Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  Doug nodded, keeping an eye on the store entrance. "Easy, kid. Take a breath."

  "Trying to make me lose my job." Dez brought his voice down. "This is a federal grand jury."

  "Relax. All that means is a roomful of citizens sitting around deciding if evidence is evidence."

  "Oh? That's all?" Wild sarcasm didn't look good on Dez.

  "The cops. What'd you tell them?"

  "What'd I tell them? I didn't tell them anything! They didn't even ask me anything, just, 'Smile for the camera, open your mouth.' I don't even know if it was for the"-- Dez looked back cautiously at two kids looking through Tupac and marijuana-leaf posters-- "the most recent thing, or what. They didn't say anything."

  "And neither did you."

  "Christ, of course not. Jesus. They take that swab thing of your mouth?"

  "Yep. Your palm, knuckles?"

  "Sure. That's not normal?"

  Maybe the van didn't burn right. Maybe Jem did something asinine, like taking off a glove while eating candy at the glass counter. Or maybe it was nothing. "They're just shaking the trees, trying to get lucky. Stirring us up."

  "Well-- it fucking worked!"

  Doug nodded, shushing him. "Newspaper said they brought in some fifteen other Town guys. A dragnet, all of them players-- except you. Calling you in with no armed-robbery record, that shows they're onto the other capers."

  "But how? How do they know?"

  "Knowing means nothing more than a hassle. It's what they can or cannot prove."

  Dez looked at a disco ball twirling on the ceiling. "Trying to make me lose my job...."

  Doug shook his head, amazed that Dez was worried about his job here. Two people walked in the front, just girls, not thirty years between them, with skunked hair and pierced ears more metal than flesh.

  "Jem thinks it's the branch manager from the Kenmore thing," said Dez.

  Doug looked hard at him. "Where's that coming from? You talk to him?"

  "No, not recently. This is from before."

  "When before? What'd he say?"

  Dez shrugged. "Just that. That she told them something, or she knew something-- I couldn't really follow him. She's bad luck anyway, you gotta admit."

  "How's that?"

  "Ever since then, you know? It's been one thing after another."

  Doug looked away to hide his annoyance, his eyes falling on a Jenny McCarthy poster, the topless blonde clutching her tits like she was going to rip them off her chest and chuck them at his head. "Jem's fucking up all over the place," said Doug. "He went Full Metal Jacket in the movie theater lobby. Shot it up with one of the guard's guns-- for no sane reason."

  "He say anything about me?"

  "About you? What, like you blabbed?"

  "No. Wait-- he thinks that?"

  "Whoa, I don't know what the hell Jem thinks, I haven't seen him. What are you talking about?"

  Dez tried to say it once, failed, exhaled, tried again. "Krista."

  Doug stared. With everything else he had completely forgotten about that. "Aw, for Christ," he said in semidisgust.

  "I ran into her at the Tap, the night of you guys' thing." Dez assessed Doug, wondering whether he should say anything more. "We hung out awhile, then she wanted to go back, watch the robbery coverage on the late news."

  Doug knew how Krista got when she drank. So did a lot of other guys. And so, now, did Dez.

  "Kid, I'm gonna say this just once. You're being played. She's putting you in the middle of what she thinks is this epic tug-of-war battle between her and me, not understanding that that's a rope I let go of a long time ago."

  "Duggy-- "

  "On top of that..." A guy in a polo shirt and a ballcap passed the entrance without looking in, Doug getting antsy, starting to feel trapped. "On top of all that, she's running all over town doing errands for the guy who killed your dad."

  "Her uncle. She works for him, does his books."

  "A distant, distant cousin at best. And Krista's not known for her algebra, Dezi."

  "What are you saying? About what she does for him?"

  So idiotic, Dez getting all twisted up over Krista with these bombs going off around them. "Christ, will you cool it? What I'm saying is, she helps out Fergie the Florist from time to time, and I know what the Florist peddles and so do you. Clean those specs of yours."

  "My specs are clean, Doug."

  "Fucking fantastic for you. Oh, and one last little thing."

  Sour now, pissed. "What?"

  "That guy in the Cavalier outside your ma's house? He was at the police station when I was there."

  Dez's face breaking, getting nervous again. "No."

  "And no rash disguise this time. He is the G, and he's coming after all of us." Doug thumped Dez in the chest with his finger. "You want something to worry about, kid, start worrying about that."

  30

  Buy You Something

  HE WATCHED HER THERE a moment, kneeling and working in her garden, before making his presence known. The riot of color and life that surrounded her was at its peak, this long late week in June. Though gardening in general struck Doug as the ultimate in futility-- bringing a plot of land to life only to watch it die again, a chore doomed from the beginning-- something in the way she threw everything she had into it, regardless of the outcome, was lovable.

  All this passed through him in the instant before she saw him: Doug watching her kneeling on the dark rug of soil that held his treasure, in the thin, side-long light of the setting sun, her shadow reaching across her garden sanctuary.

  * * *

  "I WANT TO BUY you something," he said.

  They were in the plaza outside Trinity Church, part of an early-evening crowd surrounding a street performer juggling two bowling pins, a bowling ball, and a pair of bowling shoes. Only Claire watched the juggler-- Doug watched the amusement in her face. The act ended to applause, Claire clapping prayer-handed under her chin.

  "What do you want to buy me?"

  "What do you want?"

  "Hmm." She retook his hand, twisting slightly on her heels. "How about a new car?"

  "What kind?"

  "I was kidding. I don't want a car."

  He said nothing, waiting.

  "You're serious," she said.

  "It's the first thing that came into your mind."

  "That's because I was joking."

  "If we trade in your Saturn on top of it, you could do pretty well."

  She smiled, mystified by him. "I don't. Want. A new car."

  "What do you want then?"

  She laughed. "I don't want anything."

  "Think. Something you wouldn't buy for yourself."

  She made a thinking face, playing along. "Got it. Frozen yogurt at Emack's."

  "Not bad. But I was thinking more along the lines of jewelry."

  "Oh?" She smiled at the sidewalk ahead of them. "Yogurt or jewelry. I could be up all night wrestling with that choice."

  Earrings didn't excite him. He looked at her neck: graceful, bare. "How about a chain? Where would we go to look for something like that?"

  She put her free hand to her throat. "Why-- Tiffany, of course."

  "Okay. Tiffany it is."

  "You know I'm still joking."

  "I know you were joking before, when we were talking about a car. But once the topic of jewelry came up-- I think you got a tiny bit serious."

  She laughed like she should have been insulted and hit him lightly in the chest. Then she looked at him more closely. "What's gotten into you tonight?"

  "I want to do this," he said. "Let me."

  * * *

  THE BROAD-HIPPED SALESWOMAN with the jailer's ring of cabinet keys waited as Claire turned and gathered up her hair. The woman worked the clasp and Claire turned to the framed mirror on the counter, opening her eyes and fixing on the diamond pebble glittering in the freckled scoop of her neck. Ringed in gold, the solitaire rode out a deep swallow.

  "This is crazy," she breathed.


  "It looks good on you."

  "How can you... you can't afford this."

  "It's cheaper than a car."

  "Lasts longer too," said the saleswoman, smiling.

  Claire's eyes never left the diamond. "I almost wish you wouldn't." She turned her head and watched it sparkle. "I did say almost, didn't I?"

  The saleswoman nodded. "Will that be credit, or do you need to finance?"

  "Cash," said Doug, reaching for his pocket.

  * * *

  CLAIRE STOPPED BEFORE A window a few shops away, checking her reflection again, this time over a display of fountain pens and sport knives. She touched her collarbone in exactly the same manner as the women in diamond advertisements. "I have to buy a whole new wardrobe now, just based around this."

  Doug noticed her bare wrist. "There was a matching bracelet too, you play your cards right."

  She admired it a few more moments before her hand fell away. "I should never have let you buy me this."

  "Why not?"

  "Because. Because the intent on your part was enough. The impulse you felt-- I love it, whatever prompted it. That was the magic. A stronger person maybe, she would have told you that-- and meant it-- and let it go right there. A more secure person, maybe. But you didn't have to do this."

  "The guilt," marveled Doug. "It's immediate."

  "It is, isn't it?" she admitted, smiling a moment. Then she turned toward him, the smile gone. "Doug-- I did something today, I have news."

  A little heat came into his forehead. "What's that?"

  "I quit my job."

  Doug nodded slowly. "The bank."

  "I had to. And really it was only a matter of time before they fired my ass." A flash of a smile at her slang, again quickly replaced by earnestness. "I was slacking off so much, I was no use to them anyway. Ever since the robbery... I won't bore you with that again, but I just couldn't do it anymore. Not because of what happened there. Because of me. I needed to make a clean break. I just-- I can't believe I actually did it."

  "It's sort of sudden, though, isn't it?"

  "I guess. Why?"

  "I'm just thinking about the police. A few weeks after the robbery... and now you're quitting the bank."

  Her hand went to her open mouth. "Oh."

  "I mean, maybe they won't..."

  "That never even occurred to me. You don't think..."

  He did. This was sure to bring renewed attention from the FBI. And if they started watching her, how could he keep seeing her and stay out of their crosshairs? And then, if they ever put him and Claire together...

  That made him think. "You still talk to that FBI agent?"

  Her hand came away from her mouth. "You think he'll be talking to me again?"

  Doug felt icy suddenly. He wondered why he hadn't thought of this before. "What's he look like? Anything like on TV?"

  They were moving again, through the Copley Mall toward the escalators, the Tiffany & Company bag dangling in Claire's hand. "He said he's a bank robbery agent, that's all he does."

  "What's he like, a haircut in a suit?"

  "Not hardly. He actually lives in the navy yard somewhere."

  "The yard, huh?"

  "Like my height, maybe an inch taller. Thick brown hair, kind of wavy-curly, all over the place. In fact-- it's probably gone now, but he had this reddish sort of stain on his skin from this guy he was chasing, a bank robber who got a dye pack. Do you know what a dye pack is?"

  They were on an elevator going down, which was lucky, because Doug could barely move.

  Too convoluted, the whole thing. Too massive, he couldn't break it down. Had he fucked up? Had this bank sleuth somehow been feeding off him through Claire?

  He watched her at the revolving doors, pausing in her story about the bank robbery agent getting stained in order to eye her necklace again in the reflective chrome.

  She knew nothing. Maybe the sleuth knew nothing either. Maybe.

  Outside, they crossed a brick-and-stone plaza, commuters flooding the street from the Back Bay station, jumping curbs and chasing down taxis. Claire took his hand. "Delayed sticker shock?"

  "No," he said, coming back around. "What are you going to do now?"

  "Right now? I don't-- "

  "No, I mean-- now that you're out of a job."

  "Oh. I've got some money saved, I have a cushion. What do I want to do?" She looked up at the tops of the skyscrapers. "Stay out of banking, that's for sure. My parents are going to freak out. I thought about teaching, but-- what I do with the kids at the Boys and Girls Club, that's not really teaching. It's not social work either. It's nothing you can make a living at. Though I did talk to the director over there, in case a paid position opens up."

  Thoughts came to him as fast as the commuters swarming around them. "What would you think," said Doug, "if I quit my job too?"

  She laughed a little. "I guess then I'd have company. But why?"

  "I got some money saved too. My own cushion. Hell, I got a whole sofa stashed away."

  They walked a few more steps against the crowd, then she looked up at him, remembering the necklace. "A whole sofa, huh?"

  "Matching love seat, even."

  Everything seemed threatened now, everything converging. Like his old life had suddenly been condemned, explosive charges being laid on all the load-bearing beams, a crew of badass demo hard hats advancing on it with crowbars and sledges.

  "You know how everybody's always got that place they want to go-- their if-only place? You know, If only I had the money, or, If only I had the chance."

  Claire nodded. "Sure."

  "I never had a place like that. I bet you do."

  "Only about half a dozen."

  "The problem is-- no one ever goes to their if-only place."

  "No, they never do."

  "Well, why not? Why couldn't we be the first?"

  She smiled, finding a different angle on his face, discovering something there. "Know what, Doug? You're a romantic. I think I knew it all along, only you hide it so well."

  "Things are changing for me, Claire. Changing fast, like hour to hour."

  "There's one small problem I foresee with your if-only plan."

  "What's that?"

  She smiled. "There's no Charlestown anywhere else in the world."

  "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that is a snag."

  And he left it floating there like that: mere talk. Twenty-six years ago his mother had walked away from the Town. Maybe now it was his time to follow.

  31

  Keyed

  CLARK MAYORS WAS A locksmith with a small key-making shop on Bromfield Street, one of the narrow lanes off the cobblestone boulevard of Downtown Crossing. The night-duty agent had given Frawley Clark's pager number, the Boston FO being without a good lockpick and contracting the sixty-year-old keymaker for side gigs, both on and off paper. Clark was a careful, square-faced, solidly built black man with a pleasant, home-cooked smell and half-glasses over snowy cheek stubble. His no-questions fee of a hundred an hour was coming straight out of Frawley's own linty pocket.

  Just a few hours before, Frawley had been sitting in the backseat of his new Bureau car, a banged-up, navy blue Ford Tempo, trying to stay awake half a block down from Claire Keesey's door. The muscular growl of a Corvette engine roused him in time to see the two of them nuzzling in the front seat, then her getting out and going into her place alone. Frawley put off his plan to drop in on her then, instead rolling out after MacRay.

  The bold green sports car seemed headed for the interstate, in which case Frawley wouldn't bother trying to keep up, but then MacRay cut sharply toward the Schrafft's tower at the last moment, crossing the Mystic north into Everett. He turned off Main Street down a dim residential road, Frawley thinking MacRay had made him, only to see the Corvette's round brake lights turn into a driveway. Frawley backed off and waited, parked up on Main trying to figure out his next move, when just in time he recognized MacRay's second car, the dumpy white Caprice Classic, parked righ
t in front of him. Frawley took off and made a slow loop past a funeral home, and by the time he returned, the Caprice was gone.