Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  Barkley hung up and thumbed through the file on the old car crash. There was one additional item he hadn’t shared with Cat McShane, something he’d unearthed when they ran their check on Violet. She was a working girl, busted for solicitation and misdemeanor drug possession a half-dozen times. Maybe that was fucked up. Then again, one of her kids had gone to Harvard. The other was at Latin School. God bless her, Violet must have been doing something right. Barkley shoved the file in a drawer just as the phone rang. On the other end of the line was his captain. They’d IDed the black man in Nick Toney’s photo. Surprise, fucking surprise, he had a record.

  23

  DANIEL COULD feel Grace’s pull as he walked through Kenmore Square. He kept his head down, eyes averted, gingerly but inevitably entering her orbit. And then he was there, crumbling into her arms on the steps of Music City, burying himself in the smell of her skin, stripping himself of himself.

  “Let it out,” she breathed, a whisper as ancient as the grief he felt, one that stirred the leaves of death and carried the seeds of something else, something women seemed to understand and embrace so much better and finer than men ever could. Maybe it was healing, maybe it was just acceptance. But Grace understood it. And so she comforted him and he could feel her edge, just a fraction, from young girl to young woman. And part of him marveled at such a thing even as the rest of him heaved in choking, shuddering gasps.

  “How did you know?” he finally said. Did it matter how she knew? No, but the mind asked its questions to keep itself busy. Keep itself in the game.

  “My dad heard it on the news.”

  “So you came over?”

  “Was that okay?”

  He nodded, wiping his nose on his sleeve and producing another spate of tears that filmed his cheeks and salted his lips. “Fuck.” Daniel never swore, but he was tired and stretched and dangerously out of control and couldn’t have that.

  “Why didn’t you come up?” He pointed vaguely toward his building.

  “I don’t know. Just figured I’d wait.”

  “Did you see us on the roof?”

  “I thought it was you. You wanna walk?”

  Moving seemed like a good idea so he nodded and they got up.

  “What time is it?” he said.

  She pointed to the clock on the insurance building. “Nine thirty-two.”

  Nine thirty-two. Harry had been dead how long? Daniel tried to do the sums, but the numbers wouldn’t line up in his head. He wondered if they’d burned the body yet. “Let’s walk to school.”

  “You sure?”

  “You think people will know?”

  “Probably.” She reached out and touched the ragged line he’d chopped across his head. “You cut your hair.”

  “Yeah.” He’d brought his book bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Come on. We can get there by third period.”

  They crossed the street and started up Brookline Avenue, over a bridge that spanned the Mass Pike. The Green Monster loomed on their left. Daniel noticed a baseball trapped at the base of the stiff, twisted netting and wondered if they’d leave it there all winter. And if they did, would it still be there in the spring? Maybe he’d come by every day and check. Maybe he’d be there when it fell.

  “You sure you wanna go in?” Grace said.

  He wasn’t sure, but his feet seemed to have a mind of their own. And so he led the way as they slipped over the bridge and dipped down past Fenway.

  “I was there last night,” he said. “In the alley where it happened. Spent all night at the police station, then went down to see the body.”

  Grace didn’t ask for more. She hadn’t asked for what she’d gotten. Daniel continued, anyway, because it felt like it scrubbed at something inside.

  “The police wanted to know how I got down where Harry was, but I couldn’t explain it.”

  “You couldn’t explain it cuz you didn’t want to, or you couldn’t explain it cuz you couldn’t explain it?”

  “The second one. I don’t know how I got there, but I did. And I saw in my head what I was gonna find.”

  “You saw like a picture?”

  “More like a color or a feeling. But I knew it was Harry. And I was hoping . . .”

  “You thought you could save him?”

  Daniel shook his head. “Don’t think it works that way.”

  She skimmed him a fresh look and for the first time he saw that maybe, just maybe, she was a little afraid of him. They walked another block.

  “You hungry?” Grace pointed to a Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner of Brookline and Boylston. They went in and got a couple of plain crullers, sitting at a counter by the front window and staring out at traffic streaming through the intersection.

  “He knew I loved him,” Daniel said. “Harry knew that.”

  Grace made a small sound in her throat. Daniel felt her fingers brush his.

  “Let’s not talk about it anymore,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  His cruller had just come out of the deep fryer. There was a fine crunchy crust on the outside and it was warm and soft in the middle. He ate it slowly and, for the first time since the alley, allowed himself a respite, a moment where he enjoyed something of this world.

  “Want mine?” Grace said.

  Daniel shook his head and tugged a napkin from the dispenser.

  “The guy you live with . . . the professor?”

  “Simon.”

  “Are you gonna stay there?”

  “For now, I guess. Why?”

  Grace turned so their knees were touching. “What do you know about him?”

  “I told you what I knew.”

  “I get feelings, too, Daniel.”

  “Everyone gets feelings.”

  “I mean something more, like what you described in the record store.” She read the disbelief in his face. “Doesn’t matter what you think.”

  “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Have you ever thought maybe this professor is entangling you? Manipulating you?”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Good question. Did you tell the police about the gun?”

  Daniel felt his face grow hot and pink. “What gun?”

  “The one you picked up outside of school yesterday. People see, Daniel. People know. Okay, people guess. I know.” Her eyes moved to his book bag on the counter. “Is it in there?”

  He put a hand on the bag and noticed the small muscles in his forearm as he moved his fingers.

  She blew a puff of air from her perfect lips. “You know they have a suspect?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “My dad. I guess it’s all over Chinatown.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “I don’t. And if I did, I’d tell you to leave it to the police.”

  She was growing older even as he watched, body ripening, eyes deepening, her coltish movements becoming a study in poise and polish. He saw her standing at the back of a church, in a white dress with orange flowers in her hair and scent on her cheeks, a wedge of sun warming her face and turning it a dozen shades of golden. Her life flashed past in a series of flip cards—quiet nights on the couch, movies and popcorn as the snow piled up outside, summers and sun-brewed tea, puppies, children, cookouts, a husband, partner, friend. Love. Bubbling, endless, overflowing. And so it went to the end of her days. And then it was done and Grace moved on, one of ten thousand lives she’d lead and a special one at that. It was all as it should be, but only if he was part of none of it. Love and hate, pain and perfection, one tugged at the thread of the other and life unraveled.

  “I never told you about my mom.”

  “What do you want to tell me?”

  “She died in a car crash when I was a kid.”

  Grace didn’t offer any condolences because he didn’t need any. He needed to talk. So she took his hand and listened.

  “We’d sit up in an apartment we had downtown. I was seven or eight and would lie in her bed, watching in the mir
ror as she put on makeup.” Daniel remembered lifting his nose and the smell of her powder, sweetening the thick clouds of cigarette smoke. Coffee cups kissed with lipstick crowded together on the vanity as he ran up and down a short set of stairs, getting her this, bringing her that. A hiss of silk as she stood up in her slip, figure long in the mirror, and asked how she looked and he’d stare at her face and she’d smile in the glass and kiss him and tell him he was so perfect and don’t ever change. Then she’d put on her dress and he’d zip it up and he’d thread a needle if she needed it because her eyes were no good for that and he’d watch as the rings and earrings came out and went on. When she was ready, she’d kiss him again on the cheek and tell him he’d be okay and if he wasn’t he could go to the lady who lived downstairs or the Chinaman on the corner. Then she’d look at herself a final time in the mirror, that hint of something else always tugging at her lips, as if she was waiting, begging, for someone to tell her to stay. But no one ever did. And so she’d go.

  “I’d watch her from the window, then sit up as the streetlights came on and wait for Harry. He wouldn’t get home until late from football. We’d go down in the street and play catch.” Laces spinning, perfect spirals in the night, a kiss of leather as the ball hit soft in his hands and he cradled it close to his body. Harry at the other end, smiling as Daniel threw the ball back, covering only half the distance and a wobble at that. They’d sit on the curb or a bench and talk while the sweat cooled on Daniel’s neck. Sometimes, they talked about football. Sometimes, it was their mother. Sometimes, it was her “dates.” Once Harry asked if Daniel remembered their dad. Daniel shook his head. He could feel his brother’s angst rubbing and stretching and searching for a home and he never told their mother about those conversations. Not because Harry asked him to keep quiet, but just because Daniel knew. And now he told Grace because she was everything that was left.

  “I’ll help you, Daniel. But in my own way.”

  “What do you think I want to do?”

  “Let’s talk outside.” She waited until they were back on the sidewalk before speaking again. “If I’m wrong, just tell me. You want to find Harry’s killer. Right now. Today.”

  She’d spoken the words and he felt better, like it was real and normal and just the next thing.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I want.”

  “But not the gun, Daniel.”

  “You don’t think he’s gonna have one?”

  “Not the gun.”

  He pulled the heavy revolver from his bag and handed it to her. She turned it over quickly in her hands and shoved it in her coat pocket. Then they walked down Brookline Avenue in silence. Not perfect silence, but the words they said sounded wooden and hollow and meant nothing compared to what had already been said and left unsaid. Just before they hit Avenue Louis Pasteur, Daniel stopped and turned.

  “It can’t happen like this.”

  “Then how?”

  “I don’t know, but the gun’s part of it.”

  She shook her head but took out the revolver. Whatever had been set in motion was running now, free and easy, and would be as it was meant to be, regardless of what they said or did or felt or didn’t. So Daniel shoved the gun back in his bag and they walked the rest of the way down Avenue Louis Pasteur. As they hit the front steps of the school, Grace took his hand.

  24

  THEY WENT in a side door and down to the basement to wait for the end of the period. Eddie Spaulding was sitting on the floor in the hallway, eating a Hoodsie with a wooden spoon and reading CliffsNotes for Albert Camus’s The Stranger. He fixed Grace with his golden gaze. She didn’t give him a second look as they ducked into the cafeteria. A couple of women were setting up for lunch at a long steam table, carrying out pans heavy with Salisbury steak and industrial-strength mac and cheese, all of it arriving in clouds of white steam. Nearby a man with a face like an old bucket pushed a long-handled broom across the cement floor. Grace headed to the bathroom. Daniel sat on a bench at one of the narrow tables. The swinging doors to the cafeteria squeaked once and Spaulding walked in. He took a seat across from Daniel, propping up one sneaker and flexing his wrist as he spoke.

  “I heard about your brother. I’m sorry.”

  Daniel ducked his eyes, hiding from his pain like any animal would. “Thanks.”

  “Great football player. Looked out for me when I was on jayvee.”

  “Sounds like Harry.”

  “He was a stand-up guy, Daniel. Real fucking deal.”

  Daniel was sure that meant a lot to Eddie Spaulding, but it didn’t mean jack to him. He wanted his fucking brother back. Could Spaulding do that? No. And it didn’t matter how many nice things people said.

  “Ever tell you I lost a brother?” Spaulding’s words were clipped and perfectly shaped. Daniel shook his head and waited for more.

  “We live in Old Colony. Me and my mom.”

  Old Colony was a housing project in Southie. Daniel had never been there.

  “Terry got hit by a drunk driver. I know the guy, but no one ever did nothing.”

  “How old was he?”

  “My brother? Eleven and a half. I was ten.”

  Daniel thought about the almighty Eddie Spaulding, sitting in a one-bedroom box with his mom, both of them staring at a class photo of the dead kid who wasn’t there and was always there. The man with the broom came down again to work their area. They let him sweep and didn’t say another word until he’d left.

  “You talk to the cops yet?” Eddie had cut his voice.

  “Last night.”

  “The guy who killed Terry’s still around. I know exactly where he lives.”

  “That must be tough.”

  “People in the projects still talk about it to this very fucking day. Wonder why I never went after the guy. Some of them think I’m a pussy. No one says it to my face, but I know that’s what they think. Latin School, college boy. Didn’t stick up for his dead brother. Pussy.”

  Daniel played with a seam on his book bag and felt the barrel of the gun through the fabric. “What do you think?”

  “I think I want to get my mom the fuck out of the projects. My brother never gave a shit about school, but he wanted it for me. Told everyone I was gonna be starting for Harvard. He was gonna sit in the stands for Harvard-Yale. Not happening with my grades, but that’s all right. Still gonna try the fuck out of whatever they put in front of me.”

  The zombie with the broom rotated through again. Eddie stood up. “You know they’re looking for you?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Headmaster’s office. Sent out word first thing this morning. Anyway, I gotta get.”

  “Thanks, Eddie.”

  Spaulding nodded. It was what you did if you were a certain kind of guy. You passed along what you knew to someone who was drowning. Maybe the other guy drowned anyway. Maybe you drowned together, but at least you tried. Grace came back from the bathroom just in time to see the star running back leave.

  “What did he want?”

  “Just being a friend.”

  “Really?”

  “In his own Spaulding way. He’s worried I might be out for blood as well.”

  “Are you?”

  “I’m not gonna sit by, Grace. Not again.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Daniel was about to respond when the cafeteria doors squeaked and Boston Latin School’s headmaster stepped through. Daniel had never seen the great and powerful William Keating outside of the assembly hall and had a difficult time imagining him in a place as dingy and common as the school cafeteria. But there he was, blue three-piece suit, red tie, and black oxfords that shined like mirrors. Grace put a soft hand on the strap of Daniel’s bag.

  “Want me to take that?”

  Daniel shrugged her off and stood up, his face etched in hard grooves of light.

  * * *

  They settled by a tall set of windows overlooking the front steps of Latin School. Daniel was in the middle of the loose
triangle, Latin School’s headmaster, William Keating, on his left, the president of Harvard University on his right.

  “This is Lawrence Trent,” Keating said.

  “How are you, Daniel?” Trent wore a dark silk suit that made a hissing sound when he offered his hand.

  “Fine, sir.”

  Keating got up, muttering to himself and looking for something on his desk. He returned to his chair with a sigh that whistled through his teeth. “I’m sorry, Daniel. So very, very sorry.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Such a senseless tragedy. We didn’t know if you’d be in today.”

  “I was with the police until early this morning but couldn’t really sleep.”

  The word police caused Keating’s shoulders to jump and Trent to blink. Harvard would be under the microscope for letting a bunch of its players loose in the Combat Zone. The fact that they were mostly white and entirely privileged while a lot of the girls on the street were black didn’t help anyone, especially the guys from Cambridge.

  “Have you given any thought to the funeral?” Trent said.

  “There won’t be any service. Harry will be cremated as soon as they finish with the body.”

  Keating’s jaw dropped a full inch. Trent gave Daniel a lacerating smile.

  “Do you think that’s wise? There are many people at the university who would like to pay their respects.”

  “It’s what my brother would have wanted. Besides, it’s already done.”

  “Of course.” Trent paused as if to gather momentum. “There are a few things about Harry we want to make sure get mentioned. First, of course, to you, and then to the public at large.”

  Daniel might be broken and bleeding and naked. Harry, beyond caring. All of that, however, needed to be weighed against how Harvard came out of this. And so Trent hammered on.

  “Your brother was only on campus for a short time, yet he made an indelible impact on everyone he met. Harry was a brilliant student, a leader on and off the football field, and, most important, a young man of the utmost integrity, utmost character. He enriched everyone he touched and represented the very best of Harvard. We offer our condolences and join in your grief.”