Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  “Yes, I do,” Getler says. “I like to talk. Just give me a topic and I’m off and running.”

  “Dark Horse,” Harkness says.

  Getler’s smile drops and he hands back the money.

  Harkness stares at Getler’s good eye and tries to will away whatever has him in its grip. It’s not conscience. It’s fear. “Look, I need your help,” Harkness says. “I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t. A lot of people are dead already.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  Harkness shuts up, lets Getler’s febrile mind do the rest. One of Getler’s thrice-told tales was about a favorite nephew who worked on a fishing boat out of Gloucester and overdosed in a shabby beach hotel during the off-season. Getler might be a corrupt, violent maniac, but he hates drugs.

  While Getler’s still thinking, Harkness unbuttons his shirt and pulls off the white bandage covering the burn wound on his chest, healing but still raw.

  “Shit, Eddy.” Getler shakes his head. “Nasty jolt. You’ll be carrying around that scar for life, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Harkness also knows that common ground opens up a source like the flick of an oyster knife. He and Getler are scar-carrying members of the Almost Electrocuted Club.

  Getler reaches out to snatch the cash from Harkness’s hand. “Step into my office, Eddy.” He points to the shitty white truck. “You just bought yourself ten minutes of talk.”

  12

  HARKNESS AND PATRICK meet in the dead zone, the corner of the Narco-Intel offices unseen by the BPD’s ubiquitous departmental surveillance cameras.

  Harkness hands Patrick a piece of paper and he stares at it, bleary from camping out in the office all night again. Fall is a busy season for drugs. The shorter, darker days make people start to crave a little oblivion to get them through. Above them hangs the inescapable number, the one that Harkness tapes to the wall every ­morning—heroin overdoses this year in Massachusetts. Today’s number is 956.

  Patrick holds up the paper. “What’s this?”

  “Request for a detailed information search.”

  “How come you didn’t just put it in the system?”

  Harkness shoots him a look. “I don’t want this one on the department’s servers.”

  Patrick sighs, folds the paper, and slips it in his jacket pocket. “Looks like we’re heading for another little skunk works. This one going to get us in big trouble?”

  Harkness leans closer. “Maybe.”

  “Don’t get me fired, Harky. Can’t get a job anywhere else. I got preexisting conditions on top of preexisting conditions.”

  “It’ll be fine,” he says. “We’re just doing our job. Plus some extra.”

  “Like what?”

  “I need some info about something called the Manchester Group—executives, advisory board, investors.” Lattimore’s mantra for Narco-Intel is “All drugs, all the time.” He wouldn’t tolerate an investigation into why a real estate developer was already gutting the Lower South End months before the flood. But one dirty path tends to lead to another.

  “Will do.”

  “And while you’re at it, give their firewall a kick.”

  “Do I look North Korean?”

  Harkness wonders if he’s pushing Patrick too far. Then a heavy hand squeezes his shoulder. “Kidding, boss. I’ll huff and puff and see what kinda security they got going. No problemo.”

  “Thanks.” Harkness looks at the clock, then out the window at Copley Square. “Showtime.”

  Patrick walks over to strap on his gun belt and throw on his jacket and hat. “Cop up, people,” he shouts across the office. “Time to show the mayor some love!”

  Handsome, gym-thin Mayor Michael O’Mara strides onstage to applause and shouts of “We Love MOM!” He looks at ease on the low wooden platform. Copley Square is packed with news trucks, office workers on their lunch hour, curious tourists, a handful of protesters waving signs (Boston Wrong!), and plenty of city employees, the Narco-Intel detectives among them.

  “Why are we here again?” Patrick asks.

  “Because we got an e-mail from the mayor’s office that told us we had to be here to show our support,” Esther says.

  “The dude’s looking pro,” Patrick says. “I’ll give that to him.”

  They study the stage like they’re watching a perp walk as O’Mara makes some opening remarks. He’s wearing a dark blue, meticulously tailored three-button suit, a crisp white shirt, and a season-appropriate tie, red as a falling maple leaf.

  Patrick points to the cops guarding the stage. “Yo, it’s that guy, Lieutenant Landers from A-One.”

  “Lieutenant Landline.” Esther shudders. “Douchey McDouche Douche.”

  “Last to know, last to go,” Patrick says. “How come he’s got a dumb-ass like that in charge of his security?”

  Harkness shrugs. “Heard they knew each other back at Boston Latin.”

  “Takes his cronying seriously, does he?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Harkness studies the people around O’Mara. There’s his press secretary, Jill Seybold, with her blond hair cut in a brutal bob, wearing a gold-buttoned Chanel suit more appropriate for a charity auction than a political announcement. On the other side, there’s his chief technology officer, Neil Burch, his shaved head polished to a Carville-esque sheen. Thick black-rimmed glasses give Burch an MIT Media Lab vibe, though from having a couple of drinks with him at the mayor’s inaugural party, Harkness knows Burch is more old-school, with a degree in mechanical engineering from Pawtucket Polytech.

  As Harkness watches O’Mara onstage, he’s glad that he voted for the guy. After almost a year in office, O’Mara’s shaken off the taint of his venture-capital roots, which made him act like he was always standing in front of a PowerPoint presentation. He’s more relaxed now, his dark hair tinged by a trustworthy frost of gray. His smile looks natural, with none of the tightness that used to make him open for online ridicule as a sepulchral grinner. His lips are thin and bloodless, but so it goes. Boston isn’t the land of voluptuous lips.

  O’Mara seems to be getting to the core of whatever he’s here to say. Harkness waves at Esther and Patrick to get them to keep it down.

  “People of Boston, we dodged a bullet when Hurricane X hit,” O’Mara says. “If the storm had come at high tide, much of the city would have been flooded. And we’d be facing much more daunting problems. The Back Bay, where we’re standing today, would have been inundated and badly damaged. I want to say one thing very clearly today—no more dodging bullets.”

  Huge applause at that line.

  “I’m here to announce two key appointments and one major ­initiative for our city,” he says. “First, I’ve created a new position of storm czar. The individual who has that job will coordinate all of the flood-preparedness work that we need to do as a low-lying coastal city largely built on landfill.” O’Mara points to a serious-looking guy in a blue suit, white shirt, black tie, and fancy eyewear. “I’ve asked John van de Velde, currently the city’s chief of environment and energy, to take on this important role so that we’ll be ready for whatever nature throws at us.”

  More applause. The czar takes a bow. He looks like a Dutch scientist or one of the German guys in the Notwist.

  “So far, everything he’s saying makes sense to me,” Harkness says to Patrick.

  “How come Lattimore hates him?”

  “Has his reasons.”

  The crowd goes silent and the blogger microphones stretch closer to the podium to catch the next tweet-worthy quote.

  “Mr. van de Velde will be looking to the future, of course,” O’Mara says. “But what about now? What about repairing the considerable damage in the Lower South End?”

  Shouts of “We matter too” come from the back of the crowd.

  “I hear you,” O’Mara says. “Your neighborhood is caught in an unfortunate battle with the federal government, which officially controls the Channel Dam area, a U.S. Superfund site. When the dam gave way during t
he storm, it did more than flood the Lower South End. It spread benzene, mercury, and other toxins throughout the whole neighborhood. Getting someone to take responsibility and begin the cleanup has been a major challenge. Given the inefficiency and gridlock in Washington, I’m not willing to wait. And families that are being kept out of their homes shouldn’t have to wait either.”

  Massive applause at this line. Everyone is ready for the Lower South End to rebound.

  “The guy’s killing it,” Patrick says. O’Mara’s firing on all cylinders, like he’s giving a TED talk instead of a mayoral speech.

  “I’m appointing Robert Fayerwether, head of the Urban Reconstruction Council, to oversee the reconstruction and resurrection of the Lower South End.”

  The crowd applauds and a tall gray-haired man who could have been jet-packed to Copley Square from 1964 steps forward and waves. A public figure in the tradition of Frost, Lowell, and Moses, Fayerwether looks serious and smart—the kind of sage who could re-architect the Lower South End into the twenty-first century over lunch.

  “So how are we going to pay for all the urgent work that we need to accomplish?” O’Mara holds his outstretched hands up to the sky as if addressing the universe. But in politics, there are no rhetorical questions. “The answer isn’t in a bank,” he says. He points at the library. “The answer can be found inside our much-beloved Boston Public Library.”

  The crowd’s puzzled—bums and high-schoolers are found inside the library.

  “Let me explain.” The mayor points to the elegant doors of the Boston Public Library. “Our library, the people’s library, has hundreds of thousands of items in its Special Collections,” he says. “Cultural relics that never see the light of day. Fascinating books, artifacts, and paintings—but of real interest only to scholars.”

  Some boos from the audience here. Not a good idea to disrespect scholars in Boston.

  “We’ve made a major investment in digitizing the high-value materials available in the Special Collections,” the mayor says. Harkness remembers the stack of one-of-a-kind books waiting their turn in the maw of the relentless scanner. “These works are available now to the people of Boston and scholars throughout the world via the Internet. Digitization means democratization.”

  Hearty applause from the digerati, silence from the dozens of listeners wearing Boston Public Library employee badges.

  “But what about the originals?” Again, O’Mara knows the answer to his own question. “I’m asking the library’s board of directors to vote to deaccession selected items and auction them to museums, educational institutions, and private collectors. We anticipate that the sale of these books and artworks will raise an anticipated four billion dollars in unexpected revenues for the City of Boston—a windfall that will let us start rebuilding the Lower South End without waiting for state or federal funds.”

  The communal gasp that comes from the crowd indicates some are amazed that a stack of tattered books could generate that kind of money while others can’t believe the mayor’s selling the city’s intellectual crown jewels. Harkness shakes his head at O’Mara’s ­audacity.

  He isn’t the only one who’s giving the mayor a skeptical eye. The crowd’s murmuring and milling around. There’s a lot of fumbling in backpacks and purses.

  “Now!”

  A furious rain of books flies at the stage and showers the mayor. Reporters duck and cover. Banners fall. Microphones hit the ground and screech. The cops around the mayor jump off the stage and zero in on the book throwers like bouncers.

  Patrick looks confused. “Harky, how come they’re throwing books?”

  Harkness sees Glenn Simon, the Special Collections curator, hauling back a hardcover like a Major League pitcher. He fires it off with an impressive overhand. The book’s pages must be glued closed, because it spins straight toward the stage, taking a last-minute swerve and smacking O’Mara’s forehead.

  The mayor drops to the floor. Screams echo from onstage as handlers rush to his aid.

  Harkness pushes through the crowd to tackle Glenn, and shoves him face-down on the cobblestones before he can throw another book. He’s cuffed before he even recognizes Harkness.

  “Shit, Eddy,” he says. “That hurts.”

  “You’re lucky it’s me and not a normal cop,” Harkness says.

  As if on cue, a phalanx of BPD beat cops barge through the crowd, hunching down, guns drawn. They point their guns at Glenn until Harkness waves them off. “Cuffed him,” he says.

  “Good work, Detective.” It’s Lieutenant Landline, face blotchy, eyes wild with anger. No one wants the mayor getting knocked out on his watch, even by a book. “We’ll take this asshole from here.”

  They lift Glenn and shove him through the crowd to a BPD van.

  Onstage, O’Mara rises, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his forehead. Aides and cops lead him to a waiting ambulance, red lights flashing. The stunned crowd watches the ambulance glide away, then breaks into applause for the fallen mayor.

  13

  GLENN’S FREE AFTER a few days in jail and an early-morning arraignment along with the city’s latest sports-bar fighters, storefront-window smash-and-grabbers, clueless-tourist scammers, and turnstile leapers. It’s late afternoon before his bail bond comes through and the curator turned activist is released to blink in the sunlight like a vole spaded from a garden.

  A reporter with a camera snaps a couple of quick photos as Harkness walks Glenn to the squad car. Harkness can already see the Herald headline: BOOK HIM!

  “That’s it?” Glenn leans back heavily in the passenger seat, his left eye swollen from his getting smacked around during processing. “One lousy photographer?”

  “What’d you expect, Glenn—a press frenzy? You started the book riot. Not the money riot. Or the shoe riot. Or some other riot for something people care about.”

  “Fuck you, Eddy.”

  “How about ‘Thanks, Eddy.’ ”

  “Thanks, Eddy. Thanks for tackling me and almost breaking my arm.”

  “You’d still be in jail if I hadn’t called down and moved the paperwork along,” Harkness says. “Lieutenant Landline wanted you to do a couple weeks of chill time just for making him look bad.” Harkness dodges the fast walkers crossing Cambridge Street—nurses on their way to hospital jobs, lawyers in tan raincoats. Just briefly, Harkness craves a normal job.

  “What about the media, you know, CNN, HuffPo?”

  “Online chatter is mostly snarky,” Harkness says. “There’s video showing the mayor getting conked on the head by the book you tossed. Most people don’t seem to care about the whole rare-book thing as much as you do.”

  “So they don’t care that the mayor just stole a couple billion dollars in priceless books from the people of Boston?” Glenn’s voice frosts up. “They care more about tangible property than intellectual property?”

  Harkness nods. “Pretty much. The usual academics and book people are outraged. Nicholson Baker. A guy from the Smithsonian. But regular folks? No big deal. I mean, you made high-res digital copies, right? Maybe it’s enough.”

  “That’s the problem. Today’s digital files may be tomorrow’s cassette tapes. No one knows how digitization is going to go. That’s why you always keep the original. Like the Constitution. Or the Bill of Rights. Those aren’t copies!”

  Glenn’s on tilt. He probably didn’t sleep much in lockup and his white shirt is wrinkled and smeared with blood from getting knocked around. Harkness knows the radicalizing power of a good ass-kicking. Beat up a street dealer and you can almost guarantee that he’s going to stay in the drug business forever. One thing’s clear on this crisp fall morning—Glenn’s not done.

  “Where to?”

  “The library, I guess.” Glenn quiets. “While I still have a job.”

  Harkness cuts onto Tremont Street, where steam wafts from a tourist icon, the giant kettle that once graced the Oriental Tea Company, now hanging over the front door of a busy Starbucks. “Starting to thi
nk that throwing books at your boss wasn’t a very smart career move?”

  Glenn shakes his head. “I do not work for that guy.” Glenn looks down at the rubber floor mat under his feet and drops into a solipsistic silence.

  Harkness watches the fake steam rising from the teapot’s spout, imagines it coming from Glenn’s ears.

  “I wasn’t even aiming at O’Mara, you know,” Glenn says a few minutes later as the Granary Burying Ground and Park Street Station drift by. “Throwing a book isn’t exactly like pitching a baseball, Eddy.”

  Harkness turns to stare at Glenn. “Didn’t say it was.”

  “I was aiming at Fayerwether.”

  Harkness nods. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Harkness cuts left down narrow Avery Street. He skids the squad car onto the sidewalk on Washington near the neon sign of the Paramount Theater. “You were one of those Hasty Pudding guys back at Harvard, right?”

  “Yeah. So what?”

  “Seems like a good time to do a little dramatic reading. I mean, we’re in the theater district.” Harkness shoves a couple of stapled pages across the seat at Glenn. “Here—your lines are highlighted in yellow.”

  Glenn picks up the pages and stares at them like they’re a warrant. “What the fuck is this?”

  “I’ll be the voice of Robert Fayerwether IV, you know, when the phone rings at the Urban Reconstruction Council offices.” Harkness closes his eyes to get in character, then opens them. “ ‘You shouldn’t call me here, Glenn.’ ”

  Glenn says nothing, just shakes his head to clear it. “You recorded my phone call from jail? Really? What the fuck?”

  Harkness shrugs. “Maybe you ought to get out of the library a little more, Glenn. Nothing’s sacred these days. Privacy. Intellectual property. You name it. It’s open season on everything.”

  Glenn’s face tightens. He looks down at the script and focuses, then starts to read in a stumbling voice. “ ‘You need to call someone and . . . uh . . . get me out of jail.’ ”