The Dorchester Five

by Peter Manus

  She shrugs. “What do I know?"

  “You want her to get them for what happened to Jakey, don’t you,” I say more than ask. “You figured out it was her from the start.”

  She looks away, not answering, and rewraps her coat. “So, look-it, about the elephant in the room. I knew they were half-siblings, of course, but I didn’t pick up that they were—how do I put this—playing doctor up there till they’d been into it for awhile. Then I didn’t know what to do. If she was away any amount of time, kid went ape. And you couldn’t reason with her, so I didn’t even try. She doesn’t live by the rules any more than Dylan.”

  I glance at her, not tempted to mention that I suspected Dylan of instigating some sort of sexual contact between Agnès and Jakey at some point prior to her taking on her nursing role.

  “Devil spawn, that one,” she mutters, almost as if she’s heard my thought.

  “You going to be okay?” I say, getting to my feet.

  “Why not?” she says, looking my way. “Fact is, I’m getting sick of hiding everything. What the hell is wrong with the truth, every once in a while?”

  Fact is, I kind of agree. I walk off, homeward bound for one last slasher flick—the right one, at long last.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I am Nightingale—

  He is brilliant. He plays, and it pains me. There is anger in him, and verve, and even moments of swagger, as he rips his way through those two allegros and the larghetto e spiritoso. Mostly there is precision, his hallmark. He is at the same time humble and proud.

  He stands by himself on the stage, looking narrow and pale in comparison with the beefy virtuoso who plays opposite. I have clothed him in the lovely old tuxedo from a thrift shop. Its black is faded and textured, as is he, in contrast to his partner’s raucous blast of shimmering black silk and ruddy emotion. Behind the two soloists, ranged about the stage, are the six or seven acolytes who echo their remonstrations. Two of these disciples sit at cellos, and the rest stand about like observers at a burial. Two with violins, a black man with snowy whiskers and a shorn-haired woman wearing sleeve-like black pants as if dressed as a pallbearer, stand to each side of Simon. One other, a blonde with a childlike face who sways sorrowfully in a rich mourning gown of red velvet, stands off beyond the cellos as if engaged in her own solo brand of lamentation, which she etches out in deep, sonorous tones on her larger, more doleful violin—a viola, Simon has told me this is called.

  As I experience the music, I am drawn in and out of hallucinatory moments. The hotel where we encaved ourselves today, a joyless baroque structure of battered brick, slowly sinking amid the brusque high rises at the edge of the financial district. Rooms are let by the hour. Simon is in delicate shape—there is no doubt he will die soon, with or without my adieu. I feed him squares of unsweetened chocolate, playing it gently into his closed lips until they are coated in brown juice, and then rubbing this into his mouth with the bowl of a spoon dipped in tea so that it seeps down his throat unnoticed. He seems to ingest next to nothing but he swears it makes him quite strong.

  The opening allegro ends, and Simon launches into the precise but solemn larghetto e spiritoso section. His violin creeps toward a vision that is very black indeed.

  Later in the hotel room I ask him to fuck me—I want him calm and without memories while he is playing. We strip ritualistically and then separately explore the dark recesses of the room, circling slowly, watching one another blend into the mossy maze of the wallpaper and the dreary excesses of old furnishing. Simon without clothes is already more a memory than a man. The carpet and drapes are musky, the atmosphere drowsying as an opiate. At one point, I rip open those lugubrious drapes and splay myself silently on the dense embroidery of the bed, but the window gazes upon a brick wall and the shaft thrown is dull and shadowy. Simon snakes his body against mine, his pelvic bone ridges sharply into my hip. We kiss like lovers who barely wake in the dead of night, not noticing where our lips touch. I reach down and nestle his lazy slug in my sodden thicket. Later, he buries himself in my plot, and I reach round and with both hands help him push deeper until he has stuck me to the hilt. I hold us there like that, very still, until he shudders. I think he has pierced my soul at last.

  He waits until I am dressing to divulge his plan. I brush my hair in the age-stained mirror. Behind me, he is dressed, his jacket square on his shoulders, his tie tied. He stands up from the bed and shoots his cuffs, and then, through the mirror’s reflection, he displays for me the gun. I watch him in reflection as he approaches. Then I turn. He grabs both my hands in both of his and holds me there until I will agree to listen. He presses my fingers against the gun, forcing me to feel it, to hold it. He looks into my eyes as he explains what he wants.

  In the final allegro, Simon and his partner lead a solemn dance—it is a ceremony, a requiem for a lover. I stand and walk up the aisle by myself. I can see the faces of others, rapt, joyous, frightened at this spectacle of raw refinement before them. What would they do, this crowd, if I circled around, raised the gun, and shot Simon through the heart?

  I turn, there in the aisle, to watch. At first Simon carries the canticle, but then he draws back to touch me far more deeply as he ticks out time with an intense quietude while the flamboyant other takes the melody, relating a tale of humor and grace.

  What if I were to aim the first bullet low, clipping him in the gut, so that he immediately curls in upon himself but stands, teetering, his silence the only sign of his pain? What if a second bullet enters his heart, shattering the precious instrument along its way so that the wood explodes before our eyes, revealing the surprise of its hollow innards, and the released strings spring askew, curling back in fright? What if a third bullet were to pierce his skull just as he begins to topple, so that a perfect black spot appears abruptly in the center of his forehead, bringing him instant peace, only just beginning to seep as he drops against the stage floor?

  They end together, with their five devotees joining them in an emotive fin du siecle. If I shot him now, would the members of the audience instantly abandon their emotional connection with the moment and run, clawing and tumbling in their panic to escape this sudden scene of carnage, each worried only about the possibility that a stray shot might come his or her way, ricocheting off the stage, or perhaps aimed randomly about the auditorium? Or would they instead go to stone in their seats, minds gripped by the magic before them, and simply stare through their paralytic awe as this slight form from which they have been sucking a newfound vitality crumples into itself, folding as if to disappear before their eyes?

  I turn again and walk slowly up the slope, one foot carefully before the other as if counting steps in a duel. My wrap dangles behind me, its silky fingers brushing against my ankles. I measure my steps, my gloved hand caressing the gun in my tiny jeweled purse. When I get to the very top, Simon has played the last note. I grip the gun and pivot slowly, taking in his applause. I have never been happier for another person than I am at that moment.

  Perhaps, when I shoot, instead of shirking away the people in this crowd that now pulses with the very spirit of joy would find themselves blind-sided, their deeper artistic consciousness unchecked, and would in the moment turn their unleashed, inarticulable spirit upon she who has dashed the narcotic from their lips? Could they not rise up as a collective and leap upon me, there in the aisle, first tearing the gun from my hand, next the arm from my shoulder, and after that the eyes from my face and the tongue from my throat? Would it not be right of them? Would they be deemed heroic? Or would they be a mob? Would a handful be arrested, dubbed the Cambridge Five, put through a trial, tortured in their own hearts for years?

  They bow simultaneously. Several audience members rise, and then a few more, and then with a boisterous ripple, most of the audience is on its feet.

  I cannot see him now. I crane my neck and catch sight of his face for a moment. He stands with eyes downcast. For a split second, just the time it takes to blink the eye, he looks up and
he smiles, unseeing, at the front row where he imagines I stand. Then he looks down, solemn again. He waits.

  But I am weak, as we know. I back out of the auditorium, clasping my purse.

  Très sincèrement,

  Nightingale

  THIRTY

  Marina Papanikitas’s Personal Journal

  I am writing on the fly, Zoey, kind of literally, or maybe I should say it’s about to be. H.P. and I are at Boston Med, on the roof, actually, waiting to hitch a helicopter ride. Pilot’s about to whirlybird on over to the island of Nantucket for a patient transfer. Shouldn’t be too long, now—I understand that when they decide it’s time to load you on the airborne gurney from the island hospital to the big city, you’re a patient who’s in some serious trouble. So if I cut off mid-sentence, it means I’m boarding. Mostly I’m sending this so you won’t worry about why the bed’s empty and the TV downstairs is napping for once.

  So earlier tonight I laid out my case to Harry, and he does get some credit for his lame one-liner about the groom dying at his wedding. It’s all there: the scarf on the terrace, the bottle of Arak, the philandering pol asphyxiated. And now the artist. And a bow and arrow. Our killer is doing her own The Bride Wore Black. Or should I say La mariee avant en noire—that cult Truffaut in which Jeanne Moreau slaughters five guys, all seemingly unconnected, until it comes out that they accidentally cut down Moreau’s husband on the church steps while she and he were pausing for a kiss, bride and groom, amid the rice. Agnès Rossignol thinks she proving her love for Jake Culligan by imitating Moreau’s MO. Never had to prove anything like love, myself, but then this woman did hitch her wagon to her brain-damaged half-brother-cum-patient. Might give her something to prove. Might make her lose it. Might make her truly dangerous, in the end.

  So when I leave Pruddie at the cemetery, I go home and watch the film. Moreau is just shy of middle-aged and smothered in retro fashions heavy in feathers and gauze, yet irrepressibly tantalizing. I know just about every frame of the silly thing, but it’s been a while, and in spite of my motive for watching I’m drawn in. I find myself thinking a lot about Simon Love. In the film, Moreau poses for days while the artist paints her. They give his friends the slip at one point, hinting that they’re in a bit of an artist-model affair. He finishes his portrait of her, professes his love, and she takes him out with the bow and arrow he’s had her hold as a prop. Could Agnès be following the pattern that literally?

  Now the true genius of H.P., Zoey, is that he gets what he gets and he gets what he doesn’t get. Harry’s a slab of granite—grounded, built to last, and destined to some day run the City of Boston Police Department. Solid is his forté, see, and no one’s got anything on him there. He’s too sane by half, though, to be able to think like a psychotic romantic gone off the edge. His genius is that he gets that my having a link with the lunatic element is what makes us work as a team. Maybe I’m just gushing, here, Zoey, but how many cops you know you think would take my Bride Wore Black theory in stride? After Moreau takes out her fifth victim with a bread knife while serving grub in prison—lady purposely got herself arrested so as to take him down—I hit the road and get Harry on the phone. I start jabbering about paintings and bows and arrows—this after Malloy’s already entertained him with his tale of two Florence Nightingales. I explain that I spent some time online, even as the film circled in on its final twist, looking for upcoming concerts featuring the artistry of local violinist Simon Love. Lo and behold, he is playing tonight, perhaps even as I drive.

  “And get this, Harry. Concert’s at an art forum in Cambridge located just off the intersection of Bow and Arrow Streets.”

  “There’s a Bow Street and an Arrow Street in Cambridge, and they intersect?” Harry says. “Now that’s fricking unbelievable.”

  Out of everything I’ve just unloaded on him, that’s what gives him pause. “Toward Central Square,” I assure him. “I’m about to hit the tunnel, where I’ll lose you.”

  “I’m closer,” he says. “Should get there first.”

  “Harry,” I throw out, “Agnès loves this guy. She wanted that to happen, but now that it has I’m sure she’s confused by it. Could make her trigger happy. And remember, she’s killed at least three times. She needs all that to have been for a reason.”

  “Pop?” he say. “I’ve been listening.”

  “I’m just saying that you may be forced to take this woman down.”

  “See you there.”

  I plunge into the yellowy netherworld of the Tip O’Neill. Tunnel’s wide open but Storrow’s a bloody mess. As a cop in a hurry, you just can’t win in this town.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I am Nightingale—

  His life seeps out through my arms. It is of no comfort, that fact. Not even now, a year and some months later. But I still believe that it may be of some solace in the future, and thus I put it down in this memoir so as to not forget. He dies in my arms, and as he fades he looks into my eyes and I push his glasses away, what is left of them, and I study his eyes, for I owe him much and will witness his transition from flesh to mud, from the nightingale’s song to the silence in its wake. He is with me. I daydream, now and then, that this mattered to him.

  That night, I stroll the chilly sidewalk outside the art center, my Spanish shawl wrapping my bare upper arms, my legs strangely warm in their patterned fishnets. The hip neon lettering splays the letters A-R-T into the night—pink and orange and blue, they paint the sidewalk and even tint the mist. I walk with energy, out of their range, then back a bit, then nowhere, just turning about, rubbing one velvet-gloved arm with the opposite hand. The gun in my dangling clutch knocks heavily against my hip, reminding me of what I had promised and failed to do—otherwise, I am lighter than the mist. As I wait, some other audience members—denim-clad couples clucking into their cells at their nannies—escape through the curved glass doors. We wink at one another conspiratorily, unable to refrain from sharing our delight. How could a person possibly top this high? Shall we drink until we topple from our stools? Shall we fuck so hard it hurts? Shall we drive with wild abandonment along a riverside road until we burst through a guardrail to sail in a slow spiral through the air, then pierce the black waters so that we may sink upside down to the bottom of the Charles? Who knows! Whatever we do, it stands to reason, we will never achieve the same high that we ride on this Cambridge sidewalk.

  He emerges at last, but it is not through the public lobby. A door far down the sidewalk swings to, an unmarked, unobtrusive door of a backstage area. I watch it from some distance, expectant, eager, but for the longest while there is no movement, no figure emerges from behind that metal shield. He is talking to someone behind him, it must be, accepting some final word of congratulations, offering the same in return, promising to reconvene for an even more challenging concerto. He is once again a social creature, communicating with others in the language of their craft. I begin to walk, one heeled shoe carefully before the other, my steps measured, my stilettos hitting the sidewalk in steady tempo, punctuating the night. I reach into my tiny handbag—such a frivolous bit of velvet and sequin, bumping so insistently against my thigh. I hold the gun steady, keeping it from swaying so as I tread the bricks.

  The door swings wider for one moment, then begins to recede. He appears in silhouette, illuminated only by the headlights of a car approaching from well behind him, but there is no question that this thin form with the small, high head and the black oblong case at his side is he.

  I quicken my pace as he approaches, his step steady but slow. He is exhausted, powered only by the adrenaline that wafts in his nostrils and skitters electrically up and down his limbs. He drifts like a man who knows his own Lethe, who floats down his own current toward the close of his life.

  I say his name, but he does not hear. Again I call, and he spots me. He walks forward with more vigor. He does not raise a hand, and I do not see his face, as the auto that approaches from behind has drawn closer and its headlights throw Simon into
an even blacker shade so that he is no longer even a silhouette, but rather an oblong dagger that only partially eclipses the insistent blaze from behind. I see his glasses glint as he turns his head slightly, distracted by the oncoming glare. I am afraid, then. I pull the gun from its satin holster.

  He must see me quite clearly, I realize later. The overpowering dazzle in my eyes makes the opposite for him—a spotlight on me. He must see the gleam of my garnet choker and the rippling velvet of my dress, the spatter of my flowery shawl on my shoulders and the sway of its trailing fringe. He must see the glint of my sequined purse and the matching sparkle of light reflecting off the gun in my hand. He sees my smile and the tear that fogs one eye while the other eye’s tear disappears off into the air, just a spark. He stops—perhaps he is struck by the perversity of fate, that it is his misery and my misery that should bring us to this moment.

  “It’s me!” I announce, squinting and stopping in the headlight glare, which is, at this moment, almost overpowering. We meet and he puts his hand out to take mine, to envelope my own hand as we come together. “I love you,” I say.

  “I have been half in love with easeful Death,” he whispers—it is a quote from a poem. He goes to kiss me as he slides the gun from my hand, but our lips never meet. Instead he jerks forward, almost throwing himself into me, quite suddenly and violently, and when he falls he takes me down with him. I do not understand, and think that he has shot himself, that he has, in fact, remained true to his morbid obsession and turned the gun I just handed him on himself. There was no noise, but perhaps I have somehow not allowed myself to hear it. I roll him, there in my lap, so I can see his face.

  From the look in his eye, I do not think he is so convinced that he should die at this moment. I will never know whether it is the performance and his ability to accept that moment of pride that makes him realize that he wants to live, or whether it is, perhaps, the terrible pain of dying that he experiences as his heart is shredded in his chest and the blood floods his lungs and then pumps like madness itself from his mouth and nostrils and runs from his ears and his tear ducts. One way or another, he has changed his mind. I throw myself mentally into his brain in a wild fourrage as I crouch there on the street, gripping him by his shuddering arms, my skirt growing heavy with the weight of the blood he pumps into my lap. I invade his brain, greedy for just a moment with him—he who I have refused to fourrage for days, out of some asinine notion about respecting him, although numerous times he invites me to rummage about in his thoughts and memories—too late, I try to fill his head with the message that I love him. He goes alone, but maybe he imagines I can be with him. Maybe he likes that idea.