Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  She lowered the glass. "Do you have any questions you want to ask me?"

  "Oh, only about a couple of hundred or so. But like you say, this is a nice vibe right now. I figure there's time. Least, I hope there is."

  That was good. Saying that did something to her-- even as his mind reminded him, Just one date.

  "Can I ask you another question then?" she said.

  Doug cut her off at the pass. "I had a very misspent youth. When I drink I become a jerk, so I just don't drink anymore."

  She smiled gently, almost embarrassedly. "That wasn't what I was going to ask."

  "I haven't had a drink in two years. I go to meetings regularly, a few each week. I like them. I consider what I have an allergy. Someone's allergic to nuts or something, people don't hold that against them. Me, I'm allergic to alcohol. I break out in jerk hives. And this whole thing, it makes for a very bad first impression, but that's what I have to live with." He breathed. "Okay. Sorry. What were you gonna ask?"

  "Whew." She undercut that with a smile. "I was going to ask why you wanted to take out someone you saw crying in a Laundromat?"

  Doug nodded thoughtfully. "This is a good question."

  "I know it."

  Police lights crawled along the interstate, bright, pinpoint blues. "I don't have a good answer for you. I guess, sure, I am curious about that. A pretty girl with problems-- that's not something you see every day."

  This time he heard the wine trickling almost guiltily into her glass. "Miracles" was starting now, Jefferson Airplane, or maybe Jefferson Starship. He closed his eyes a moment and saw his mother's old black-and-silver RCA singing from the top of the refrigerator.

  "Honestly," Claire said after a sip, "how much of this did you plan?"

  "Not a second of it, I swear to God."

  "Well, it's perfect. I mean, you can't even know how. If I could stop time right now, keep that sun from coming up tomorrow morning..."

  "Yeah? What's the sun got on you?"

  "Tomorrow morning I start back at work."

  "Start back?" said Doug, mustering innocence.

  The wine slowed her words down a little. "I've had sort of an extended vacation."

  "That's nice."

  "Not really." Another sip and she turned to him. "You've lived here all your life, right?"

  "Right."

  "So what do you know about bank robbers?"

  He cleared his throat, letting out a long, silent exhale. "What's to know?"

  "There's supposed to be a lot from here. I figured maybe you grew up with some."

  "I guess-- maybe I did, yeah, I guess."

  "My bank, where I work... a couple of weeks ago, we were robbed."

  "Oh. I see."

  "They were hiding, waiting for us inside."

  Stunning, how immediately shitty he felt. "And what, they tied you up?"

  "Held us at gunpoint. Made us lie down. Took our shoes off." She looked at him again. "Isn't that the weirdest? Our shoes. I'm stuck on that, I don't know why. Belittling, you know? I have all these dreams now where I'm barefoot." She looked at her shoe boots against the rubber-coated roof. "Anyway."

  "But you weren't hurt."

  "Davis was-- my assistant manager. They beat him. A silent alarm went off."

  He had to keep it up now. "But if it was silent, then...?"

  "One of them had a radio wire in his ear. A police radio."

  "Right. They beat this guy up because he set off the alarm."

  She stared at the city as though the correct answer were out there somewhere. She never answered him. Doug pondered that.

  "Police catch these guys yet?" he said.

  "No."

  "They're on them, though."

  "I don't know. They didn't say."

  "You probably had to go through, what, a whole interrogation?"

  "It wasn't too bad."

  He let it go. Best not to push. "And you haven't been back at work since?"

  She shook her head, frowning, pensive. "They took me with them when they left."

  Doug couldn't play along with her here. He couldn't say anything.

  "They were worried about the alarm." She followed the jet lights in the sky to the airport off to their left. "Somewhere over there, they let me out. I was blindfolded."

  It was all there in her voice, everything he never wanted to hear. "Scary?"

  She took a long time to answer, so long that Doug started to wonder if he hadn't given himself away somehow. "Nothing else happened," she said.

  She stared at him now, eerily intense. Doug stumbled over his words. "No, I didn't-- "

  "They just let me go. That's all. Once they knew they weren't being followed, they just pulled over and let me out."

  "Sure," he said, nodding. "Of course."

  She folded her arms against the creeping cool. "I've been in such a funk since. The FBI agent, he told me it would be like being in mourning."

  Doug said, as evenly as he could, "FBI agent?"

  "But I don't know. When my grandparents died, I was sad, very sad. But did I truly mourn...?"

  Doug kept nodding. "And you're working with them?"

  "The FBI? Just this one agent I talk to. He's been great."

  "Yeah? That's good." Waiting a patient beat. "What does he ask you, like, 'What'd they look like? What'd they say?' "

  "No. At first, yes. Not anymore."

  "Now what, he, like, calls you up, checks in?"

  "I guess." Her little side glance informed Doug that she had noticed he was asking a lot of questions. "What?"

  "No, I'm just wondering. From his point of view. Maybe he's thinking, 'Hey, inside job.' "

  She stared. "Why would he think that?"

  "Only because, this other guy was beat up, you were taken for a ride, let go unhurt."

  "You're saying he suspects me?"

  "How would I know? It's just a thought. You never thought that?"

  She sat perfectly still, like someone hearing a strange noise at night and waiting to hear it again. "You're freaking me out a little."

  "You know what? Maybe I should stick to talking about things I know something about."

  "No," she decided. "No, it's impossible."

  "They're probably just casting a wide net."

  But he had thrown a little monkey wrench of uncertainty her way, and that was enough. Her shoulders were bunched now, arms crossed high on her chest.

  "Getting cold?" he said.

  "I am."

  "I think 'Muskrat Love' is coming up next anyway. That's our cue."

  She said she was done with the wine, so he poured the rest into the roof gutter, stowing the chairs and switching off the CD player in the middle of "Poetry Man." The wine formed a bloody stain on the sidewalk as they left the building, walking back down Bunker Hill Street to Monument Square. A handful of skateboarders hanging out around the stairs at the base of the granite obelisk put Doug in the mind of his crew, making him itchy. They came to a five-street junction in the heart of the remade section of Charlestown.

  "Okay," said Doug, bringing her up short on the brick sidewalk, her door only a hundred yards around the bend.

  She was surprised. "Okay..."

  Ask for her number. It would be rude to do otherwise. Then fade away forever. For her sake as much as yours.

  "So," she said, waiting.

  He swiped a mustache of sweat off his upper lip. You had your date, your flirtation with danger, you got that out of your system. She was looking up at him, her empty glass catching some of the lamplight, holding it there.

  "Look," he said. "I probably shouldn't even be here with you."

  She reacted like he was making up his own language. "Why do you say that? What do you mean?"

  "I don't even know." He shuffled his feet, needing to leave. "I'm all messed up recently, my mind. I'm used to order, clarity, things a certain way. Not this. Not doing things I don't understand."

  "But that's-- me too." A revelation, a bright smile of comm
union. "I'm exactly the same way right now."

  "And I need to... I'm trying to be good in my life, you know?"

  "Hey." She stepped up to him, examining his face in the light of the gas lamp. She reached for his forehead, and when he did not protest, touched the scar that split his left eyebrow. "I wanted to ask at the restaurant."

  "Hockey scar. An old injury. You-- you like hockey?"

  Her finger came away from his face. "I hate it."

  Doug nodded fast. "So what are you doing tomorrow night?"

  She said, surprised, "What-- tomorrow?"

  "Probably have a busy day, right? Back to work, you'll be tired. How about the night after?"

  "I don't..." She looked amazed. "I don't even know."

  Doug felt like someone was trying to open up an umbrella in his chest. "Okay, here it is right here. Whatever it takes to see you again, I'll do. Would you want to see me again?"

  "I..." Looking up at his face. "Sure."

  "Great. Okay. So we're both crazy, that's good. Your turn this time. You pick the place-- somewhere outside C-town. I'll pick you up right here. Give me your last four digits."

  She did, and he gave her no time to ask for his, forsaking all thoughts of a parting kiss, just trying to tear himself away from her. He was acting drunker now than he ever had before.

  "Good luck," he said, backing off. "With tomorrow."

  "Thanks." She held up the glass as though it were a gift. "Good night, Doug."

  "Wow. Hey, could you say that for me again?"

  "Good night, Doug."

  "Good night, Claire." He said it, and there was no lightning striking him dead in the street.

  14

  The Pope of the Forgotten Village

  DEZ LIVED IN THE NECK.

  As Charlestown was the orphan of Boston, so was the Neck the orphan of Charlestown. Getting there meant heading out past the Schrafft's tower at the western gate of the Town, banging a one-eighty by the MBTA rail shop in the Flat, ducking under two crumbling highway elevations, then turning past the all-cement salute to urban blight that was the Sullivan Square Station. Tucked behind there was the six-street patch of old railroad houses also known as the Forgotten Village, an outpost teetering on the edge of Charlestown and of Boston itself, the last settlement before the Brazilian food markets of Somerville's Cobble Hill.

  The Neck embodied the Town's siege mentality. Dez's mother still hissed about the traitors who'd accepted the city's relo money, making way for planners and engineers to carve up the Neck. Whole streets had been bulldozed-- Haverhill, Perkins Place, Sever-- chopped off like arms and legs, and yet, proud old veteran that it was, the Neck survived.

  Dez's mother's aluminum-sided two-story on Brighton Street was shouldered between two taller houses, its square front yard fenced with child's-height chain-link. Growing up beneath a major highway had made Desmond Elden feel isolated and marginalized-- and proud. Looking up at the rusting struts-- the corroding Central Artery and its crumbling chunks of concrete-- Dez often thought of the view fish had, looking up at a pier.

  Dez earned enough-- legitimately, from his other mother, dear old Ma Bell-- to move them both out of there, though he knew better than to even bring up the subject. Ma would never give up the land she had been bitching about for years. Certainly there was no leaving the parish. Dez's mother didn't drive, and her daily walks to mass were a hike: a dreary quarter mile over hot asphalt in summer, battered by whipping river winds in winter, always taking her life into her hands crossing the highway rotary. And this was just to reach the Schrafft's tower-- from there she had to march all the way up Bunker Hill to the steeple at the crest of the Heights. But you'd just as soon ask her to trade in Dez for another son as leave St. Frank's. This daily odyssey was part of her experience of mass, as it was part of the experience of living in the Neck, of being Catholic, of being Irish, of being an aging widow. It was suffering made proud. There were only two ways she would leave the Neck, Ma always said, and one of them was by being bulldozed.

  Dez understood her view of the world, though he no longer embraced it. Wire work had taken him high above much of Greater Boston, in a cherry picker over leafy towns like Belmont, Brookline, Arlington, neighborhoods with grass and parks and unobstructed sky, even some elbow room between houses. But the Neck was all she knew. It was like smoking to her now-- gone beyond habit and addiction, a way of life.

  The smoking, pursued vigorously over four decades, was finally and forever drying Ma out. Her hair-- the wavy red mane she had been known for-- was thinning into wisps of brown. Her skin was stiff and going gray like an old sink sponge, her eyes marbling, her lips shriveling along with her beauty, all that was supple and yielding about her evaporating away. Her wrinkled hands trembled without a butt or a soft pack or a lighter to busy them, and more and more nights she spent alone at the kitchen table under the fruit-glass lamp, listening to talk radio and filling the house with exhaust.

  She put the smokes away long enough to sit down and eat the meal she had prepared. Doug's visit had brought her to life, which was nice to see. At least she could still snap-to for company: fussing about the old kitchen with a dishrag on her shoulder, humming the way she used to. Both she and Dez had needed this lift.

  "Meat loaf's better than ever, Mrs. Elden," said Doug, bent over his plate, scooping it in.

  Her secret was to bake a small loaf of spice bread first, then shred that and work it into the meat. Her cooking was getting spicier and spicier, the cigarettes snuffing out her taste buds one by one.

  "Potatoes, too, Ma," said Dez. She whipped them with a mixer, melting in four sticks of butter.

  "Yeah," said Doug. "This is a meal."

  "Such manners on you two," she said, pleased. "My Desmond, of course, I expect it. Raised him that way. But, Douglas, the way you were brought up? The bad luck you seen?"

  He helped himself to a little more ketchup. "Just so as I get asked back."

  "Don't give me that now. You know you're welcome here, any day of the week."

  Dez ate happily with his father's photograph at his elbow. It had been moved there from its customary position across the table in order to make room for their dinner guest. The picture showed two blurry nuns and most of the word Hospital behind a happy, surprised-looking man in shirtsleeves and thick-rimmed, black eyeglasses, holding a thin-banded summer hat. The picture had been taken on July 4, 1967, the day of Dez's birth, and the resemblance between father and son was made extraordinary by their shared pair of eyeglasses. The specs in the picture were the same ones Dez wore now. In the sixteen years since Desmond senior's murder, neither Dez nor Ma had taken a home-cooked meal without his portrait joining them at the table.

  The linoleum floor was warped, and when Doug rested his arms on the table, all three glasses of Pepsi jumped. Dez said, "I gotta get that shimmed."

  "How's your father doing?" Ma asked Doug. "See him much?"

  "Not that often," said Doug.

  "Jem says he's doing good, Ma," said Dez. "Jimmy Coughlin goes up and sees him more than Doug does."

  Doug wiped his mouth, nodded. "His old man and mine ran around together, and Jem, I think he likes to hear the tales. Stories about his old man, because that's all he's got."

  "Those Coughlin kids," said Ma, shaking her head-- Dez tensing. "How you became who you are today, Douglas, living in that household, I'll never know. Any trouble you ever got into, I blamed that family."

  "No," said Doug, aiming his fork at his own chest. "You can place all that blame right here."

  "That woman and her tirades. Mother of God. Get herself loaded and start calling around town, ranting at her enemies. I know she took you in, Douglas, and God bless her for that. Her one and only ticket upstairs. I do wish we coulda taken you at the time, given you a proper home."

  "That's beautiful of you to say, Mrs. Elden. But Jimmy's ma, you know, she did her best. Truthfully, I think she liked me better than her own kids. I know she treated me that way."

 
"And that daughter of hers..."

  "Ma," said Dez.

  "Desmond don't like me talking about it, but"-- she put out a hand to keep Dez from cutting her off-- "I am just over the moon that you two are no more."

  "Jesus, Ma," said Dez, "I didn't tell you that so you could-- "

  "No, no, no," said Doug, putting out his own hand. "It's fine, really. Krista's all right, Mrs. E. She'll land on her feet. She's doing good."