Serpents in the Cold (28 page)

_________________________

Cambridgeport, Cambridge

AT THE FRONT
door, Dante pressed the doorbell twice. There was no sound from within. He waited, cupped his bare hands and blew into them, even though they were already slick with sweat, and then went around to the side walkway that led to the back of the house. Sometimes Karl left the back door open for his customers. The small backyard was littered with scraps of steel and aluminum, a child's bicycle upended, its front tire angled off the rusted frame. Racks of empty pint bottles were stacked unevenly upon one another and several torn bags of trash. Putrefying garbage was strewn about the snow. Even in the cold, Dante could smell it.

Snowdrifts were piled against the dilapidated fence, where gaping holes were covered with chicken wire, and from the other side Dante heard the movement of a big dog, its panting heavy with phlegm. It sensed Dante moving, and barked. Other dogs farther off in the neighborhood barked in return, a chorus of dogs calling out to one another as if in some secret warning.

Maneuvering over more scrap that cluttered the yard, he made it to the back door, turned the knob, and pushed at the frame until it budged. Before he stepped inside, he noticed a foot-long length of rusted pipe on the ground. He reached down for it, cold against his palm, and entered the house. On his right was the door leading to the first-floor apartment. He heard a radio playing in a kitchen, disembodied voices of a soap opera aimlessly chattering away, and the sounds of dishes clattering in the sink.

The hall stank of piss, cigar smoke, and something foul that he couldn't quite place. He moved up the stairs, reached in his coat pocket, and touched the revolver to make sure he still had it. At the door, he knocked once, twice, and, after the third, he heard movement on the other side.

“Gimme a minute.” A woman's voice, abrasive and raw. A chain lock rattled and scratched at the wood. She opened the door slowly. Light suddenly cut into the darkness, dizzying him. His eyes refocused and the woman appeared before him. He watched her rounded face look at him and then a coy smile exposing a missing front tooth.

“I need to see Karl,” he said.

She laughed, raspy and carefree. “Well, he's sleeping off a hangover.” She opened the door wider, turned, and stepped back into the kitchen. She was wearing pale blue panties, and her buttocks hung below the hemline, doughy and marked. Dante looked away. Light came in from the dusty, grease-speckled windows.

“The front bell, it's broken.”

As though she hadn't heard him, she said, “I've never seen you here before. What's your name?”

The woman was nearly his height, a wide, round face on a thin neck and broad shoulders with barely any breasts pushing at the fabric of her tight man's T-shirt. Her lipstick was dry and caked and her eye shadow smeared, giving the appearance of a bruise.

“It doesn't matter.”

“You're right, you'd probably give me a fake name anyway. They all do, you know,” she said.

He passed her in the kitchen, and suddenly his senses sharpened. There were eggs frying loudly in a pan. The faucet dripping into the sink full of dishes and glasses, each drop tapping hollowly against a tin tray. A cigarette burning in an ashtray, smoke churning upward in dusty blue tendrils. A newspaper spread out on the floor, darkly stained and stinking of cat piss.

“So, you here to get high or get fucked?” the woman said as she reached over and pulled his arm closer to her. He smelled reefer on her breath, and the stale bitterness of alcohol. “I'm not like one of Karl's little girls who don't even know how to please a man yet. We could have a good time, you and me.”

He looked down at her hand holding his: the index and middle fingers were gone, scarred stumps up to the knuckles. She saw that he was looking.

“That was from the Fore River yard in Quincy, working the night shift building ships for the boys overseas. I hated that job like you wouldn't believe.”

He pulled his hand away from hers and, to avoid her eyes, looked at the kitchen table. It was covered in dirty plates, balled-up tissues and napkins, foil, cigarette boxes, newspapers, and smut magazines yellowed with age.

He asked for a cigarette. Her watery chestnut eyes moved to the side, head gesturing with a sideways nod to the kitchen table. He eyed a pack, grabbed it, and shook it. It was empty. Then he found another pack, pulled one out, lit it with his lighter, and took a deep drag. On the table were several of the plaster Jesus Christ figurines he had seen the last time he'd visited Karl, each one split into powdery pieces as if dismembered; a head on its side, a split torso, raised arms broken off from the shoulders, little hands with nails the size of thorns pinned in their center.

He touched the plaster torso that no longer seemed part of Christ, no longer seemed part of something sorrowful and holy, but something obscene. He pressed his thumb into it, crushing it apart until there was nothing left but dust.

“Get your clothes on and get out of here now.”

“What'd you say?” The woman smiled at him, as if he were setting up a joke.

“I said get your clothes on and get the fuck out of here.”

Looking down at the pipe in his hand, her eyes widened, suddenly aware. She stepped backward into the bathroom, flicked on the light, and closed the door.

Dante took a deep drag off the cigarette, let it burn inside his throat and chest, and then pressed the cigarette into an ashtray overflowing with ash and crumpled ends. He passed through the narrow, cluttered hallway. His stomach turned and he paused before entering the living room. There was a quavering groan, followed by laughter, throaty and deep. Something about it was oddly childlike. Feet were banging the floor as if someone was throwing a tantrum.

In the living room a boy sat upright on the couch. Or it looked to be a boy at first, but the head was so large and misshapen, with patches of hair missing where the hairless lumps made the skull seem inhuman, like a sculpture of a head whose clay had not yet hardened, and the eyes sunken into the skull left nothing but shadows, as if the boy had no eyes at all. The boy reared his head up toward him, and Dante saw that he was blind.

From one of the bedrooms he heard a man growling, grunting like some beast in heat as he fucked one of Karl's girls. As the sounds became louder, the boy on the couch began to mimic the noises, grunting gutturally, his lips slick with saliva. He pounded both feet against the hardwood floor so violently that the end table and lamp shook. He grinned, showing a mouthful of crooked, oversized teeth.

There was a heavy wool coat next to the boy, and Dante knew that it was the kid's father or caretaker who was in the next room having his way. He shook off the disgust building in him and moved toward the bedroom door. The boy quieted, cocked his head to one side, and the blind, sunken eyes turned and followed Dante across the room.

The sounds from inside hit a violent peak. A headboard banged and thudded against the wall. The man grunted pig-like over the muffled moans of a girl in pain. Suddenly the ruckus faltered, stuttered, and then silenced before the man released a sickly groan. Dante turned the doorknob. It was locked. He stepped back, gained his foothold, and launched forward, kicking the door. Wood splintered and the door bowed in, but the lock still held. He reared back again, raised his leg, and slammed his boot into the doorknob. The door broke open and banged against the inside wall.

On the bed, a man's white, pockmarked ass bounced up and down, the large body pressing down on the girl beneath him. The man lifted himself off her and, as much as his fat neck would allow, turned around. “What the fuck!” he shouted. “What the fuck, asshole!” His face was flabby and unshaven, the skin flushed and glistening with sweat. He slid off the girl and stood with his fat cock dripping.

He raised his arms and rushed toward Dante. Dante stepped to the side and brought the pipe down on the man's right arm. A dull crack of bone just under the elbow, and the man cried out and bent double, cradling his arm against his bare stomach. The girl screamed, and Dante could see that she was much younger than she was made up to look. He guessed she was no more than fourteen.

“You.” Dante nodded at the girl while keeping the pipe raised for another blow. “Get your clothes on and get moving.”

Tears in her eyes, mascara dripping dark streaks down her cheeks dusted pink with rouge, she moved up off the bed, and with the sheet covering her naked body, she rushed out of the bedroom.

The man shook his head. “You're gonna pay for this, cocksucker,” he said.

Dante rushed in, swung the pipe at the man's face. The impact of cracking his skull shook through Dante's hand. The man fell sideways, bounced off the bed frame, and fell to the floor. Dante watched as he got to his knees, fingers pressing at his wound, smearing blood across his face. Dante tossed the pipe aside and reached into his coat for his gun. He jammed the barrel into the man's mouth, the metal chipping his yellowed front teeth. His finger quivered on the trigger, but then he heard the boy in the living room crying out again, and dragged the man to his feet, pushed him across the room. Whimpering, the man stumbled to a chair and found his clothes.

Karl was standing in the doorway, an ashen pallor to his face, his black hair raked back. His protuberant eyes glistened, locked on Dante. He held a baseball bat in his hand. Dante had seen firsthand what Karl could do to people with a bat, and there was no way now that Karl was going to let him leave without exacting his pound of flesh.

“Maloney,” he said. “Get your retard son and get out of here. I'll take care of this.”

Pulling up his pants, the man nearly tripped out of the bedroom. He rushed to put on his white T-shirt even as the blood pouring from his head turned the shirt red. He grabbed his son by the arm, pulled him off the couch. The boy cried out and tried to wrench free from his grasp, but the man pulled harder and with a bloodstained hand cuffed him on the back of the head. The boy mewled like an animal, his lips and teeth glistening with spittle. Both scrambled out the door, their heavy footsteps pounding in the hallway and down the stairs. Dante felt the house rattle as the front door slammed shut.

Karl stared at the gun pointed at him. He reached down to his stained robe and scratched at his crotch. He sucked on the cigarette between his lips, and smoke poured from his nostrils.

“What the fuck you think you're doing, Dante?”

“I'm making things right.”

Karl gave him a sickly grin. “For what, Dante?”

Dante felt sick, felt his fever double up. He tried to swallow before talking but couldn't.

“C'mon, just give me the gun and we talk about this. Just give me the fuckin' gun and I'll make everything better.”

Dante raised the gun and moved toward Karl, who backpedaled into the living room. “C'mon, man.” He dropped the baseball bat and it clattered onto the bare floor.

“Don't tell me this is about Margo. That's old news, man. Just let that shit stay buried.”

They passed through the living room into the kitchen. Looking into Dante's eyes, Karl realized that Dante wasn't high but completely sober and in control, and suddenly he began to feel fear. “Just because your wife's last dose was from me doesn't mean anything,” he whined. “She was already sick and you know that. All this, it's fucking ridiculous, man.”

The bathroom door was shut, and Dante heard movement from within: the whimpering of the girl being quieted by the woman who'd let him in.

“Let's forgive and forget, man. We get our heads back on straight and I give you the dose of a lifetime. No problem, I'll forgive you for all this. Trust me, my new shit will get you higher than the heavens. C'mon, your wife would have done anything for a taste of it.”

A shadow of a smile crept over Karl's face. “And I mean ‘anything'—anything I wanted—you know that.”

The bathroom door banged open and the woman, screaming, rushed at Dante, pulling at his shoulder. The gun almost fell from his hand, and he turned and stiff-armed her. She fell backward and collided with the refrigerator, sending empty bottles on top to the floor, and glass shattered about them.

Karl grabbed a steak knife off the kitchen table and lunged at him. The blade cut the air an inch from Dante's throat and Karl howled with pleasure. They banged into the stove and sent the pan of eggs clattering to the floor, hot grease splashing the linoleum. Grinning, Karl stabbed again and slashed Dante's cheek. Dante staggered and pulled the trigger. A flash of pale light, and Karl's head snapped back. The bullet blew through his forehead, just under his hairline. Blood bubbled out from the hole and streamed down his face.

On the floor, Karl twitched as the life rushed out of him. His eyes rolled white and, as Dante watched, a black puddle pooled around the back of his head.

He glared at the woman, who stood watching from the sink, moaning. “Shut up,” he said, but her moaning increased. “Shut the fuck up!”

He pointed the gun at her. “You take that girl, and you go someplace safe,” he roared. Her eyes glistened wide in shock. With a hand clenched to her mouth, she nodded. Dante put the gun back into his pocket and walked to the stairs. At his back, he heard the cries of the woman become louder as air came back into her lungs, but all of his sympathy, all of his remorse was gone. He no longer cared about anyone.

_________________________

Black Jack's, South Boston

THE ILLUMINATED SIGN
for Brubaker Beer hung crookedly above the entrance like a guillotine that might soon lose its hold and slice through whichever drunk stumbled out at the wrong time. Dante watched the red and white lights tick and hum in their glass tubes, began to see spots in front of his eyes, and looked back down at the windows of Black Jack's, covered with mustard-colored curtains. His reflection shimmered in the pockmarked glass, and he imagined it would remain there long after he stepped inside the bar.

Hand in his pocket, fingers touching the gun, Dante pressed back into the shadows near an empty stoop still covered in snow and watched the bar and the men who entered and exited: rail workers, longshoremen, and laborers, an old barfly stumbling slightly in a tattered fur-collared coat. He smoked a cigarette, and then another, felt the smoke singe his raw throat. On the other side of the street a beat-up sandblasted Chevy rumbled up to the curb. Three men got out. The driver stood for a moment in the street, jangling his keys in his hand and laughing at something one of the other men had said. Dante recognized two of them as the Kinneally brothers, and the other as one of the goons who had helped pin him against the alley wall outside the Dublin House. He watched them enter the bar, and began to get the shakes again, feel the fever creep back under his skin.

He stepped out of the dark and stood by a bus stop, pretending he was waiting for the next bus to arrive. A few men walked by him, eyed him with that questioning, invasive glance peculiar to those living in Southie. He nodded toward one of them, thinking that he recognized him, but the man glared back at him with the same cold stare, as if seeking a fight but too damned tired to start one.

He moved toward the door of Black Jack's, grabbed the handle, and, holding it for a moment, looked at his hand. It was a junkie's hand, but he was no longer shaking, and it was steady now. He opened the door and stepped inside. The harsh, treble-heavy sounds from the jukebox echoed sharply in the room, fiddle strings wildly playing alongside a woman's high-pitched voice. His eyes adjusted through the smoke and he saw the long oak bar on his left, the hunched shadows of men lined up against it, and on the other side, tight low booths. A man with rolls of fat hanging over his belt sat on the bar stool closest to him; he had a cigar clenched in his mouth, and its yellowish smoke moved over his wrinkled face slowly like ink traveling through water. The bartender, thin and acne-scarred, placed a drink on the bar before him, glared at Dante, and asked, “Who the fuck are you?”

Beside the fat man, a woman wearing a lopsided wig turned on her stool and looked at him. She had a man's chin, a man's Adam's apple, and she winked at him as a man might to a child after telling an off-color joke. Dante pulled out the gun, kept it at his side, visible enough to anybody who cared to look. The bartender shook his head in an exasperated way, as if pondering the mess he'd have to clean up afterward. “Don't be a cunt, fella, just move it the fuck outta here.”

“Blackie Foley.”

“Who?”

“You heard me.”

The bartender paused as if pained, and then moved down the bar illuminated in reds and blues by neon signs hawking Miller and Brubaker. Dante stiffened and walked deeper inside. At the farthest end of the bar, the bartender was talking to someone. Blackie. He leaned back, slowly moved off a stool, and stood there for a moment. When he recognized Dante, his eyes widened and he started laughing. He pulled up his belt, making sure his shirt was tucked in, and walked toward him. The Kinneally brothers and the other goon rose off their stools and followed him. Another one watching on the opposite side of the room left the darkness of a booth and rushed Dante. From the corner of his eye, Dante saw him. He turned and sidestepped, striking the man with the grip end of the gun. The steel tore into the man's jaw and sent him to his knees. Stunned, the goon reached up to his bloodied mouth with fat fingers. When he tried to get to his feet, Dante aimed the gun at his face. “Don't fucking move,” he said. He looked back up at Blackie, who stood a few yards away, grinning.

“What's up with the gun, Cooper. You need a fix that bad?”

Blackie's boys laughed with a sadistic playfulness.

“Does the fucking thing even work?” called out one of his men, but there seemed to be so many of them Dante couldn't pick out which one had said it. Sweat stung the corners of his eyes. He took a step back, raised the gun off the injured goon, and aimed it directly at Blackie, who had stepped toward him. When two of his boys moved alongside him, Blackie raised a hand, telling them to stay put.

“I guess you're playing revenge here, is that it? You're here to show us that you're more than a coward. Seriously, I got no beef with you, Cooper. Never had much of a beef with you. Messing with junkies ain't no fun.”

Another voice called out, “Somebody just shoot the fuck and get it over with.”

Blackie moved closer. “If you're here to get some payback for putting that prick O'Brien in the hospital, then be a man and drop the popgun and try to take me.”

“Like a real man!” some drunk echoed. Someone clapped, egging him on; a few muttered harrumphs and taunts from observers at the bar. Laughter followed and it seemed to fill the room, then it faltered when Blackie raised a hand again to stop it. The last note from the jukebox faded. Nobody got up to put in another nickel. Somebody in a booth flicked a match to light a cigarette, and it was the only sound left in the world.

Dante cleared his throat. “You were looking for Sheila. You found out where she used to live in Somerville. You were looking for something. And you killed an old man. Bashed his fucking head in.”

“You're fucking loony, Cooper. Out of your fucking mind.”

“And then Lynne. You torched Cal's place. You knew she was inside.”

“You're talking out of your ass, Dante.” Blackie raised his right hand, palm-side up. “Just put that gun away, say you're sorry. C'mon, old neighborhood, we stick together.”

There was a blur of movement from behind Dante and he turned and fired, and the acne-scarred bartender's eye exploded in a blood-pink plume and he dropped to the wood. The crack of the revolver silenced the barroom. Time slowed, and Dante felt as if he couldn't move, but as Blackie reached for his own gun, Dante shot him. Blackie recoiled and twisted sideways, knocked to the floor. Dante got off another round and the bullet tore into the neck of the Kinneally beside him, hands clawing at his throat as he fell to his knees. Flashes of pale fire lit up the room. Most of the patrons made a break for the back door, a panicked flurry of footfalls, chairs tossed aside, and people pushing one another to get to the exits.

Dante fired again even as a volley of bullets ripped chunks out of the wood around him. A sudden pain tore into his shoulder and he lost his footing, slammed sideways into the jukebox. He glanced down to where a black circle smoked in his right shoulder. A surge of blood bubbled through it, dripped from between his fingers and onto the floor. He regained his feet and fired off another round, stumbled away as bullets shattered the domed glass of the jukebox, the lights within flickering strobe-like before sizzling out. He emptied the gun into the crowd as he pushed against the door and stumbled out onto the avenue.

He slid on a layer of ice into a gutter piled high with debris, regained his foothold, and began to run. He fumbled with more bullets from his pocket, which he fingered but couldn't quite grasp. The gun barrel singed the skin on his hand and he fought against the pain, popped the cylinder open, and jammed in as many bullets as he could.

He glanced back as he ran, fired four more rounds at the goons rushing out of Black Jack's so that they had to dive into the snow and behind cars parked along the curb. Gunshots popped like firecrackers. To his right, a parked car's windshield shattered, a snowbank erupted into plumes of ice. Pedestrians huddled in storefronts, rushed for cover in alleyways and behind trash cans. When the pain in his right shoulder became too intense, he switched the gun to his left hand and fired haphazardly. Above the door, the sign for Brubaker Beer exploded in white sparks and showered down on the cowering bodies below. He kept firing until the gun clicked empty a second time.

He made it to an intersection, stumbled off the curb and into the street. Car headlights blinded him. Drivers laid on their horns. A blackness pulsed at the edges of his vision; he felt the ground sway and bend beneath him. A hundred yards ahead he saw a taxicab coming down the avenue. He crossed into the middle of the street, raised the gun toward the headlights that grew larger and enveloped him in their light. The driver hit his brakes, and the car spun across the icy road before coming to a sideways stop, smoke steaming from its tires.

He winced against the blinding glare of the headlights, aimed the gun at the driver's side of the windshield, and stumbled to the passenger's side. Inside the cab, he held the gun at the driver. The man was old, with a frightened, impoverished face and a white beard that thinned out at his chin. He shook his head, said something in a language that Dante knew was Polish.

“Turn the car around,” Dante said, his hand trembling and spittle flying from his lips. “Turn the fucking car around!”

The staccato flares of gunfire came from the other side of the street, the sharp echoes popping off into the night. Bullets tore through the taxi's back door, and the side window exploded, broken glass skittering across the hard leather seats. The driver put the car into gear and pressed the gas. The tires spun, caught traction, and the engine roared as the car straightened out and sped ahead. Dante held his free hand against his shoulder to stanch the flow of blood, but there was so much of it he could taste it. He fought against a wave of burning pain carrying through his arm. Bile filled his throat. The darkness was coming and he had to hold on; he blinked and tried to will the adrenaline through his veins, while in his head he replayed how he'd seen Blackie go down and he prayed with all the strength he had left that it was a head shot.