by Chuck Hogan
Coughlin rounded the corner and Frawley was there with the Remington. Coughlin grinned like he knew him, or maybe thought the letters across Frawley’s chest were funny. Frawley was yelling at Coughlin. He didn’t know what he was saying, and it was just as likely Coughlin never heard it anyway.
Coughlin laughed, the pistol in his bloodied hand starting to rise, and Frawley squeezed one blast low—Blam!—then pumped and—Blam!—squeezed one blast high.
Coughlin flew back, puppet strings of insanity keeping him on his feet, backpedaling until he fell off the wet curb and spilled hard into the road.
Frawley did not move, frozen in the shooter’s pose, still feeling the jerk of recoil. A bloody pistol lay on the sidewalk where Coughlin had once stood.
Coughlin rolled over in the street and started crawling. He was dragging himself, the black bag still in his grip, reaching for the double yellow lines like they were the top ledge of a high building.
Frawley finally moved, keeping his distance behind Coughlin, knowing that he had killed him and it was just a matter of time. Tac cops came charging up alongside Frawley, guns trained on the bright wet orange target, everyone waiting.
Coughlin stopped, laughing blood, then rolled over and looked up at the sky spilling down on him, his chest bucking, his mouth smiling even as his throat groaned for air.
DOUG WATCHED JEM’S ORANGE form crawl into the middle of the wide road, stop, and roll over.
Cops were coming up near them now. “Doug,” hissed Dez.
Doug backed away, turning, striding fast alongside Dez. He and Dez would go on the run together now. The switch car with their change of clothes was lost, but the Fenway Gardens were right around the corner. They’d dig up Doug’s stash, hit the nearest clothing store they could find, then hop a taxi to the long-term parking lot at Logan, boost an older model car, head out of state. Then figure out what shape the rest of their lives would take.
All these things raced through Doug’s mind until he realized he was alone. He turned and saw Dez wandering back into the middle of the street, looking down the length of the double yellow line at Jem. Dez was trying to see through the rain, rubbing at his contacts like a man disbelieving his eyes.
Vested Frawley and some commando cops were coming up slow on Jem. Doug didn’t understand Dez’s concern—until, at once, he did.
The grenades on Jem’s belt.
“Hey!” Dez started to yell.
The commando cops would never hear him through the rain. “Dez!” said Doug, calling him back. Regular cops coming from the burning car.
Dez ran a few steps forward, waving an arm. His stand here had to do at least as much with getting some final triumph over Jem—thwarting his grand battlefield exit, Jem’s plan to take a few of his enemies with him—as it did saving the cops’ lives.
Dez drew his gun and fired it for the first time that morning, straight up into the rain, then a few times low at the road around Jem. It worked, the only way to back the cops away from that distance.
The blast was like a road mine exploding, Jem erupting into lumpy pieces. The bag coughed money into the air, cash fluttering like confetti shot out of cannon, drifting back down to the wet road.
The cops near the smoking Civic were drawing on Dez now, yelling. All confusion in the slapping rain, Dez trying to see, his eyes bothering him, arms rising to his face.
The first shot spun Dez around. The second jerked him the other way, his vest vulnerable at close range, Dez dropping to the asphalt with a splash.
Doug drew and started after him. But already half a dozen orange raincoats were advancing on Dez where he lay.
You gonna shoot at cops?
Doug watched Dez squirming on the ground until the encircling cops blocked his view. Dez was down. Gloansy was caught. Jem was dead.
Something washed over Doug then, with the rain. He holstered his gun and turned and walked away.
* * *
THE RINGING IN FRAWLEY’S ears was his mind screaming as he picked himself up off the wet road and stumbled back toward the pieces of Coughlin. It was snowing money now, and he moved gun-first through the flurry of cash to the double yellow line.
Coughlin’s armored vest was cracked open like a bloody husk. The fucker had blown himself up and tried to take Frawley and everyone else with him.
Frawley looked down the road to where the shots had come from, his thoughts too shrill to even speculate about what had happened. Someone was in custody down there. Frawley only hoped it was MacRay.
DOUG SAT ON HER stone bench. The willow was weeping rain into her garden, and he was trying to understand what it was he was feeling, until finally he realized—he felt nothing.
He got down on his knees in the muck. Rain battered the purple impatiens as he thrust his hands wrist-deep into the soil, as though he could reach all the way down to his money, take it, and leave. As though he had anything to run to now. As though he had anything to run for.
Nothing left in him but vengeance. Sirens wailed out on Boylston as he stood and shed his orange coat, starting back toward the Town.
53
HOME
DOUG WALKED OFF THE T at the Community College stop and crossed over Rutherford Avenue on the elevated walkway, seeing the soaked Town before him, the shoulders of its twin hills shrugged against the rain.
He walked along Austin Street between the rink and the Foodmaster plaza toward Main Street, umbrella people nodding at this drenched beat cop passing them on the sidewalk, kids in slickers and rubber boots staring up at the man in blue. Doug didn’t see any of it. The only thing he noticed other than the bricks at his feet was the State Police helicopter cutting through the rain over the city across the river, looking for him.
The bell over the front door giggled as he entered the flower shop. He heard harp and fiddle music, “A Little Bit of Heaven” serenading the thirsty plants and squatting stone gargoyles. Doug stood alone among the pale blooms for a few airless moments, until Rusty, the Florist’s guy, pushed through the black curtain hanging over the door behind the back counter.
He wore a green tracksuit and was eating a lettuce sandwich out of tinfoil. He looked at the sodden blue cop in the store as just another customer, until he recognized the face.
For a moment it seemed that Doug wouldn’t have to shoot the ex-IRA man. Rusty had nothing but a cold sandwich to defend himself with, and Doug thought the guy might just bend to the will of force and time and step aside.
But a glance at Doug’s empty hands showed him that Rusty had too much pride. The Florist’s guy dropped his sandwich and lunged for something under the counter.
Doug cleared his holster and fired twice, the white-haired Irishman falling back against the wall to the floor. Doug passed the counter on the way to the back, Rusty facedown and gasping for air.
Doug pushed through the black curtain gun-first. The Irish music was louder there, warbling out of an old turntable. The glass-doored walk-in cooler was empty, Fergie’s workbench standing across the room.
Doug heard a toilet flush. He turned toward the latch door as it opened.
Fergie wandered out carrying a newspaper, wearing his tight, hooded sweatshirt, long work pants, and maroon suede slippers. He saw the cop there with
the gun in his hand and at first just looked annoyed. Then he pulled off his reading glasses for a clear look at the cop’s face. The half-glasses fell against his chest.
He said Doug’s name and Doug filled the air between them with smoke. Doug did not stop firing until Fergus Coln lay beneath the workbench, barefoot among the stem clippings, condolence ribbons unspooling over him.
It was a while before the Irish music returned to Doug’s ears. He never heard the bell over the front door.
Two gunshots punched him high in the back of his vest. Another round bit into his left rear thigh, a fourth skipping off his shoulder to slice into his neck.
Doug twisted and dropped to the floor, firing from there, aiming back through the c
urtain into the store. He heard something fall, then the giggle of the doorbell.
He pushed himself to his feet. The lead in his leg burned and blood was spilling down the front of his shirt over his fake silver-and-blue badge. He felt a warm, pulsing hole in his neck and closed it with his palm, pressing hard and hobbling to the doorway, tearing down the black curtain.
Rusty hadn’t moved, dead where he had fallen. Among the floor pots in front lay a body on its side, a young guy quaking, his black boots thumping the tile. A tear in the back of his T-shirt was blooming red, just over the belt of his fatigues. Doug limped over, his left hand holding the blood into his neck, his right hand holding his gun.
One of Jem’s camo kids. The giggling bell had been the other one getting away.
Doug stood over him, waiting, but the kid refused to look up, lying there shaking in the scummy pot water he had overturned.
Doug holstered his gun and started away, leaving the kid twitching on the floor.
FRAWLEY SAT INSIDE THE McDonald’s, still trying to count all the shots he’d fired. There was going to be an FBI investigation as well as civil liability hearings, and he would be held accountable for each and every round. He had already surrendered his Remington for ballistics.
“I’m going to be fired,” he said.
Dino was drinking a strawberry shake next to him. “Easy, now.”
“Look out there.” The street was filled with umbrella-toting city, state, and federal lawmen, Suffolk County coroners, city hall lawyers, and news crews pressing against BPD sawhorses. “Shots fired in Fenway Park. A goddamn grenade blowing up a car.” Frawley sat up. “I killed a man in the street.”
“You shot him pretty good, but technically I think it was that crazy mofo’s hand grenades that cashed out his tab.”
Frawley’s wrinkled FBI vest lay before him. “They can’t clip me right away. Wouldn’t look good. Got to wait for the inquest to run its course. Transfer me somewhere cold in the meantime.”
“You at all curious about that other one down the street?”
Frawley grimaced. “Okay.”
“It was Elden. The one in the Suburban, that was Magloan—with what looks like the entire take in the trunk, minus whatever got blown up out there with Coughlin.”
Frawley waited. “And MacRay?”
“We’ll find him. Bringing in the Canine Unit to search the ballpark.”
Frawley looked at the half-eaten breakfasts left on the tables by the windows, empty high chairs, open newspapers.
“Dean,” he said, unable to look the older man in the eye. “I did some stupid things with this. I did some things I probably should have run by you first.”
Dino looked at him, quiet, maybe counting slowly to ten.
“Nothing illegal,” Frawley stressed. “But I pushed it. I put myself inside this. I got involved.”
Dino took a long draw on his shake, then set the cup aside. He stood. “You’re in shock, Frawl. Couple of hours, we’ll talk. Rather—you’ll talk.”
Dino walked away, leaving Frawley staring out the window, thinking about cold weather. He still had his law degree. Maybe this McDonald’s was hiring.
Outside, he watched two detectives jump into an unmarked Grand Marquis, driving fast out of the parking lot.
Frawley read excitement on the faces of the remaining patrolmen. He pulled himself together and went outside. He asked the youngest-looking uniform what was going on.
“The Florist’s shop in Charlestown,” said the cop. “A bloodbath, gangland style. Looks like somebody got Fergie.”
Frawley’s mind seized up like a fist. All that time he’d been sitting there on his ass in a McDonald’s, feeling sorry for himself—
Claire Keesey.
He took off running across the street, back up Yawkey toward his car.
DOUG PRESSED THE BELL again and hung his head low so that the badge on his hat was in the spyglass.
Claire opened the door to the cop. She saw Doug’s face and his bloody hand at his neck and her hand went to her mouth, eyes widening.
Doug’s first step over her threshold was okay. He faltered on the second step and went down hard on the third.
Claire screamed.
He could not move his hand from his neck. Pressure was the only thing keeping him alive. This slow throb against his palm was his clock running down.
He got himself into a sitting position and used his free hand and the heels of his shoes to push back from the open door. Making it to her place was all he’d thought about in the rain. Now he just wanted to push in deeper. He got to the small table outside her kitchen and slumped back against the legs of a chair.
He went away for a little while. Then he came back.
“Made it,” he said. He needed a yawn in the worst way, but couldn’t get one.
Claire came toward him. Impossibly tall, her hands covering her mouth, eyes screaming tears.
Doug fought down a swallow. “Why?”
She started to kneel, hesitated, remained standing.
“In your garden.” He spoke in hoarse bursts. “That last time. I wanted you… to tell me not to do it. I wanted you… to stop me.”
She shook her head in horror.
“I wanted you… to give me a reason…”
“But nothing I could have said…”
She still didn’t get him. “I would have done… anything for you. Even save myself.”
She slipped to her knees, sitting on her heels at his outstretched feet, mystified. “Why? Why leave that to me?”
And there, in her bewilderment, he recognized his grave mistake. He had surrendered himself to Claire, just as Krista had to him. When you give someone the power to save you, you give them the power to destroy you as well. That was what Frank G. had been all about—not relinquishing that grip on yourself.
A man coming at him down the front hall, gun out. The sleuth, Frawley. Doug tightened his grip on the side of his neck.
FRAWLEY WENT IN THE open door, seeing the trail of blood and rain, his SIG-Sauer out of his armpit. MacRay was in a cop uniform, slumped against a chair on the floor, Claire kneeling before him.
MacRay’s gun was in his holster. One hand was wet red and clamped over a neck wound, blood dripping from his bent elbow to the lemon yellow carpet. No grenades on his belt.
MacRay, dying, frowned at Frawley’s gun, then at Frawley himself.
Frawley came up behind his SIG to MacRay’s side, smelling blood, reaching across and tugging the Beretta from MacRay’s cop holster while MacRay sat there and watched him take it. Frawley backed away past Claire, easing up on his aim, putting the Beretta in his back pocket. He saw a telephone on the table and circled to it, picked it up.
“Don’t.”
MacRay’s voice was as bloodless as his face. Frawley put down the phone, moving back into MacRay’s line of sight.
Claire turned her head to look up at Frawley through tears. “Did you do this?”
Her words cut him. She was asking, Did you do this because of me?
MacRay worked hard to breathe, harder still to speak. “She dimed me?”
He seemed to know the truth already. Frawley said, “That’s right.”
MacRay swallowed with difficulty. He looked at Claire until his eyes fell, then blinked back to Frawley. “Why let it go so far? Why not take us… at the hotel?”
“What hotel?” said Frawley. “I didn’t find out anything until an hour beforehand.”
MacRay looked hard at Claire again. Something was going on there.
Frawley said, “We’re talking about Coughlin’s sister, right?”
MacRay’s eyes came back to Frawley, so still and staring that Frawley thought MacRay was gone. Then MacRay nodded. He seemed to relax.
Frawley’s heart was pumping hard enough for both of them. “You got the Florist.”
MacRay blinked. “Tell Dez I did it for him. For the Town.”
Frawley wanted to feel nothing for the crook, but to be in a ro
om with a dying man is to die a little yourself. “You’ll have to tell him.”
The only reaction was a flicker in MacRay’s eyes.
“The money.” said Frawley. “Where’s the rest of your stash?”
MacRay was falling into himself.
“Where’s the money?” pressed Frawley.
Claire said, “Leave him alone.”
MacRay was going. Frawley backed away, heavy-legged. He picked up the phone and dialed 911.
SHE CAME FORWARD AND took his empty hand, holding it tenderly in her own, as though the hand itself was the thing that was dying.
Doug said, “You were never going away. With me. Were you.”
She held his gaze. Her wet-eyed expression said no.
He felt love streaming out of his hand into hers like electricity.
She would find it in the spring. The money he had buried like doomed hope in her garden. Like a note he’d left for her. Maybe she could use it to fund her work at the Boys and Girls Club. Maybe in time she’d think of him differently.
His left hand fell away from his neck as he focused on her face. He wanted her to be the last earthly thing he would see.
Even if a thing is doomed—there is that moment of absurd hope that is worth the fall, that is worth everything.
CLAIRE FELT THE SHOCK of lifelessness in his limp hand. She dropped it out of fright and would only later wilt at the shame of letting him go. Right now a dead man was lying on her floor and her mind was choking on this.
Why had he come to her to die? Dragging himself into her kitchen, just as he had dragged himself into her life. She despised him for the mess he had made, the blood on her floor like the stain on her soul. And yet. And yet as she looked at him now, she could not help but feel for the motherless boy inside. For Adam Frawley too, the vengeful one whispering into the telephone—these two lovesick sons she had gotten caught between. But for the men they had become, she had only scorn.
