“That’s a punishment?” I say.
“Are you kidding me? That’s like no notice, be on the red-eye to Wichita—somebody just reported seeing McKenna buying a six-pack of Budweiser in a town with two streetlights and a seed store every fifteen miles. Then it’s off to Cleveland for more of the same. That’s no kind of life. Only here’s the wrinkle. Lee put in for vacation a little more than two weeks ago, and here he is all tangled up in blue and way up our ass on this Wells Fargo thing. My guy actually asked me if I had a bead on him. They can’t even keep track of their own agents?”
“Lee’s chasing Devlin McKenna for a vacation?” I say.
“Different strokes,” Brill puts in. “Fifty ways to fuck your lover.”
“Been that kind of case,” Wells says. “One sad song after another. Lee maybe the saddest—one mistake, and his career’s circling the drain. And the impression I got, he was moving up the ladder when the chow-foon hit the fan.”
“Can you imagine? Lee’s out there seeing Devlin McKenna in everything, like it’s all one big conspiracy. He probably figures the only way he’s getting his career back on track is to nab Boston’s number one bad guy and do it on his own, because the bureau sure as shit isn’t in on it, and like I told you before, they’d prefer if McKenna stayed gone, a million miles away from Lee’s redemption fantasy. So unless you got something new for us, this looks like sayonara, Zesty, we’ll be in touch if we need you. Wish I could say it’s been fun, but ever since I met you, my tan’s faded and now I need new shoes. Any last words to remember you by?”
“Sorry I couldn’t be any more help?” I say, keeping Lee’s contact number and what I’m pretty sure is Darryl’s hideaway address to myself.
Lee might be a loose cannon, but if so, he’s a cannon with a radar attached to it. And as for Darryl, what can I say? He’s a shady cat, no doubt, but I don’t think he’s killed anybody, and I like playing ball and smoking weed with him, and where I come from, that just about makes us friends.
And in this town, a man can use all the friends he can get.
SIXTY
The entrance to Chinatown is flanked by a pair of enormous foo lions guarding a pagoda gate that faces toward the Paifang and Beach Street, where Will finds a parking spot to shoehorn the Bug as a maroon Cadillac slides by, trailing exhaust and bad parking karma.
The money is noticeably lighter now that Leila has taken her cut, but she could have taken more. Under the cover of the blanket, he consolidates what remains into one duffel bag, lifts it out, and places it between his feet at the curb. From his pocket Will pulls a few coins, gripping them between the joints of his fingers before sliding them into the meter, though he knows he’ll never drive this car again, the pile of tickets that will sprout on the windshield adding to the cliché of Boston décor. Diane has taught him well; he’s careful enough not to leave any prints on the coins or the meter appendage, which he twists with his knuckles, the purchased time popping up behind the curved glass window and providing Will a moment of uncalled-for bemusement as it hits him that what he’s doing, for Rachel Evans, for Diane, is exactly that: buying time as he calculates the next move.
Will picks up the bag and curses himself because while he’d been forced to factor Leila into the hand, he didn’t have time to read her play, couldn’t possibly know how tight a grip McKenna had on her. He’d assembled a puzzle of leveraged pieces, the whole only coming together on the outer edges, McKenna filling in the picture when the time was right for him, and Will realizes now that he had Leila all wrong, made her for a player content to come along for the ride, justify her inevitable losses with the caveat that, if nothing else, she’d played at the highest level, swum with the roughest of sharks.
Hell, he’d seen it before, the fish drawn to the current of the game, already inured to the fact that they’re bound to lose, that perhaps the game itself is rigged against them. Lady Luck’s orphaned children. After all, the entire ocean can’t be stocked entirely with sharks. Diane had warned him that Leila was possibly unstable; she had wanted bodies at the Harvard bombing, a message in blood. Diane managed to rig a miracle, the bomb detonating prematurely before the students filed in, the charred remains of a century-old lectern the only fatality.
This was where they had parted ways, Sparhawk effectively disbanded even before the smoke had cleared over Harvard Yard; Leila evading the FBI dragnet for years, something not even Diane had managed; McKenna, up to this point, true to his word, running interference with the feds. Only now as Will navigates the winding Chinatown streets does he realize that Leila is improvising recklessly, the revolutionary’s handbook replaced by something more selfish. So much for the commune, time to ditch those Che Guevara T-shirts.
So where does that leave him? Quite simply, playing catch-up in a game he’s always taken great pains to avoid, the wild card messing with the variables, creating a risk that leaves him now, like a rank amateur, praying on runner-runner.
Leila’s changed everything. Will’s liar’s eyes can’t help him in a place where all is black, where every face has turned to stone. The time for calculating odds in this new game has passed. This is the hand he’s been dealt. These are his cards. Now it’s only a matter of deciding just how much he’s willing to lose.
SIXTY-ONE
I stop at the front desk on the way out. Darcy has a box at her feet and paperwork the police either neglected or didn’t want spread out in front of her. At the edge of the desk is the black-and-white sketch the dishwasher drew, a shadow-faced figure with sunken eyes and high forehead. Wells is right, the drawing’s a work of art, the underlying message that it could be practically anybody, a composite blank caught in the strobe of a gunshot flash. I slide the copy into my pack without Darcy noticing. It’s just the two of us now, the remaining staff out filing unemployment claims or chasing down job interviews.
“What are all these?” I say to her.
Darcy keeps her eyes on the paperwork, her tongue working her cheek, contemplating curses. I’ve heard stories about Darcy’s tongue. Apparently she’s one of those gifted women who can tie a double knot in the stem of a cherry.
“Band contracts mostly,” she says finally. “Appearance obligations. I don’t even know why I’m going through them. There’s no company left, no deals. It’s all worthless shit.”
“Local bands?”
“Mostly.” Darcy looks up from the paperwork, her face a little sad. “There’re a few from New York, a couple from Europe. That one’s Gizzard’s contract. Talk about worthless. I’m gonna miss Gus.” Darcy takes a deep breath, tears welling and blackening to ink drops as they pick up her mascara.
“You know a lot about the local music scene, Darcy?”
“What?” A black tear drops with a loud click onto the paper. Darcy smudges eyeliner with the back of her wrist.
“I mean you’re always out going to shows, seeing new bands?”
“Yeah, so?”
“You know the business? Bookings, promotions, those sorts of things?”
“Hell, yeah.” Darcy wipes the contract ink, the black streak on paper a mirror reflection of her skidmark eyeliner. “I’ve been doing this stuff since I was sixteen. It’s all I ever really wanted to do. I can’t sing, and I don’t play an instrument.…” She trails off into a shrug.
“So?” I say.
“So what?”
“No more Black Hole, but there’re all these bands with no label and no valid contracts.”
“Yeah. And half of them I never would’ve signed in the first place.”
“Exactly my point. You’d know, right? And here you are, vacant office, nice address.”
“This street bites. I wouldn’t put my office here if you paid me.” Darcy smiles and looks at me with a fresh set of eyes. “You think I could do it, Zesty?”
“Who better?” I say.
“You really think Britta and Ray aren’t coming back?”
“I’d bet my life on it.” Britta cutting her losses, sma
rt enough to step away from the million dollars in blood money, and Ray most likely putting some distance from Darryl and Black Hole. “And anyway, it doesn’t seem like Ray knew what he was doing in the first place, does it?”
“I guess not. Listen, Zesty, I’m sorry I’ve been so mean to you. And thanks.”
“For what?”
“Giving me a new perspective on this. I’m not sure I would’ve come to it on my own.”
“I’m glad I could help. Usually I don’t get that sort of insight without a bong hit or two.”
“Yeah? We can do some of that.” Darcy tilts her razored bangs toward the lounge. “I don’t think the cops are coming back, and they didn’t confiscate the couches. You gonna answer your phone?”
No, something inside my shorts says.
“I think I have to.” I pull out the phone and look at the screen. Zero’s number flashes.
Darcy smiles at me, licks her lips.
“I’m sorry, I have to jet. I’ll call you soon, though, okay?” I bang through the glass doors, touching the screen as I go.
Zero says, “Tommy called in, thinks he spotted Dad in Chinatown near the Pagoda Gate. I’m on my way now.”
“I’ll meet you there.”
“No. Wait on Lee’s call. Where are you?”
“Back Bay. I can be there in, like, two minutes.”
“What I fuckin’ tell you? I’m on it. Jhochelle show you how to take pictures with that thing?”
“Yeah. What’s that noise?” I hear a loud crunch of metal, a chorus of horns and car alarms.
“Oh shit, Jeremy just took off somebody’s fender and—watch out!—almost killed one of your biking brethren.”
“In one of your trucks?” With ZERO’S ZEN MOVING plastered all over it.
“Hell no, that’s why I’m laughing. Jeremy boosted the Giants’s box delivery bus outta their yard. There’s gotta be, like, ten parked cars on Beacon Hill with purple paint scraped up their sides. That won’t be good for business. Left here! Listen, whatever Lee gives us, use the phone to take pictures. Of everything. You got that?”
“Find Dad,” I yell over the screech of brakes.
The phone goes black in my hand.
SIXTY-TWO
Will carries the money from Summer to Washington, Franklin to Arch, the morning rush hour congealed to a steady crawl, the sidewalks full of the daily paycheck grind. Would Will take this type of life now if given a choice?
What does it matter? His choices have brought him here to the expanse of the Summer Street Bridge and Fort Point Channel, the Boston Wharf sign shining in the cold, hard sunlight atop the rounded red brick curve of Melcher. He turns into the industrial canyon of the Leather District, Necco to Necco Place, skirting the bins beside the black box of the Channel, dead at this hour, cases of Bud and Miller empties stacked against the club’s side wall.
This isn’t the most private of places he’s chosen, but the symbolism works for him, and besides, it’s a place that’s barely changed in a hundred years. It will do. At this point, it’ll have to. Will’s already missed the rendezvous in Everett; McKenna and Ritter are undoubtedly out looking for him. He tamps the soft ground, pushes aside the condoms and Twinkie wrappers as a song takes hold inside his head, prompting him, despite the pain in his mouth, to move his lips and sing along:
Love those dirty waters,
Oh Boston you’re my home
No matter the Standells had been singing about the Charles River, an entirely different cesspool from this narrow industrial canal.
It’s a bit of a ways, but Will can see clear across the channel to Dorchester Avenue, which means he can be seen too, but that’s the risk he takes, coming here right under McKenna’s nose, more of his damned symbolism, South Boston, firmly in McKenna’s iron grip just a block down A Street. Still, the place is deserted; nobody wanders back here aside from the random drunk to piss in the polluted waters, Channel staff, groupies and bands to blow a joint or blow each other before or between sets. But it’s always dark, and nobody pays attention to the scenery; they’re more concerned with avoiding the long-tailed, red-eyed rats scurrying along the channel’s murky edge.
Will finds the hole easily, counting each step as he makes his way to where he’d dug it late last night before getting his butchered stitches—not the easiest thing to do bleeding all over the place, half his front teeth missing. But there it is, one hundred and eleven steps from the back of the club, already lined with black plastic trash bags, covered with garbage, undisturbed. The hole’s not too deep—it’s not like he dug a grave or anything—just big enough to drop the bag in, fold over the black plastic, and cover with his hands and feet, followed by the trash.
At the water’s edge, Will looks over the splintered piling lining the channel walls, holding back its poisoned muddy waters. They look like shit, but they’ve probably got another fifty years in them easy. What, somebody’s going to build something around here? Stuff a giant cork in Boston Harbor and sift through this toxic sludge? Be a scary thing if they dredge these waters, turn over this land. Better get ready for the Year of the Rat if they do. This place is fucking crawling with them.
SIXTY-THREE
Junior White’s has four customers as I wheel my bike through the door, two scruffy white guys in lightweight hoodies and headphones, an old man perusing the jazz section in a green jumpsuit with his name stitched over the front pocket, and a pretty college-age girl near the back door with a tiny backpack strung over her shoulders and a giant afro held high on her head with a bright orange headband.
Junior White does most of his business from what he refers to as Mount Never-Rest, an elevated platform where he can see the entire floor below him, his heavy-lidded stare more than enough to discourage any boosters from plying their trade in his store. Junior’s longtime manager, Seldon, is manning the counter, separating records from a stack and dusting them off with a rag. Seldon’s tall and wiry, and he’s wearing a white dust mask and disposable latex gloves for the task.
“Anything good?” I say to him.
“Got a couple old Ella discs and Prince’s first album that’s pretty fine, probably worth the price of the bundle. See what else shortly, but it don’t look promising.” Seldon wipes his brow with the back of his wrist. “Really, I don’t understand people. How can you have this here Chet Baker, then the rest of the shit’s Jody Watley, Kansas?”
“Eclectic,” I say, half saluting Junior at his perch.
“If you say so. You dropping something off?”
“I need to see Darryl,” I say.
“Who?”
The back door where the girl’s flipping albums is plastered with old Roxy showbills, a gray metal plate screwed in at the corners around the doorknob. It could be a storeroom, or it might lead to stairs, although there’s no exit sign as would be required by law.
“It’s a dust mask, Seldon, not earplugs.”
Seldon looks at me for a long moment, flicks his eyes up behind him. “Talk to Junior,” he says. “I don’t really care for your tone, Zesty.”
“Okay,” I say, heading for the back door instead. “Excuse me.” I edge past the girl and try the knob.
“Keisha!” Junior’s voice rumbles from his perch, and when I turn my head, the girl’s looking at me with hostile curiosity, her afro tilting to one side, a long-barrelled silver revolver in her hand, which she presses deep into my cheek like she’s trying to poke a hole through it.
“Keisha, no.” Junior shakes his head, motions to the two guys in headphones. The old man in the jumpsuit looks over with raised eyebrows but decides it’s none of his business and goes back to examining a Cannonball Adderley album.
“Girl,” I mumble, half my face bent out of shape by the gun, “please tell me you did not have that thing hidden in your hair.”
Junior reaches below his desk. The door clicks audibly, and Keisha opens it with the palm of her free hand, pushing me through with her foot into Cedrick’s thick embrace.
> “Ho, shit! Lookit what pussy dragged in. You know Zesty, Keisha?”
“How would I know this fool?” Keisha says.
“Zesty everywhere, girl. This muthafucka musta been cloned there so many of him. He a dangerous cat too. You done good.”
“That mean I get to shoot him?”
“Hell no! Take a ticket and wait in line like everybody else. And you best believe I got first dibs on that. Now, get your skinny ass back on the floor.”
In no particular order, Keisha looks disappointed and offended but does as she’s told.
“Nice to meet you,” I call after her. “And no worries, your ass isn’t all that skinny.”
“Fuck you, Casper.”
Cedrick laughs, pushes me against the wall and pats me down. “Keisha doesn’t like white boys lookin’ at her ass.”
“Oh good,” I say, turning around. “I thought it was just me. I’ll come back when I’m tan. I’m usually super dark by July.”
“Too bad you ain’t gonna make it to July, then.” Cedrick opens my bag, maintains a solid poker face looking at the money. “Get on up them stairs. End of the hall. Darryl waiting on you.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Second line of defense,” Cedrick says by way of explanation, pointing my way up. “And, Z, I meant what I told Keisha. You one slinky muthafucka. That was some nasty shit you slipped me the other day, had me tripping my damn head off near half the night, then lights out, nigga. You cook that up yourself?”
“No.”
“Yeah, well, whoever did be a damn genius. You get out this mess alive, you gonna hook a brotha up, right?”
Unreal.
The room where Darryl is waiting smells like a mixture of sweat, french fries, and machine oil from the arsenal spread out on a long table set up in front of Darryl’s hard leather club chair. Darryl might have been waiting on me, but that doesn’t mean he looks happy to see me. A half dozen sullen-faced teenagers take their cue from him, staring daggers from under the lids of their black “B” caps. Only Otis, greasing the chamber of a blue-gripped .38, looks content, but for all I know, he’s just won the I Get to Shoot Zesty lottery.
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