When we get outside, the sun is beaming directly overhead, the glare off the sidewalk causing us to shade our eyes. “Man, look at this place. They can’t build shit fast enough. What’s with the bag?”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shift the money to my other shoulder.
“You own the building you live in, Zesty?”
“For Chrissakes, Sid, spit it out.”
“It’s your dad.” Sid squints painfully into the sunlight. “He’s gone missing.”
FIFTY-ONE
Change the game.
It’s hard for Will to veer from what he does best, but the cards he’s holding can’t get him out, no matter how well he plays them. See, the trick in this game is to get the mark to that warm fuzzy spot where, down to the marrow in his bones, he thinks he’s got everything all figured out.
Three years Will waited before switching locations on the first bundle of McKenna’s money, practicing what he preached, playing the long game. He had no doubt McKenna would check the early spots, double-verify the pictures and storage bills, the treasure maps and stash houses. He was too careful, too cunning not to, and Will knew he didn’t even trust Ritter enough to let him in on the retirement drive. There might be prying eyes on McKenna, but if he didn’t have the ability to go ghost once in a while, he would have been dead or in prison a long time ago.
So Will was forced to play it blind, odds or evens, heads or tails; it hardly mattered. Saint Paul. Oneonta. Glendale. Closer to home too. Orchard Beach. Montpelier. Why not? As far as Will is concerned, every dollar moved, hidden someplace else, is house money. Does Will believe in luck? No. What he believes is that McKenna will kill him and Diane whenever he decides the time has come. And in that he’s right. The time has come.
Change the game again.
FIFTY-TWO
Alzheimer’s is a losing disease, the car driving off to park itself on a different street, the keys turning to Mexican jumping beans, never where you left them last, your unlaced shoes a mystery to behold, like cracking Nazi code. The physical tells come next: hygiene, hair, the same clothes worn day after day. And then one morning a walk around the corner ends up as a picture on the back of a milk carton. Have you seen this man?
According to Sid, my father wandered off around the time Gus was killed on LaGrange, as sudden an ending to his life as my father’s drawn-out decline, Gus’s spirit—if you believe in such things—joining the walking ghost of my father beating bricks in pajama pants, a blue Gap sweatshirt and tennis sneakers with orthotics to ease his arch pain as his walk has turned into a flat-footed shuffle that quickly wears the bottom of his soles. If my father walked through a dirt field, you would swear they were laying train tracks behind him.
“You give all that to the Brookline police?”
“See, Zesty, here’s the thing.” Sid grimaces, tugs his walrus mustache with both hands. “My piece is missing.”
“Your piece?”
“My gun,” Sid explains.
“I know what a fucking piece is, Sid. What I wanna know is what you’re doing at my dad’s with a goddamn gun.” I feel awkward talking to Sid like this, not the least because he could snap me like a twig, but also because he’s my elder and someone I respect. Only nothing he’s telling me is coming off right.
“Just following orders, Z.”
Meaning Zero’s. Why Zero thinks Sid needs a hammer while caring for my dad totally eludes me. My father lived his whole adult life working a very thin margin, but those days are behind him now, maybe even forgotten. Did he have enemies, people who held grudges? It’s not unlikely; after all, somebody had to lose at my father’s poker games.
“Jesus. This is like a shitty country song. My dad’s crazy, and he’s got a gun.”
“And I don’t gotta tell you, it ain’t registered. Let’s just hope he keeps it out of sight.”
“Is it reliable, Sid? Loaded?” I don’t know why I hadn’t thought to ask that sooner. My own brain must be working at half speed, the first of its daily caffeine injections way past due.
“Course. What good’s an empty gun?”
“Right.”
“Hey, don’t get all fuckin’ pissy, Z. If you’re asking me does it got, like, a hair trigger or anything, the answer’s no. But it’s a solid piece.”
And my father knew where it was kept. Or did he just stumble across it?
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary, Sid? Anything that might have caused him to do something different, out of his routine? Was he worked up over anything?”
“We was watching Rounders again, just like when you stopped by.” Sid stops to think, makes a face like he’s cracking a safe. “He got another crank call late, after I put the movie on. That same dead-air motherfucker I was telling you about, only this time he’s yapping. Wants to speak to your dad. After I told him again how I was gonna fuck him up, I finally let him know your dad has Alzheimer’s, but he didn’t care, said your pops would remember him.”
“You put him on?”
“I figured one time, so the prick would finally get he’s wasting his breath. Only your pops just stood there listening and then we went back to watching the movie.”
“And you got no idea who this guy is, Sid?”
“Not a fucking clue, Z. You ask me, maybe he’s a little touched himself, got his own wires crossed.”
“Why do you say that?”
“On account of I could hear the fucker, and all he kept saying was ‘I want my fucking money. Bring me my fucking money.’ Over and over. Fuckin’ loon probably thinks he’s calling his broker at Morgan Stanley.”
“And my dad didn’t say anything?”
“Well, nothin’ that makes sense. Something about channel eleven.”
“And…?”
“The fuck hung up, and that was that. Only your dad kept saying it, channel eleven. So I change the channel to eleven.” Sid laughs and pokes me lightly in the chest. “And your dad, he almost bites my head off. Fuckin’ Matt Damon.”
FIFTY-THREE
The men who have clocked long hours in my brother’s employ, meaning those who’ve resisted their recidivist tendencies—the thrill of the caper, the call of the gun—walk as if they’ve taken a Cro-Magnon step backward on the evolutionary chart. There’s a stoop to their shoulders as if they’re bracing for a body shot to the kidneys, as if their spines have been compressed, not so much by the weight of the world as the weight of their collective hauling—narrow staircases, awkward life turns.
As Charlie pointed out, with the police it shows in the way they carry themselves, though I can read it just as clearly in their cynical eyes and downturned mouths. With the men and women who ride a desk and computer, log too many hours in hotel and airport lounges, it’s their flattened rear ends and outsized bellies that tell their stories, limited range of motion, aching backs, carpal tunnel hands. My point being, you do something long enough, eventually the job becomes you; the body is the work.
For the man sitting in the client chair across from Jhochelle, it’s the orator’s posture and chalk-white mane, on its own looking capable of spinning a compelling argument to a skeptical jury. Plus, I’ve seen a handful of Andrew Tetter’s press clippings over the years, so there’s that.
“Where’s Zero?” I ignore Leila Markovich’s celebrity defense lawyer as he pulls himself to his feet with some difficulty.
Jhochelle blinks, taking in my new haircut, bending her words around me when she speaks. “Sydney, would you be so kind as to get us all some coffees?”
“Sydney?” I crane to look at Sid behind me grinning like a starstruck tourist. Jhochelle has that effect on men. Lithe and dangerous in camouflage pants and an army green T-shirt, she’s olive skinned, of Yemenite descent; a pinup girl of the Mediterranean who can assemble an Uzi with her eyes closed. Who could want anything more from a girlfriend?
“Watch your mouth,” Sid warns me with a raised finger.
“Zero’s downtown,” Jhochelle says, impatiently. �
��Zesty, this is—”
“Sid told me Zero was out looking for Dad.”
“He is. Sydney, those coffees please?”
“Screw the coffees.” I can’t believe I just said that. “This is bullshit. Listen, counselor, leave a card. Now’s not the time for whatever you’re selling.”
“You know who I am?” Andrew Tetter lets drop the hand I neglected to shake. For someone who must be on the far side of seventy, he’s still a big man, his age showing mostly in his thin legs, which seem to cause him pain as he straightens them.
“Yeah. Give your press secretary a raise. What’s Zero’s plan? Where’re the crews looking?”
“Sydney?” Jhochelle sighs heavily, and Sid grabs me hard by my shirt collar and wraps me in a cobra embrace, his tree-trunk arms making even Cedrick’s outsized guns look like kindling.
“You’ll have to forgive the kid, Mr. Tetter. I don’t think he’s had his bong hit this morning.”
“Now is the time for listening, Zesty.” Jhochelle fixes me with sniper eyes. “Which means with your mouth closed. Our guest can explain just about everything you need to know if, by some miracle, you manage to hold your tongue for a couple of minutes. Do you think you’re capable of doing that, so we can discuss what needs to be done, or are you just content with making a scene?”
“I’ll shut up,” I say. “But I want Sid to hold me. He smells like Aqua Velva, and I like it.”
Sid plants a rough kiss on my cheek and pushes me away.
“Nu, first order of business.” Jhochelle rolls an empty seat beside her, motions for me to sit. “Your brother is downtown, as I’ve said, ostensibly to enlist other resources that might aid our search for your father.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, resources?”
“Just that. Figure the rest out yourself.”
“A bunch of fucking crooks,” I say.
“My, what an imagination you have. Mr. Tetter, would you be so kind as to update Zesty on what is occurring?”
“Certainly. First off, Zesty, you need to understand everybody in this room wants the same thing, to find your father before any harm comes to him. But his disappearance is far more complicated than you suspect.”
“How?”
“You know your father is armed?”
“Yeah, armed and forgetful, great combo.”
“How forgetful?”
“What?”
“Has he ever, to your knowledge, fired a gun before?”
“Jhochelle, counselor, what the fuck is this crap? Just get to the point so I can get out there and look for him.”
“And where would you look for him?” Tetter abandons any effort to keep the frustration from his voice, probably unaccustomed to being interrupted by anything less than somebody in a dark robe banging a gavel. “Is there someplace specific you would go to find him? Someplace he’s talked about returning to?”
“No.”
“So listen, then. And answer the questions that are asked of you. Has your father ever used a gun before?”
“Not as far as I know. That a good thing or bad?”
“Hopefully we won’t have to find out. Here’s the short of it, Zesty, since you’re in such a hurry: Your father is indeed missing, only I’m not so certain he’s just wandering around aimlessly.”
“Then you don’t know shit, counselor.” I spring to my feet. “And you’re wasting our time. My dad’s got Alzheimer’s in the worst fucking way. He doesn’t even know what year it is, let alone day. The world we live in, those streets out there, none of it’s there for him anymore, you understand that? It doesn’t exist. For Chrissake, he has conversations with people who’ve been dead for thirty years. He’s lost.”
“No, I don’t think so.” Andrew Tetter’s deeply lined face is painted with a smile that’s so kind, so understanding, all I want to do is rip into it with my fists.
“Your father may be out of time perhaps, but I’m not convinced he’s entirely lost. And though I can’t say for certain I know exactly where it is he’s heading, I’m reasonably sure I know who he’s looking for and what he expects to find.”
“So that’s a good thing,” I say.
“No,” Andrew Tetter says, shedding his lawyerly demeanor and shaking his head. “It’s the worst fucking thing possible.”
FIFTY-FOUR
These are the questions Will asks himself now: What is that weight in his pocket throwing his step off balance? When did he become invisible, people walking through him as if he didn’t exist? Where is he? The psychedelic CITGO sign, a triangular beacon, points him toward Commonwealth Avenue, helps him find his bearings toward the South End. Warren Avenue … Columbus Avenue …
Home … Zero smiling at him beside the bed, Zesty still asleep.
“Why are you crying, Daddy?”
“Am I crying?”
“Are you scared?”
“Yes, I’m scared.”
“Of what?”
“It doesn’t matter, but it’s okay to be scared. As long as you’re ready for what’s next, scared is good. Scared will keep you on your toes.”
Devlin McKenna helps. He doesn’t make it right, of course, but he makes it real when it dawns on him that Diane will not be acting in this snuff film he’s directing. McKenna’s rage helps, because it is Will’s rage too that McKenna is channeling as he smashes Will’s front teeth with a cut-off length of pipe, the pain only coming as the electric air rushes in to hit the exposed nerves dangling like loose wire from Will’s gums. The blood helps too, because there has to be a price to pay for something that hurts so deep beneath the surface; something has to show, and when the pipe rips Will’s jaw so wide he can actually feel his bottom teeth jutting through the hole, through the gushing red, he thinks to himself, Yes, this feels about right. This will serve as a reminder every time he looks in the mirror, every day his tongue finds this raised worm of flesh. This he will never forget. This scar will be his gift.
And the beauty of it all is on that very next October day, the pain helps him focus as he sits idling in front of Bank of Boston, the lipstick of a drunken clown smeared on his swollen face. Glance in the mirror: At least he shaved before the beating, but don’t kid yourself; even without the bruises and swelling, Will does not make a pretty woman.
FIFTY-FIVE
“Perhaps the best way to start is by explaining Leila Markovich’s parole to you.” Andrew Tetter regains some flexibility in his legs moving about the office. Like me, he’s more comfortable when he’s on the go.
“I read the Globe article a couple days ago.”
“Then you know her initial appeal was rejected, only to be reversed weeks later.”
“Pissing off the governor.”
“By all appearances. Which is the public face one would expect him to display considering the difficult position he finds himself in, eyeing a run for the senate next year. Only, it was the governor himself who ordered the board to grant Leila’s early release. All the Sturm und Drang about a recission hearing was nothing but smoke to feed the media and sate the public outrage. There will be no hearing, mark my words. The board sits at the governor’s pleasure; you think they’d actually buck him on such a high-profile prisoner, a former self-declared enemy of the state?”
“Why should I be interested in this?”
“Because it’s more than local politics I’m explaining to you.”
“Then I don’t get it. What does Leila Markovich’s parole have to do with my dad?”
“You’ve met Agent Lee of the FBI?”
“Yeah. So has Zero. But what he’s dealing with has nothing to do with my father. It’s a completely different mess.”
“Or one that’s spilled into the other. Agent Lee is not quite what he appears to be, and from what I can tell from my discussion with your brother, he has vastly misrepresented himself.”
“He’s not FBI?” My temples start to throb, either caffeine withdrawal or my internal DJ angling for a return to the airwaves.
“No, he’s a legitimate FBI agent. But in many ways he is also a radical quite in the vein of other radicals Ms. Markovich has associated with and whom I have, in the past, represented. By which I mean that Lee, if you haven’t deduced this on your own, is a fanatic of the most dangerous sort. Dangerous in part because he is resourceful, yes, but mostly because his obsession runs so deep it has obliterated every other aspect of his life, to the point where it has compromised his judgment.”
“You sure we’re talking about the same Lee? The guy I met looks like an accountant.”
“Yes. On the surface, to look at him, Lee is all glide. He appears to function as a bureaucratic cog within his organization, but he burns with a fever that, at the very least, will cost him what remains of his career.”
“Really? I know a couple of homicide cops who’d tell you his only problem is he’s got a Devlin McKenna fixation.”
“I would argue that ‘fixation’ understates Lee’s pursuits. Though Leila would be the last to complain, seeing how he is solely responsible for the parole board’s turnaround and her release.”
“How?” Jhochelle pipes in from behind the desk, caressing a cigarette without lighting it. “How does an FBI agent who seems to be chasing the tail of a ghost influence the governor of Massachusetts to override his own appointed board and release a convicted murderer? I don’t mean to echo Zesty’s impatience counselor, but could you get to the fucking point already?”
“But I have, my dear. Agent Lee is the point. In his dogged pursuit of Devlin McKenna, it appears Lee has gotten ahold of sensitive documents belonging to the bureau. Documents that would prove damaging to the FBI and therefore the governor’s national ambitions if made public.”
“Gotten ahold being a euphemism for, what, stolen?”
“So it seems.”
“And you know this because?”
“Lee contacted me prior to Leila’s second hearing and informed me he was in possession of these documents. He told me what the outcome of Leila’s second parole hearing would be if I called for one.”
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