Pulse

by Michael Harvey

  “Can I see them?”

  “Probably not a great idea.”

  “Please.”

  Toney sighed and stared at the traffic on Washington, looking for all the world like a man who wished he’d kept his mouth shut.

  * * *

  The studio had six windows, four looking out to the street, two staring straight down into the alley where Harry had died. Toney pulled the shades on all of them, flicking on a set of overhead lights and directing Daniel to a seat at a long worktable. He listened as Toney rummaged around in the back. Three lengths of wire were strung across the room. Attached to each were what looked like work prints. Finished photos hung on the walls. Almost all the shots were of women, most of them taken in the studio or at night on the street. Toney returned from the back with a couple more prints.

  “Sorry for the mess.” He pushed aside the remains of a Greek salad and a couple half-eaten chunks of gray meat.

  “What kind of photos do you shoot?”

  “I document lives. Girls, pimps, whatever catches my eye. Last night I was working with a fifteen-year-old girl. Runaway from Minnesota.”

  Toney pointed to a trio of pictures clipped to one of the wires. Daniel got up and took a look. The girl reminded him of Twiggy, except even skinnier and grimmer around the eyes. Honest, unflinching, a black-and-white study in the perfection of corruption.

  “See this one.” Toney had come up behind Daniel, plucking one of the few color shots off the wire and holding it under the light. The print shivered in his hand.

  “Who is she?” Daniel said.

  “Pretty, right?”

  The woman was older, straight brown hair, hollow green eyes. Toney had caught her at a street corner in the morning, just as she turned and before she’d had time to armor up.

  “Her name’s Elena Benson. Haven’t seen her in over a year. Happens a lot down here. Anyway, the reason I was looking out the window was because I thought she was down in the alley. Just a minute or two before your brother. I yelled at her, but she was close to LaGrange and couldn’t hear me.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “I told you. Elena. Elena Benson. She wasn’t there when Harry died, Daniel. I’m not sure she was ever there.” Toney clipped the photo back on the wire. “Let’s sit down.”

  Toney took a seat and placed one of the photos he’d brought out from the back facedown on the table. “Before I show you anything, there’s something you need to know.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I actually met your brother yesterday morning. Just a chance thing in Harvard Square. I can’t say I knew him, but it still kind of shook me.”

  “Is that why I’m here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I saw you sitting there with the girl and you looked like you’d had your guts kicked out . . .” Toney’s voice trailed off to nothing.

  “It’s all right, Mr. Toney.”

  “What’s all right?”

  “You feel like you’re part of what happened to Harry, maybe even a little responsible, but you’re not.”

  Toney nodded and drummed his fingers on the table. Daniel’s eyes were fixed on the blank back of the print. Toney rubbed a thumb along its border.

  “I cropped it so you can only see the killer.”

  “Thank you.”

  Toney flipped over the photo. Harry’s attacker was perfectly caught in a fracture of street light, staring directly up at the unblinking lens. If this was Walter Price, Daniel knew him. He’d fought with him outside of Latin School yesterday and had his gun stuffed at the bottom of his bag.

  “You recognize him,” Toney said.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It’s written all over. Don’t worry. I ain’t gonna tell no one.”

  “He’s a student at Boston English. I go to Latin. It’s right across the street so I’ve seen him around. Name’s Walter Price.”

  Toney turned the photo around and gave it a hard look. “No shit?”

  “You know him as well,” Daniel said.

  “I didn’t have the name but, yeah, I’ve seen him down here from time to time.”

  “You know where he is.”

  Toney turned the photo facedown again and laid his hands flat over it. “I might know where he’d go if he was scared.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Nah.”

  “Why not?”

  Toney shrugged. “Down here you depend on a lot of people for access. Part of the deal is I look the other way on some things. Otherwise, it’s just no good.”

  “You gave them your photos.”

  “Maybe that’s where the line is for me. Besides, I went down there at five in the morning. Made sure no one saw me coming or going.”

  “Give me the address, Mr. Toney.”

  “Go home, son. Bury your brother and let the cops handle it.”

  Daniel pointed his chin at the print. “Can I at least keep that?”

  Toney kicked it across the table with a finger. “Go ahead, then.”

  Daniel unzipped his book bag and slid the picture inside. Then he pulled out Walter Price’s revolver.

  “Give me the address or I swear I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

  After Toney got done laughing, he told Daniel to put the goddamn gun away. The photographer opened the shades to the front windows and cracked them each an inch. Then he got a couple of ice-cold bottles of Coke from a small fridge. As the city whispered in the street below and the sun worked its way across the sky, the two of them talked.

  “I can’t give you the exact address,” Toney said.

  “Why not?”

  “Does the phrase ‘lambs to the slaughter’ mean anything to you?”

  “You think I’m gonna go busting in there and start shooting?”

  “I think you’ll go busting in there and get yourself shot, but what’s the difference? Truth is I don’t have an exact address.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Tell someone who gives a fuck. Best I can do is put you on the same block. After that, you’re gonna have to wait for the cops. Take it or leave it.”

  Daniel took it. After he’d left, Toney pulled the shades, turned off the lights, and sat in the dark, wondering like hell if he’d done the right thing.

  26

  BARKLEY PULLED up in front of Tommy Dillon’s apartment at a little after three. He unfolded his six-foot five-inch frame slowly from the front seat, well aware of the four kids arranged on the stoop across the street. Barkley let them get a good look at the piece on his hip as he walked past, listening for the trail of Irish whispers that followed like soft blessings all the way to his partner’s front door.

  Katie Dillon answered on the first knock, pulling him close for a hug and pressing her body against his. “God, that feels good.” She leaned back a fraction to get a look at his face. “Come on in.”

  They walked into the living room. Barkley stopped near a table full of photos. Tommy with Katie. Katie with Tommy. Both of them with the twins.

  “Tommy said you guys are on the Harvard thing.”

  “That’s the rumor.”

  “It was on the news all morning, Bark. You were on the news all morning.”

  He picked up a photo of Katie playing hoops back in the day. “I hear you have a sweet jumper. Or should I say ‘had.’”

  She took the photo from him and put it back on the table. “I’m serious.”

  “So am I.”

  “Why’s it always you two who catch these ones?”

  “Which ones you talking about?”

  “You know what I mean. White kid, black suspect.”

  “Black cop, white partner.”

  “It’s just a boatload of stress, Bark. Tommy, me, the girls. All the way around. You know what I’m saying?”

  “There’s the big dog.” Tommy came rolling down the hall, hair still wet from the shower. He tossed Barkley a can of Bud.

  “Am I supposed to open this now?”r />
  “I’ll take it.” Tommy gave him the other can he had in his hand and popped the first. A froth of foam bubbled out of the top. Tommy drank it off and plopped down in an easy chair. “Take a load off, brother.”

  Barkley sat across from Tommy on the couch. Katie took a seat between them.

  “Smells good in here,” Barkley said.

  “Homemade spaghetti and meatballs.” Tommy pointed to a crush of take-out bags in a wire basket by the door. “My wife says I need to eat better.”

  “She’s right.”

  “This from a guy who eats beans out of a can.”

  “You got time for a plate?” Katie said.

  Barkley held up a hand. “Grabbed something before I came over.”

  “Don’t believe it,” Tommy said. “He slept at the station. Breakfast was probably a Zagnut bar.”

  “Hey, you didn’t go home like I told you.”

  “I was home by eight thirty, nine. Got five good hours, plus a little extra.” Tommy grinned at Katie and yo-yoed his knees back and forth. Katie colored but didn’t move from her chair.

  “We got some things to run down, Tommy.”

  “K was just telling me. How’d we get a suspect?”

  Barkley glanced at Katie, who got up neatly. “I’ve got sauce on the stove. Bark, we’re still gonna set a date for dinner?”

  “You got it.”

  “Thanks, babe.” Tommy spoke without ever taking his eyes off Barkley. They waited until she’d left.

  “The photographer.”

  “Toney?”

  “He’s got a studio looking right over the alley.” Barkley pulled one of Toney’s photos from his pocket. Tommy turned on a lamp and studied it under the light.

  “Fucking hey.”

  “Dumbass luck.”

  “We catch all the shit when things go sideways. Don’t be afraid to take a bow.”

  “Ever hear of a kid named Walter Price?”

  Tommy shook his head and tapped the picture with his finger. “This him?”

  “Looks like it. Student at English. Part-times as a hustler down the Zone. Got a sheet. Girls, dope, ragtime shit.”

  “Lemme guess. He’s in the wind?”

  Barkley nodded.

  Tommy handed back the photo. “I’ll have an address for us by the end of the day.”

  “That’s what I want to hear.”

  “Just lemme say good-bye to the girls.” Tommy got up, draining his beer and tossing the empty in the basket.

  “Hold on a sec.” Barkley waved his partner back to his chair.

  Tommy sat, one heel rapping a beat on the wooden floor. This was his thing, like letting a bloodhound off the leash. “Yeah?”

  “Relax.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Fuck you’re good. You look like you want to lift your leg and take a piss in the corner. How’s Katie doing?”

  “She’s fine. Why?”

  “Nothing. Let’s talk about the file you left on Violet Fitzsimmons.”

  “Fucked up, right? Guy’s mother dies in a car crash and then the kid himself gets offed.”

  “Did you read through the file?”

  “Quick look.”

  “You know she was a hooker?”

  Tommy popped his head back. “The mom?”

  “Was raising both boys while she was working.”

  “Probably kept ’em for the welfare chit. Any dad listed on the kids’ birth certificates?”

  “Nope. The one we talked to last night was in the car with her when she crashed.”

  “No shit.”

  “Eight years old. They found him walking down the beach in a daze. Then he slips into some sort of coma.”

  “That was in the file?”

  “Finding these things does you no good, Tommy. Not unless you read ’em.”

  “And if I did that, why in the fuck would we keep you around? Where’s all this headed, B?”

  “Don’t know for sure. Just bugs me. I mean, what are the chances he’s in the crash and then this happens? And why was he down in that alley?”

  “Know what I think?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Best thing we can do for that kid is find the cocksucker who killed his brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  Tommy got up. “Let me say good-bye to the girls and we’ll roll.”

  He disappeared down the hall. Barkley hadn’t told him about Daniel’s print, traced in blood and pulled off his mother’s throat. Or about Barkley’s trip to Latin School. He’d asked Daniel about the accident. And the print. Daniel said he couldn’t remember a thing. Barkley hadn’t bought it. And then there was the quiet way the kid looked at him, like he knew Barkley’s heart and every mark life had left upon it.

  He got up and walked into the kitchen. Katie was chopping garlic. Meatballs and sauce simmered in a pan.

  “Smells good.”

  “You should stay.”

  “Can’t.”

  “I know, you’re all so goddamned busy.” She swept the garlic into the pan and cracked a second clove with the flat of her knife.

  “What’s the problem, Katie?”

  She glanced at the connecting door that led to the hallway.

  “He’s with the girls,” Barkley said.

  She walked around him and shut the door, putting her back up against it. “He’s on that shit again.”

  “What? Blow?”

  “I don’t think he ever got off.”

  “My ass. He went through a six-month program.”

  “You know Tommy. All the Irish bullshit comes out when he needs it. He’d have those counselors eating out of his hand.”

  “What makes you think he’s using?”

  Katie pulled a baggie from her pocket. “How much is that?”

  Barkley held the baggie up to a trickle of sunlight bleeding through a tiny window over the sink. “Quarter gram, maybe a half.”

  “I don’t know what that is, Bark. I don’t know what that is, but I can’t have it in my house. Shit, I’m gonna start bawling, great.”

  There was a sound from somewhere. Katie cracked the door, pushing the hair back from her face and yelling down the hall, “What are you looking for?”

  “Never mind,” Tommy said. “I got it. Tell Bark I’ll be there in a minute.”

  She nudged the door shut and returned to the stove, wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand and reaching up into a cabinet for a can of whole tomatoes. She was wearing a long-sleeved Celtics shirt that rode up to reveal an ugly purple welt running along her arm just above the elbow. Barkley touched her wrist and turned the arm gently.

  “What’s that?”

  She tugged herself free.

  “Is he fucking hitting you?”

  Katie lifted her chin, Irish heat baked into cracked eyes, two red spots marking her cheeks. “You know better.”

  “Do I?”

  “We were arguing and he grabbed me. I bruise easy. Makes it look a lot worse than it is.” She reached to adjust a burner on the stove, brushing her hip against his thigh. He sensed the pulse of her blood sync with his and remembered the feel of her flesh, the way she moved above him, her amazing hips and the small sounds she made as he rocked inside her and filled her. It’d be three years Christmas. They’d separated, her and Tommy, both of them confiding in Barkley, both convinced it was so fucking done. Not that it should have mattered, not that it did matter. She showed up at Barkley’s apartment one night. The snow was falling, first of the year, perfect and white, making everything blurry and soft in a city known for none of that. She didn’t want to talk about Tommy. Just a Christmas drink with a friend. He never saw it coming. If he had, he’d have run like a hound from hell. Not that he regretted it. That was the best part and by far the worst. He couldn’t ever have Katie Dillon for his own. They both knew it even as they lay together in his bed, with the moonlight tiptoeing through the window and the snow falling in great drifts across the rooftops of Charlestown. And so ever
y touch was a first, every kiss, their last. Hours slipped past in a moment and moments would have to last a lifetime. Six months later, she was back with Tommy. At his partner’s insistence, Barkley met them for a drink at a bar near Fenway called Copperfield’s. She hugged Barkley and said she was happy. But he could read her eyes and knew what was there and knew she was reading the same thing in his eyes. Meanwhile, Tommy watched both of them, tickled as all fuck cuz his life had been Scotch-taped back together and desperate to move on before anyone looked too close. And now this. The tiny-as-shit kitchen, her, Tommy in the back with the twins. The bag of dope.

  “Who’s he running with, Katie?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Where’s he getting his stuff?”

  “That ain’t hard. Walk a block in this neighborhood and you’ll find someone who’ll sell you pretty much whatever you can dream up.”

  “You scared?”

  Katie shook her head. “I told you. Tommy would never hurt me. Not for real.”

  “The twins?”

  “Exception to the rule.” She reached behind her back and picked up a curved knife from the counter. “He’d cut me for those two. Wouldn’t think twice about you, either.”

  Tread in the hall. Katie put down the knife and slipped her hands to Barkley’s hips, sliding past and kicking the door open as Tommy turned the corner.

  “Something smells good.” He lifted his nose to the air. “You sure we ain’t got time, boss?”

  Barkley shook his head. Tommy had his service weapon clipped to his belt. He pulled his faded leather jacket off a hook and gave Katie a kiss, goosing her as they broke their clinch.

  “See, Bark, girl can still move. Am I driving?”

  “I’ll drive.”

  “Be careful,” Katie said, turning back to her stove. The two cops rumbled down the hall and left.

  * * *

  Barkley’s car had a half-dozen eggs splattered across the side panel and windows. Tommy wanted to roust the little pricks. Barkley told him to climb in.

  “I’ll get the cocksuckers,” Tommy said as Barkley turned on his wipers and squirted fluid across the windshield.

  “Forget it. Where we headed?”