The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Doug shrugged. “I just liked watching it fall.”

  Inside the construction trailer, they waited for Billy Bona, Billy saying, “Yup… yeah… sure… ,” into the phone and strangling the cord in his hands. Ten years before, while tearing out a condemned building alongside Doug, a falling cinder block claimed the nails of the last three fingers of his left hand. Doctors told him they would grow back twice as thick, but they never grew back at all. Now Billy was the demo foreman in his father’s company and only used his helmet-less fingers for pointing at guys and signing things.

  He hung up and came across to shake hands. “The original thick-dick micks.”

  Doug said, “Billy Boner.”

  Jem said, “’S’up, Little Italy?”

  “You know how it is,” said Boner, sliding a clipboard off his desk, “this and that, that and this. I got two minutes here, literally. What’s the squeal?”

  Doug said, “Highway project, huh?”

  Jem was twiddling Boner’s Rolodex like a kid on a visit to his dad’s office. “This economy, I take it where it comes,” said Boner, distracted, not liking his cluttered desk touched. “What you got? Potato famine suddenly? Coming back to do some real work?”

  “Never, man,” said Jem. “Just wanted to go over terms of our deal.”

  Boner frowned, looked at Doug, concerned. “Fuck’s wrong with the deal?”

  Jem held up a Bonafide Demo paperweight showing the Leaning Tower of Pisa. “Know what I’d like to see on this instead?” he said. “That chef from the pizza boxes, twiddling his Rollie Fingers mustache, you know? That would be good.”

  Boner said to Doug, “What’s going on here, MacRay?”

  Doug had forgotten Jem’s sourness toward Boner, it had been that long. “It’s all good, Billy,” said Doug, dropping Boner for the moment. “Nothing wrong with the deal. Everything’s cool.”

  “’Cause your guard dog here is slobbering all over my desk.”

  Jem smiled his smile, challenge accepted, and went around to sit in Boner’s big chair, putting his mud-caked boots up on the desk. “Seat’s a little hard, Boner. Your ass is much more accommodating than mine.”

  Boner gripped his clipboard two-handedly. “If this is some fuckin’ poor man’s shakedown, you can both—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” said Doug. “Hold on. How well you know me?”

  “Used to know you good, Duggy. Going way back. So what the fuck?”

  Doug said to Jem, “Get out from behind the man’s desk,” just to be polite, not really expecting Jem to move, which he didn’t. Doug said to Boner, “Everything with the arrangement is going great, everything’s fine. We just think we might be hearing hoofbeats, so to speak, so we wanted to come up here, make sure all our bases are covered.”

  “A reminder,” said Jem, picking up a pad of pink phone-message slips, flipping it at Boner. Boner made no move to catch it and the pad bounced off his arm, falling to the floor.

  “Not a reminder,” said Doug. “A courtesy call, let you know you might have visitors coming up here with badges, questions. Or maybe not, we don’t know.”

  “Jesus,” sighed Boner, not needing this hassle.

  “You been making a tiny little mint off us,” said Jem, sitting up behind Boner’s desk. “Keeping us on the books, paying us full sal, us kicking half back to you.”

  “Keeping you outta jail, sounds like, giving you taxable income for the IRS.” He looked back at Doug. “And what, an alibi?”

  “Maybe,” said Doug. “But mostly just gainful employ. Our good citizenship. They got nothing pinned on us, ’cept their own ambitions. So you don’t have to worry about a thing. We just didn’t want anyone coming up here and throwing you, catching you off guard. All you need to do is pledge us as two of your contract guys.”

  “Your very best contract guys,” said Jem. “Good workers and nice fellows, handsome guys. Only out sick that day.”

  “And then let us know. That cool, Billy?”

  Boner nodded. His glance at the wall clock told Doug that Boner was busy and this was no big thing to him, which was all Doug wanted to know.

  Jem said, “Boner’s cool. ’Course, he’s got no fucking other choice anyway.”

  Boner wheeled and pointed with a finger off his clipboard, sputtering. “Why you so fuckin’ hot all the time, Jimmy? I mean, what the fuck?”

  Doug explained, “He gave up jerking off.”

  “Yeah? Traded it for being a jerkoff,” said Boner, having had all he could stand. “You never showed my dad any respect, you fucking hump.”

  “Respect?” said Jem, hands folded, still seated, too calm and comfortable. “That’s all you ever showed him, fuckin’ daddy’s little girl. Taking over the business so he can head off down to Florida.”

  “Seems like you inherited your daddy’s business too.”

  Jem bounded up and around the desk, up into Boner’s face with the chair back still rocking. Doug stayed where he was, so fucking tired of it all.

  “You think I’m afraid of you?” said Boner, the clipboard at his hip now. “Huh? Yeah? Well you’re goddamn fucking right I’m afraid of you, you half-a-psycho.” Boner backed off and picked his message pad off the floor—then whipped it at the papers on his desk, slapping down his clipboard and bouncing a pen off his phone.

  He stopped, facing his vacant chair, shoulders riding his anger. “You two came here to tell me something, and now you told me, and now I’ve got some real fucking work to do. Guys under me who actually work for their paychecks, guys with families to feed, earning their salaries.”

  He turned back looking for some trace of shame in their faces and, failing that, banged out of the thin trailer door empty-handed.

  BACK INSIDE THE FLAMER, Jem’s beat-up Trans Am, driving south from Billerica to the Wendy’s parking lot off the highway where Doug had left his Caprice. No tail either way, and they had been super-fucking-careful—but instead of relief, this only increased Doug’s paranoia. He made a mental note to recheck his wheel wells and firewalls and poke around under the hood for tracking beacons.

  Jem drove eager-eyed, tearing up the road. He tried the radio and a Sesame Street tune blasted out of the speakers. “Jesus fuck,” he said, hitting Eject and tossing the tape into the backseat like it was on fire. “See that? That’s why I don’t fucking let her use my car. She wanted me to put a baby seat in back there, full-time? Yeah, like Jem’s cruising around Town with that chick magnet.”

  He wheeled onto the highway, the white sun glaring off the gaudy blue-on-blue flame work on the hood, bouncing into Doug’s eyes. Their helmets rolled around the piles of crap in back like the aggravation rattling inside Doug’s head.

  “So what about the Dez situation?” said Jem.

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “Okay.”

  “Of all of us, he’s the weak link.”

  “Dez is fine, I told you.”

  “When’s he been proven? A fucking candy store, even—the kid’s never put gum in his pocket without paying for it. How’s he gonna stand up under a grilling, told to turn us over or else? Where’s his track record on that?”

  Doug wasn’t so annoyed that he couldn’t find some truth in this.

  “And what about the manager?”

  “The bank manager?” said Jem.

  “No, Don Zimmer. Yes, the bank manager. Said you’d have something there.”

  “There’s nothing there. A dead end. Done.”

  “You think so.”

  “I know so. I can fucking guarantee so.”

  “How?”

  “She checks out. Don’t worry about it.”

  Jem switched lanes, slicing between two cars with maybe six inches to spare on either end. “So there’s no need to remove her from the equation, then.”

  Doug turned to him, Jem’s stupidity as blinding as the sun. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You’re ju
st saying what? What are you just saying? You’re a fucking contract killer now?”

  Jem shrugged, playing tough guy. “I don’t like loose ends.”

  Doug had to take a breath and remind himself that this was all just talk, part of the movie playing twenty-four hours a day on the cable channel in Jem’s head. “Listen, De Niro. You need to start jerking off again. And I mean fucking pronto, like right now, pull over, I’ll wait. Fuck’s gotten into you? The music all night—”

  “What, is it too loud?”

  “Is it too loud?”

  “Awright, whatever, what the fuck.”

  “Turn down the volume in your head, kid. What is it? Vampire bite you or something?”

  “Just trying to be careful.”

  “Let me be the paranoid one, all right? Let me do the worrying. Cool it.”

  “Fuckin’… it’s cool, man. It’s cool.”

  They were quiet for a while, Doug’s head ringing, Jem rolling down his window to spit.

  “So, Gloansy’s wedding, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Doug.

  “Who you taking? Got anything set up?”

  Doug shook his head. “I’m nowhere on that one.”

  “Yeah.” Then: “Krista has no date neither.”

  Doug stared ahead, letting it pass.

  “What else’re you doing with your time?”

  “Why, what the fuck? What are you poking at me for?”

  “Poking at you?” said Jem. “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t know—what are you talking about?”

  “See—this is you between jobs.” Jem nodded like one of them was crazy and it wasn’t him. “Time off for you is no fucking good, time off for any of us.” He palmed the wheel, pushing the car ahead. “Speaking of time. Mac, last weekend—he was asking for you.”

  “Yeah?” said Doug, wondering where the hell this was suddenly coming from. “Yeah, how’s he been?”

  “Good, good. Says he wants you to come by sometime.”

  “Yeah. I been meaning to.”

  “Says he don’t like to ask, but he wants to see your face. Wants to know what’s up, I guess. I said I’d tell you.”

  “Sure,” said Doug, already angling to duck it. There was a latent smudge on his side window, brought out by the sun: a little round handprint, dead center, and Doug wondered what the fuck Shyne was doing riding around in the front seat with no belt on.

  Jem said, “You know I get the fuckin’ biggest kick outta your dad.”

  “Yeah,” said Doug, thinking, You’re the only one—his eyes staying trained on the oily ghost of a tiny little uncreased palm.

  18

  DATING THE VIC

  BUT HOW DID YOU KNOW?” asked Claire.

  “Know what?” said Frawley.

  “‘Mortgage or sick kid,’ how would you know that?”

  “Ah.” Frawley rubbed his cheek, a ruminative habit he had adopted since getting stained. The dye had faded to a coppery orange, like misapplied self-tanner. “The smell of coffee on the note. The way his first, failed attempt went down. And then just looking at him there, facedown in the playground. A kind of desperation I’ve seen before.”

  They were seated away from the bar inside the Warren Tavern, over low-key drinks and apps. The place was crowded on a weeknight, and Frawley wondered how a colonial-era pub suddenly got so tony.

  Claire wore a cream top with the sleeves shrugged up. She sipped her white wine, concerned for the robber. “And that’s five years in jail?”

  “Federal sentencing guidelines are pretty strict. Between forty and fifty months for a first-time offender, then add on maybe a year and a half for the bomb threat. But I spoke with the assistant district attorney and recommended that only state charges be brought. It’s not up to me, but that would be less of a smack. This yo-yo might even be able to put his life back together after that.”

  She said, “That’s because you’re a nice guy.”

  “No, it’s because he’s not the kind of bad guy I’m after. Note-passing is the dumbest of crimes. Broad daylight, plenty of witnesses, and you’re photographed in the act. Hello. Fifteen hundred dollars against four or five years in prison. Banks attract dumb, desperate people.” An excuse to reach across the table and touch her forearm. “Bandits, not employees.”

  She smiled. “Thanks for clarifying.”

  “A professional crew that’s ready to hurt people, put them in the hospital—that’s what I’m here for. Not the sad case sitting in a Dunkin’ Donuts one morning, thinking his life is ending.”

  She noticed him rubbing his cheek again. “Does that itch?”

  “Only psychologically. I’m like half-cop, half-criminal. You should see the looks I get.”

  She smiled and Frawley thought he was doing well. “So, why banks?” she said. “What is it about banks and you?”

  “Have you seen those ads for the tornado movie coming out, Twister?”

  “Sure, with the cow flying across the screen?”

  “I grew up—well, I grew up all over. My mother had this knack for meeting men just as they were about to move out of state, and she would move with them, only to split up a few months later, leaving us out on our own again. We didn’t have much and kept losing things in the breakups. She carried around with her a couple of items she called her ‘treasure.’ Some photographs of her as a girl, her grandmother’s Bible, letters she had saved, my birth certificate, her wedding ring. So every new town we pitched a tent in, the first thing she’d do would be to go down to the bank and rent a safe-deposit box, store her treasure there. It became a routine—new town, new bank, new box. When I was eight or maybe nine, we were living in Trembull, South Dakota, and a tornado hit. Flattened the town, killed eight. We rode it out on the floor of a fruit cellar—my mother blanketing me, screaming the Lord’s Prayer—and when it was over, we climbed back upstairs, and the upstairs was gone. Roof, walls, everything. The entire neighborhood, people crawling out of their cellars like worms after a hard rain. Everything gone or moved and tipped over on its side. We all just followed the path of destruction into the center of town. Only, the center was gone too. Just a war zone of cracked lumber and debris—except for one thing. The bank vault. The bank building itself was gone, but that silver vault remained standing. Like a door to another dimension.”

  Her frown had a smile behind it. “I hate people who know exactly who they are, and why they want what they want.”

  “The next day the manager came and opened it up, and there was my mother’s treasure, safe and sound.”

  “And where’s your mother now?”

  “Arizona. Fourth husband, a cattle auctioneer. The guy answers the phone, I can’t understand a word he says. But of the thirty-four states she’s resided in, Arizona’s the first she’s lived in twice. So I’m thinking, this guy, maybe he’s finally the one.”

  Claire smiled. “Explains why you’re not married yet.”

  “I don’t know. I think it’s more because I’ve moved around so much with the Bureau. And hope to be moving again soon.”

  “To?”

  “The top job for a bank robbery agent is Los Angeles. Boston may be the armored-car-robbery capital of the world, but L.A. is the bank-robbery capital, no contest. One out of every four bank jobs in the country goes down there. And with the freeway system, they have to do a lot more with tracking devices, gadgets, gizmos. Charlestown here, their methods are quaint compared to those out West.”

  Claire nodded, swirling the last sip of wine around the bottom of her glass. He wanted her to have another. “So funny to me that you live here too.”

  “It’s a great town. And I’ve lived all over. Great neighborhood, great people. It’s just that there happens to be this ultrasmall faction, this subculture of banditry.” He finished his Sam Adams. “Do we need another round?”

  She looked from her glass to him. “I’m not clear on something. Is this work, or is this a date?”

  He shrugged. “It�
��s not work.”

  “So it’s a date.”

  “It’s a pre-date. It’s appetizers, drinks.”

  “Because,” she said, “and maybe this sounds crazy, but someone warned me that I shouldn’t speak to you again without a lawyer.”

  “Wait—someone from Charlestown, right?”

  “How’d you know?”

  He dropped his voice a little. “Well, that’s the other thing here, this ‘Code of Silence.’ Born out on the docks, I guess, with bootlegging and longshoremen. Something like fifty murders committed in this town over the past twenty years, many of them with witnesses, and yet only twelve have been solved. The code was, ‘Talk to the cops, you’re dead, your entire family is dead.’ But it’s all unraveling now. People testifying against each other, rushing to cut deals. Ugly.”

  She nodded, only half-listening. “Do you consider me a suspect?”

  Who was feeding her this? “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know. The questions you asked me at my parents’ house. It never occurred to me that you might think…”

  “Well, early on, I had a kidnapping that resulted in the bank manager being released unharmed. Add to that the fact that she lived in Charlestown, and—where are you getting all this?”

  “Nowhere.”

  Nowhere? “Would I have asked you out here if I suspected you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Not if I’d wanted a conviction, evidence that would hold up in court.”

  That seemed to satisfy her. She sat back, distracted. “Honestly, at this point? I almost hope you never catch them. In terms of testifying and all that. I just want to put this thing behind me and move on.”

  “Well,” Frawley told her, “I am going to catch them. Don’t sweat the testimony. Even if I bagged them tomorrow, court’s easily a year or two down the line. And with twenty-year federal mandies for repeat offenders using firearms in the commission of a violent felony, on top of whatever they draw for the crimes—those are tantamount to life sentences. And believe me, once you see these bozos in court, see their faces—oh, yeah, shit.” He searched his jacket pockets. “Almost forgot. Just a moment of investigatory stuff here.”