Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  Finn could hear the sirens whining in the distance. They sounded too far away. Sally was still unconscious, but she was breathing steadily on her own now. Kozlowski had bundled his jacket into a pillow and put it under her head, and he’d pulled a blanket out of his car and spread it over her.

  There seemed to be less they could do for Devon. Finn had started to put pressure on the wound in the chest, but after a moment he realized that the bullet had gone through the body, and Devon was bleeding out of his back as well. The black-red stain underneath him grew endlessly, and Finn could see him slipping away. “Hold on,” he said. “You’re gonna be okay.” Finn couldn’t imagine words less convincing, but he said them anyway.

  Devon nodded. “I’ll be okay.” His voice was little more than a whisper. He turned his head so he could see his daughter, lying a few yards away. “She’s fine,” Finn said. “She’s gonna be fine.”

  Devon gave a weak smile. “She’s a piece of fuckin’ business,” he said. “I wish I coulda done better for her.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Finn said. “You can do more when this is over.”

  “From Walpole, or the fuckin’ grave? I’m goin’ away any way you look at it. We both know it.”

  “Shut up,” Finn said. “You hired a miracle worker, remember?”

  “I did that,” Devon said. “Thanks. I got one more favor.” He coughed, and a thin sliver of blood ran down his chin from the corner of his mouth.

  “Sure,” Finn said. “Whatever you need.”

  “Make sure Sally’s taken care of. Make sure they put her someplace good. Maybe look in on her every once in a while. She gets the right chances, I swear to fuckin’ God, she could do something with her life. She could be good at something.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Finn said. “I’ll make sure she’s okay.”

  “I got your word?”

  “You’ve got my word.”

  Devon looked back at his daughter. He seemed to relax. “It’s not that bad,” he said. “It doesn’t even hurt.” For just a moment, he looked at peace. Then the peace was shattered.

  “Where are they!”

  Finn looked over and he could see Porter running toward them, Hewitt following closely behind. “Where the hell are they!” Porter yelled again. He seemed dislodged. His eyes were wheeling, darting from Stone and Sanchez to Kozlowski to Finn. Finally his gaze settled on Devon. “You’re the guy? You’re Malley?”

  Devon said nothing.

  “Where are they?” Porter screamed. “Where are the goddamned paintings?”

  Devon looked confused. “They’re in the box,” he said.

  “They’re not! The box is empty!” Porter went to Devon and pushed Finn aside. He reached down and grabbed Devon’s shirt. “Where are they? Tell me!”

  Finn stood and grabbed Porter’s hands, pulling them away. “What the fuck are you doing?” he yelled. “He’s been shot.” He was ready to throw a punch, but Hewitt stepped in, pushing him back.

  “Let it go,” Hewitt said to Porter.

  “He knows!” Porter screamed. “He knows where they are!” He started toward Devon again, but Hewitt held him back.

  “Not now,” Hewitt said. “Let it go.”

  Finn bent down again. Devon’s breathing was shallower. “Take it easy, Devon.”

  “They were there,” Devon said. Finn had to lean in to hear him. “I pulled them out less than two weeks ago; I put them back. I didn’t move them.”

  “It’s all right,” Finn said. “It’s gonna be all right.”

  “I swear to God, Finn,” Devon said. He could do little more than mouth the words. He looked over at his daughter again. “I swear.”

  “Just hold on.” The sirens had grown louder, and Finn looked up to see the red lights flashing just beyond the corner of the self-storage building. “They’re here,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine.” He looked back down at Devon. His head was turned to the side, and he was still staring at Sally. His eyes, though, had changed. There was no hint of recognition in them; they looked emotionless and cold. “Devon?” Finn said. He took hold of Devon’s face and turned it toward him. It was heavy and it flopped over at an awkward angle; there was no tone to the muscles in the neck. “Devon?” Finn said, louder this time. He slapped the man’s face; the eyes didn’t blink.

  Suddenly the area was swarming with people. Gurneys rolled over, and a man in a paramedic’s uniform pulled on Finn’s shoulder, telling him to move away. He moved back and watched as they poked and prodded and pumped, trying to yank Devon back to life. Finn could tell it was pointless, and their efforts lost urgency after a few moments. They started checking their watches as they worked to get the body on a stretcher, making sure to document the attempted revival process for the hospital records. They wheeled the body away, pretending that all wasn’t lost, as though something more might be done at the hospital with better equipment. Finn knew better.

  Porter was still screaming about the paintings. Hewitt was trying to calm him down. At one point Finn had the sense that the FBI agents and the BPD detectives were in a heated argument, but he couldn’t follow it. Their voices warbled unsteadily and he had trouble making out the words through the fog in his head.

  He walked over to where two other paramedics were working on Sally and stood next to Kozlowski. The effort was going better there: they seemed satisfied that she was out of danger, and they were spending their energies making her comfortable as they clipped a pulse monitor to her finger and strapped an oxygen mask to her face to make her breathing easier. As they loaded her into the ambulance, she opened her eyes. It looked as if she was trying to talk.

  “It’s okay,” Finn said. “You’re going to be okay.” The words felt hollow. He’d said them too many times already that night.

  She tried to talk again, and Finn could hear the heart monitor ping faster. “Just relax,” said one of the paramedics, but that only sped the ping pace. He looked at Finn. “You know her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You wanna come in the ambulance? We need to keep her calm right now; she’s in shock.”

  She was looking at him, and her heart rate was settling slightly. “I’m not her family,” Finn said.

  The paramedic looked back and forth between him and Sally. “Maybe not,” he said, “but you seem to be calming her down. We could use your help.”

  Finn thought about the promise he’d made to Devon. He looked at Kozlowski, who nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “If you think it’ll help.”

  The paramedics lifted the gurney into the ambulance, and Finn climbed in behind them. One of them slid up front into the driver’s seat; the other stayed in the back, making sure the monitors were working. Finn lowered himself into a seat across from the gurney, up by Sally’s head.

  “You can hold her hand,” the remaining paramedic said.

  Finn hesitated, then reached out and took her hand. He could feel her squeezing his hand tightly, hanging on for dear life. He squeezed back, and that seemed to calm her. She tried to talk again, but Finn couldn’t make out the words. He thought maybe she was asking about Devon, but there was no way to tell. “You’re all right,” he said. “Just relax.” She looked at him and nodded.

  A moment later, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Forty-One

  Devon’s funeral was at eleven on the Wednesday of the following week. There was no service, just a rectangular hole in the ground on a brown plot of grass off a dead-end street in Dorchester. The casket was suspended above the pit, ready to be lowered hydraulically into the ground. The cherrywood was polished to a shine that reflected the bright sun from above; it was the top of the line. Finn figured there was no reason to skimp; he used the cash that Devon had stashed in his apartment to pay for the plot, the service, the short obituary in the paper, and the coffin. The rest he put into a fund for Sally. He couldn’t bring himself to take the fees the firm had been promised. It didn’t seem right; he’d failed Devon, after a
ll.

  It was a Catholic cemetery, so a priest was present, though when he asked Finn what he wanted him to say at the burial Finn told him nothing. It didn’t seem there was much to say. Two grave-diggers stood nearby, ready to fill in the hole once the casket was lowered. Other than that, it was just the four of them: Finn, Kozlowski, Lissa, and Sally. No one else showed up. The priest went through the ceremony quickly and quietly enough that Finn could hardly hear the words. That, too, was fitting, he thought.

  Sally was quiet throughout the service; she’d said little since she’d been released from the hospital a few days before. She stood there, staring at the casket as if she was trying to unravel a riddle. Finn understood: the fact that there would never be answers wouldn’t keep her from asking the questions.

  When the service was over, a switch was flipped, and the casket descended into the ground. The four of them stayed until the process was over, but turned before the first shovelfuls of dirt were thrown on top. They didn’t need to see that.

  They walked away silently, Kozlowski and Lissa holding hands, their heads down. Finn had his hands in his pockets, walking close to Sally. As they came up the hill, back toward the car parked in the narrow lane that wound around through the cemetery, Finn saw a figure standing under a tree, watching the grave-diggers work from a distance. Sally saw it, too. She stopped. “It’s her,” she said.

  “Who?” Finn asked.

  “My mother.”

  Finn squinted into the sun, trying to make out something more than the silhouette. “You sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I don’t know.” Sally stood there for a long moment, just staring at the woman under the tree. “I should go over, I guess,” she said at last.

  “If you want to.”

  “Will you come with?”

  “Yeah.” Finn called over to Kozlowski and Lissa, “We’ll catch up.”

  He and Sally climbed the short hill toward the tree where the woman stood. As they approached, Finn could see she did not look well. Her hair was short and disheveled, and she wore loose-fitting clothes over emaciated limbs. She must have been in her late thirties, but she looked much older. She looked at Sally as they approached.

  “Sally!” she called. Her voice was shrill with forced surprise, as though a father’s funeral were the last place she would have expected to find a grieving daughter. She opened her arms as if she was expecting a big hug. Sally stayed next to Finn.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I read about your father in the paper,” she said. “I’m sorry. I thought you were better off with him than me. It’s over now, though; you can come home with me.” She was smiling, but tears were streaming down her face, and it had been long enough since she had bathed that they made tracks on her cheeks. Her eyes were glassy, and it seemed she was having trouble focusing.

  “Where?” Sally asked.

  The woman waved her arm. “Oh, I got a place, don’t worry.”

  “Where?”

  “I’m gonna get a new one.” She was no longer looking at her daughter. “We’ll be happy now.”

  It took a long time for Sally to answer. “I think I’m gonna figure something else out,” she said at last.

  “You sure?” The woman’s voice sounded sad. Relieved, too, though.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

  “Okay, then,” the woman said. “You take good care of yourself, and I’ll come visit, okay?”

  “How will you know where to find me?” Sally asked.

  The woman waved her hand again. “Don’t be silly, a mother always knows.”

  They stood there in silence for another moment, with Sally looking at her mother and her mother avoiding her daughter’s eyes. Finn looked at the ground. Finally Sally said, “Okay, Mom, I gotta go.” She turned and walked away before her mother could say anything more.

  Finn caught up to her and walked beside her. “You okay?”

  “Fine.” She was walking quickly, back to Lissa and Kozlowski, who were standing by the side of the car, looking back at them.

  “You sure?”

  “Fuck her,” Sally said. “I’m better off alone.”

  Finn put a hand on her shoulder as he walked. “You’re not gonna be alone,” he said. He wasn’t looking at her as he said it. As they walked, he saw her arm come up and wipe something away from her eye.

  Kozlowski bought the drinks at the pub back in Charlestown: a scotch for himself, a beer for Finn, and a Coke for Sally. Lissa ordered a glass of merlot, which brought a look of surprise from Finn.

  “Doc said a glass of wine every once in a while wouldn’t hurt the baby,” she said. “Feels like a day when a glass of wine wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “This doctor any good?”

  “Yeah, he is. You got a problem?”

  Finn shook his head. “No.”

  “My mom smoked crack when she was pregnant with me,” Sally said. Everyone at the table looked at her, unsure what to say. “Of course, it’s not like I’m a poster child for reproduction.” She stood up. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Back around down the hall to the left,” Lissa said.

  Once she was gone, Kozlowski asked, “We gonna talk about it?”

  “Not today,” Finn replied.

  “We gotta talk about it at some point,” Kozlowski said. “We need to find a place for her to live.”

  “I’m not putting her in the system,” Finn said. “Not right now. She can stay with me for a little while.”

  “She’s not a puppy,” Kozlowski said. “You can’t just keep her for a little while and then take her back to the pound when she shits on the rugs.”

  “That’s not what I’m doing.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m trying to help.”

  “Trying to help?” Kozlowski looked at Lissa. “You believe this?”

  She looked down at her belly. “Yeah, I do. Let’s leave it for another day.”

  “You too?” Kozlowski shook his head.

  “Another day,” she repeated.

  “Fine,” Kozlowski said. “What about the other thing that no one wants to talk about? We gonna keep ignoring that, as well?”

  “Works for me,” Lissa said. “Devon’s dead. Kilbranish is dead. Half of Bulger’s old crew is dead. Doesn’t seem like anything good’s gonna come from talking about it.”

  “Something good could come from it for Sally,” Kozlowski said. “Reward’s five million. We find the paintings, and that’s a lot of good.”

  “You’re not gonna find the paintings.”

  “How do you know? Devon had them two weeks ago. Maybe he moved them.”

  “I don’t see how Devon could have moved them,” Finn said. “He was with us from the minute he got out of jail.”

  “He could have moved them before he went in,” Kozlowski said. “Then he led us to the self-storage knowing they weren’t there.”

  “But why?” Finn asked.

  “Because they were worth half a billion dollars,” Kozlowski said. “Maybe he still wanted them for himself. Maybe he still wanted them for the girl.”

  Finn shook his head. “He knew what was at stake, and he cared too much about his daughter to take that risk. For Christ’s sake, he went into that river after her with a bullet in him. Besides, he knew he was dying. If he’d moved them he would’ve told me where when he had the chance.”

  “What other possibilities are there?”

  “We know what other possibilities there are. Devon said Bulger told him there was one other person who knew where the paintings were.”

  “Porter?” Kozlowski offered.

  “No,” Finn said. “Did you see him with Devon down at the river? He was having a breakdown when he realized the paintings weren’t there, and I don’t think he’s a good enough actor to pull off that kind of performance if he was the one who moved them himself. I think he’s
genuinely obsessed with finding the goddamned things.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Hewitt.”

  “No,” Kozlowski said. “I know him; he’s not behind this.”

  “Come on, Koz,” Finn said. “I know you’re friends with the guy, but he was working on the organized crime task force back in the eighties and nineties. He would have had plenty of opportunity to get to know Bulger. He had contacts that he could have used to orchestrate the whole thing.”

  “I don’t buy it.” Kozlowski wasn’t budging. “There were plenty of others who would have had just as much motive, just as much opportunity.”

  “How many of those others were involved in this investigation? How many of them were there when Devon was killed? How many of them shot Kilbranish?”

  “Fuck you, you’re wrong.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Enough!” Lissa interjected. Her voice was loud enough that the bartender turned and looked at them. She lowered the volume. “Who cares?” she demanded. “These are just paintings we’re talking about. Who the fuck cares where they are now?”

  “They’re not just paintings,” Finn objected.

  “Yes, they are,” she said. “They’re just paintings. They’re expensive paintings. They’re nice paintings. But they’re just fucking paintings. And they’re paintings that have gotten people killed. Whoever has them now will kill whoever they have to to keep them, and I’m not letting either of you be next on the list. It isn’t our problem anymore. Do you two understand me?”

  The two men looked at the table, not answering.

  “I’m serious about this,” she said. “I want both of you to just fucking drop it. We have a law firm to run, we have a little girl to deal with, and we have a baby on the way. This ends now.”

  Kozlowski looked at her and took her hand. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll drop it.”

  She looked at Finn. “You?”

  He didn’t look up at her, but he nodded. “Fine,” he said. “I’ll leave it alone.”