The Guardian

by David Hosp

  The Tedeschi’s on the corner was like a thousand others across the city. It had narrow aisles filled with low-end staples. Soft, starched-white bread, generic soda, peanut butter and various cheap canned goods were lined along the shelf-space. The store survived, though, on the goods sold behind the counter. Cigarettes and lottery tickets were the items that moved the fastest, most purchased with government-issued EBT food-stamp credit cards.

  Cianna picked out some eggs, butter, and bread, and a plastic pack of processed bologna. The girl behind the counter was twenty pounds overweight and in her early-twenties, with bad skin and worse teeth. A look of recognition came over her face when she saw her. ‘You’re Cianna, right? Cianna Phelan?’

  Cianna said nothing.

  ‘I grew up in the building next to you in the Colony. I was about five years younger, but I remember you. You had a brother a little closer to my age. What the fuck was his name, Chucky or something like that, right?’

  ‘Charlie,’ Cianna said.

  ‘Right, Charlie. He always got picked on ’cause he was so fuckin’ small. You used to stick up for him, but there’s only so much you can do, right? How’s he doin’ now?’

  ‘He’s good,’ Cianna said. ‘He just got out of the Army.’ She pulled out her wallet and gave the girl an impatient look in the hope that it would spur her to start scanning her groceries.

  The girl took the hint and looked slightly offended as she started ringing up the purchases. ‘I heard you went away for a while. And now you’re doing that parole-guard shit?’ Cianna said nothing. ‘Some fuckin’ thing that happened last night to Vinnie Bronson at the projects, huh?’ she asked knowingly.

  Cianna recognized the girl, but had no idea what her name was. She certainly didn’t know her enough to make any admissions to her. ‘I’m not sure what you’re talking about,’ she said.

  The girl winked like she was in on a secret. ‘Uh huh, I’m not surprised. Vinnie’s got some friends. Better not to know anything. They say it was a chick that broke his nose. They say he’s pissed ’cause he’s always been vain about his looks, and now his face is all fucked up. Most people think Vinnie’s an asshole, though, so he’s not gonna get a whole lot of sympathy, y’know?’ She was ringing up the purchases as she talked. Cianna wished she would hurry up.

  ‘Like I said, I don’t know anything about it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ the girl said, trying to make eye contact. ‘Like I said, that’s probably better.’ She was done ringing up Cianna’s purchases, and Cianna ran her debit card through the reader. She held her breath, hoping that she had enough in the account to cover the nine dollars’ worth of food. She felt the same worry whenever she was at the store. Living paycheck-to-paycheck caused her more stress than she cared to admit.

  ‘Did your friend find you?’ the girl asked as Cianna held her breath waiting for the transaction to clear.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘There was a guy here yesterday looking for you. Did he find you?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, that must have been my brother,’ Cianna said, giving a polite smile. ‘He found me.’

  The girl waved her hand at Cianna. ‘No, not your brother. Unless your brother grew about two feet, hit the gym and shaved his head.’

  Cianna frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I remember your brother. He was short and skinny. I used to watch the neighborhood kids kick the shit out of him. The guy in here looked more like the kind of guy who does the shit-kickin’, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I don’t,’ Cianna said.

  ‘He was a fuckin’ monster, this one.’ The word came out as monsta. ‘Shoulders like out to here.’ She held her hands far apart and over her head. ‘Totally bald, too. I don’t know, some chicks like that look, but not me.’

  ‘Someone besides my brother was here yesterday?’ Cianna frowned again. ‘He was asking for me?’

  The woman shrugged like it was no big deal. ‘Yeah. He was asking if I knew where you lived and where you worked.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘I didn’t tell him a fuckin’ thing.’ She looked at Cianna and put a finger on the side of her nose. ‘For all I knew he was a cop, and it ain’t my business. That’s the way it works here. Maybe you should remember that when you bust into people’s apartments when they don’t want to be found.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  Charlie Phelan was shaking as he walked into the Iron Cross Tavern in South Boston. It was a dark place where people minded their own business. At ten-thirty Miles Gruden was already sitting in his corner booth, three newspapers spread out in front of him, two plates cluttering the table, and a stained coffee cup in his hand. It looked as though he’d been there for a while. Two men sat a few tables away. They were rough-cut and heavily boned, and they exuded menace. There was no question they were Miles’s men.

  Charlie walked over to the table. ‘Miles,’ he said, trying to keep the warble out of his voice.

  Gruden glanced up at him like he was looking at a gutter that needed cleaning. He had a weathered, round face, and the pits in his nose testified to fifty-five years of hard living. He was wearing a short-sleeved, button-down shirt, open enough to show a dirty undershirt underneath. He said nothing for a moment, then looked back down at the newspaper in front of him and continued reading.

  ‘It’s Charlie,’ Charlie said stupidly. ‘Charlie Phelan. I grew up in the Old Colony. Chris Connell gave me your number, said you might be able to help me? I called—’

  ‘I know who ya are,’ Gruden said, cutting him off. He was still reading the paper. ‘Siddown.’

  Charlie did as he was told. Behind him he could feel Miles’s men move closer, sitting at the table behind him, facing his back.

  ‘You fuckin’ believe this?’ Gruden grunted. Charlie wasn’t sure whether he was talking to himself. ‘Economy’s still not right and they’re talkin’ about raising taxes again. Motherfuckers.’ Charlie was sure that Gruden had never paid a dollar in taxes in his entire life, but that seemed to be beside the point. ‘Gonna bleed the fuckin’ country dry.’ He shoveled a fork full of cold egg and potatoes off one of the plates into his mouth and looked up at Charlie as he chewed, letting his lips separate enough to give Charlie a view of the semi-masticated breakfast. ‘You bring it?’ he asked after a moment.

  Charlie shook his head. ‘I didn’t think—’

  Gruden put his head back down in the paper without hearing the rest. ‘You catch this shit, Joe?’ he said into the table. ‘Kid asks for my help, and then he doesn’t even bring the shit with him.’

  ‘Fucked-up world, Mr Gruden,’ said a voice from behind Charlie. Apparently one of the men sitting behind him was Joe. Charlie wasn’t sure which, though he supposed it didn’t matter. He was guessing he’d have a hard time telling them apart anyway.

  ‘You think I got time to waste, kid?’ Gruden said.

  ‘No,’ Charlie replied. ‘I didn’t know whether you could help,’ he stammered. ‘I thought you wanted to talk—’

  Gruden looked up sharply. ‘If you didn’t know whether I could help, why the fuck you call?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure—’

  ‘You weren’t sure? Why’d you call, then? You think I’m a fuckin’ chump?’

  ‘No, I just . . .’ Charlie took a deep breath, tried to relax. Gruden was testing him. Charlie had spent enough time around bullies to recognize the tactic, and he understood that his reaction would set the tone for the negotiation to come. He thought about all the people who had taken advantage of him throughout his life, and he willed himself to appear confident. ‘I wanted to talk to you first,’ he said slowly. ‘I didn’t know whether you could help with this. It’s an unusual item.’

  Gruden picked up a stained napkin and wiped his mouth. ‘Is it genuine?’ he asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s genuine.’

  ‘Then I can help you move it,’ Gruden said. ‘But I gotta see it first. I can’t do a fuckin’ thing one way or another i
f I can’t verify that it’s the real article.’

  ‘I understand,’ Charlie conceded. ‘But I need to know how you plan on moving it.’

  ‘You hear that, Joe?’ Gruden said. ‘Kid needs to know how I plan on moving it.’

  ‘Unbelievable.’

  Gruden narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Charlie. ‘You don’t need to know shit,’ he said. ‘If it’s genuine, I got people who are interested. You understand, I’m gonna take sixty per cent to move it, though.’

  ‘Going rate is forty,’ Charlie said.

  ‘Like you said,’ Gruden responded, ‘it’s an unusual item. Goin’ rate don’t apply.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Charlie shot back, ‘but you said you’ve already got people interested. If that’s true, this is gonna be the easiest sale you’ve ever made.’

  Gruden blew his nose into the dirty napkin. Something escaped and landed on the front of his shirt. Charlie couldn’t tell whether it was egg. Gruden either didn’t notice or didn’t care; it remained on the shirt. ‘Maybe the easiest, maybe the most dangerous. I guess we’ll wait and fuckin’ see,’ he said. ‘Either way, you need my connections.’

  ‘There are other people with connections in this city,’ Charlie said. It was dangerous to try to play a man like Miles Gruden, but Charlie also knew that this was probably the largest fence the gangster would handle all year. It was easy money to him – too easy to pass up.

  Gruden looked at Charlie for a long time before he lowered his eyes to his newspaper again. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What do you think, Joe?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s a fucked-up world, Mr Gruden.’

  Charlie worried that he had over-played his hand. ‘Forty-five per cent,’ he offered quickly.

  Gruden folded up his newspapers one at a time, stacked them in a neat pile on the side of the table. He raised his hand and gestured toward the table and a waitress hurried over to collect the plates in front of him. She came back five seconds later with a pot of coffee and filled his cup. ‘I remember you,’ Gruden said as he emptied four sugars into the coffee cup. ‘From when you were growing up in the neighborhood. Probably seems like a fuckin’ lifetime ago to you, but to me it was just yesterday. You were always a scrawny little shit. Scared of your own shadow.’

  ‘The Army changes people,’ Charlie said. It was the best he had.

  ‘Yeah?’ Gruden sipped his coffee. ‘I wouldn’t know; I was smart enough to stay out.’ He put his coffee cup down. ‘But lookin’ at you now, it’s hard to believe. You still look like the same scrawny little shit from the projects.’ He paused for a moment. ‘What’s your sister doing now? Some kinda fuckin’ charity work, I hear. She was always a hot piece of ass.’

  Charlie said nothing. He just sat there, staring back at Gruden, trying not to blink.

  ‘If it wasn’t for her, growing up you’d have caught an even more serious ass-kicking, you know that? I guess the Army changed her, too, from what I heard, didn’t it?’ He waited only a beat, and when there was no response, he said, ‘Shame, that. I hear she messed up a guy I do some business with occasionally last night. You might want to tell her to be careful who she fucks with. I’ll let it pass this time, if we’re doin’ business here.’

  ‘Fifty per cent,’ Charlie said. He folded his arms across his chest, and kept his eyes focused on the man across the table from him.

  Gruden stirred his coffee, took another sip. ‘You’re right, Joe,’ he said, looking over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘It’s a fucked-up world.’ He looked back at Charlie. ‘You know where my shop is?’

  Among other things, Gruden owned a barber shop off L Street. Everyone knew where it was. Charlie nodded.

  ‘Good. You bring it by my shop this afternoon. Six o’clock. If it’s genuine, I’ll move it. Fifty per cent.’

  Charlie nodded again. He stood up without saying another word and walked out the front door of the restaurant. He headed around the corner and up the block. When he came to the first alley, he ducked inside and found a spot where he couldn’t be seen from the street. He put his hand against the wall, took a deep breath, and slumped to the pavement as his knees buckled.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘I never thanked you for Sam,’ Ainsworth said. He was leaning against the door to Jack Saunders’s office. Saunders was packing a briefcase. ‘For what you did for him and the others. It was a violation of every directive you had, but I should still have thanked you.’

  ‘I wasn’t looking for thanks,’ Saunders said without looking up.

  ‘I know you weren’t. Which is why you deserved them more. Thank you. As your boss, I’ll tell you that you did a very terrible thing. As Sam’s father, though, I want you to know how much I appreciated it.’

  Saunders looked up and held Ainsworth’s eyes for a moment. He could see at that moment how deeply the death of his son had affected the man. ‘He was like a brother to me.’

  ‘I know. You might be the only person who could possibly understand how I felt, because you felt some of the same things. Except you did something about it, while I . . .’ His voice trailed off for a moment. ‘Well, I suppose that is why I owe you thanks even more. As I sat here and considered all the global political implications, you went out and took revenge.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it as revenge.’

  ‘Yes, you did. But in the end, it was only a gesture. The people who were truly behind his murder – and the murders of all the others at Camp Chapman – are still operating with impunity, and they will continue to unless we show the will to oppose them fully. That is why your vacation in Boston is so important.’

  Saunders went back to packing his things. ‘Any last words of advice, while you’re still my boss?’

  ‘Have you ever heard of The Prophet’s Will ?’

  ‘Sure,’ Saunders said. ‘Jerry Bruckheimer movie, right?’

  Ainsworth didn’t smile. ‘It’s the code name for a Taliban operation to remove western influence from Afghanistan once and for all.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of it,’ Saunders said. ‘Don’t know much about the details.’

  ‘No one does,’ Ainsworth said. ‘My guess is there isn’t much to know. We get rumors every once in a while. Nibbles of information, really, from the lines we’ve got out in the water. Nothing more than that.’

  ‘So why bring it up?’

  Ainsworth folded his arms. ‘Some of the nibbles mention the Heart of Afghanistan.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Plus, there have been rumors that there could be some people on our side involved.’

  Saunders looked at his boss. ‘People on our side?’

  ‘In the military.’

  ‘Why would anyone on our side be involved?’

  ‘I have no idea. It’s really just ghost stories, probably. I figured you should know, though.’

  ‘Do we know anything about the operation at all?’

  Ainsworth shrugged. ‘Not much. All the bits and pieces we’ve got talk about capturing the Heart of Afghanistan – the source of Mohammed’s power. The true believers seem to think that if they get their hands on it, it would lead Islam to its final victory over the West.’

  ‘What is it?’ Saunders asked as he transferred a couple of pens from his desk to his briefcase.

  ‘We don’t know. But whatever it is, they seem to think it’s in Boston at the moment.’ Saunders looked unperturbed. ‘You need to be very careful on this, Jack,’ Ainsworth cautioned him. ‘Afghanistan is in a very precarious position right now. The American public thinks we’ve succeeded. The politicians are desperate to pull as many of our troops out as we can; all of them, if possible. That’s going to leave a power vacuum in the country, and the civil war that will erupt will be worse than the one that happened after the Soviets pulled out. It’s going to be a mess, and everyone over there knows it. You need to understand that the people who are lying in wait, biding their time, are the most dangerous people you will ever deal with, and they will stop at nothing to get po
wer and keep power.’ He gave Saunders a hard look to drive home his point.

  Saunders considered this for a moment, then went back to his packing. ‘Tell me about Phelan,’ he said.

  Ainsworth opened a leather briefing file. ‘Charles Teigan Phelan,’ he began.

  ‘Nice Jewish boy, I’m guessing?’ Saunders said.

  Ainsworth ignored him. ‘Born October tenth, 1988, at Metropolitan Hospital in Boston. Grew up in the Old Colony Public Housing Project in South Boston.’ Ainsworth looked up at Saunders. ‘You grew up around there, right?’

  ‘Quincy,’ Saunders replied. ‘We were posers compared to the kids from the Southie projects. They were the real deal.’

  ‘Not Phelan, from what we can tell,’ Ainsworth said. ‘He was never in trouble as far as we know. Got decent grades in school, but nothing to stand out. He certainly wasn’t getting any scholarships to Harvard. Signed up for the Army at eighteen. Passed through Basic, but he wasn’t fit enough to get into any of the elite forces he was looking for. Hell, even the infantry didn’t really want him. He ended up in the Quartermaster’s Corps.’

  ‘Sounds pretty dull,’ Saunders said.

  ‘Compared to what you did over there? Sure. He saw some interesting spots, though. Did a tour in Baghdad and was lent out to a unit in Istanbul. Ended up stationed in Kandahar before he mustered out.’

  ‘So, what’s his name doing in a Taliban communication to a sleeper cell?’

  Ainsworth shrugged. ‘Could be nothing. Could be a coincidence.’

  ‘And we’ve got no address,’ Saunders commented.

  ‘No. Like I said, his sister’s in Boston. If someone was looking for him, that’d probably be the best starting point.’