“Great story.” I look out onto the stoop, familiar to me for some reason.
“I’m not done yet. See, now Etta, at that time, mid to late sixties, had a nasty heroin addiction and tax problems on top of that. So for accounting purposes, she signs songwriting credit to her boyfriend, Billy Foster, over at Chess Records. Can you imagine, having a hand in writing a song like that and not being able to take any credit for it, never mind the royalties.…” Brill lets out a low whistle and shakes his head, but I jump in before he can resume his narrative.
“Chess Records releases Tell Mama as an album and the title song, same name, as a forty-five with ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ on the B-side, and it sells like crazy. Big whoop.”
“That’s right.” Brill gives no indication he’s impressed with my soul music knowledge, another line of wisdom my father had imparted to Zero and me to accompany our poker educations.
I recognize the stairs. There are two pictures sharing a single frame in my father’s house: my father sitting with a trio of tuxedo-clad, long-haired, wild-eyed white guys mixed in with a dozen or so black men in suits and fedoras, a group of neighborhood children squatting at the bottom of the stairs. The other photograph is the same group, but everyone stripped down to his undershirt, the street urchins out of the frame, abandoning their poses for some other neighborhood distraction.
“You knew my father,” I say.
“Knew?” Brill screws the cigar out of downturned lips. “He passed?”
“Not exactly. More like lately he’s all past.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He’s got Alzheimer’s. All his yesterdays are today. Shit, Detective, if you knew my father back in the day, then you are old.”
Brill barks a laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know.” He reaches over and clicks off the stereo. “Except I’m not that old. I knew your father from the block when I was a kid.” Brill points to the stoop directly across the street. “Lived right there with my uncle and his kids. But it wasn’t until my late teens I got to know the man for real. See, my uncle had this little blues joint near the corner of Columbus and Mass Ave. Just this one long room, street level, but the acoustics were phenomenal, even better in the bathroom in back—so much so that some guys actually played from the toilet with the door open. Your dad used to come in fairly often, alone mostly, but sometimes with other people, rock-and-roll types, giving them a little blues education, a taste of the street. Brought your mom in too.” Brill lifts his eyebrows, anticipating some kind of reaction, but getting none, he lets them fall back into place.
“Pretty lady. Lot younger than your dad. Course I didn’t know who she was at the time, but talking to my uncle years later, I got the distinct impression a lot of people did. You get what I’m telling you, Zesty?”
“She was protected?”
“Don’t make it sound like a dirty word, son. She was community.” Brill puts emphasis on the word, explaining something without having to explain it. “And because she was with your father and your father been around these parts a long time. Did a lot of favors for people.”
“My father play poker in your uncle’s place?”
“Nope. And I’m glad you asked that question. Now, I don’t have to tell you my uncle’s place was a nee-gro place, do I? We’re talking early eighties here, which makes it—”
“After the Harvard bombing but before my mother robbed Bank of Boston. I get your point.”
“I have a point?”
“My father didn’t mix business and pleasure.” I try to move the detective along, my eyes getting heavy, the ratty butt-indented seat suddenly way too comfortable, molding to my weight.
“To a degree, maybe. Except back then, the South End was something of a free-for-all, rubbing up against Roxbury, which Jerry Dapolito controlled; Southie, which was soon to be all Devlin McKenna’s; and Boston proper, which the DiMasis ran all the way from the North End through to the Back Bay. The South End was a problem, see, because it was a stew to begin with and getting more mixed by the day. Jerry ran the gays when they started coming in, remodeling. Bathhouses, dance clubs, and the like. McKenna started making inroads on the numbers, coke and heroin, and the DiMasis wanted a piece of everything because they were the DiMasis and it was so close to home.”
“My dad mediated for your uncle.”
“You got it. City hall for the license and everybody else for everything else, garbage collection, liquor wholesale—”
“Protection, drugs—”
“Nuh-uh.” Brill had begun shaking his head even before the words were out of my mouth. “My uncle was a churchgoin’ man, you understand? And he wasn’t a hypocrite, either. But all the same, he was a businessman, which means he was a realist. He couldn’t control everything. I mean, you have to put it in context. We just flipped the seventies; every day it was something else. I’m not saying people didn’t run their games, smoke their reefer; after all, it was a music bar. And, man, we had us some names come through there: Pinetop Perkins, Bettye LaVette, even, singing ‘Let Me Down Easy.’ Still brings tears to my eyes.…” Brill takes a moment to compose himself, lights up his cigar, maybe to hide behind blue smoke.
“But rules were rules. Working girls understood they were welcome to come in, soak up the vibe, but they couldn’t run their johns out of the bar. Heavy hitters had to check hardware with my uncle or leave it home. The bathrooms were off-limits for junkies, and anyhow, like I said, someone was usually blowing a horn out of it. I’ll tell you, that was the cleanest bathroom in the city.” Brill allows himself a smile at the memory. “My uncle paid what he had to, but it was more like pay not to play, and your daddy was the only one who could make that happen. So when he came in, there was always a table or a spot at the bar and a drink at the ready, though he wasn’t much of a drinker either. I guess you can even say he and my uncle were friends.”
“Which makes us, what, friends-in-law? What’s the lesson, Detective? It’s way past my bedtime.”
“The lesson is don’t be a middleman, Mis-tah Meyers. There’s no percentage in it, and it doesn’t suit you. That clear enough for you?”
“Clear as day. Now can you take me home?”
Brill looks at me for a hard moment. He reaches to shift the car into gear but instead cuts the ignition and screws his cigar back into his mouth, looking out his window away from me.
“Naw, you know what? I think I’m gonna stay here awhile, reminisce on my own. Oh, and my original point concerning Ms. Etta James before I was so rudely interrupted is this: Take credit where credit’s due, understand? Take responsibility. Don’t let someone write your script for you and hope to get yourself flipped to hit it on the B-side. Now go fuck yourself, Zesty. You can walk from here.”
TWENTY-SIX
Some days are better than others. Days when Will feels the years that have slipped by, haven’t just left him inhabiting a shell of what he’d once been, robbed him of his ability to manage the entanglements his life has accrued. As his well empties, having a voice in his final days is what matters to him, even if that voice has now been choked to a whisper.
The irony of his predicament isn’t lost on him—he built his life on a foundation of silence, survived by holding his tongue, sealing those lips. Now he wants to speak? It’s almost laughable.
Some days are better than others.
Only this is one of those days when the shadows edge closer than ever, when a stranger, his body smelling of damp earth and ozone, pulls up a seat and starts stacking chips as the deck that was so familiar to Will morphs into fifty-two double-edged razor blades, a cut in every shuffle, blood from every turn.
This is the day Devlin McKenna lets Will know who runs this city and takes from him the only thing a player can ever truly control—that decision to fold, to lay down the cards and get out of harm’s way. Will can couch it any way he pleases, but the cold, hard truth of the matter is Will has a boss now and the only card that really counts is the card he punches clocking hours
under his permanent midnight shift.
Welcome to the new Bosstown, motherfucker. It’s no wonder he’s in a hurry to forget.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Tuesday’s optimistic sunshine forces its way through my eyelids like a crowbar on a rusted lock, the open sky a blank canvas for some early-morning skywriter taking advantage of a captive rush-hour audience. The pilot isn’t very good, though, or maybe it’s just windy, the bloated marshmallow script unreadable. If it was a heaven-sent message destined for my eyes, I imagine it would have said something along the lines of sorry about yesterday. Care to try again?
My answer to that would be not particularly. But there remains the matter of those bills on my desk, the shut-off electric, and the question of what to do about the Black Hole money I papered Boylston with. As for Gus and Britta, I don’t know where to go next. I just have to hope Brill and Wells find them or they’ve realized the enormity of their fuckup and have put some serious distance between here and Darryl.
On top of that, it’s Tuesday, a day I reserve for visiting my father at his rented home in Brookline, where he gets round-the-clock care from arguably the most unusual assortment of caregivers ever assembled, a hodgepodge of former “colleagues” from my father’s poker games and a few longtime trusted employees of Zero’s. Needless to say, I don’t make much of a financial contribution to my father’s care—Zero handles his bills and rent—but I do what I can, and Tuesday is generally my day to give everyone a break.
So I will myself out of bed, change my bandages, and pick a standard working outfit: black cycling shorts, black Dogmatics T-shirt, Adidas high-tops. I open my reclaimed bag, rake the cascade of bills into the main hold, and pop another can for the cat before making the mistake of opening the refrigerator for a habitual peek inside. I’m not sure what I expected to find—groceries have never magically appeared before—but what I get would make a coroner gag. Not that it hampers the cat’s appetite. He keeps himself busy face-walking the can across the floor.
Today’s a new day, I tell myself. Every day is a new start. Onward and upward. Carpe diem. Here’s the plan: I’ll drink enough coffee to float a battleship, call Martha to reroute work for the day, and find out what my insurance situation is. I’ll go see my father, give Zero a heads-up about Brill and Wells coming around to chase the Collin Sullivan connection if they haven’t done so already, and finally, drop by Black Hole to get a handle on their story and maybe a lead to Britta.
But first things first.
I get my coffee at the bakery on the corner of Shawmut Avenue and Union Park, served by a girl with a pink Mohawk and diamond-studded nose ring, who swears it isn’t decaf and won’t taste anything like an old dish towel.
I take it outside under the bakery’s roll-top awning, where an abandoned copy of the Globe already blankets the dime-sized table, saving me a dollar and a walk around the corner to the 7-Eleven discreetly tucked in among the high-end shops that have sprung like wild mushrooms up and down Washington Street.
The smells of baking bread and freshly ground coffee hang pleasantly in the air, every once in a while pushed along by a light breeze that adds the scent of the grass being mowed by a thick man with a gleaming bald head inside Union Park. It’s not really hot yet, but you wouldn’t know it watching Kojak sweat. Cherry blossoms curl and fall into the street.
I drink my coffee, trying to ignore the stiffness rooting in my spine, the chair from the Marquis de Sade Collection not helping matters as it was clearly designed to stimulate table turnover. Meditate on the positive, I tell myself, flipping the newspaper open. Ignorance is bliss. Yesterday never happened. In fact, I’m not in Boston anymore. I’m sitting at an outdoor café in Paris, waiting to deliver the next batch of baguettes somewhere. To another café with even stronger coffee and softer chairs. Somewhere Buicks don’t eat bicycles for breakfast.
What’s eating me? Is it the fact that I don’t have a clue what to do next or that yesterday’s delivery was the first I’d ever failed to make? Through heat waves and hangovers, busted tires and blizzards, if there’s one thing I could be counted on for, it was that I always made the pickup when called, always went all out to get where I needed to go—God help the pedestrian who didn’t look both ways. Why do I feel like the guy who couldn’t get it up when the hottest girl in town finally gives him a chance? Could it be that somewhere along the line I developed a work ethic? A sense of professional pride? Do I actually have a job now?
Screw that noise.
Drink more coffee. What’s the problem? Is it the bills I can’t pay? Or that until I fell on my head again, I couldn’t recall yesterday’s delivery address, much the same way my father can’t remember how old he is or where he lives or how to drive a car? Could a couple of concussions cause the early onset of Alzheimer’s like it’s triggered my internal radio?
It’s a self-indulgent question, really, and one that serves no purpose other than to remind me that somewhere in my DNA the same fate as my father’s might be waiting for me, my memories destined to swirl that same dark drain, only to spit up chunks in no discernible order, the ghosts of my past released to walk the earth as if they’d never left.
Drink more coffee. Think positive. I dump the bills and deal them out into three piles. The phone company wants 142 dollars. The electric company has me down for three hundred and change, and UMass Boston’s registrar’s office, an equal-opportunity harasser, is demanding five figures while withholding credits.
I slip the electric and phone bills under my coffee cup, create a new pile for the rest, and wade in again until I come across a series of envelopes with only my name and loft number handwritten on the front. The first letter’s backdated to last month, essentially the warning shot across the bow. The second and third notes are a series of code violations brought to light by city inspections. The fourth is a signed and notarized eviction notice.
I dump everything back in my bag and give the Globe a couple of minutes, but the headlines alone are misery. Suicide bombers in Pakistan, death squads made up of moonlighting police officers in Brazil, the Midwest underwater, large swaths of California and Arizona in flames. Lacking any natural disaster, Massachusetts manufactures its own brand of calamity: a state lottery official indicted on charges of fixing winning scratch tickets, a director of public works arrested for selling road salt reserves, which led to deaths on icy roads.
Thankfully, last night’s Red Sox debacle had ended too late for the paper to record. Habit would have demanded I try to glean some insight from the loss, which, according to my father, is what we’re supposed to do with life’s bad beats—the sports pages are an ongoing lesson, much like listening to Etta or Ella or Billie singing the blues, something to be learned from, through tears if necessary, blood if it comes to that.
A steady parade of fit, well-dressed men come and go from the bakery, cruising each other shamelessly. Nobody lisps. Nobody calls anybody Mary or Miss Thang. I find my name in two column inches buried inside the Metro-Region section. Mercury Couriers gets a plug I don’t figure on adding to my business cards anytime soon. I flip pages, but there’s no follow-up to the Wells Fargo heist, no connections made to the money on the street or the Roxbury shooting, the paper empty as Mother Teresa’s rap sheet.
Darryl said I was off the hook for the fifty grand. So why am I having trouble letting it go? Because I’m a professional is why. And in my business, that means you pay and I deliver. So for starters, I cross the street to the doorway of the Union Park Laundry under a busted sign that once said WASH AND FOLD and now just says FOLD. Good advice in a poker game when the cards aren’t falling your way. Not particularly helpful as a life philosophy.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“Zesty, Zesty, please molest me.” Martha masticates loudly into the receiver. “Where the hell are you now?”
“Gee, I’m fine, Martha. And how are you?”
“Swamped. Gus is still a no-show, Owen’s hung over, and Damien said he got a flat and now he’s ignoring
his phone. Is anybody interested in working around here anymore?”
“Not me,” I say. “It’s Tuesday.”
“Oh yeah, sorry. Give your dad a kiss for me.”
“I will, but later. Zero’s got people who can hold the fort till then.”
“So you’ll make some runs?” Martha’s so hopeful she even stops chewing a second.
“I didn’t say that.”
“Great. So where are you?”
“Union Park Laundry, watching clothes go round and round.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
“You should see some of this underwear. I think they’re running some kind of stripper special.” I stick another quarter in the pay phone while Martha’s chewing is replaced by the hiss and pop of a bubble. Gum has long been a staple of Martha’s diet, but lately she’s taken to Swedish fish, which tend to leave little pieces of red jelly between her teeth, giving her rare smile a carnivorous look.
“Oh hey, before I forget, a couple of detectives were here yesterday asking all kinds of questions about you.”
“Black and white guys?”
“Like an interracial Mutt and Jeff. How’d you know that?”
“Been here, done me,” I say. “In a manner of speaking. What’d they want to know?”
“Like who handled the Black Hole account? What your schedule was, as if you had one, a complete list of your accounts.”
“They say why?”
“I didn’t ask, just assumed it had something to do with yesterday. By the way, you see the Herald this morning? You’re Boston’s most famous bike messenger. There’s a picture and everything.”
“That’ll be swell for business. Anything else?”
“I don’t know. They came at a bad time; the phones were jamming. Really I just wanted to get rid of them. They also asked where you hung out and who with.”
“And you told them?”
“What’s to tell? You’re a long-haired freak who likes to ride, smoke pot, and chill with other people who do the same.”
Bosstown Page 14
