The City Below (13 page)

A shawl covered Tucci's dark suit and black bow tie. Seen this close, his smallness was a surprise, especially in contrast to the bigger man behind him, but it made Squire more aware of his power. Also, Tucci was old, as old as Squire's grandfather. His hands were placed carefully on the table, flat in front of him, one on each side of the still unopened brown envelope and the roll of coins. Tucci looked at Squire as from behind a wall. And another wall, it seemed, stood between Tucci and the other man. If Tucci can ignore him, Squire thought, so can I.

"I'm Nicholas Doyle. I'm eighteen years old. I live in Charlestown, on Common Street I go to school there. But also, beginning last spring, I serve as the manager of a merchants' association. I collect the dues, which is the money in that envelope."

"You bring it to me?" Tucci's accent sounded nothing like Squire had imagined, an actor on
The Untouchables.
There was no crispness in his voice, and he spoke very softly.

"Yes. The money is yours."

"Why?"

"In the envelope, you will find bills and a list of merchants and tavern keepers up and down Main Street, from City Square to Sullivan Square, thirty-seven of them. One is my grandfather. They have nothing to do with the trouble between your people and McCarthy's, but you know what happens. Last year, men came into their stores wanting money. I told the store owners they need insurance, but they didn't know where to get it. I told them to pay me, I would arrange it Out of respect for my grandfather, they do. They trust my judgment My judgment was that insurance from you was what we needed, but why would you give it to us? I have told everyone that a relative of yours is our sponsor. It is a lie. But it worked. No one bothers the businessmen in Charlestown now, but it is because of you, even if you don't know. I have come today to pay you what is yours, to ask you to make my lie the truth." If the explanations seemed a speech, it was. Squire had practiced it.

Tucci picked up the envelope and, with the nail of his forefinger, slit it open. He emptied it on the table, several banded stacks of bills, hundreds, fifties, and tens.

"Ten dollars per week," Squire said, "for six months, from thirty-seven members. A total of eight thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars. It's all there."

A lot of money to the Irish kid. The fact that it was not to Tucci made no difference. The shops in Charlestown, unlike those on the waterfront, made no difference to him either. He sat staring at Doyle. The deep pools of his eyes were like that ocean out there gone completely calm.

To Squire it was as if someone had lit a fire in the fireplace on the wall behind, the fresh warmth in the room was that palpable. He had come here hoping to gain a foothold in the wall of Tucci's confidence, to become his formal representative among the Irish in the Town. It had never occurred to him to hope for, or want, a personal affirmation, yet that was what he began to feel.

He looked at the man behind Tucci, saw the resemblance, and realized that he was Tucci's son. His role, Squire sensed, was to do only this, and do it always: watch.

"Your grandfather," Tucci said at last.

"Yes?"

"What business?"

How the fuck did Tucci know to ask that? Squire nearly laughed. He would have to make an admission now that would associate him with the Garden, which would ruin everything. In the confessional, Catholic boys learned to say nothing that could prompt the priest's direct question, because it was unthinkable to lie in response to it. Yes. Here it was, confession. "Flowers." He touched the bandage at his ear. "You offer insurance to the flower man at the Garden. I was the one who crossed the line there. You stopped me. I learned my lesson." He gestured at the money. "I want to work for you on my side of the line, my side of the river. In Charlestown."

"But you already do."

"A presumption until now." Squire grinned. "Is that what you call it? I only claimed a connection to you, hoping to make it true eventually."

"Or hoping that, with Kennedy, you could replace Lombardi."

"Who?"

"The North End, the Garden."

"That was the flower business, something separate, something for my grandfather. A mistake."

"You're bold, aren't you?"

Squire did not answer.

"I like boldness. Although, in the young, more often it is foolishness. Are you foolish?"

"What do you think?"

Tucci had not had this experience before, studying a young Irisher. Instead of seeing the hairline crack along which Doyle could be broken, Tucci saw an image of the fierce, unbreakable man he'd been himself.

"What do they call you? Nick?"

"Squire."

Tucci smiled for the first time. "An old-country idea. A liegeman. A man with an oath. Whose squire are you?"

"Yours." Squire answered without any sense of treason because he did not mean it.

Which Tucci knew. He also knew it was the exact answer he'd have given. He picked up the money and put it back in the envelope, all but one band of ten hundreds, which he pushed toward Doyle, who took it—the symbol of their deal. "You collect ten per week from each one?"

"Yes."

"Make it five. You tell them Tucci personally makes it five."

"They'll like that."

"I expect you back every other month, the first Monday. Only you."

"You honor me." Such solemnity was strange in Squire, but it had come spontaneously, as if Tucci's presence required it Squire glanced toward the son, who still showed nothing. What had he made of this? Could he tell it was true, what Squire had just said about being honored?

Squire pointed to the roll of coins on the table. "Your men took those from me outside, a measly handful, but it belongs to someone else."

Tucci pushed the roll across to him. "Take it, then. Now leave."

As Squire's streetcar headed south, back toward the city, he remembered another time on this route, when he and his Townie chums had been chased by a gang of dagos. What would they think now? Squire allowed himself a brief rush of satisfaction, then deliberately blanked his mind. He kept his hands in his coat, his fingers clutching, in one pocket, the thousand dollars, and in the other, the roll of quarters.

The streetcar passed through Winthrop and Chelsea and rode for a time under the shadow of the Mystic River Bridge. The houses were ramshackle, the businesses depressed. Oil storage tanks and warehouses dominated some streets; blind-windowed taverns and weedy vacant lots dominated others. The streetcar stopped periodically, but few passengers boarded. Then it entered Maverick Square in East Boston, a lively intersection lined with colorful stores and dotted, that day, with umbrellas. The MTA stop was crowded. Many of those waiting wore uniforms, and Squire realized they were airline employees just off from the early shift at Logan.

Squire stood, and with a sweep of his hand and a pleasant smile offered his place to a woman in a cleaner's uniform. He positioned himself in the aisle, apparently set, but then at the last moment, just before the driver threw the handle over, slapping the door shut, Squire pushed past a burly Pan Am worker and dropped through the door like a parachutist through the hatch of a transport plane. One of Mark Clark's boys dropping behind the lines into Italy.

Squire waited under the shelter until the streetcar was gone, though it made no rational difference if its riders saw which way he headed. Fuck Mark Clark, he was no commando. An image like that could put a fellow in the wrong mood.

He set out, concerned now because rain this hard could screw up his plan. He pulled his hat lower on his face. From Maverick he went down the street that led away from Logan to the waterfront Two blocks along he turned right, into the more private realm of a residential street Now he realized that the rain was a friend, and he could hustle along without being noticed. The windows of the houses were blank. Not a curtain stirred. This was the city neighborhood into which North End Italians had been spilling, across a narrow finger of the harbor, since the war. At the next corner was a butcher shop, which had hanging in its window the skinned carcasses of whole rabbits and what Squire, when he'd first come here, took to be dogs, but then had recognized as lambs. Even in the rain, the stink of foreign food registered. He turned left and came to a small bakery, and he smelled its strange licorice bread. He kept going.

The Dello Sport Café. It was across the street at an angle from the bakery, the first floor of an unpainted three-story clapboard building. A large plate-glass window dominated the sagging façade, and through the window Squire made out the figures of men holding sticks, playing pool. He watched for a moment, until satisfied that the one he wanted was there. He continued along the sidewalk to a point beyond the house opposite the café, an alley into which he stepped to hide from view. Across the street, the same alley ran beside the café into a warren of fenced yards, collapsing garages, and precarious rear porches. Squire leaned against a building, set his collar again, and prepared to wait.

Wait. How un-Irish it had been of him. Instead of impulsively and suicidally charging his enemy, he had waited. He had followed. He had watched. He was at the end of one period of waiting, however, because he was at the start of another, a much longer one. It was time to finish with the first.

More than an hour passed. During that period the rain eased off, and he took it as a good sign when the pool players opened the door of the café to let in air. From previous visits, Squire knew that the toilet was in the rear of the building, off the alley, and that customers had to go out the front and around to reach it.

Finally one man came out and went into the alley and disappeared into the closetlike jakes. He reappeared moments later, zipping his fly, and returned to the café. A short time later another man came out carrying his pool cue, and then went back. Still not the one Squire wanted.

The fourth to appear was the kid with the stooped shoulders, the shiny suit, and the cocky, dipshit gait that formed the larger part of the profile Squire had memorized. He remembered the guy's name, Mano, which had enabled Squire to track him. Squire came alert when the punk stepped outside, paused on the wet sidewalk to take one last drag on his cigarette before snapping it into the street.

Mano must have just taken a game of eightball, because he stretched with satisfaction, up on his toes like a smug cat He headed toward the rear of the building. Squire waited as Mano went into the head and closed the door, then he pushed away from his wall and quickly crossed the street In seconds he was at the door. He kicked it open.

What a picture the bastard made, hunched on the seatless crapper, his precious pants carefully hooked at his knees to keep them free of the wet, filthy floor. He looked up at Squire with utter stupefaction. His acne-pocked face, with a wispy new mustache but the same stringy sideburns, was the smaller part of what Squire had memorized. He had seen it in the haze of his first sleep every night since May.

Doyle was at his most efficient. He had imagined this. He said, "A flower store in Charlestown—remember, asshole? Off the Common? An old mick at the cash register? You did this." Before Mano could react, Squire slugged him on the side of the head. His fist, wrapped around the roll of quarters, came down like a rock. Irish brass knuckles.

Mano collapsed into the gap between the toilet and the wall, his upended ass smeared with shit. He looked groggily back up at Doyle, who reined an impulse to hit him again. He had not only imagined this moment, but he'd anticipated its decisions. Blow for blow, a strictly equal act of retribution, a disciplined response, and a message, the beginning of a method of operation.

Squire had no urge to avenge the savage Garden beatings, not his own and not even the sickening blinding of Terry's friend. Whether the high-flown but stupid colored guy, or Terry, or even Jackie had known it or not, the four of them had spun the wheel that day and lost. They'd tried to push across the, what was it, Rubicon? Tiber? The fucking Charles. In other words, they'd asked for it.

But not Gramps. Gramps had just been sitting in his own place, making his damn shamrock whatzits. He was old, his fighting days over. Gramps had treated the wop assholes with respect. This was the one who'd pounded him. The bastard started to get up. Squire leaned over him to hiss, "You cross into Charlestown and I'll know it, and I'll kill you."

He had never said those words before, and he had not intended to now. It was no part of his dream of this. What shocked him more than having said such a thing was realizing he meant it.

Nick Doyle broke the roll of quarters and spilled the coins on the slumping, half-naked figure, an impulsive final gesture, not planned either.

Gramps. Watching his grandfather get hit and doing nothing; watching his grandfather fall and bleed; watching his grandfather look around for help, for him. His grandfather by whom he measured the meaning of love. His grandfather who had tapped him, dubbed him, consecrated him Squire.

***

The campaign had chartered dozens of buses to bring the Boston contingent of the New Frontier down to Washington for the inauguration. But two days before, on January 18, Terry's mother developed symptoms. Real ones.

"She can't catch her breath," Terry told the doctor. It was midnight. He clutched the phone, pressing it against the bones in his face. "I've already called the ambulance."

"What about her pulse?"

"Wild," Terry said. "Her pulse is wild."

"Has she been taking her Coumadin?"

"Yes, I think so. I mean, unless she got confused. She takes a lot of stuff."

"But you don't know for sure?"

Terry looked across at his blinking, shaken grandfather. Nick was in the bedroom, bundling up their mother. "No," Terry said. "I don't know for sure."

"I'll see you at the hospital. Make sure they take her to MGH, because it's closest I'll call ahead."

Terry hung up the phone as the wailing siren drifted up from the street. The sound released the knot in his chest, and panic surged through him.

An hour later the doctor appeared in the threshold of the visitors' room. His white coat was open over a misbuttoned flannel shirt. The brothers and their grandfather stood. "She survived," the doctor said. "She's had a pylmonary embolus, but she survived."