by Chuck Hogan
She released him, her earlier smugness returned to her face. "You can't wait for me to leave, can you?"
"You picked up on that."
"Why isn't she here now? If she's going with you." Krista looked at the room. "And such a trashy little fuck pad. After a Tiffany necklace, I'd've thought a room at the Ritz or something."
"What did you say?" Doug went to her, fast. "Who told you about that?"
She was smiling now, having drawn him to her. "A little bird."
Doug grabbed her arms. "Who told you?"
She smiled more fiercely in his grip. He shook her but he couldn't shake away the smile. "You always did like it rough."
"What do you know about a necklace?"
"I know I don't see one around my neck. I know you'd rather see a rope there than jewels."
"You don't know what you're talking about," he said, pushing her away to keep from smacking her.
"You better be more careful. Pushing around a pregnant woman like that."
Doug froze. She looked down at her flat belly, regarding it as though it were some new part of her body, laying a proud hand over it the way pregnant women do.
"It's Dez's," she said.
Doug's hands came up to his forehead. He mashed his eyes with the heels.
"Ah," she said. "So broken up for a friend. Most people offer congratulations."
Doug raised his face to the ceiling, eyes still covered, elbows pointing at the corners of the room. He pressed until he saw stars. Dez.
"You think the Monsignor will do the right thing?"
"Make an honest woman of you?" Doug said. Then he dropped his hands, his vision clearing around her defiant face. "You Coughlins."
Her eyes were fierce, teasing. "I don't think his mother likes me."
"What do you want? What is this? If I agree to stay, you'll set Dez free?"
She stepped before him, her hands resting against his pecs, fingertips light as flies. "Take me with you. I'll get an abortion-- I'll go to hell for you, Duggy." Her palm settled over his heart. "But do not leave me behind."
Doug stared at her with the disgust he normally reserved for his morning mirror. "Probably we deserve each other," he said, pulling her hands off his chest and throwing them back at her. "But I'm not doing this anymore. No more fixing things, me smoothing it over for everybody. Babysitting Jem. I told Dez to stay away, I warned him."
He moved past Krista, scooping up Shyne and her bubba, the girl's eyes still glued to the set as he carried her away.
"The fucking problem here," he went on, "is me. I'm the enabler. I'm the guy helping everything hold together, when it's all screaming to break apart." He marched to the door with Shyne under his arm, opened it, turned. "Everybody will be better off once I'm gone."
Krista followed him only as far as the corner of the bed. "Duggy. Do not do this."
"Or what? You'll have the kid? Just like you had this one?" Sad Shyne sagged under his arm, hanging from his side. "Who's her father, Krista? Huh? Since we're letting in a little truth here. Who was it? Was it Jem?"
She recoiled in disgust. "Jem?"
"Who, then?"
Her "Fuck you, Duggy" seemed heartfelt, but he couldn't trust anything she said now. And anyway the point was moot.
"You know what?" he said. "If I was going to take anyone with me, it would be her." Doug set Shyne gently down on the floor of the empty hall, then stepped back into the room.
Krista was not budging. "We're coming with you."
"You're getting out of here. Now."
"Duggy. Don't you say no to me. You think about this, Douglas MacRay. I want you to think about what you're doing-- "
He grabbed her arm. She fought him-- "No!"-- pounding his chest, pushing up at his chin, digging her nails into his windpipe, while inexorably he maneuvered her toward the door. With a final kicking yell, she shook herself free, then walking the few remaining steps into the hallway, as though she had some last shred of pride to preserve.
Outside, she turned, alternately cool and smiling furiously. "You don't know what you just-- "
Doug closed the door, threw the lock. He expected banging, screaming, and knew that she could outlast him, this woman without shame, and that he would be forced to readmit her before guests complained and police were called.
But there was nothing. When he looked through the spyglass later, fully expecting to see her still standing there with Shyne, she was gone.
50
The Dime
FRAWLEY'S TELEPHONE RANG AS he was sprinkling shredded cheese over his scrambled eggs. Ocean-driven rain whipped his window overlooking the toll bridge. His microwave clock read 7:45.
A Sergeant Somebody, calling from the emergency room at Mass General. "Yeah, Agent Frawley? Hey, we got a DWI here, banged up in a one-car in the Charlestown Navy Yard? Kissed a big anchor on display in front of one of the dry docks."
Frawley's first thought was Claire Keesey. "I need a name."
"Coughlin, Kristina. Got that off the auto reg. A white Caprice Classic. Had a kid with her. Little girl's fine, but the mother is banged up and belligerent. Claims she's working with you, which seems specious, but she did have your card, this phone number written on the back. DSS came already and took away the little girl. Ms. Coughlin is under arrest, but she says we need to get you involved first."
Frawley dumped his hot eggs into the garbage. "I'm leaving now."
The walk to his car, the rain, the rush hour cost him thirty minutes. He walked the halls of Mass General in wet shoes, his creds getting him thumbed inside the ER to a wide room like a voting hall under morgue light, rimmed with curtained bays.
"Hi," he said, stopping at the nurses' station, "I'm looking for..."
Then he heard her voice cutting across the room-- "How 'bout you put on that assless smock first, Denzel, then I will"-- and started in that direction. A good-looking, flustered black doctor shrugged aside a pale yellow curtain.
"Coughlin?" said Frawley, heading past him.
But the harried doctor slowed him up. "Listen. She needs to be seen by our plastic surgeon. If you have any influence over her, please stress that. Laceration's too deep for simple stitching, she'll be scarred for life."
"Yeah-- okay." Frawley tried to get past, but the doctor had a hand on his arm now.
"She claims she was pregnant," he said. "But the blood test was negative, and no signs of miscarriage."
Frawley took his arm back. "Hey, I'm not family or anything, I don't need to know." He walked to her bay, pushed the curtain aside.
Krista was sitting in the padded visitor's chair, a gauze wrap around her forehead with a bright red bloom over her left eye, blood spatter on her sweatshirt and her jeans. "Here's handsome," she said.
Frawley nodded to Sergeant Somebody, the older cop rolling his eyes at her and moving to the break in the curtain. "Five minutes," Frawley told him.
Krista called after him, "I take mine milk, three sugars!" She smiled over tightly folded arms as Frawley closed the curtain. His card rested on the bed, on top of the folded johnny she had refused to wear. She flicked her fingernails and bobbed her crossed foot-- a black shoe with a broken heel-- restlessly. "I was on my way to see you."
"That's interesting," said Frawley. "Considering you don't have my address."
"You're in the yard." She shrugged. "I would of found you."
One look at her eyes told Frawley she was good and dusted. Recognizing this slowed him down a bit. "What happened?"
"I don't know. Guess someone left an anchor in the middle of the road." She shrugged the grin of someone for whom life was such a daily absurdity in and of itself that a car accident made for a welcome start to the week. In that grin Frawley discerned the bullying contempt of her brother.
He saw the empty car seat in the corner-- blue plaid fabric crumb-dusted and milk-stained-- its vacancy like a mouth opened to scream.
Krista saw him looking, sucked in her smile, swallowed it down. "She wasn't hurt," she s
aid proudly. "Not a scratch."
"Then you could be looking at Mother of the Year here," he said, unable to help himself.
"What do you know, what I go through? Look at you." She broke the knot of her arms. "People make mistakes sometimes-- and who are you, Mr. Tsk-Tsk college boy? The mistake catcher? A fucking hall monitor with a badge, what do you know about someone like me? I am a real person. I am a single mother."
"Your daughter is in the backseat of a state van, being driven by a stranger to the Department of Social Services. How long do you want to talk here?"
Krista stared, eyes dampening. Frawley was being hard, but it was working.
"What were you coming to see me about? You needed a babysitter? I tried to call you twice, you hung up both times."
She glowered at the waxy curtain, keeping her dusted emotions in check. "DSS only holds her for a while. There's an evaluation. Nothing happens until the evaluation."
"So maybe you want a lawyer here, then. Not the FBI."
She looked at him again, nearly amazed. "Why is it I'm always the one who gets used? Every man I know."
"Who's using you here? Who called who? Who's asking for help-- me? I'm pretty sure I'm here because you want your daughter back. Because you can use me to get her."
"Real people make real mistakes-- "
He talked over her. "This is not about you anymore, this is about your daughter. Look at this empty car seat."
She did, her eyes blinking wet.
Frawley went on, "You're going to need some sort of plea agreement on these charges now, in order to retain custody."
She looked up fast. "And my house. I want your guarantee."
"Whoa, hold up. I never said I could guarantee. I said I could try."
"You said-- "
"I said I could try. And that is what I will do, Krista, that is my promise, provided you're straight with me here. And if that isn't good enough, maybe you want to wait for a better offer. How many more Get Out of Jail Free cards you got on you? Could your brother get you out of this jam? MacRay? Who? Fergie?"
Her eyes sparked to that.
"What, Fergie's your benefactor, is he? Why should a degenerate dust dealer help you out with your daughter?"
Nothing in her low-eyed look was telling-- except the duration.
Frawley's stomach curdled. "Oh, Jesus."
She kept looking at him: defiantly, then starting to fall apart.
"You and the Florist..." Frawley had to stop himself from saying more. He was picturing the gangster's mashed face in a spasm of feral ecstasy, looming over her.
Krista's chin trembled. A hard woman crumbling was an awful thing to see. "Why you have to lean on me so hard? Why make me beg for everything I get? Treating me like I'm nothing, I don't matter. All you men."
Frawley summoned the memory of MacRay coming after him in the parking garage in order to sustain his anger, counterbalancing his sympathy for Coughlin's sister here. "You called me. That means you have something to trade."
She looked down, taking deep, shuddering breaths. "Duggy's going away with her after."
"Her?" Frawley stepped up. "What do you mean, with her?"
Krista looked up. She read the desire in his eyes, the anger, and said, "You too?"
He lost it. "What do you mean, with her?"
Krista was aghast. "What is she anyway? What does she have-- Jesus Christ-- to make all of you so fucking crazy over her?"
Frawley remembered himself, stepped back. "You said after. Going away with her after. After what?"
Krista turned to look at the clock-- and Frawley's blood came crashing.
"Today?" he said, pouncing on her look. "Not Tuesday-- today? Where? When?"
Her jaw quivered like mortar cracking off a facade. "My daughter...."
"You need to be smart now, Krista. A life full of bad decisions, this is the one that could do you good, help turn things around. But their clock is your clock too."
"My daughter," Krista said, finally breaking. "She's retarded."
Frawley's breath was gone. He stood very still.
Krista spilled tears, her face collapsing in despair and defeat. "She's going to need things... special things... special schools..."
"Right," he gasped out. "Uh-huh."
She looked up, her face tired and tear-streaked. "For her I'm doing this. Not me."
"No," said Frawley, stealing another glance at the clock. 8:25. "Of course not."
"It's not for me... not for me..."
51
The Mourning Of
THE FOUR OF THEM standing around the hotel room, all in cop uniforms, guns and folded black duffel bags on the bed.
Rain fell hard outside the shaded window. A punishing rain was almost as good for a job as snow. It darkened the day, obscured loud noises, kept bystanders off the streets, and gummed up the city in general. Gloansy had picked up four bright safety-orange raincoats at the army/navy store the day before. The coats covered up the armored vests that bulked out their cop uniforms.
"Rain's good," Jem was muttering, walking back and forth from the drawn window curtains. "Rain's good. Rain's good. Rain's good."
Doug looked at the phone. He was barely there, the crashing of the rain outside like the shit coming down all around his head. He answered when spoken to and moved when it was required of him, but everything felt distant and rehearsed, occurring outside himself while he watched. The four of them going through their pregame rituals. He was having trouble placing himself in time, figuring out what led to what and how he had arrived at this hotel room at the end of the world, dressed like a Boston cop.
Dez cursed the bathroom mirror, having trouble with the hard contact lenses he wore on jobs. His face looked undressed without glasses, his nearsighted eyes small and lost in his face. What's up? Dez had said at the door, the last to arrive. Nothing, said Doug, until then hoping that Dez might stay away.
Gloansy gobbled down two pancaked slices of cold Domino's, while Jem's pacing and muttering and knuckle-cracking bordered on the lunatic. Where was the prejob ragging and the goofing that used to drive Doug nuts? Gone was all that crazy joy.
Would the G even let them leave the hotel? Or wait until they were going into the ballpark and nail them there, all packed up and loaded, a headline bust? Or would agents be waiting inside, wearing can guards' uniforms-- a reverse Morning Glory?
Worse than the doomed feeling of the trap was knowing that he was the only one aware of it. Asshole that he was. Falling for this creature of his imagination, this all-forgiving, all-healing girl-- this magic, winning ticket. Trusting her. Needing her. What was it about him that wanted a wounded girl to vanish into? If the phone rang now, it would only be the G calling from the lobby, telling them the place was surrounded and ordering them out, hands behind their heads, one at a time.
It was not too late. He could tell the others what he'd done. They could all change back into street clothes and ditch the uniforms and guns and walk away clean-- three of them heading back into Town, and Doug in a different direction. He had some money, he'd be all right. For a while.
But part of him still held out hope. Arguing that if there was going to be a takedown, it would have happened already, there at the hotel. The G didn't want them out on the streets, armed and unpredictable. Maybe Claire hadn't told them anything. Every second that ticked toward Go time, Doug's hope grew.
He went around wiping down the dresser and table with rubbing alcohol, removing his prints from the room. Krazy Glue on his hands, krazy thoughts in his mind. Glugging bleach in the bathroom sink and shower, blitzing the drains, obliterating his DNA. Erasing every trace of his existence. The bundle of cash he had buried shallow in the garden of a girl who hated him, and the clothes piled up in Mac's old army bag by the door: they were all he had in the world now. And these three guys.
Gloansy and Dez went around rapping fists, pulling on orange coats and slipping out one at a time, down the hallway stairs to the rear door. Doug watched from the
window, the slapping rain providing decent cover for two bright orange cops ducking out of a hotel and into a stolen car. They were leaving early to snarl the morning city commute before returning to the ballpark. Doug watched them roll around the corner out of sight and envisioned them being pulled over just outside the parking lot, boxed in at gunpoint by a roadblock shutting down Boylston Street. He closed the curtains as though tear-gas canisters were about to come crashing through the window, smoke filling the room.
