Innocence

by David Hosp

  Gradually, he regained the ability to move, if only slightly, and his lungs expanded enough that he was at least making some noise as his jaw worked up and down in what he’d initially thought would be his silent death scream. Had his attention not been dedicated to weighing the odds of his survival, Finn probably would have been fascinated by his assailant’s reaction. He was watching Finn with what looked like concern, and he seemed almost relieved when Finn started showing some signs of life again.

  It was another minute or two before Finn could straighten himself and speak, still on his knees. “I’ll take that as an indication that the offer’s been rejected,” he coughed out, wiping his mouth and looking for blood as he drew his hand away from his face.

  “I don’t want to do this,” the young man said quietly.

  “Good. That makes two of us,” Finn said, placing one foot on the ground while still supporting his weight with his other knee.

  “I’m serious.”

  Finn could tell he was. “So don’t do it,” he offered. It seemed simple enough.

  “No choice. Mr. Slocum wants this resolved. He’s willing to double what Mrs. Slocum would’ve gotten under their prenup. My instructions are to make sure that’s acceptable to you. Tonight.”

  A light sweat had broken out on Finn’s forehead, and he put his hand up to mop it off. “Four thousand a month?” He considered it.

  “It’s more than I make,” the young man said. “And she don’t have to do anything to earn it.”

  Finn shook his head. “She won’t go for it.”

  “I’m sure you can convince her. If not, I can.” The young man crossed his arms. “It’s the way it’s gotta be. You agree now, and I don’t have to do anything more to you. Shit, I’ll even take you to the bar on the corner, buy you a beer, so you know I’m not such a bad guy.”

  Finn nodded, leaning his weight forward onto an arm slung across his knee. “Help me up,” he said, exhaling loudly.

  The young man was visibly relieved. He uncrossed his arms and stepped forward, leaning down to pull Finn off the floor. As Finn came off his knee, he drove his head up, snapping it forward into the man’s face as he was bent over, sending him stumbling back.

  Finn was sure that would end the altercation. He’d been in enough fights to know that a solid head butt to the face was generally enough to put even the stubborn brawlers down. Sometimes there was some finishing work left to do—a quick kick between the legs to close the deal, or maybe a blow to the back of the head with a heavy object—but it was always a mere formality.

  Finn got to his feet and moved in for the kill, watching and waiting for the man to go down to the floor in front of him and present an easy target. But something remarkable happened: The man didn’t fall. He stumbled back a yard or so, his hands to his face, but he stayed on his feet. After a couple of seconds, he pulled his hands away, and all Finn could see was a trickle of blood running from his nose. Other than that, he looked unfazed. That was the moment Finn realized he was in trouble.

  “That was a mistake,” the man said simply.

  “I’m getting that feeling,” Finn replied.

  “That was a really big mistake.”

  “Yes, I think we’re agreed on that point.”

  He was unbelievably quick for such a huge man. His hand shot out, grabbing Finn by the throat. Another hand came up and attached itself to the front of Finn’s shirt, lifting him up off the ground.

  “Wait,” Finn protested. “You haven’t heard my counteroffer.”

  The young man tossed Finn over the desk and into the exposed brick wall. Finn landed hard and at an awkward angle, wrenching his knee. He had no opportunity to evaluate the damage, though, as his tormentor came around the corner of the desk and reached down to pick him up again. Finn felt like a character in some twisted fairy tale as he was lifted off the ground once more. All that was missing was a beanstalk.

  The giant heaved him across the room and pinned him against a section of drywall. He held Finn with one hand while he pulled the other back and swung his enormous fist at Finn’s face. It took all of Finn’s strength to break free enough to duck his head slightly, so the blow glanced off his ear, the fist smashing into the drywall and blowing a hole through the plaster and paint.

  As the young man pulled his hand out of the wall, Finn knew this was his last chance, and he swung his own fists twice at the man’s stomach. It was like punching a sandbag; the man gave no indication that he’d even noticed Finn’s efforts. He pulled Finn’s head up again, holding him firmly under the chin this time, and Finn caught a glimpse of the gaping hole in the wall from the first blow. He shuddered as he understood the damage that was about to be inflicted on his face. He suddenly regretted that he’d skimped on his health plan.

  The door to the street groaned open and slammed shut. “What the fuck?”

  Finn had never been so happy to hear Tom Kozlowski’s voice.

  The young man didn’t seem particularly concerned, but he was at least distracted enough to pause in his assault. That was something, Finn thought. “Get outta here, old-timer,” he said to Kozlowski. “This isn’t your business.”

  “I work with him,” Kozlowski said. “So I think it is my business. Besides, I forgot my keys back there in my office, and you’re blocking the door, so it’s definitely my business.”

  The huge man flung Finn to the ground. “Fine,” he said. He moved quickly toward the ex-cop, so quickly that Kozlowski didn’t have time to pull out his gun. That was bad news, Finn thought. Koz was a rock, but he was probably seven inches shorter than this behemoth, and was giving away at least a hundred pounds and a quarter decade to boot. Finn had serious doubts that Kozlowski would last much longer than Finn had in a hand-to-hand battle with the young man.

  Finn watched as the man pulled his arm back and swung at Kozlowski’s head. Koz ducked it easily, then kicked out hard with his heel, connecting with the inside of the man’s right knee. Finn heard an ugly popping sound as the man wobbled, roaring in pain. He fell to one knee in front of Kozlowski, looking up at him in anguish. Kozlowski didn’t hesitate. With remarkable efficiency, his fist shot out and slammed into the man’s Adam’s apple. The man went silent, his eyes wide with terror and his hands flying to his throat as he toppled heavily to the floor. He lay there, flopping like a beached shark, helpless, as Kozlowski stood over him.

  Finn got to his feet and walked over to Kozlowski. “Is he dead?”

  Kozlowski shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “Will he be?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t think so.” Koz leaned over and tried to pull the man’s hands away from his neck. “Let me see.” The man pushed Kozlowski’s hands away, still struggling in panic to breathe.

  Kozlowski pulled out his gun and put it to the man’s forehead. “I have to figure out whether you need an ambulance,” he said. “Now move your hands or I’ll shoot you.” The man relented and took his hands away from his throat, and Kozlowski leaned in close to take a look. “Nope,” he said, standing up. “Nothing’s broken; the windpipe’s just choked off temporarily.” He spoke directly to the man on the ground. “Relax. Struggling makes it worse. You’ll be able to breathe in a minute or two.” Kozlowski kept his gun out and his eyes on the man lying on the ground, who was starting to get some air back into his lungs. “Unsatisfied client or angry husband?” he asked Finn.

  Finn shook his head. “Messenger from Slocum.”

  Kozlowski nodded. “Ah. Playing hardball? I take it he thought your last offer was unreasonable?”

  “Apparently.”

  “So? Should we call the police, or should I just shoot him? Send a message back?”

  The man on the floor, who had regained enough breath to prop himself up on an elbow, choked out a plea. “No, please!”

  Finn shook his head. “He’s kidding.” He looked at Kozlowski. “You’re kidding, right?”

  Kozlowski shrugged.

  “Let’s talk to him a little first,” Fi
nn suggested. “Then we’ll figure out the best plan.”

  “Fine with me. It’s your wall he put a hole in, not mine. I just rent.” Koz looked down at the young man. “Can you get up and sit in a chair?” The man nodded. “Okay, you understand that if you do anything to make me even a little nervous, I’ll shoot you, right?” The man nodded again. “Good. Get up. Slowly.”

  The man rose and sat in a chair against the wall.

  “What’s your name?” Finn asked, leaning against his desk.

  “Charlie.”

  Finn shook his head. “Full name?”

  Charlie hesitated. “Charlie O’Malley,” he said after thinking it over.

  Finn chuckled. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re related to Michael O’Malley, aren’t you?”

  Charlie nodded.

  “You remember Big Mick?” Finn asked Kozlowski. Kozlowski shook his head. “Big Mick O’Malley,” Finn repeated. “He ran a crew out of Charlestown. Great guy. He saved my ass a dozen times back when I was a kid running with Tigh McCluen in the eighties.” He looked at Charlie. “He your father?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Uncle.”

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Dead.”

  Finn frowned. “Shit. How?”

  “Cancer.”

  “Too bad. Beats a bullet in the head, I guess. And now you’re following him into the family business? Doing a little muscle work?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Like I told you, I don’t want to be doing this. I don’t have a choice.”

  “Why not?”

  He folded his arms. “Three years ago, I was out riding with a friend. Not even a friend, really, just a guy I knew. He got into a hassle, and we ended up getting pulled over. He had half a kilo of smack in his bag in the back. I did two years for it.”

  “Why?”

  “It was my car. The guy lied and said it wasn’t his bag. Cops didn’t know and didn’t care. Long as someone went away, it was all the same to them. Now I’m out on parole, and Slocum’s one of the few people who would sponsor a guy like me—give me a job—which is a condition of my parole. He sponsors a lot of ex-cons.”

  “Sounds like a prince,” Kozlowski commented.

  Charlie nodded. “A regular fuckin’ Gandhi. But it all comes with a price. He tells me to do something, I gotta do it.”

  Finn scratched his head. “Who’s your parole officer?”

  “Hector Sanchez.”

  Finn looked over at Kozlowski. “Name mean anything to you?”

  Kozlowski nodded. “I’ve dealt with him. Not a bad guy. Overworked, overstressed, but reasonable for the most part.”

  Finn considered his options. “You really looking to get out of the life, or are you just bullshitting me?”

  “I swear. I don’t want this.”

  “What do you want?”

  Charlie looked embarrassed. Finn thought it was an odd expression for such an enormous man. “I want to be a musician.”

  “A musician?” Finn stifled a laugh.

  “Sounds weird, right? I’m pretty good, though. I used to sing at the church, and my grandfather taught me some guitar when I was little.”

  “Bullshit. You were never little.”

  “When I was in the can, the only good thing was they let me keep a guitar, and I got to practice. I’m not lookin’ to be a star or nothing. I’d just like to play at bars. I’d be good at that.”

  Finn was bewildered. He looked at Kozlowski, who shrugged back at him. Finally, Finn said, “All right, here’s the deal. We’ll put in a call to Sanchez. I’ll also find you another job. You stay away from Slocum; don’t go back to work.”

  “Why would you do all this?”

  “Like I said, your uncle bailed me out of a lot of jams when I was young. Maybe this is my chance to pay some of those debts back. Besides, this shit doesn’t really involve you; it involves me and Slocum. Give me a phone number, and I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Charlie looked back and forth between the two other men. “Seriously? That’s it? I just walk out of here?”

  “You could stay, I suppose, but it would seem weird,” Finn said.

  “Slocum’s gonna be pissed. He’ll send someone else after you.”

  Finn considered that. “Are there any other guys like you who are unhappy with what Slocum’s making them do?”

  Charlie shrugged. “A few, I guess.”

  “Introduce me to them. Then let me deal with Slocum, and just wait for my call.”

  Charlie stood up and walked to the door. “This is fucked up.”

  “You’ll find that more and more as you get older,” Finn said. “Enjoy it when it goes your way.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Saturday, December 15, 2007

  Saturday evening Lucinda Gomez lit the candles in the window of her first-floor parlor overlooking the desolate East Boston street where she lived. It was a ritual of hers, one she had been looking forward to for over a month. Every year she began decorating for the holidays on the second Saturday before Christmas, and the first symbolic step was to light the candles in the window. She would light them every evening between now and January 2. Three weeks of holiday celebration were enough, in her mind; she couldn’t condone the overzealousness with which some strung their red and green the day after Halloween, commercializing the birth of the Savior. They probably weren’t even real Christians, and she was sure Jesus would be appalled.

  She sat back in her favorite chair overlooking the street and took a sip of her sherry. It warmed her throat. Evenings like this one were the last joy left for the seventy-eight-year-old widow. She had spent most of the day in church, and she felt sanctified. Should her time come tonight, as she often prayed it would, she would meet the Lord with the confidence of someone who, to her certain knowledge, had committed and confessed her final sins long ago.

  The BMW was still there, she noted as she sat back comfortably. The young man inside was sipping yet another cup of coffee. He’d been there for several evenings, at least since Thursday night, when she first noticed him. He disappeared during the days but showed when the sun went down, which, at this time of year, wasn’t much past four o’clock. She’d been tempted to call the police on the second evening, but after watching him, she decided that she really couldn’t imagine a more clean-cut, respectable person to be sitting on her street.

  In an odd way, he even made her feel safer. She’d taken to thinking of him as her guardian angel, and it gave her comfort that his attention was focused on St. Jude’s across the street. Satan’s house. That dark, menacing structure, which would remain deserted for weeks at a time and then see a flurry of unholy activity. She missed the days when the place was still a house of God. It had been her solace for over fifty years, and it had been taken away from her. The clandestine activities that seemed to go on there only confirmed her belief that the church’s closing was the work of the devil, and she had complained numerous times to the police, but they seemed to take little notice. Perhaps, she thought, they were taking her seriously now. Perhaps the young man was a police officer, sent to investigate. She thought probably not, but it would be nice.

  In any event, she was happy to have him as a buffer against whatever evil took place there. As she sipped her sherry again, she felt a rush of danger sweep over her. Not for her but for the man in the car. It was nothing more than a geriatric delusion, fed by loneliness and alcohol, and she consciously dismissed it. Yet it was more stubborn than most of her fantasies. She shook her head as she finished her drink and headed off to bed. She would keep him in her prayers that evening. It occurred to her that the man might very well need God’s help more than he knew.

  z

  Mark Dobson yawned as he brought the coffee to his lips. He was jittery-tired from lack of sleep and too much caffeine, and he had to fight his body to stay awake. The novelty of investigative work had worn off by the third night, and doubts were starting to creep into his mind. Perhaps Finn had been right; perhap
s Salazar really was guilty. Dobson pushed back against the notion. He needed Salazar to be innocent. He needed it more than anyone.

  He yawned again and pulled a hair out of his forearm to revive himself. It was a trick he’d learned in law school: Pain stimulated the adrenal glands and gave you a little burst of energy to fight off sleep. It had gotten him through his exams. The only problem was that, like any chemical, adrenaline began to lose its potency with each dose, and the effects were shorter- and shorter-lived. He was at the point where the crashes were coming within five minutes of each yank. Not to mention that he was running out of hair on his arms.

  His thoughts drifted back to law school, and he considered again the hardships of a well-planned life. The only son of an overachieving, hypermotivated couple clinging to second-tier wealth, he had been programmed from birth to succeed, and to define that success in the narrow terms of material wealth and recognition of the appropriate professional set. It wasn’t until he was in college that he’d started questioning his parents’ priorities—and his own. By then it was too late. Competition was too much a part of who he had become. He tried to refocus, even tried to sabotage his studies, but nothing worked. He graduated at the top of his class. After law school, he initially planned to work for some sort of public interest concern, a place where he would make little money but might have an impact on something that actually mattered to him. But then Howery, Black made him an offer, and no one turns down a firm like Howery, right?

  Now he was at a crossroads, and part of him thought this was the last chance he would have to redefine himself. After three years of serving well-heeled, demanding clients, he had come to the realization that, while he got no thrill or even satisfaction from his job, he was good at it and it was safe, and in all likelihood, he could continue doing it for the next four decades. Then he’d started working on the Salazar case, and it was like falling in love. He’d been so thrilled that he viewed the case as a test. He’d vowed that if he was successful in clearing Salazar’s name, he’d give notice at the firm and start his life over. If he failed, however . . . Well, at least there would be a gold watch and a retirement place in Florida for him.