Bosstown

by Adam Abramowitz

  “Temptation, Zesty.” Wells taps the bar for emphasis. “All that money talking to him every day and the neighborhood whispering in his ear. Sullivan was dirty. It just didn’t work out the way he planned.”

  “So what? I still don’t get why you’re telling me this.”

  “Ah, there we go. That’s where I was. So me and Brill, we’ve been to Sullivan’s place before, and by we, I mean the lab guys, forensics, FBI. Been over every inch of that apartment, and there’s nothing there you wouldn’t expect from a guy bringing home a little over twelve hundred every couple weeks. No fancy flat screen, no keys to a spanking Mustang, just Working Man shit, family pictures, porn, Xbox. We learn nothing. And then lo and behold, you come around and there’s cash flying through the air. That money you were hit with? We know at least some of it came from the Wells Fargo job. Except it pretty much dead-ends with you, so back we go to Sullivan’s place.”

  “Before talking to anyone at Black Hole?”

  “I’ll get to that in a minute. How much you figure you were carrying—twenty, thirty grand?”

  “I told you at the hospital, I wouldn’t know,” I half lie, knowing now it was fifty thousand.

  “Right, anyhow, to Sully’s depressing one-bedroom manhole we go. And guess what we missed the first time around?”

  “I don’t have a clue.” My brain tells my mouth to say that, but I see where he’s going, my stomach sending me a totally different message.

  Zero’s Zen Moving T-shirt.

  Wells reaches into my bag and lays the dead man’s shirt out on the bar, thick cotton, black as a starless night, spun heavy and stitched tight to absorb the sweat and hard labor of moving furniture. I have the same shirt, except mine’s paper thin, soft and worn from hundreds of moves, the black dye bleached into an uneven charcoal gray by my sweat.

  “I recognize Sullivan, but I didn’t know him,” I say. “He worked for my brother, moonlighting I guess, like me when he needs the help or I need some quick cash.” I slide the shirt closer to Wells, but he doesn’t move to take it back, too busy rubbing his hands with nervous energy, sparks practically flying from his fingers. Maybe later he’ll take out that DETECTIVES tin and shine it up, blind himself in one eye.

  “At Zero’s place, you work off the books?”

  “You homicide or IRS?” I say with enough of an edge to let the detective know how far I’m willing to go in this conversation. If Wells’s late-night talk is going to veer deep into my family, then the discussion, for me, is through.

  “Why’d you lie about Sullivan this morning?”

  “Because I don’t like getting stuck in the middle of something I have nothing to do with.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Yeah, okay. Maybe I just didn’t like the way you were asking. You like that answer any better?”

  “No. But you know what, Zesty? You need to toughen the fuck up, because as far as I’m concerned, we came at you easy this morning. I don’t know what kind of pull your father has in the department or with Brill, for that matter, but it was way before my time, and I don’t owe anybody shit, you hear me? BPD signs my checks, but I work for Collin Sullivan, the dirty cocksucker, and the way I see it—no, the way we see it—is you owe us one.”

  “Is that right?” I say. “You don’t know who my father is? He’s right there.” I pivot in my seat, pointing to a photograph on the wall: my father with Jerry’s dad, a trim, snow-capped Irishman, posed alongside then Boston mayor Kevin White and Barney Frank, who at the time was an aide to White and would become a senior-ranking Massachusetts congressman. The picture was probably taken in the early seventies, and it was beginning to show its age, yellowing at the borders, the corners curling toward the glass frame. My father looks happy, or at least in his element, those liquid black eyes of his shining.

  “Your father was a fixer. I figured that out. He knew people, got things taken care of. Beyond that…?” Wells shrugs, the heat draining from him as swiftly as it had arrived. “He still alive?”

  “He’s got Alzheimer’s. Just like the mayor there, coincidentally. Maybe it’s this city, it makes you want to forget shit.”

  “Ah, don’t be like that, Zesty,” Jerry says, hearing the edge in my voice. He leans both elbows on the bar, pointedly ignoring two slumming stockbrokers waving fistfuls of money down the other end. “They just didn’t drink enough, what it was. Listen, my pa, God rest his soul, used to tell this story—after Mr. White was out of office, of course—how the honorable mayor would grace this establishment ostensibly to drink and negotiate with the powers that be. Stop me if you’ve heard this one, Zesty.”

  “Go on,” I say, smiling.

  “Well, White, he’d always be the first to arrive, and when he’d come in, he’d request a dishrag from my da, a dry one, and he’d wipe down the bar in front of him like he was waxing his car in the driveway. ‘Jaysus!’ my father would say, his face like a pomegranate, least the first few times this happened. ‘Mr. Mayor, the stick’s clean as a whistle! You could eat a steak off it. Whattaya have to go wiping it down for?’ The mayor would just regale him with some nonsense, shoulder the rag like he’s keepin’ it in case of spills, like he worked here. And my da would stalk away, have my uncle James or Joe Marshall serve him. He was so angry he couldn’t even look at him. You probably don’t remember Joe Marshall, Zesty, but he worked the stick here fifty years for my father. Fifty years! Anyhow, the mayor would keep the rag, but at some point in all the drinking, it would disappear from his shoulder like magic. What nobody noticed is that the mayor dropped the rag to the rail under the bar and all through the night, as everybody got good and hammered, the mayor would be tipping his drinks toward the floor. Shot after shot, to the rail, to the rag, everybody getting plastered, and the mayor straight as a razor and twice as sharp. Hizzoner cut many a deal in his favor right here, with your father in attendance quite often, I might add, Zesty, for your da was never far from the action, was he?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I doubt the mayor’s sleight of hand escaped your pa’s notice, being the cardsharp he was himself, all due respect. Anyhow, at the end of the night as everybody stumbled home, their heads ringing into the wee morning, there was the dishrag, the mayor’s unholy cloth we called it, soaked with whiskey, which my father refused to touch.…”

  “And?” Wells prods, tries his best to look uninterested.

  “Well, Joe would squeeze it out, of course.” Jerry corkscrews the rag that had lain over his shoulder. “Where do you think well drinks come from?” He winks at me, feigns surprise to see the stockbrokers still waving their bailout money. “Gentlemen! What’ll it be?”

  The detective picks up his empty drink, sniffs the glass.

  “You were saying?”

  Wells looks at me hard but doesn’t find any resistance to feed off of. Maybe Jerry’s story gave him a little historical perspective to mull things over.

  “How many times you work with Sullivan?”

  “Maybe twice, three times? Guys come and go at Zero’s. It’s a tough job, harder than it looks. If he worked any more than that, my brother would have a record of it.” Or not. Cash moves are encouraged by Zero’s crews, and those jobs tend to disappear from the books. The moving business in Boston is no joke; you find whatever edge you can to turn a profit. Probably only Zero’s main rival, Gentle Giant, keeps accurate records.

  “Sullivan never mentioned working for Wells Fargo?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Short-term memory loss again?”

  “More like there was nothing to it. We worked, shot the shit, and that was that. Seemed like an okay guy. Worked hard. Next thing I know, you’re showing me pictures and his brains are all over the side of his van.”

  Wells maintains focus on me for what I guess passes for long and hard, his Truth-O-Meter clocking overtime, trying to decide whether I’m holding out on him.

  “You come from a pretty interesting family, Zesty.”

  “Wh
at’s that supposed to mean?” He has my full attention now.

  “We run a check on you after the hospital visit, and we get nothing, not even a parking ticket, probably on account you don’t even have a driver’s license. And there’s your father’s influence to consider, but like I said, that’s before my time. You have your courier’s license—expired, by the way—so there’s something I can hang on you. But aside from that, you’re either a model citizen or just real lucky. Zero, on the other hand, pops up all over the fucking map, though granted, always in a tertiary manner.”

  “Tertiary,” I say. “Nice.”

  “Yeah. I’m a cunning linguist,” Wells says.

  “Did someone say cunnilingus?” One of the two lady cops who’d parked themselves next to us slides off her seat.

  “Not exactly.” Wells rubs his temples with both hands.

  “That’s a shame,” the lady officer coos, running her finger down the length of Wells’s expensive tie.

  “I once flew Air Cunnilingus,” the other lady officer says, a catlike smile on her face. “All the way to Ireland.”

  “Nonstop?” I say.

  “Of course, darlin’. Except back then it was called Don’t Ever Stop.” She reaches out and strokes my thigh. “Come see me when you’re healed, baby.”

  “One day I’ll make a TV show about you,” I say, catching her as she tips toward the bar, unsteady on her heels. “It’ll be called Lady Cop, and it’s gonna go something like this: Lady Cop! She was a lady first. But first she was a cop.”

  “I like it,” Lady Cop purrs, tossing her long curls.

  “Friday nights,” I tell her. “After a very special episode of Bones.”

  “Ohh, I love that show.”

  “Remind me to drag you downtown next time,” Wells says. “This place is like storytime for drunks. So Zero. As in zero arrests, like you. And yet his name keeps popping up in everything from the Gardner Museum extortion thing to the BU payroll job. Called in for questioning a handful of times, but nothing sticks.”

  “My brother owns a moving company,” I say, and leave it at that.

  “Zero’s Zen Moving? Are you kidding me? Practically everybody working there’s an ex-con or some local hard case with a sheet so long you could use it for packing paper. He should call it Recidivist Moving, see what that does for business.”

  “Ex-cons shouldn’t work? He gives guys second chances.”

  “Oh, that’s what he does. He doesn’t, like, say, hire somebody good at safes, case out a house on a job, then come back to finish things off?”

  “You’ve got a hell of an imagination. You want to go partners on that Lady Cop thing, pitch it somewhere?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. My brother’s a mover and a businessman, and I own my own courier company.” What’s left of it. “What are you getting at?”

  “Your father—”

  “Like I said, my father has Alzheimer’s. So you can leave my father the fuck out of this discussion. My mother too, as far as that’s concerned, because that’s where you’re headed next, right? I don’t know my mother, don’t know where the hell she is or even if she’s alive, so you can keep her the fuck out of it too.”

  I don’t know when during my soliloquy I got up out of my seat, but I’m standing now. The lady cops and Crown Vic guys aren’t watching the game anymore, their antennae twitching to a possibility of action. In fact, the whole bar’s a little hushed, and I can hear the baseball announcer working himself into his own frenzy, Ichiro striding to the plate from the on-deck circle just a homer shy of hitting for the cycle.

  “Sit down,” Wells says evenly.

  “I don’t think so.” I lower my voice but keep my eyes on the TV. “I told you what I know about Sullivan. My family’s my family; it’s the only one I got. Now go chase your tail.” Ichiro steps into the batter’s box, points his bat, tugs on his sleeve, and fouls the first pitch back to the screen.

  “Best ballplayer in America,” Ichiro’s biggest fan says loudly, setting the bar back into motion. “Selfless. Down by two, needs to park one for the cycle, and he’s slappin’ at the ball, just tryin’ to get on base.”

  “That’s how he swings at everything,” says his partner.

  “You, my friend, are a moron. Mo-ron!”

  “It’s time you wake up to what’s going on around you, Zesty. What happened to you this morning wasn’t an accident.”

  “You figure that out all by yourself?”

  “Hell no. That’s why I work with a partner. If you haven’t noticed, I’m the good-looking one. But here’s the thing. The money you got hit with, whether it came from Black Hole or not, hardly makes a difference. You hearing me, Zesty?”

  “I’m listening,” I say, though what I’m really hearing is the static filtering its way back into my head, the Cars dropping in stereo between my ears.

  I don’t mind you comin’ here

  And wastin’ all my time

  ’Cause when you’re standin’ oh so near

  I kinda lose my mind.

  Ichiro fouls another ball near his feet, this time barely making contact. The phone behind the bar starts ringing. Jerry answers it, glances our way.

  “You’ve managed to step neck deep into a pile of shit here, Zesty, so you’d better be telling me the truth about Sullivan. We having an understanding on this?”

  “Get to it,” I say, probably too loudly, the song at full volume between my ears now.

  “We went over to Black Hole to corroborate your story, and there’s no record of any pickup for a delivery, nothing signed, a check missing but the copy blank. You following the bouncing ball, Zesty?”

  “Yes, he’s here.” Jerry winces into the receiver. “Now how am I to know why he doesn’t answer his damn cell, Detective?”

  “So maybe you’re just a liar or maybe you got set up this morning, only either way, I don’t need to be a fortune-teller to see where this shit’s heading. I’d watch my back if I were you, Zesty, because your life just got a whole lot more complicated.”

  I don’t mind you hangin’ out

  And talkin’ in your sleep

  It doesn’t matter where you’ve been

  As long as it was deep, yeah.

  “Detective.” Jerry extends the phone to Wells.

  “Hold on a sec. What?” Wells grunts into the receiver. “Really? No, you heard right. I got him right here. Tell me again. Okay. Got it.” Wells hands the phone back to Jerry as Ichiro knifes away from a ball inside. “Where were we?”

  “My complicated life.”

  “Right. Forget that part about not having to be a fortune-teller. Turn around and put your hands on the bar, Zesty.”

  “What?”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Breaking and entering on Mission Hill ringing any bells? Possession of marijuana? Assaulting a police officer?”

  “Heavens to Betsy!” Jerry clutches his chest, staggers backward.

  Ichiro takes a ball down low. I turn around, place my hands flat on the bar. “I changed my mind, Jerry. I’ll have another Jameson.”

  Wells guides my arms behind me, cuffs me at the wrists.

  “Ohh, kinky.” The curly-headed policewoman nudges her drinking partner. “Need assistance patting him down, Ociffer?”

  “Make that two Jamesons,” Wells says. “And two for the ladies.”

  Jerry lines up five shot glasses from under the bar and fills them. “What are we toasting to?”

  “Anyone ever been arrested inside your fine establishment, Jerry?”

  “Inside? Why, I don’t believe so.” Jerry picks up two shots, hands them to the women, and slides one along the bar to Wells.

  “Then to firsts,” Wells says.

  “To firsts.” They all clink glasses, Jerry doing the honors for me as the bar erupts to the crack of a bat. There it goes! Way back…!

  I tilt my chin to the ceiling. Jerry pours the shot do
wn my throat. Lady Cop with the long curls presses against me and, with a hand at the back of my neck, pulls my head down to kiss me hard on the mouth, her tongue sliding long and hot across my teeth.

  I guess you’re just what I needed

  (just what I needed)

  I needed someone to bleed.

  “Oh baby!” She looks up into my eyes. “You know, I’m not that drunk.” She winks, dabs the corner of her glistening lips with the tip of her finger.

  Just my fucking luck, I think as Wells pushes me out the door.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Wells’s car is a black Audi sedan with tinted windows, walnut trim, and enough dashboard gadgets to order a set of Ginsu knives off Amazon. We head out of the South End crossing into Roxbury, bowfront brick turning to public housing as we cut Mass Ave.

  “You forgot to read me my rights,” I say from the front seat beside him. The cuffs are loose, but my shoulders are cramping. Sam’s magic pill evidently maxes out at nine hours. At the corner of Ruggles and Tremont, we glide past the glass cubes of the new Boston Police Headquarters. There’s nothing else here, but maybe that’s by design. Isolationville.

  “So I’m not really under arrest?”

  Wells blinks at me, runs a red light. “Keep those cuffs off my leather, or I’ll beat you with a rubber hose.”

  “I have a client in Bay Village who makes good money saying shit like that to people.”

  “So?” Wells shrugs, unimpressed. “I’m on the clock.”

  “Yeah, but you’re not wearing stilettos and a studded dog collar. No siren?”

  Wells slides his window down, twirls his finger in the air. “Woo woo,” he says. “Music.”

  The radio comes to life with a Coldplay song. Wells seems to like it, picks up speed on the guitar solo. If I had a choice, I’d take the beating with the rubber hose.

  “What were you doing at Britta Ingalls’s house?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t be an idiot. We have your description, your business card. Soon we’ll have your prints in the house. Where’s the gun?”