Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  He arrived a few minutes early at the liquor store out of which Whitey ran his business. The lights were off. He went to the front door and pushed. It was locked. He looked around and walked to the back of the building. As he approached he could see that the back door was cracked open ever so slightly. He pulled it open half a foot.

  “Mr. Bulger?” he called out softly.

  “In here,” came a voice.

  Devon thought he would throw up. He could see nothing but darkness inside, and he assumed his life was over. He hesitated.

  “Get the fuck in here,” the voice said.

  Devon took a deep breath and stepped into the building. He’d passed up whatever chance he’d had to run. “Where are you?” he asked into the darkness.

  “Back here. Storage room.”

  Devon moved slowly, his hands feeling for danger out in front of him. After a moment he caught the dim shadow cast by a small light toward the back of the storage area. He walked toward the light, feeling slightly more sure-footed as he got closer and the light gave him a better sense of the room. When he got to the door, he pushed it open.

  Bulger was there. There was a table in the center of the room, and on the table was a large wooden packing crate. “I need your help movin’ this,” Bulger said.

  Devon looked around, expecting to see someone else from Bulger’s crew. It was just the two of them, though. “Sure thing, Mr. Bulger,” Devon said. “Where to? The other room?”

  Bulger shook his head. “I got a truck outside,” he said.

  “Oh,” Devon said. “Sure. No problem.”

  The crate was lighter than Devon had expected. It was a two-man job, but not a strenuous one. The truck outside was a custom van. It had thick brown shag carpeting on the inside and little round bubble windows on the back end. It was the kind of a van Devon had always wanted growing up—the kind guys from the neighborhood got laid in.

  He and Bulger loaded the crate into the back and closed the rear doors. “Get in,” Bulger said. He tossed Devon the keys. “You drive.”

  Devon climbed into the driver’s seat; Whitey sat next to him. He started the engine and let it idle for a moment. “Where’re we goin’?”

  “Charlestown.” Whitey wasn’t looking at him; he was looking out the window, scanning the parking lot from every angle, looking in the rearview mirror to see if anything was moving. Devon had never seen him nervous before. It didn’t do anything to put Devon at ease. He put the van in gear and pulled out.

  Under other circumstances, the drive might have been pleasant. The temperature hovered in the high twenties, and light flurries drifted weightless through the beams cast by the headlights. A thin layer of snow had cleansed the city earlier in the day, and it had remained cold enough for the snow to stick. As Devon crossed through Southie and into Boston, he hesitated. “Which way you wanna go?”

  “Charlestown Bridge,” Bulger replied.

  Devon nodded and took the right onto Atlantic, then followed it around, peeling off onto Surface Road, which followed the shadow of the raised highway that separated downtown Boston from the North End, onto North Washington to the four-lane bridge that crossed into the southeastern part of Charlestown. At the far end of the bridge there was a light. “Take Chelsea Street,” Bulger ordered.

  Devon turned and headed north, through Charlestown on the eastern part of town. The place glowed with the holiday season, colored lights warming the street scene through brownstone windows. To the right was the Navy Yard, with its virgin luxury condos; to the left was the flat below Monument Square, with its redeveloped brownstones, their roof decks proclaiming the city’s recent gentrification. With the snow, it looked as though they might have traveled through time to be cruising through the place fifty years earlier.

  Chelsea Street quickly fell into the night shadows of the Mystic River Bridge, which towered over the water, headed to Chelsea, where LNG stations and industrial smokestacks dominated the landscape. To the right, the Navy Yard withered away to shoreline, and to the left, the refurbished town houses gave way to battered housing projects. The contrast as they headed north was striking.

  Chelsea Street crossed the Little Mystic Channel and turned into Terminal Street at the water’s edge out on Mystic Wharf, a twenty-acre chunk of landfill where Boston’s Public Works Department stored its vehicles. The place was covered in concrete and jutted out from the mainland into the Mystic River. Thousands upon thousands of ghostly vehicles lined up in an endless parking lot. It was a wasteland, with only a few buildings squatting fat and ugly at the edge of the river.

  “I’ll tell you when to stop,” Bulger said as they approached the western end of the mammoth wharf. “Turn in here, to the right.”

  Devon turned through a gate. There were two visible buildings, low and long, running perpendicular to the river. A faded sign on one read “Charlestown Self-Storage.” “Around back,” Bulger said.

  They wound around onto a narrow driveway out back that hairpinned by the edge of the water, following the back of the building to a narrow drive in between the two structures. Halfway down, Bulger said, “Park here.”

  Devon stopped the van.

  “Get out.”

  Devon did as he was told; Bulger followed. He looked around nervously as he walked to the back of the van and opened it up. The two of them leaned in and grabbed hold of the crate, hoisted it up, and carried it toward the only door Devon could see. Once there, they set it down and Bulger took out a key. He opened the door and held it with his foot while the two of them moved the crate inside. Then he let the door slam, and they were swallowed up in darkness so complete Devon wondered for a moment whether he was dead. He felt around with his hand on the wall and found a switch, flipping it. A jaundiced light flickered on. “Turn the fuckin’ light off,” Bulger hissed. Devon looked at him, confused, but turned the light off. A moment later, Bulger flipped on a flashlight and slipped it under his arm. It was a weak light, creating little more than gray shadows, but it was enough for them to maneuver down the long, narrow passage. “Down at the end,” Bulger said, and the two of them walked jerkily down the hallway.

  There was little that Devon could see, but then he was pretty sure he wasn’t missing much. Narrow blue sliding doors lined the hallway, each of them lonely and silent. They reminded Devon of prison cells stacked up side by side; a mausoleum of solitary confinement, the screams of the occupants silenced and forgotten.

  When they arrived at the end of the hallway they put the crate down and Bulger used his flashlight to locate another key and unlock the door. He reached down and grabbed hold of the handle at the bottom of the door, sliding it open. Motioning to Devon, he picked up one end of the crate again, carried it inside the little storage room, and then pulled the door down behind them.

  The room couldn’t have been more than six by ten, only slightly bigger than a jail cell, and it had no ventilation, no insulation. Devon could see their breath as they exhaled, caught in the weak light still cast by Bulger’s flashlight. In the center of the room stood a narrow wooden box, about five feet tall, eight feet long, and three feet wide. Devon’s first thought was that it resembled a coffin.

  Bulger opened the door to the box from one end; it had a metal clasp that held a swinging door closed. Devon had never seen anything like it. The interior was lined with a rich, luxurious cloth. It looked like silk, but a deeper silk than he’d ever seen. “What’s that?” he asked.

  “Mind your fuckin’ business,” Bulger said. “There’s a hammer in the van. Get it, and get the fuckin’ crate open.”

  Devon did as he was told. It took a few minutes for him to pry off the lid to the crate, but once he did, he could hardly believe his eyes. There, inside the crate, were all of the paintings and drawings he and the Irishman had taken from the Gardner Museum years before. “Holy fuck,” Devon said.

  “You ain’t kiddin’,” Bulger agreed.

  The last time Devon had seen the paintings they were rolled up and piled on a
table at the auto body shop. Now they were mounted on wood, and they looked well cared for.

  “I thought the Irishman paid you for these,” Devon said.

  “He did. We’ve tried twice to move them out of the country, but there’s still too much fuckin’ heat. I’m holding them for our friends until it’s safe. In the meantime, we gotta take care of them. You don’t stretch ’em out, and they crack,” Bulger said. “This box is like a humidor; it’ll keep out the moisture and protect ’em. These things get ruined and they’re fuckin’ worthless.”

  “Where’d you get it?”

  “I know a guy,” Bulger replied. “I had him make it. That’s all you need to fuckin’ know. Now hand them in to me, one at a time.”

  It took just a few minutes for them to transfer the paintings to the box. Bulger closed the door and latched it.

  Bulger turned to Devon. He had his knife in one hand and a set of the keys to the storage facility in the other. The knife turned menacingly in his hand. “There are three sets of keys to this place,” he said. He tossed the key in his hand to Devon. “Now you got one, and I got one.”

  “What about the third?”

  “You don’t need to worry about the third,” Bulger said. Without warning, he reached out and grabbed Devon by the throat, pushing him into the wall. “You even think about fuckin’ me on this, and I’ll do things you can’t even imagine, you got that?” He held the knife less than an inch away fron Devon’s right eye. “I’m more serious than you’ll ever fuckin’ know.”

  “I don’t understand,” Devon said. “Why do I need the key?”

  “Because if I’m not around, someone’s got to get our Irish friends their shit if they show up lookin’ for it.”

  “What about the other guy?”

  Bulger laughed. “He’s not in a position to help out our friends.” He turned serious again. “Three of us,” he said. “That’s all there is that know about this place. And I know the other guy ain’t gonna fuckin’ cross me; so if this shit disappears, you’re the only guy I’m comin’ after.”

  “I wouldn’t fuck you,” Devon said.

  Bulger kept the knife where it was for another minute. Then he pulled it back and put it away in its sheath. “Good,” he said. “Now help me get this fuckin’ crate back to the van.”

  Devon started helping with the crate. “Why me?” Devon asked after a moment.

  Bulger laughed. “I don’t trust nobody who isn’t scared shitless of me,” he said. “Some other guys, they might think they could take me. They might think, if things ain’t goin’ my way, that’s their chance. You ain’t gonna think that way no matter what happens, are you?”

  Devon looked down. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not, Mr. Bulger.”

  Bulger looked at him and smiled. “I told you once before, call me Jimmy,” he said.

  Bulger dropped Devon off back at his apartment and peeled away. Devon never saw him again. A day later, rumors began to spread that the Justice Department had obtained sealed indictments against Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang. Bulger himself was tipped off by his FBI handlers and slipped away before he could be arrested. In the fifteen years since, no one ever called on Devon to get the paintings.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Devon finished telling them everything. They were sitting in the living room. Devon was on the battered, fraying sofa, his shoulders sunken. Finn was sitting on a plain wooden chair, looking at him. Kozlowski was standing against a wall.

  “You made the offer to sell the paintings,” Finn said.

  Devon nodded. “Two weeks ago. I went to the self-storage place. I took the paintings out and took pictures of them, and I scraped a few flecks of paint off two of them so I had the proof. I put them back where they were. Then I put the word out that they could be bought.”

  “And you were the one who called the cops to tip them off about the job you were doing at Gilberacci’s. You wanted to get arrested.”

  He nodded again. “I didn’t know what the fuck to do,” he said. “When I started this, I thought Bulger was the only worry, and I figured it was worth the risk, ’cause there’s no fuckin’ way he was coming back now. But after I put the word out about the paintings, I started hearing talk about some Irish guy coming to town to look for them. I figured it had to be the guy. I knew him nineteen years ago—knew what a sick fuck he was. I panicked. I figured the safest place for me was in jail, and I knew you’d be able to get me out eventually when things calmed down. It seemed like the only thing to do.”

  “Not only that, but you knew with us working for you, you could find out what was going on. You sent us out to find out whether Murphy and Ballick had been killed, so you’d know whether the rumors you heard were true.”

  “I did it for Sally,” Devon said. “To keep her safe.”

  “Good thinkin’,” Kozlowski said.

  “Fuck you!” Devon yelled. “What was I supposed to do? I was sittin’ on more money than any of us have ever seen! I wasn’t givin’ that up without a fuckin’ fight!”

  “How much are you asking for them?” Kozlowski asked.

  “Twenty-five million.”

  “A bargain for art worth half a billion,” Finn said.

  “I’m not greedy,” Devon said.

  “No,” Finn said. “Just stupid.”

  Devon looked down. “Yeah. Just stupid.”

  Finn rubbed his face. “Why?” he asked. “You kept it quiet for eighteen years. Why risk it all now?”

  “I never had a daughter before,” Devon said. “She deserves better than what I can do for her. She’s so fuckin’ smart, y’know? She could be anything if she got the chance. She’s the only thing in my life I’ve done that’s any good. I wanted to do right by her.”

  “Well, now you’re gonna have the chance. You’re gonna give up the paintings to get her back.”

  Devon shook his head. “I’ll give myself up to get her back. The paintings are hers. She keeps them. At least she can get the reward for them; that’s five million. That’s more than I could ever give her. It’s more than I’m worth.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Devon,” Finn said. “She needs a father more than she needs five million dollars.”

  Devon looked up at him and laughed. “You been watching too many fuckin’ after-school specials, Finn,” he said. “I’m a piece of shit. She’d be better off without me. That’s not self-fuckin’-pity, I know what I’m talkin’ about. With money like that, she can start a life. A real life. Not the gettin’-by shit I can give her.”

  “You may be right,” Kozlowski said. “She may be better off without you. I don’t know. I do know that it doesn’t matter, though; we’re giving him the paintings.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s the only way to keep her safe.”

  Devon looked confused. “I don’t understand.”

  “Koz is right,” Finn said. “Shit, Devon, you’ll end up telling Kilbranish where the paintings are anyways; he’ll get it out of you.”

  Devon shook his head. “I can take the pain. I won’t tell him shit.”

  “Oh, Jesus, Devon, think about it! You couldn’t keep from telling us after I blew you a fuckin’ kiss. You really think you’re gonna stand up to what this psycho will do to you? You’ll promise to tell him if he promises not to hurt Sally, and he’ll promise. And then, you know what? He’ll kill her anyway, just to cut the trail off. Even if you somehow manage to keep you mouth shut as he slices your nuts off—and you won’t—you think that’ll end this for him? You think he’s gonna pack his shit up and head back to Ireland humming a happy fuckin’ tune? No, he’ll go after Sally just to find out if she knows anything. Then he’ll come after me, and he’ll come after Koz, and he’ll come after Lissa on the chance that you’ve told us something—which, by the way, you have.”

  “I’ve got enough to do in my life,” Kozlowski said. “I don’t need to spend my time hunting down some whacked-out leprechaun just to protect my people.”

  The
realization spread over Devon’s face. “But then Sally has nothing!” he cried, in agony. “She’ll have shit!”

  “She’ll have you,” Finn said.

  “Same fuckin’ thing.” He was sobbing now. His head was down and his shoulders were shaking silently.

  “Maybe,” Kozlowski said. “But it’ll have to do. It beats being dead.”

  No one said a word for a few moments, and Devon’s silent outburst died down. Finally, he pulled his hands away from his face. “Okay,” he said. “Okay, we’ll do it your way. How do we do it?”

  Finn and Kozlowski looked at each other. “First,” Finn said, “we wait for Kilbranish’s call. He said he was calling at six. Then we set up a meeting to trade the paintings for Sally.”

  Special Agent Hewitt was parked on Devon Malley’s street, facing east. He’d been tailing the lawyer all day. He followed him to court and ducked down in the back of the courtroom during the bail hearing. He watched as Finn, Malley, and Kozlowski went to pick up the other car, and he followed them to Southie.

  He got Devon’s name off the courtroom schedule and called it in to Porter, who was back at the office. “I’ll run him through the computer,” Porter said. Twenty minutes later, Porter called back. “He’s a thief,” he reported. “Small-time, but he had some connections back in the day with Murphy. The apartment they’re in is his.”

  “He could be our guy,” Hewitt said.

  “Could be,” Porter replied. “Something’s going down.”

  “Feels that way, doesn’t it? Word at the courthouse was that the lawyer pulled some strings to get this guy’s bail hearing scheduled early. No reason for the hurry unless something’s happening.”

  “Have you got GPS with you?”

  “Yeah. I was afraid they might just be stopping off for a second, but from the look of things, they may be here for a while. The car’s a little way down the street from the apartment. Could be tricky, but I think I can handle it.”