"You're single-handedly depleting my stock of single malt Scotch, Harry," Werner opened, slipping into the casual banter that characterized their easy relationship.
"You might consider giving gin a try this summer."
"Oh, I couldn't do that," Kendall replied. "The Scotch is for my health, you see. A couple of years ago my doctor told me I had a whiskey deficiency and I've been trying to catch up ever since."
"Well, since all the alcohol I sell is pharmaceutical grade, you're in good hands. And by the way, I'll leave your prescription under the visor."
Werner tucked an invoice for the delivery under the visor. The document was carefully itemized but showed no company name or address. Kendall could be relied upon to deliver an envelope with cash to the Club on Monday.
"What else is happening in your world these days, Harry? If you're planning any events this summer, I hope you give me enough warning so I can keep you supplied with Mount Gay. If you haven't bought the company yet, you should, because the stuff's getting harder and harder to find."
"Actually, it might be wise to stock up again," Kendall noted as he braked for a traffic signal. "I'm planning a big outdoor reception at my place in a few weeks and I doubt if I have enough to cover it, even with what you brought today."
"What's the occasion?" Werner inquired.
"Well, it's been a secret for months, but since we announced it to the press yesterday, I suppose I can tell you. It's what I've been working on ever since I joined the Governor's staff. We've launched a new privatization initiative involving the Boston Housing Authority, the Commonwealth, and the federal government. I'm hosting a reception for the various partners and stakeholders so that we can put all the pieces together."
"Harry, if you're able to loosen the Housing Authority's death-grip on even a fraction of the apartments it controls in Boston, you'll be a hero."
Kendall flashed a self-satisfied grin.
"We not only can, we will, and a lot sooner than you expect," he answered with his usual confidence.
"Lots of luck, Harry. From what I can see, trying to deal with the BHA is like dealing with a Harlem slumlord or the Soviet Minister of Housing. Those people don't give a damn about the properties or the tenants. They just collect rent until the building finally collapses. And lately, I hear, the BHA won't even keep the squatters out."
"All that's going to change very soon," Kendall insisted. "It's what our project is all about. Privatizing will allow us to stabilize the buildings so the squatters won't be able to get a foothold. And we'll make money for the state and the city in the bargain."
"Sounds like a win-win if you can pull it off," Werner conceded.
"It's a win-win-win when you consider the fees it will generate for the private partners. And you'll be getting a piece of that action, too, my friend, because I want you to supply the liquor for our kickoff reception.
"Terrific!" Werner agreed, concealing his misgivings. "How many people are you expecting and what sort of drinks would you like to serve?" Werner inquired.
"We'll be inviting at least a couple hundred people. There's the Treasury team, the Undersecretary and his people from Washington, the BHA people, the Mayor and all the city government people, the FEMA folks, and some local law enforcement and security types. But one thing is for sure: these guys are not white wine drinkers. They swill booze and not just any booze, either. They'll want the best and you're the best at supplying it."
"Yes, that would be me, all right," Werner concurred. "And who will be your caterer for the event?
"Franz, as usual."
"Excellent. I'll write up some serving instructions for Franz's people, just to make sure everything's clear. Do you know yet when you might place your order? I'll need a list so I can source what you want and write up a quote."
"Certainly," Kendall agreed. "I'll have it sent to you at the club Monday or Tuesday with payment for today's delivery. The event will be a month from Saturday, which should give you plenty of time. Now, do I take good care of you or what?"
"You're the best, Harry. I've never had cause to complain. But I do have one more request, if you don't mind my asking. Could you possibly offer an idea of how soon your new privatization project will be up and running? You see, we've already had squatter problems at our building and it gives my girlfriend the creeps. The police won't lift a finger.
"I can't really give a date," Kendall responded, "but the good news is that BHA has brought in FEMA and the DSS to begin securing the first buildings slated for privatization. Rest assured, their first order of business will be to deal firmly with any squatters."
"Why FEMA?" Werner inquired. "And why the DSS? Is there a security connection?"
"It's the refugees. You see, among them are quite a few officials and party members from Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island who need to be taken care of. Flooding and refugees come under FEMA's mandate, so they're funding a lot of this. Just don't tell anyone I said so, okay? Only the top people at the local FEMA office are in on it."
Kendall flashed a boyish grin.
"And what about the current tenants?" Werner followed up. "Will they get to stay in their apartments after their building has been privatized?"
"Interesting question. It all depends. You see, the way it worked when the Russians and Eastern Europeans tried this sort of thing back in the '90s was that each tenant would get a voucher for the value of his flat and then the privatization authority or other private parties could make him a cash offer for it. The tenant then had the choice of selling or holding, knowing that he would pay a higher rent after privatization. But, just between you and me, Frank, if the BHA makes you an offer for your apartment, just take the money."
"And if I don't?" Werner challenged.
"Believe me, just take the money."
"And run?" Werner asked with a conspiratorial smile. "You said it, not me," Kendall laughed.
Before Werner could think of a response, the Mercedes pulled to the curb and Kendall noticed that they were back where they had started.
****
Frank Werner rolled the empty hand truck around the corner to the delivery van and returned it to its place before driving north toward Concord. The news of Harry Kendall's planned reception came as a welcome surprise, not only for the additional business it would bring, but also for the prospect that senior FEMA officials would attend. But the information by itself did not amount to a plan, as he could not be certain that Rocco would be among those invited or, if he was, that he would attend. Werner filed the information away mentally in his "operational leads" file for consideration at another time.
Even more interesting, however, was Kendall's uncharacteristic disclosure of confidential information about the BHA's privatization plan. A man of Kendall's stature had nothing to gain by disclosing it to his bootlegger and could not possibly have known the information's relevance to Werner. But to Werner, the information confirmed his worst suspicions about Harriet Waterman and explained them in a way he could not have guessed on his own.
The drive to Concord took less than half an hour. Werner pulled the van into the driveway at 50 Middle Street and parked with the van's cargo doors as close as possible to Nancy Widmer's back door.
Entering the laundry room through the mudroom, he saw stacks of open and sealed boxes marked "Donate," "Discard", and "Keep" piled against the walls.
Nancy heard him enter and greeted him in blue denims and an old ski sweater. After a suggestion or two about how to maneuver between the cellar and the back door with his hand truck, she pointed out that the family who bought the house from her would be moving in on Monday from their farm near Fitchburg. What with gas rationing, unreliable rail service, and the father's new job in downtown Boston, the Kiernan family could no longer function so far away from the city and needed a place within walking distance of the rail line, shopping, and schools.
But since the couple could not afford to pay cash for the house and no mortgage financing was available, N
ancy had decided, against her attorney's advice and over her daughter's objections, to hold the Kiernan's mortgage, taking the credit risk upon herself.
"I never would have considered it if I hadn't met their children," she declared. "The Kiernans have six, you know. Two of their own and four nieces and nephews. And they're all beautiful. I decided I simply had to do whatever I could to help."
"Wow, six is impressive," Werner remarked politely. "My hat goes off to the parents. Back when our girls were at the Academy, I recall that the average number of children per family in Concord was less than 1.5. Maybe the pendulum is finally swinging the other way."
"Oh, no, it's not that couples are having more children. Heavens, no. What has happened is that more families have chosen to take in children from their extended families or churches or local communities. Without foster care or the welfare bureaucracy to fall back on, good people have stopped looking the other way."
Werner nodded respectfully. He thought of the children of the prisoners he had known at Kamas and Mactung and pondered how many of them would ever be so fortunate as to live with a family like the Kiernans in the house at 50 Middle Street in Concord.
Nancy opened the cellar door for Werner, switched on the light in the stairwell and excused herself to brew some tea. With that, Werner began the work of carrying the cases of liquor out of the cellar and loading them into the van. In little more than an hour it was finished. When he returned from the van to tidy up the cellar, however, he found a rolled up rug leaning against the cellar door, each end tied with twine. Next to it was what appeared to be a case of Gordon's Gin.
Werner carried both downstairs, then untied the twine at each end of the rug and unrolled it. Inside was a fleece-lined leather rifle case. His face flushed with excitement and his fingers trembled as he unzipped it and removed an engraved Browning Mark II Safari semi-automatic rifle with attached scope. He worked the action to verify that it was unloaded, aimed across the room, and squeezed the trigger. It was a beautiful rifle, in mint condition, with a solid feel and the smell of oil mingled with gun steel and walnut. He returned it to its case, rolled it up in the rug and retied the ends with twine.
Next Werner opened the case of Gordon's with a box cutter. Inside was a second cardboard box containing four boxes of Remington .308 ammunition, two boxes of .45-caliber pistol ammunition, a gun-cleaning kit, a leather rifle sling and a military-issue Colt Model 1911 self-loading pistol zippered inside a soft suede case. Werner removed the pistol, ejected the magazine, jacked back the slide to ensure that no round was in the chamber and then felt the thud as he released the slide. With a smile of satisfaction, he took aim at an empty wine bottle across the room and heard the hammer click on an empty chamber.
Today's bounty was no coincidence, he thought, as he repacked the cardboard cartons. In the camps it was axiomatic that coincidences did not exist. Every prisoner learned that, when the margin of survival is razor-thin, even the most insignificant event carries a meaning. Werner pondered the meaning of finding unregistered weapons and ammunition in such an unlikely place as Nancy Widmer's wine cellar. Then he carried the rug and the Gordon's box quietly back to the van.
On his return he found Nancy in the kitchen, where she was waiting with a pitcher of freshly brewed iced tea. He sat at the table while she poured out two glasses. But before drinking he took an envelope from his shirt pocket and placed it on the table.
"I rounded it up," he announced. "Will the new total be all right?"
Nancy grasped his free hand in hers and thanked him.
"And now I have something for you," she added eagerly.
"It is a bit of news," she added.
Werner waited for more.
"I received a visit last night from Monica Cogan. She said you had called on her last week and that she wanted to apologize for having been rude to you. Monica wanted you to know that she is in a difficult position at the Concord Center and asked you not to come back."
Werner nodded while hoping at the same time that this was not the entire message.
"But after you came, Monica said she felt bad about not having helped you get in contact with your daughter. So she got in touch with a few students she thought might have heard from her. One of them said that your daughter Marie has been studying at some college or university in England, but she didn't know where and couldn't remember where she had heard it."
Werner felt his heart pound at the unexpected news and questioned if this was really happening and not some sort of daydream.
"You're sure they were talking about my Marie and not confusing her with someone else?"
Nancy shrugged but with such kindness that Werner felt it would be ungracious to press for details where none were available.
"Monica promised me that she would let me know if more turned up, but not to expect much."
Werner thanked Nancy for the news and for her delicious tea. Within a week she would be living with her daughter in Northampton and out of touch with Monica Cogan. It seemed unlikely that there would be much more news of Marie through this channel, at least for some weeks. But news it had been, even if fragmentary and unconfirmed. And coming as the first news he had received of Marie since his return to Boston, it made his heart sing. Yet to have received the news today, so soon after his visit from Dave Lewis and the news of Harry Kendall's party, made his head swim.
****
Greg Doherty was waiting on the loading dock when Frank Werner backed up the delivery van for unloading on his return from Concord. Doherty was the day shift supervisor at his uncle's bonded warehouse off Boylston Street in Newton. He greeted Frank warmly, took a quick look at the two wooden pallets in the delivery van, then walked Frank over to the chain-link cage where Werner's other goods were stored before leaving to fetch a pallet jack.
Werner was both pleased and relieved that Doherty showed no signs of having downed a few beers with lunch. At forty, Doherty still looked extremely fit, as might be expected of a stellar high school hockey player who spent nearly twenty years in the Second Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, attaining the rank of Master Sergeant. He served in Afghanistan, Civil War II, the Canadian and Mexican incursions, and the Russian War.
Doherty was tall, lean and sinewy, with a severe hawk-like profile inherited from his French-Canadian ancestors, and wore his graying hair in a buzz cut as he had since joining the Army just out of high school. But inside that warrior's body, Werner had come to know, was a simple, honest, forthright character motivated in large part by a desire to please.
Werner had met Doherty only a few weeks after returning to Boston from Utah in late 2027, at a bar in Newton frequented by military veterans. Many of the vets had fought in the Russian War and had either been taken prisoner by the Chinese or had been held by their own government in so-called repatriation camps in Alaska and the Yukon upon their return from Russia.
When Werner met him, Doherty had been working at the warehouse for five years, ever since his discharge from the U.S. Army and release from the P.O.W. reindoctrination center at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Doherty had been a career soldier when he had shipped off to Vladivostok to help the Russians defend the Russian Far East against the Chinese invader. He fled the Chukhotka Peninsula in the Second Infantry Division's final evacuation from Russia in 2020, having experienced almost continuous combat for the better part of a year.
Doherty and his fellow soldiers were shocked and bewildered when military police arrested them on arrival in Anchorage and transported them to a military prison camp in the Yukon as a precaution against mutiny. Later, those who were deemed politically unreliable were transferred without hearing or right of appeal to a civilian Corrective Labor Camp operated by the Corrective Labor Administration of the Department of State Security.
Doherty spent nearly a year at the camp, which was called C227 because it was located at Milepost 227 on the Canol Road (short for Canadian Oil), built during World War II to transport oil from the Northwest Territories to the Yu
kon. This, in fact, was the same C227 camp where Werner had labored briefly in 2024 before his transfer to the Mactung tungsten mine. When Werner confided this to Doherty while walking home after a night of barhopping in Newton, the hardened combat veteran collapsed onto a park bench in tears. After that, the two men shared a special bond that they knew few others in their lives could ever understand.
While being held at C227 without trial as a political prisoner and facing an early death from cold and malnutrition, Doherty was suddenly transferred to Ft. Leavenworth for reindoctrination pending release in the military amnesty of 2021. As a condition of his release, he signed an agreement denying him an honorable discharge and any rights to a military pension and prohibiting him from any public disclosure about his time in Russia, Alaska, or the Yukon.
When Werner had decided to enter the bootlegging business, he had called on Doherty to store his inventory. He was pleased to learn that Doherty and his uncle were already experts at dealing with black- and gray-market goods and knew exactly how to support his unusual business needs with the proper measure of discretion. But Werner could see that relations between Doherty and his uncle were cool at best, and that Doherty was often morose, drinking heavily several nights per week and nearly losing his job once after a three-day bender. Though Doherty was able to control his drinking when he attended his AA meetings, lately his attendance had been less than perfect.
"Need any help with unloading?" Doherty asked when he returned with the pallet jack.
"Nah, it's just two pallets," Werner replied. "I can handle it.
"No, really, Frank," Doherty persisted. "I don't have anything else going on and I could use every extra hour of pay I can get."
"All right, you're on. If you can help me get these boxes sorted and stacked, why don't you come grab a cup of coffee with me afterward and bill the time to me?"
Star Chamber Brotherhood Page 8
