The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Dino stayed parked out on School Street until the last of the stragglers arrived, then crept into the parking lot, tucking his Taurus in deep next to a pale blue Escort with a photographer’s name spelled out in gold stickers on the side window. From there they had a decent side view of the entrance, wipers clearing away the drizzle once every fifteen seconds or so. Beyond the VFW post, the city stood high and wide, looming like a wall.

  Dino said, “They say rain is good luck for a wedding.”

  “You had hail, I take it.”

  “Worst drought in fifty years. When are you gonna get busy, get yourself some wedded bliss?”

  “When I can afford it.”

  Frawley had spoken to Claire Keesey a few times since their pre-date, once setting plans, to meet for drinks at the Rattlesnake, but the late-afternoon robbing of an Abington bank—a crackhead counter-jumper so junkie-sick and nervous he’d puked on his own gun—forced Frawley to cancel on her at the last minute. Judging by her remarks, it seemed that the piano mover was out of the picture.

  The wipers slicked the rain-smeared windshield clean, Frawley watching a guy in black exit the post, jogging down the front steps to the street without umbrella or coat.

  “Your generation,” said Dino, smiling. “So cautious. So afraid of marriage. But then somebody suggests skydiving, and everyone’s fighting over parachutes.”

  Frawley said, “Dean, hit these wipers again.”

  Dino did. Frawley saw the guy in the tuxedo, now halfway across the street, turned and talking to a jacketless guy standing outside the door.

  “That’s MacRay,” said Frawley.

  “Which? On the road?”

  “I think. And the other one, that’s Coughlin.”

  Dino rolled down his window but the rain drowned out the conversation. It didn’t look like an argument, but it didn’t look like See ya soon either. MacRay continued away across the street, Coughlin watching him a few moments before ducking back inside.

  “What do you think?” said Dino.

  Frawley watched MacRay cut into the mall parking lot outside the 99 Restaurant, shoulders hunched against the rain. “Don’t know. Home is that way.” He pointed to the hill behind them.

  “Could be just ducking out for a Certs. What are we doing here, anyway? It’s not like they’re gonna knock over their own wedding reception.”

  Frawley was pulling on his red rain shell. “You take off, Dean. I’ll jump here.”

  “Sure now?”

  “Navy yard’s in that general direction anyway, so I’ll see where he goes, then get home myself.”

  “No argument from me,” said Dino.

  Frawley stood out of the Taurus—rain always looks harder than it feels—and jogged toward the mall parking lot, wishing it was Coughlin he was following, reading the pale-eyed bumper as the likely ringleader. MacRay was hard to miss in his tuxedo, and Frawley stayed well back, following him across the lot to the next street, climbing a side road past the skating rink.

  Near the five-street junction, Frawley felt something happening. He sensed a convergence but pushed it aside until he neared Packard Street and alarms started ringing in his head. Still it was too much to accept, even as MacRay stopped outside one of the doors. Frawley watched from the corner, unable to tell from that angle which building was Claire Keesey’s.

  He felt a lift when MacRay changed his mind, starting away—but MacRay was only pacing, and Frawley watched from the corner, standing under a downspout, roof runoff pattering his shoulders.

  MacRay ran up the stoop again and pressed the bell. The door opened. Words were exchanged, MacRay was invited inside, and the door closed.

  Frawley splashed up the sidewalk and climbed the same three stone steps, finding the bell buttons, noticing immediately the one that was wet. The name next to it read KEESEY, C.

  He went blind for a minute, standing there. She had invited MacRay inside—one of the thieves who had knocked over her bank and taken her for a ride. And Frawley had cleared her. He had excluded her, beyond a doubt. He had been trying to date her.

  Had they scammed him? Was he being outfoxed by these scumbags? Had she—of all of them—fucked him over good?

  The piano mover.

  If the door opened now, they would see him there, standing before them. And he wanted that. He wanted them to see him, wanted them to know that he knew, that he had seen them together. And then—

  And then he didn’t want that at all.

  THE GOLD ALPHABET STICKERS applied to the second-story window of the Brighton row-house apartment read GARY GEORGE PHOTOGRAPHY, and below that, smaller, PROFESSIONAL PORTRAITS—HEADSHOTS—GLAMOUR.

  Frawley reached inside the wrought-iron cage over the basement apartment window to rap on the glass. Through it, he had an odd, God’s-eye perspective looking down into a living room, where an Indian guy was curled up on a sofa in lounging pants and a T-shirt, cuddling with his lady friend in front of a soccer match on TV. They spooked at Frawley’s badge, the guy leaping off the sofa and buzzing Frawley inside.

  The tile floor of the lobby was cracked but clean. The soccer fan padded up the stairs alone, barefoot, nervous. “You’re all set, I just needed a buzz in,” Frawley told him, displaying the creds again and shooing him back downstairs.

  Frawley climbed to the second floor, finding the door with the business name on it, again in mailbox letter stickers unevenly spaced. He knocked and heard soft footsteps coming up on the other side.

  Frawley held his credentials over the peephole. “FBI, open up.”

  The door yielded two inches, the length of a security chain. The photographer’s skin was shiny and buffed, like he’d been scrubbing it all evening. “Is this a joke—”

  Frawley shoved open the door, shoulder lowered, the chain snapping, the doorknob banging, the links chinging across hardwood like spilled dimes.

  The photographer staggered backward, stunned. He wore a short, blue, terry-cloth bathrobe with nothing underneath it. Frawley knew there was nothing underneath it because the shock of jerking back from the door had caused the robe to fall open.

  Frawley straightened, the door having suffered for his anger. “Close your robe, Gary.”

  Gary George closed his robe. “You can’t come in here without a search warrant.”

  “I can’t collect evidence without a search warrant,” said Frawley, closing the door. “But generally all I need to get in anywhere is this”—he showed him his creds—“and this”—he flapped open his jacket to show him the SIG-Sauer shoulder piece. “That’s usually enough.”

  Gold hair slicked back with mousse during the day now flopped dryly around Gary George’s face, drooping weedily to his cheeks. He double-knotted his robe. Frawley smelled incense.

  “I’m having a bad day today, Gary,” Frawley told him, “a real bad day. I’m warning you in advance so that you know not to make it any worse. You worked a wedding in Charlestown this afternoon. How did you know those people?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “I came with the flowers.”

  “You came with the flowers.”

  “Mainly as a favor to someone.”

  Frawley’s realization nearly made him step back. “Fergie the Florist?”

  Gary George’s silence was a yes.

  “Fergus Coln, Charlestown gangster and drug dealer? Hell of a guy to be doing favors for, Gary.” Frawley stepped close, checking Gary George’s pupils. “You loaded right now?”

  He was too stoned to be properly defiant. “I might be.”

  “The photographs you took today—I want them. Group shots of the wedding party. Anybody in a tuxedo. I will pay you for the prints, maybe even throw in a buck or two for the busted door chain if things go smoothly. Do we have a deal?”

  Gary George thought about it, nodded.

  “Excellent decision, Gary. So far, so good. What do you have, one of those bathroom darkrooms?”

  Frawley paced among the moo
d lighting and beaded doorways and velvet slipcovers, waiting while Gary George worked. On one wall was a giant studio portrait of a model wearing a bobbed black wig, long beads, and a flapper dress, and, of course, the model was Gary George himself. Frawley found four sticks of incense smoldering in the kitchen and threw one after another out of the window into the rain. His anger built again as he thought of MacRay lounging at Claire Keesey’s, while Frawley waited on a doped cross-dresser in a ladies’ beach cover-up.

  “What?” asked Frawley, when Gary George emerged from the bathroom at the half-hour mark, empty-handed.

  “Taking a little cigarette break.”

  Frawley shoved him back inside the bathroom and shut the door.

  When it opened again, Gary George held dripping prints with rubber-thumbed tongs. Frawley studied one group shot posed around a table, the bride and groom in back, the wedding party in chairs before them. He recognized Elden on the far right, and beady-eyed Coughlin near the middle, a beer bottle half-hidden next to his leg. But no MacRay. Nor was he in any of the others.

  “The big guy,” said Frawley. “Kind of thick-nosed, buzzed hair.”

  “This is it for tuxedos. They weren’t very into the whole portrait thing.”

  Frawley checked the image again. The woman in a slinky black dress, darkly blond, bad-girl hot, had to be Coughlin’s sister, the one living in the house with him and MacRay. She had Coughlin eyes.

  “Maybe he’s on the video,” suggested Gary George.

  Frawley turned and stared until Gary George started moving.

  Back through the doorway beads, out in the main room, Frawley snatched the videocamera out of Gary George’s hand, ejecting the unlabeled VHS tape himself.

  “I’ll need that back,” said Gary George.

  Frawley kept a twenty and threw down the rest of his wallet money on a lace-draped sewing table. “Tell anyone about this, Gary, and I will return with a narcotics warrant and a thick pair of gloves and tear this place apart. Understood?”

  Gary George picked through the bills. “This is only like thirty-seven dollars.”

  But Frawley was already through the door and moving down the hall to the cracked stairs, thinking only, MacRay, MacRay, MacRay…

  PART III

  BAD

  25. Popcorn

  26. Inside the Tape

  27. Next Morning

  28. Leads

  29. Roundup

  30. Buy You Something

  31. Keyed

  32. Rink

  33. Billy T.

  34. Definitely Good Night

  35. Dust

  36. Wire

  37. A Beating and a Meeting

  25

  POPCORN

  THE MANAGER, CIDRO KOSARIO, drove a dusty blue Cressida with a failing muffler. He parked in his usual spot on the west side of The Braintree 10, unfolding reflective silver sun shields over his dash and rear ledge before locking the car and twirling his keys around his finger as he ambled to the side door. He slid the key into the lock, and Doug stepped out from behind the trash pen.

  “Morning, Cidro.”

  Cidro startled. He saw their fucked-up faces and the guns pointed at him and his Monday-morning eyes died like stabbed yolks.

  Jem was at Doug’s elbow. “We’re here for the popcorn.”

  Doug told Cidro, “Inside.”

  Cidro unlocked the door, Doug’s gloved hand pushing him through. The warning tone was shrill, the alarm keypad flashing on the wall. Jem shut the door on the daylight behind them and got right up in Cidro’s face. “Bet you couldn’t even remember the panic code right now, if you wanted to.”

  Doug said, “And you don’t.”

  Cidro looked incapable of much of anything at the moment. He took one more quick glance at their faces—yes, this was happening—then turned his eyes to the geometric pattern of the dark carpet, barely looking up again for the next two hours.

  Growing up, Halloween had always been Doug’s and his friends’ number one holiday. Christmas brought presents, Independence Day bottle rockets and cherry bombs, but only Halloween allowed them to be criminals: wearing masks, roaming the night, marauding.

  Gloansy, in his legit life as a sometime union driver for local movie productions, was always nicking stuff off sets. Props, cable, snacks—anything he could eat or move. Off an Alec Baldwin movie called Malice he had taken a makeup kit that looked like a big fishing tackle box, to which Doug had since added clearance rack Halloween disguises.

  Doug and Jem had used the mirrors inside the stolen Caravan to apply their faces in the hour before Cidro pulled up. The point was to intimidate as well as disguise. Jem wore a gargoyle application over his nose and cheeks, an old man’s chin, some Frankenstein-style ridging over his eyebrows, and a clown’s red mustache. He looked like sort of a dog-man, a human mutt, and when he had turned to Doug for a quick check, Doug said from the backseat, “Christ, that’s fugly. Take my money too.”

  Doug had made himself look like a cross between a burn victim and an ugly man with a creeping skin disease. They wore vests underneath the blue repairman jumpsuits and matching service caps, with pale blue latex gloves and wide, mirrored sunglasses. Doug carried a Beretta, Jem a Glock 9.

  “Key in the disarm,” said Doug, his hand squeezing Cidro’s shoulder. “Go.”

  The theater manager did, five digits, the aliens’ tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The warning tone ended on two beeps, the keypad lights blinking out.

  Cidro Kosario was a mix of Portuguese and black, a dark-eyed, mournful young man with short, kinky hair and an eagle beak, his flesh nearly silver. The two types of citizens who got hurt in heists were assholes and superhero-in-waiting movie fans. Accordingly, Doug had tailed Cidro. “What’s your baby, Cidro, boy or girl?”

  “She’s a… huh?” He almost looked up at them again.

  After seeing Cidro and his short wife walking their baby stroller outside a Quincy apartment building, Doug knew the manager would give them no trouble. “A girl, that’s nice.” Doug kept his hand heavy on the skinny man’s shoulder. “So this is a robbery, okay? Everything’s gonna go smooth, and then we’re out of your life for good. Nothing’s gonna happen to you—or them—so long as you follow along and do as you’re told.”

  Doug felt the guy starting to shake.

  Jem took Cidro’s keys from him and said, into the crew’s walkie-talkie, “We’re in.”

  “Yah,” came back Gloansy’s voice.

  They started past the individual theater doors toward the brighter light of the central lobby. Being in a quiet theater in daytime reminded Doug of matinees, and how going to them had always felt like playing hooky—before he went into playing hooky full-time.

  Doug asked, “How long until the armored truck comes for the money?”

  Cidro was sagging, twisting a little, buckling into a standing squat.

  Doug said, “About an hour and a half or so, am I right?”

  Cidro tried to nod, breathing funny.

  Doug said, “You’re gonna take a shit, aren’t you.”

  Cidro froze, his face a mask of pain.

  “Lucky for you, we got time. Can you still walk?”

  DOUG WAITED AGAINST THE wall across the handicapped stall, his gun on Cidro, the guy’s pants around his ankles, hugging his bare knees as he exploded himself into the toilet. “Yeah, go ahead, wipe,” said Doug. The humiliation on Cidro’s face was genuine, boylike. “Okay? Let’s see the office.”

  Jem staggered away from the draft caused by the opening restroom door. “Ho! Armed robbery enema.”

  They walked Cidro behind the triple-wide Independence Day cardboard display into the locked manager’s office. It was a drop safe, a small manhole in the floor with twin locks like eyes over the flat grin of a one-way deposit slot.

  Doug said, “Why don’t we get your safe key now, so we’re ready.”

  Cidro pulled it from a cash box full of stamps and gift certificates at the back of a des
k drawer. That weekend’s deposit receipts were paper-clipped to a cash sheet on the calendar blotter, waiting to be tallied and phoned in. Doug glanced at the slips and liked what he saw.

  Jem yanked the phone lines out of the wall, cutting them while Doug scanned the room for potential weapons. “What time does your day shift arrive?”

  Cidro glanced at the wall clock, stalling. Doug decided not to give him the opportunity to lie.

  “About eleven fifteen, right?” said Doug, collecting Edward Scissorhands scissors, an American Me letter-opener shiv, and a heavy Jurassic Park paperweight. “All right, back out. Lie down here on the carpet, on your stomach. We’re gonna chill for a while.”

  Cidro did as he was told, lying on the floor of the lobby with his face turned away from them, his wrists bound with a plastic tie.

  Jem’s impatience allowed Doug to hang cool at the end of the candy counter, watching him pace. Jem wandered around the lobby inspecting the posters and the freestanding cardboard displays, studying the stars’ faces up close as though trying to see what they had that he hadn’t. Later he opened up a $2.50 box of Goobers on the glass counter, popping one after another into his mouth.

  Gloansy’s voice squawked on the radio, “First one’s on the way.”

  Doug’s watch read 11:12. “Cidro,” he said, using his Leatherman to cut the manager’s hands free. “You’re gonna stand up now and let in the first of your day shift. You’ve had a lot of time to think, lying there, and I hope it was all about your family, your home in unit eleven on the fourth floor of the Livermore Arms, and not about alerting your employees or trying to bolt on us once you open up that side door.”

  Cidro let in the first worker, the second, the third, fourth, and fifth—all without incident. The old projectionist held his chest after seeing mutt-face Jem, but he seemed okay once they laid him down and cuffed him with the others. Jem yelled out, “Stop fucking trying to look over here!” every few minutes, just to keep them properly terrorized. Doug brought Cidro to the front to unlock the outside doors as usual, then re-locked the inside ones and brought him back to the lobby, laying him down to wait.