“Great job of reducing me to a stereotype, Martha.”
“Spare me. People put more revealing crap on their Myspace page. I tell it like it is.”
“Which is why I love you.”
“By the way, nice work leaving the bong out in plain sight.”
“Martha, how many times do I have to tell you that’s a water sculpture?”
“Right. That younger cop was super cute. I mean, for a cop. I wish he’d sniffed a little closer in my direction.”
“Why, so you could eat him?”
“Mmm, I would at that.”
“Anything else?”
“They seemed pretty curious about how much money you pulled in and how you got by on so few jobs.”
“Did you tell them by the skin of my teeth?”
“Something along those lines.”
“You gave up my accounts?”
“Roger that. What’ve you got to hide, right? I mean besides the Cullen account.”
The Cullen account is a buddy of mine who runs pot out of a loft in Jamaica Plain above the warehouse of Food Not Bombs, an organization that distributes food to the Boston area homeless. I don’t deliver large amounts for Dani, who’s by far my steadiest client, and I never see the goods because they’re already packaged when I pick them up, but I’m well aware of what I’m delivering, and, boy, are people happy to see me come walking through that door.
“Anyhow,” Martha says, “I left Dani off what I gave the detectives, so you can relax.”
“Good girl.” I mentally cross Dani’s name from the list of heads-up calls I have to make today. “Hey, just wondering, but the cops didn’t flash a warrant, did they?”
“They showed me their badges?” Martha says apologetically. “I guess I got kind of flustered, figured I had to give them something.”
Which is what they’d intended, though there wasn’t much Brill and Wells could have done to compel Martha to volunteer any information if she’d decided to clam up. Persuasion, my father preached to Zero and me from early on, has little to do with carrying any official emblem of authority. The badge is even a hindrance, he’d argue, because it is a symbol with too many negative associations for some people. My father espoused the need to read people individually, in and out of context and situation, not just listen to their words, because the words are often nothing more than distraction.
Focus. Eyes. Hands. How are they sitting or standing? It’s not so much the pitch that counts, it’s the delivery.
Other kids get the birds and the bees. Zero and I got winning poker. Except I realize now he wasn’t just talking cards.
“It’s no big deal, Martha. Anything else?”
“They asked a lot of questions about Gus too. And took his client list, which is way longer than yours, by the way.”
“But everyone knows my dick’s bigger.” Black Hole being Gus’s account, it makes sense they’re chasing down his angle. So why do I feel my pulse quickening, a fibrillating buzz through my veins?
“What’s going on, Zesty? Are you and Gus in some kind of trouble?”
“I can’t speak for Gus. Hold on.” I stick another quarter into the pay phone, spy a police cruiser idling at the curb. Keeping an eye on me? “So what kind of questions, specifically, about me and Gus?”
“I dunno, it seemed pretty vague—like, how would I characterize your relationship? I told them you weren’t his type.”
“What do you mean, type?”
“You know, like what type he’d be interested in if you swung both ways.”
“Hold up a second, Martha. You’re telling me Gus is bi?”
“It’s not like it’s some kind of secret.”
“It’s news to me.”
“Puh-lease. Tell me you’ve never heard ‘Do Me Two Ways’?” Martha, a huge Gizzard fan, starts singing into the receiver, the word “hole” featuring prominently in the vocals, though it wouldn’t surprise me if she was just spicing it up for my benefit. Somewhere out there fiber-optic cables are curling.
“And all this time I’ve been dialing one nine hundred for a cheap thrill,” I interrupt her. “But it’s just a song, Martha. You know for a fact Gus is bi? Like, all the power to him, it’s just he’s never really struck me as the type to—”
“What, suck dick? Or take it in the butt?”
“Well, both, actually. If you want to put it that way.”
“Well…” Martha’s mocking me, her voice dropping from hoarse to seductive. “How would you like me to put it, Zesty?”
“I think you put it fine, Martha.” What the hell?
“Mmm-hmm.”
Mmm-hmm? “Mmm-hmm what, Martha?”
“Mmm-hmm I’m getting wet, Zesty.” Martha’s breathing rises to prank call heavy, a cacophony of phones ringing unanswered in the background, the sound of jobs slipping through cracks.
“Oh, Christ, Martha!”
“Say something dirty, Zesty!”
“Martha, I’m in a fucking Laundromat! This is where people come to clean things!”
“Louder, baby, I’m touching myself. Tell me about the fucking Laundromat, Zesty! Tell me!”
Unbelievable.
The police cruiser lets out a whoop and peels out from the curb. I drop another quarter and dial Zero’s cell, but he doesn’t pick up. I recover a Herald from the trash outside and bring it back to the leopard-spotted bras, crotchless lace panties, and Day-Glo thongs tumbling through my reflection in the dryer’s porthole window. The Herald has me on page three, a headline writer’s dream:
SPECIAL DELIVERY: MESSENGER LOSES 20G AS GRIDLOCK BREAKS OUT ON BOYLSTON ST.
How the paper came up with that cash tally is beyond me. Maybe they talked to one of the looters and multiplied the take by the cars backed up to Copley Square. There’s not much more to the article other than what the Globe had reported, except for a picture of me being loaded into the ambulance.
“Do me a favor,” I say when Martha, exuding relaxation, picks up the line again.
“Anything, Zesty.”
“You have copies of those client lists you gave the detectives?”
“I can print them out for you.”
“I just need Gus’s.”
“Why?”
“Will you just do that for me, please?”
I have to wait on something crunchy before I get my answer, most likely chocolate-covered espresso beans—Martha prefers her caffeine in crunchable form. “Okay. Wait a sec, duty calls.”
I listen to Martha answer ringing phones, marking addresses and handing out wildly optimistic delivery-time estimates.
“Zesty? I just put some girl looking for Gus on hold.”
“So?”
“Do you want to work?”
“Not really,” I say, but then a thought occurs to me, as they sometimes do. “You recognize the number?”
“Not offhand.” Martha punches keys on her computer. “Okay. I’ve got Gus’s file up. No, the number’s not here.”
“She ask for Gus specifically?”
“Yep.”
“I’ll take it,” I say. “You think she’s seen Gus before?”
“How would I know?”
If the number was on file, it would qualify her as a regular account. And if the caller knows Gus outside of work, then she could have called him directly at his place on LaGrange or his cell. Maybe she already dialed those numbers and, getting no response, decided to try him at work.
“Is this Gus’s first call since yesterday morning?”
“Are you kidding? It’s been off the hook for him since yesterday when I sent you out. I even called Flash looking to get a bead on him, but they haven’t seen him either. I figured maybe he just turned his cell off for a bit.” Martha pauses to think things over. “It’s not like him to be gone so long.”
“Listen, Martha. Print up that list, and I’ll make the run, okay? If the girl’s upset it’s not him, I’ll tell her he’s out sick, and that’ll be the end of it.”
; “I don’t know, Zesty. What are you up to?”
“What am I up to? I’m up to my fucking ears in bills and staring down an eviction notice. Cut me some slack here. I make this run, get paid, then I check in with you. Tell you what, I’ll even sweeten the deal, throw something your way when I come in.”
“Yeah?” Martha’s receptive but a stickler for details. “Like what?”
Like what? Good question. “Like…” I hold the receiver at arm’s length, look around the deserted Laundromat. The dryer buzzes and takes a final spin, erotic feathers floating to the bottom of the cylinder. “Like panty heaven, baby,” I purr into the receiver. “Like panty fucking heaven.”
“Oh boy.”
TWENTY-NINE
That McKenna is not a card player, his black talents of a more forceful nature, is of small solace because what he possesses is the patience of a grinder, and the grinders are always dangerous because they believe with near-religious fervor that today’s the day they catch lightning in a bottle. McKenna having unearthed Diane’s identity shouldn’t come as such a shock, considering the sad fact that Diane’s former comrades had at times relied on criminal elements to arm themselves or purchase drugs, the undercurrency of every protest movement. The federales must have loved that catbird seat: Watch the crooks who sold to the kids, who bombed the buildings. Everybody in one big net.
So Will was in the game now.
And two months later, sitting in a high leather booth at Hunan Garden, overlooking the spill of neon over Central Square, McKenna deals out another hand; every card has something to say if he’ll just open up and listen.
“Now that you have your house in order, we can finally get down to business. Marriage does that for some men.”
“Does what?” Will says.
“Makes them more manageable, agreeable? Maybe it’s because now they realize they have somebody else they’re responsible for. Am I making myself clear?”
Will doesn’t answer, as women, their hair pinned with a spike of dark wood through the bun, bring steaming plates of food, which they set at the table’s center. Tea is poured into small cups with no handles, hot to the touch.
“Do you enjoy travel, Will?” McKenna works the chopsticks with surprisingly nimble fingers. There are deep red scrapes on his knuckles.
“Sure. Where’re we going?”
“Not we, boyo, only you.”
“Where am I going, then?”
“All over. It’s a big country; you’ll be seeing a lot of it.”
“Okay.” Will sips the scalding tea.
“That’s it?” McKenna peers over his chopsticks. “Just okay? No questions?”
“Doing what?” Will says, only because McKenna’s inviting the query.
“Investing in the future.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I don’t expect you to.” McKenna talks with his mouth full. “And anyhow, that’s not your job. You’re going to be putting my money away for me, William. Someplace safe.”
“Why?” Will puzzles aloud, groping to find an angle. “I mean, why me? Why don’t you do it yourself?”
“If only I could. But there are too many prying eyes on me, both the jackal and the hyena, you might say. Neither of whom I trust. It’s hard for me to get out of town unnoticed, much less to a restaurant for a civilized meal. As for you, William, you know everybody, but you also know—now—to keep your mouth shut. That lone mistake with the DiMasis is unlikely to happen again. Am I right, William?”
“Yes.”
“Am I a good judge of character? Do I have the right man for the job?”
“Yes,” Will says, like a man without traction, like a man falling backward. “You have the right man for the job.”
“Yes.” McKenna peers into Will’s black eyes. “I believe I do. Because what we have, what we’ve created, is a perfect symmetry of confidences, you might say. Your lovely Diane on one end, my interests on the other. As long as one is safe…? And just to be perfectly clear, William, the fact your wife isn’t rotting behind bars while she’s got a bun in the oven, isn’t getting gang-raped by a pack of up-county bull dykes, is my doing alone. Understand that, boyo. It’s not a matter of my friends knowing; it’s a matter of them choosing not to act on what they know.”
“The FBI,” Will says.
“Balance is everything.” McKenna holds a clump of white rice at the end of his chopsticks to illustrate his point. “Without balance, nobody eats.”
“I get it,” Will says.
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He understands McKenna perfectly. When you live in a house of cards, balance is everything. But also Will understands this: When you’re all in, when you’ve pushed every chip you have into the center of the table, there’s no turning back. And when you’re at your weakest, when you’ve lost the feel for the game, sometimes all in is the only play that’s left.
Will drinks the tea, even though it blisters his throat. It’s better that way. Something tells him he’ll need to build up a tolerance for pain, for scars.
“When do I start?”
THIRTY
Marlborough Street in the Back Bay is tree lined, and dominated by turn-of-the-century red brick town houses, which stand in relative architectural harmony with one another like soldiers at inspection. Two-thirty-one Marlborough is near the corner of Exeter Street, four stories high, with bowfront windows and arched doorways identical to its neighbor. A blue jay is standing guard on the rim of a scrolled iron birdbath, shaking down membership fees from the other neighborhood chirpies.
I flick water at him as I pass, get clicked into a tight marble lobby with a large chandelier dripping crystals from the ceiling, distracting the eye from the surveillance camera tucked in neatly above the doorway.
There’s no elevator. Boston’s older buildings rarely have them. Before the town house was chopped into condos, the butler climbed more steps than a Sherpa. I follow in his worn footsteps. The first-floor landing is dominated by a painting of a foxhunt spread across a green expanse of British countryside; on the second floor, a hunter takes aim at a flock of geese flying in formation overhead.
On the third floor, the girl who opens the door is very tall and ultra thin, dragging hard on a cigarette between lips as full as collagen implants will make them.
“You’re missing a painting.” I motion toward the blank square of off-colored wallpaper beside me. It had probably been something quaint, like a nice oil of the Boston Massacre.
“Yeah. It fell. I guess it’s in the frame shop.” The end-glow of her cigarette ignites green-tinted cat-eye contacts. She blows casual smoke past my shoulder, tucks stringy blond hair behind tiny ears. Her look is dirty and oily, but I’m pretty sure it’s just a look and probably an expensive one at that. “You’re Gus?”
I don’t contradict her, following as she leads me down a narrow hall into a bright living room that, despite the gleaming parquet floor, conveys all the comfort of a physics lab. There’s furniture to sit on, only it’s all hard angles and symmetry, glass, chrome, and plastics salvaged from a Superfund site. The television’s a razor blade mounted above a fireplace painted glossy white; the only decoration is a series of framed magazine covers featuring my host wearing even less than the slip she has on now, her large eyes making love to the camera. Evidently, she’s a master pouter, only the pictures are either airbrushed or old because her nose looks perfect, doesn’t have the same red raw puffiness her nostrils sport now.
“You want a glass of water or something?”
“No thanks. What’s so funny?”
The girl stifles a giggle, glancing toward the opposite end of the apartment, where I hear the muffled strains of tacky music that usually accompanies porn flick sex scenes. Don’t ask me how I know these things, I just do.
“Roommate?”
“Friends.” What sounds like live grunting starts backing up the waka-waka score. The girl takes another massive drag on her cigarette, holds up an index finger,
turns, and scampers down the hall. “He can hear you!” she shrieks into the room.
“So?” a man’s voice says. “Fuck him. Give him the goddamn money, and let’s par-tay!”
“Oh, ick!” The girl returns with a handful of cash. “Don’t look at those pictures! I look terrible.”
“You look fine,” I assure her. “Why does this one look familiar?”
“It was on a billboard in Kenmore Square. This month I’m in something for GQ. You read GQ?”
“Once in a while,” I lie, the truth being I get my magazines from a neighbor’s recycling bin and use them to line the litter box. I don’t know what it is, but I swear the cat shits better on pictures of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise.
“So, I don’t really know how this works.…” The girl touches the back of her hand to her red nose, the distraction of her cigarette gone. Or maybe it’s just dawned on her she’s practically naked in front of a man who looks like he’s been through a meat grinder. “I mean, like, Ray gave me your numbers?”
“Ray,” I say, alarm bells going off in my head, yesterday’s radio static igniting a signal in the distance, the room starting to blur.
“He said it was cool.” The girl starts chewing a fingernail.
“Ray?” I say again, but already have a good idea who she’s talking about. “From…?”
“Black Hole Vinyl? Omigod, I mean, he said it was cool! Fuck, I’m so sorry—”
“No, no worries. If it’s cool with Ray, right? You were at the party the other night?”
“On Newbury! Yes! You were there?”
“Just for a bit. You probably didn’t see me.”
She’s about to say something else when the sound of giggling picks up, followed by more of the tacky porn soundtrack. She lifts the back of her hand to her nose again, comes away with a small red dot, which she rubs onto the edge of her slip.
“So what do you need?” I say. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m kind of in a hurry.”
“Two eight balls. Is it any good?”
“I’m not in the advertising business, honey, the shit sells itself. It’s good enough for Ray.” I shrug, but the line doesn’t seem to inspire much confidence. Maybe Ray’s not such the connoisseur of blow I imagine him to be. I gauge what’s in her hand and shoot for the moon. “That’ll run you eight hundred.”
Bosstown Page 15
