by Wilderness
“No one has said or done anything to change your mind?”
Newman shook his head again. Vincent looked at Croft. They were silent.
Newman said, “I’m sorry, but …”
Without looking at him Vincent said, “Shut up.”
Croft said to Vincent, “Who knew?”
Vincent said, “You tell me, Bobby. Who knew we had a witness and what his name was?”
“You, me, people in the squadroom. People in Smithfield. Valences from Essex County DA’s office.” He spread his hands. “Too many, Murray. Got no way to know who they talked to.”
“We better try, Bobby. They knew before Newman left this fucking office. You hear what I’m saying?”
Croft nodded.
Newman said, “Wait a minute. Nobody …”
Vincent turned toward him. He unfolded his arms and placed his hands palm down on the edge of the desk behind him. “You close it up, scum bag. I got no use for you. You tucked your fucking tail between your fucking legs and hauled ass at the first sign of trouble.”
“The hell I …”
“Shut up.” Vincent straightened from his desk and shoved his face toward Newman, bending forward slightly. “I know somebody threatened you, and I know you’re not going to say shit because you think if you’re quiet it’ll all go away. Maybe it will and maybe Dolph Karl will blast somebody else and it won’t be you and you’ll shake your head and say ‘My my ain’t that awful. Why don’t those stupid cops do something about it?’ Or maybe Dolph will worry about you and maybe he’ll send somebody around to make double sure you stay scared and stay quiet.”
Newman was silent. The fear twitched and tickled in his stomach.
“You can end it here and now, you got the guts. Or you can be scared and jump at shadows the rest of your life. Or maybe you and your wife and who knows who else can be dead.”
Newman could hear that flat uneducated Boston voice on the phone. He shook his head again. “I made an honest mistake, Lieutenant,” he said. “I simply made an honest mistake.”
Vincent said, “Bobby, get him the fuck away from me.” He turned his back and stood looking down at the picture of his family on his desk.
Croft jerked his head and he and Newman got up and left.
“Lieutenant’s pissed,” Croft said in the hall.
“Corporal Croft, I tell you it was simply a mistake. He wouldn’t want me to put an innocent man in jail, would he?”
“Aw, don’t bullshit me, Mr. Newman. I know you were threatened or bribed. Lieutenant knows it. You know it. So, I don’t know, maybe I don’t blame you. Maybe they leaned hard. Maybe they got your wife or kids, it happens. But don’t bullshit me.”
“Vincent got family?” Newman said.
“Sure,” Croft said. “Wife, five kids, I think.”
“I suppose he wouldn’t back off if they were threatened.”
“Vincent? Hell no. He wouldn’t back off for anything.”
“So what would he do, risk their lives?”
Croft smiled a little. “No, you haven’t seen Murray work. I have. He wouldn’t back off, and if somebody threatened his family he’d blow him away.”
“If he could,” Newman said.
Croft was still smiling. “He could,” Croft said. “I’ve seen him work.”
They walked down the corridor toward the parking lot.
“The thing is,” Croft said, “Murray’s probably right. You’re making a mistake. You let them do this and they’ll be around for the rest of your life. It won’t be done like you think it will be. Remember, I told you before. Dolph Karl is a fucking psychopath. We had him on the hook and you let him off. There’s no way to know what he’ll do.”
At the door they stopped. “You change your mind,” Croft said, “you give me a call. You have my card.”
Newman nodded. “Vincent would kill them?”
Croft nodded. “No doubt in my mind.”
“And you?”
Croft was silent for a minute, his hands in his hip pockets. “I guess I’d have to be in the situation. Then I’d see. I don’t see too much point to figuring ahead.”
Newman started to shake hands, hesitated, and Croft said, “Hell, I’ll shake hands with you.” He put out his hand and Newman shook it. Then Newman went out into the bright parking lot.
After the air-conditioned building the heat was tangible and startling. His bright blue Jeep was parked against the far wall. As he walked across the half-empty lot he felt obvious and isolated. As if a high camera shot were focused on him. He’d taken the top off the Jeep for the summer, and with the big wheels and the high clearance he felt exposed still as he pulled out onto Commonwealth Avenue.
Jesus Christ I’m scared, he thought as he drove along Commonwealth. He wished he had a gun. He wished Croft were with him. Maybe he could tell the Smithfield police he’d had anonymous threatening phone calls. Maybe they’d put a cruiser nearby. But if they’re watching and they see the cops they’ll get us.
He drove past Boston University into Kenmore Square. One foot was cocked up on the door frame. He wore a blue Levi’s shirt, washed often. The sleeves were rolled, the top three buttons were open. As he moved the steering wheel the muscles in his arms swelled beneath his tan.
“Machismo,” he said aloud. Jiving it in self-mockery. He looked in the rear-view mirror at the thick brown column of his neck, the strong jaw, the square tanned face. In circles where there weren’t any, he was thought a tough guy.
Past Kenmore Square he pulled onto Park Drive and drove through the Fenway. Automatically he looked, as he always did, at the light towers of Fenway Park as they showed above the apartment buildings. They had loomed for him, when he was a boy, like the towers of Camelot.
He went past the Museum of Fine Arts and pulled into the faculty parking lot at Northeastern University. His wife’s parking sticker entitled him. Northeastern was an urban university of unrelieved ugliness. Janet’s office was in a converted industrial building. Inside, the brick walls and hardwood floors had been veneered with paint and vinyl and the open spaces partitioned with wallboard. It was air-conditioned. In Janet’s office there were another woman and two men. Newman knew them. He didn’t like them much. He was jealous of Janet’s work and her friends at work and her commitment to both the work and the friends.
As he came to her door she was talking animatedly. Her eyes were bright and wide, her hands moved. Her color was high. Goddamn isn’t she something. There was a faint red line on her left wrist, where last night the rope had marked it. He felt anxiety heavy in his stomach, but also faintly, around the edges, desire as he remembered her naked helplessness.
He stepped around the corner of her office door and said, “Newman’s the name, words are my game.”
Janet stopped talking and smiled at him and waved.
“Margie,” he said, “how are you? Jim? Charles?”
They spoke to him. He made them a little uneasy, he knew. He had been reviewed in Time and Newsweek and been on the Today show. For them he was a celebrity. And a celebrity in the field where they would care. They were all English professors, he was a writer. Always inside them was the war; Newman understood it. Always there was the disdain for his popularity and envy of his success. He liked making them uncomfortable.
Janet said, “What are you doing here? Did you have your appointment?”
“Yeah,” Newman said. “I had it. It went okay. They were a little upset, but nothing they could do.”
Margie was small and very slim with perfectly black hair and good features. She was much younger than Janet. “Anything wrong?” she said.
“No,” Janet said. “Just some business that had to be done. It involved returning some merchandise and I was afraid it could be unpleasant.” She smiled. “That’s why I had Aaron do it.”
“Man’s work,” he said. They were very liberated here in the English department. He loved to scandalize them. If only mildly. “How about you and me, little lady, we go do
wn to Chris’s Place and have a few drinks and dinner.”
“Aaron, I have my car,” she said.
“So drive down, meet me there. Or drive down in the Jeep with me and we’ll come back and get your car.”
“I’m not riding in the Jeep and having my hair blow all over the place.”
He took a big breath. “Okay, then, ride down in your car and meet me.”
“Okay, but I’ll be late. There’s a curriculum committee meeting and it’s important. I won’t be able to get there for another hour.”
“Course, don’t want to miss that curriculum committee meeting. Probably couldn’t have it without you. What are you going to do at this meeting, plan the next meeting?”
“Aaron, don’t be a pain in the ass. You go down and have a few beers with Chris and I’ll come down after our meeting.”
“Yeah, okay, when can I expect you? You know how you are.” He looked at the two men. One was tall and willowy with a full beard and small round gold-rimmed glasses. The other was middle-sized and trim with a European-cut three-piece suit and a Phi Beta Kappa key on his watch chain. Half his salary on the goddamned suit.
“I’ll be there in an hour, I already said that. The meeting will have to end at six because people have classes at six-thirty. Go ahead. I’ll be there.”
He nodded, smiled at the four of them, and turned to go. He paused next to the medium man in the three-piece suit. “Charles,” he said. “You are a regular fashion plate.”
He was close to Charles and was aware of how much bigger he was than Charles. He wanted Charles to feel that, to let the sense of his mass sink in. Charles smiled vaguely.
“I wish I could dress as you do, Aaron, and stay home all day and cash big checks, but some of us aren’t so lucky, or talented, maybe.”
Newman grinned. “That’s true,” he said. He waved his hand at all of them again and went out. Jesus Christ, we got the biggest problem of our fucking life and she’s got a curriculum meeting. Nice how she’d give up anything to be with me. Nice how she’s always there when I’m feeling bad. Very fucking nice. He got in his Jeep and drove toward the waterfront. His eyes stung as if he would cry. But there were no tears.
5
At forty-seven Chris Hood stood six feet tall and weighed 190. He had a black belt in karate, could bench-press 375 pounds. The skin on his body was too tight to pinch. In 1950 he had jumped into Wonson, Korea, with the Second Ranger battalion, been captured, escaped, returned to his unit, and won the Distinguished Service Cross. From 1956 to 1959 he returned punts and kickoffs for the Detroit Lions. He had been cut six weeks before he qualified for a pension. He came back to Boston and worked as a bartender and a bouncer in several different clubs and finally in 1976 opened a heavily mortgaged pub/restaurant in the area of Quincy Market. He sat at the bar with Newman and sipped Perrier water with a twist of lime while Newman drank Beck’s beer.
“Janet coming down?” he said.
Newman said, “Yes. She’s got a meeting first.”
The room was dim and air-conditioned. The bar itself was mahogany. Behind the bar on the wall above the display of bottles was the mounted head of a grizzly bear Hood had shot in Alaska.
“Hear anything from Kathy?” Newman said.
Hood laughed. “Every time I’m a day late with the alimony.”
“How’re the kids?”
“Okay, I guess.” Hood looked at the grizzly head on the wall. “I don’t see much of them, to tell you the truth. You hear from Karen?”
“Yeah,” Newman said. “She’s in Amsterdam. And next week she’s going to Paris.”
“When’s she get back?”
“September, just before school starts.”
“How about Sandy?”
“She’s in Cleveland, she’s dancing in a road company revival of Carousel. They’re supposed to be in Boston in November and she says she’ll be able to come home a couple of days.”
Hood looked at Newman’s glass, saw it was empty, and nodded at the bartender. He brought a new bottle.
“Your kids are doing good,” Hood said. “They’re going where they want to. They’re learning what they like. They’re not hung up on supposed to and all that shit. You and Janet have done a good job. Hope Kathy doesn’t fuck mine up.”
Hood had a dark, thick moustache. His hair was curly and short with no gray in it. He wore blue-tinted aviator glasses.
Newman drank half his beer at a swallow. “You killed people in Korea, right?”
Hood nodded. “Sure,” he said. “We were supposed to. Didn’t you?”
Newman shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. There were some skirmishes and stuff, but I don’t think I ever shot anyone.”
“Just like hunting,” Hood said. “Nothing personal. You get in a fire fight and it’s kind of fun. It’s exciting. Unless you get killed.”
Newman drank the rest of his beer. The bartender brought another.
“Ever kill anyone except in Korea?”
Hood raised his eyebrows. “Nice question,” he said. “If I had would I admit it?”
Newman said, “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Do you think you could?”
“Kill someone, sure. If I had a reason. You got someone in mind? I get through here at three.”
Two women came into the bar. One wore white pants and a blue-striped halter top that showed a lot of cleavage. The other had on a denim jumpsuit with rhinestone trim and a pair of sling-strap high heels. The cuffs of her pants were rolled up in a six-inch-wide turn. They sat in a booth behind Newman and Hood and looked for a long time at Hood.
“They’re both looking at you, Chris,” Newman said. “Must have seen my wedding ring.”
Hood turned and looked steadily at both women for perhaps a minute. Both of them reddened. One said, “What are you looking at?”
Hood said, “I’m not sure,” politely and turned back toward the bar.
The bartender brought Newman another beer and looked at Hood’s glass of half-drunk Perrier. Hood shook his head slightly and the bartender went away.
“Three billion people in the world,” Newman said, “and I end up living next to a guy who looks like Robert Redford.”
“He’s blond,” Hood said.
“Oh yeah.”
“You look like you’ve lost a little weight,” Hood said.
“Oh yeah, maybe a few pounds. I’m fighting it all the time. You know what happened to me last night?”
“You got laid?”
“No.” Then he told Hood everything that had happened. He spoke softly, leaning toward Hood so that no one would hear him. And he spoke rapidly but with very little inflection. Hood listened and said nothing.
“I’m out taking a pleasant little run for my weight and my health, you know. And now gangsters are threatening me and tying up my wife and I don’t know what the fuck to do. I mean, Runner’s World doesn’t cover this kind of thing.”
“So that’s why you were asking me about killing people.”
Janet Newman came in the front door wearing huge sunglasses with wire rims, and walked the length of the bar, slowly, as her eyes adjusted to the light. She had on a white gauze dress and black high heels and carried a black shoulder bag. Three men at the bar turned to watch her walk past. When she reached them she kissed Hood on the cheek and slid in beside Newman.
“Not bad for an old broad,” Hood said.
“Want something?” Newman said.
“Perrier with a twist of whatever,” Janet said. Hood motioned to the bartender.
No vices, Newman thought. Won’t get drunk, won’t get fat, won’t get out of control. Some fun, a glass of soda water. “Better be careful on the Perrier,” Newman said. “You know how you get after three. Just climb all over me.”
She smiled. “Dream on, Aaron,” she said. “Have a rich fantasy life.”
Hood was looking at her. “You okay?”
“Sure,” Janet said. “Why shouldn’t I be okay?”
“Aaron told m
e about last night,” Hood said.
Janet frowned. She looked at Aaron. “Was that smart?”
Newman shrugged. “I thought Chris could help me make sense out of it. Why not tell him?” Newman drank beer.
“It’s not Chris,” Janet said. “But I don’t think it’s wise to talk about it to anyone. If it stops here that’s one thing, but who else will you tell? Have a few beers and …” She spread her hands, palms up.
Hood said, “We were quiet about it. I won’t say a word. Who the hell else do I talk to but you?”
“And just what was Chris going to help you make sense out of,” Janet said.
“The whole thing. The shooting, the way they treated you, the way I had to go and tell the cops I was mistaken. The lieutenant called me yellow.” Newman drank more beer. “But I can’t let them harm you. Christ, you’re my whole life.”
Janet said, “They threatened to harm you too.”
Newman shrugged and looked at the bar top and shook his head as if to clear it.
“Or the girls,” he said. “You know what I’m like. I’m a husband and a father before I’m anything else. It’s what makes life purposeful.”
“How about the books,” Hood said.
“They help, but they’re not family. That’s what I do, not what I am.”
“You write good books, Aaron,” Hood said.
“Yeah, about courage and the matter of honor and how things heal stronger at the break.”
“Best since Hemingway,” Hood said. Janet sipped her Perrier.
“And then two bums come around and humiliate my wife and I roll over and make gestures of submission.”
“Oh, Aaron, don’t be so goddamned melodramatic,” Janet said. “What else are you expected to do?”
The bartender brought more beer. Newman finished his glass and poured more.
“I could kill them,” he said.
Something stirred in the back of Chris Hood’s eyes and tugged briefly at the corners of his mouth.
Janet said, “Oh, Aaron, grow up. You don’t even know who they are.”
Newman still stared at the bar top, his head lowered between his shoulders. “I know who he is,” he said.
“Aaron,” Janet said, “you know how you are when you’re drinking.”
