-issued Glock dropping deeper down my shorts, threatening radical vasectomy. From this angle I can see my Yokota stuck halfway under the Pathfinder, the front wheel warped beyond repair, an industrial flower blooming spokes off the center.

  “Nigga, get up and get the fuck in.” Brick yanks me off the asphalt as Switchblade, taller than me by a good three inches, pulls the bike free and tosses it to the curb. It’s like Groundhog Day around here, only with new actors and less money. One endless day, two bikes, misdemeanors and felonies stacking up like firewood.

  Switchblade latches a vise-like grip on my elbow, places me in front.

  “Take your bag off.” He folds himself into the rear seat behind me, sticks the muzzle of a gun into the corner of my eye. “Slowly. Then pass it back.”

  Brick gets in and pulls away from the curb, adjusting the rearview mirror. Switchblade takes my pack and gently taps the side of my head.

  “Turn around and put your seat belt on.”

  “Where we going?”

  “And shut the fuck up.”

  Brick tunes the radio to 88.9 WERS Emerson College Radio, the low volume an insult to his custom Boston speakers stacked in the rear.

  I reach to the dial and turn it up, Brick scrunching his face in disbelief. “It’s Edo. G,” I say by way of explanation.

  If I’m a ride

  I’m a ride by high

  Fuck the rules ain’t shit we abide by

  We live and die by

  The same thing that you do

  Edo. G rock the B hat and FUBU

  Somethin’ to move to

  Boston’s finest, skills remain timeless

  Bullshit behind us

  Runnin’ through your crib like interior designers

  Brick clicks it off.

  “Runnin’ through your crib like interior designers. I love that line. Speaking of cribs, where we going? One-oh-four Cabot, right?” The lost delivery address for the Black Hole package drops into place, a manila envelope scrawled with black Sharpie flashing in my mind’s eye. “Cabot … That’d be off Dudley Square?”

  Brick slides his eyes to the rearview mirror, Switchblade shaking his head, his gun out of sight. I keep my hands away from my shorts, not even contemplating trying to shoot my way out.

  At a red light Brick sniffs the air, powers down a window.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Switchblade volunteers from behind. “White people smell like dog when they wet.”

  “Yeah, well, this dog smells like he peed hisself.”

  “It’s patchouli,” I say.

  “It’s bitch pussy what it is. Now, roll down your window and shut the fuck up.”

  One-oh-four Cabot is a refurbished brownstone off Dudley Square, the longtime heart of Boston’s black community and a stone’s throw from Junior White’s, Boston’s funkiest record store and one of my original accounts. My father hooked me up with that connect, having never made the switch off vinyl.

  We park out front, Brick mugging full-faced to the security camera mounted inside a clear Plexiglas box before using his own set of keys to unl
ock the double front doors. They sandwich me up two flights of stairs and through another locked door into a bright loft-style apartment with wide plank wood floors and three windows offering views of the square. There’s a large oak desk in the far corner, centered on a bright Persian carpet. Crates of albums line the brick walls, a familiar-looking DJ’s turntable, red headphones, and stacks of speakers massed on the opposite side. The muscular black man behind the desk looks familiar too, but it takes me a second to place him this far out of context.

  “Darryl?” I say. Brick and Switchblade look at each other quickly. “Man, I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. Nice place. Yours?”

  “Zesty.” Darryl runs his hands over his face. He shakes his head but not as an answer to my question. “Really, C?”

  “You told us scoop the nigga that lost the money. What we do? Here’s the nigga.”

  “O?”

  “Like he said.”

  Darryl says, “This ain’t him. He looks like him, I’ll grant you that, but this ain’t him. You don’t recognize this white boy? For real, C? From the courts at the Y…? All white muthafuckas look alike to you?”

  “Gunner?” Brick says tentatively, shooting Switchblade a crushing what’d I tell you? look.

  “There you go,” Darryl says expansively. “Gunner. Nigga never saw an outside shot he didn’t like.”

  “What can I say, I’m always open.”

  “Right! You a beneficiary of the black man’s conundrum. Cover you tight and you drill from twenty feet; make your man look foolish and he’s gonna hear it from his teammates. Leave you wide open and you drill from twenty; black man just lazy but we all lazy from time to time. Mind you, I ain’t talkin’ about myself,” Darryl says with a smile.

  “He got handle?” Switchblade shows some renewed interest now, maybe trying to picture me with a basketball in my hands.