The City Below (55 page)

"Oh yeah? Where the fuck are you? Huh? Where?"

"With you, Jackie." The street ended at Mass. Ave. "Which way?"

"Turn left. Turn left, goddamnit! Down to Symphony Hall and turn right. Over to the Fenway."

"Jackie, you've got to—"

"And shut the fuck up. Do you hear me, shut up!"

Doyle did.

Mullen regained control of himself, like a stoical maniac, but he continued looking back, expecting to be followed. He put his gun on the seat, the barrel pointed at Doyle, but he kept his hand on it. At various corners he barked directions, and Doyle obeyed, executing a series of random, sudden turns in the maze of streets around Northeastern University. Once, when the dashboard radio came to life again, Mullen kicked it, then snapped it off. They made two complete circuits of the elliptical Fens parkway. At one point, Mullen ordered Doyle to drive into the parking lot of the Museum of Fine Arts, but when he realized there was a guard booth, he told him to keep going, onto Ruggles Street For an awful moment, Doyle thought Mullen's manic orders would bring them over to Ruggles Square, and the symmetry of that seemed perverse, an ominous climax. The thing was to be able to keep driving, to get Jackie talking. Doyle turned onto Huntington Avenue, heading for the hospitals.

"Why don't you tell me what's going on, Jackie?"

"You don't know?"

"No."

"I thought Squire knew everything." He kept looking around. "That's the fucking feeling you're giving me. Shit"

"He knows everything. But I don't."

"When did you start working with him?"

"When he brought Amory into my deal."

"
Your
deal? I didn't know you were part of that."

"What'd you think?"

"McKay. I thought it was McKay's deal."

"Well, McKay and I are partners."

"So you know about that?"

"Yes."

"Shit," Mullen said, then fell silent.

Doyle continued driving along Huntington. After a block or two he said, "So it's Squire, Amory, and McKay." He paused, then added, almost absently, "And Tucci's money behind Amory." Doyle slowed the car for a red light, then stopped. "It's all a laundry operation."

"So what is your part in it?"

"I brought McKay in."

"Funny..."

"Why?"

"McKay acted like he really did not want you to know. I heard him say that."

"You know Squire. He likes to keep his players guessing."

Once more Mullen looked back, to see who was there.

Doyle said, "What happened, Jackie? You turned against your old buddy? You turned honest? A good cop after all?"

Mullen faced Doyle with dismay and surprise, and then a dark look came over his face. "I'm not the one who turned, Terry. Squire is." He leaned across the seat, suddenly hopeful. "Did you know this? Squire is working with the feds. He's setting us all up. You too."

"Not me."

"Your friend, then. Squire's been wearing a wire from the start."

"A wire?"

"For the feds. That's what I'm telling you. He's a walking tape recorder, and the game's up tomorrow."

"When he tapes Tucci."

"Yes. They're all meeting."

Terry indicated with his eyes the suitcase in back. "You just sold him out, isn't that it? If he's wired for meetings with Amory and Tucci—you just told them."

"Amory, Tucci, and your friend McKay. He's going to be there too." He pressed Doyle's arm. "You should rethink this shit, same as I did."

The light changed then, and once more Terry began to drive, relieved to do so. Yes. Rethink. Think. Rethink again. Jackie was no longer interested in giving him directions, so where Huntington Avenue intersected the Riverway at an overpass, Doyle turned, heading back to the Fenway, toward Boston.

In his mind he could not get past the impossibility of Mullen's position. Caught in the act of his mortal betrayal, Jackie was now going to have to kill the man who'd caught him. Me. He has to kill me.

The road wound along the weed-ridden Muddy River, the border at that point between Boston and Brookline. The curves broke right and left through woods and stretches of overgrown grass. The trees smelled fresh, but there were sweet, rotting odors in the air. The road came to a rise where, for a moment, the view ahead featured the tops of the Hancock and Prudential buildings, the light scaffolds and layered rooflines of Fenway Park Terry felt he saw the city very clearly, but the road dropped and he lost it.

Mullen lifted his gun. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

"Help me understand how it looks from your side, Jackie. You've been in bed with Squire all these years. He's married to your sister. His kids are like yours. Why'd you turn on him? Why are you doing this? I thought Squire always took care of you."

"Bullshit, Charlie, bullshit! I'm the one who's taken care of
him.
I've covered his ass the whole way. Every time they put him on the wanted list, I cooked a deal for him. I set him up with the Bureau in the first place."

"So he's been feeding the FBI information on Tucci right along?"

"Not Tucci. His operation, the mid-level guys, shit that hardly counted. Never Tucci himself until now. That's the point This is stupid. This is taking on God, and you don't do that Squire's lost his fucking mind, and my fingerprints are all over this. I had to protect myself."

"You mean, in case Tucci scores. You're covered either way, is that it?"

"I'm in the fucking middle, don't you see that? If the feds succeed, they don't stop with Tucci. For them, the point of this thing is to blow open the
network,
not just Tucci but what Tucci hides behind, Commonwealth Bank—which is why they'll want McKay. And the State Police. The feds love turning over the rocks of the State Police to see what crawls out."

"You."

"You got it. If the feds win, I go to jail with Tucci. If Tucci wins—"

"He kills you."

"Unless." Jackie shrugged. This.

"So you've put money on the mob instead of on Squire."

"He doesn't give a rat's fart about me. Nothing matters to him but scoring on Tucci. That's all that's ever mattered."

"I thought he came to terms with that."

"Never. He has no heart, your brother. None. Not for me. Not for you. Not for Didi. Not for nobody. You should know that best of all." Mullen waved his pistol, the perfect emblem of his superiority. Yet he seemed more uneasy than the stoical Doyle, increasingly crazed. The weapon was in plain view of other motorists, and because of that, Doyle turned down a deserted side street that ran behind Fenway Park. Warehouses rose on one side, the bleachers wall on the other.

"Where you going?"

"We don't want to be in traffic, Jackie."

Mullen's agitation increased. He looked wildly about for signs of an ambush. "You shouldn't be with Squire. Not you, of all people."

"What do you mean?" Doyle pulled the car over and stopped. In a few weeks the Sox would be in town, and this street would be packed. But now it was completely deserted.

Mullen put his face in front of Terry's. "Ask your wife," he said.

"My wife has nothing to do with this," Doyle said coldly.

"Just ask her what she thinks about your brother." It was Mullen's red-eyed leer, more than the lewd insistence of his words, that set off the charge, exploding inside Doyle. His right hand shot into Mullen's face, slamming his skull back against the rear-view mirror, the mount of which snapped in two, bouncing Mullen's head forward again. Once more Doyle hit him.

Mullen dropped the gun. Doyle grabbed it and began to beat him with it. Mullen fell back against the door, blood spurting from his head, one hand raised as a shield, the other scratching behind for the door handle. He got the door open and fell out backwards.

Doyle went after him onto the pavement, pounding the butt of the gun against Mullen's head until his body curled into a fist.

Finally he stopped. His breath came in gasps. His eyes burned as if lye had been thrown in them. He moved back until he bumped into the automobile. The solid steel against one hand, the steel weapon in the other—the thick immutability of steel, of the solid pavement beneath his feet, brought him back to what was real. He looked up, away from Mullen to the sky above, the moving clouds, the play of sunlight and shadow against the uneven roof edge of the adjacent green wall of Fenway Park.

Mullen raised an arm to look up at him. "What are you going to do to me?"

Instead of answering, Doyle reached into the car, first for the keys, then for the suitcase. Bringing it out, he nudged Mullen. "How much is this?"

"A hundred thousand. It's supposed to be a hundred thousand."

"And you betrayed Squire—why? Because he doesn't love you?"

"Take it You can have it."

"Of course I'll take it."

"But don't tell Squire, Charlie. Please, Charlie."

"What about Bright?" he asked. "What's supposed to happen to him?"

"That's right." Mullen grabbed at the thought, as if McKay would save him. "If Squire gets his way, the feds indict your friend."

"And if you got yours, he'd just get his head blown off, along with Squire. Tucci blows away his betrayer and the only witness, right? Am I right? Same old story, huh, Jackie? Bright gets his eye kicked out again, either way."

"He's just there, that's all. In the target range."

"Has Squire been wired in his meetings with Bright up to now?"

"Yes, but he hasn't handed anything over to the feds yet. Squire controls the tapes as a way of staying in charge."

"So the Bureau doesn't have Bright yet? Dealing with Squire?"

"No evidence. But after tomorrow, once Squire gets Tucci—"

"What are the feds giving Squire in return?"

"A free ride. Boston. Whatever the fuck he wants. They'll have plugged the biggest mob money-laundering gig in the country. They'll have sent a message to every bank that winks at drug money. They want this bad."

"Where's the meeting?"

"Wait a minute." Jackie sat up, wiping the blood from his face, staring helplessly at Doyle. "Why don't you know all this? I thought you said you were in on this."

"Where's the meeting?"

"I don't know." Mullen pulled at Doyle's leg. "Christ, Terry, please."

"What? Don't tell on you?"

"Don't, don't."

"Don't tell Squire? Listen to yourself. I could have told you it would end like this, you stupid shit."

"Give me my gun back at least."

"If I thought you'd use it on yourself, I would."

Doyle pocketed the gun. He hoisted the suitcase by its strap, turned, and walked away.

"Ask your wife!" Mullen cried one last time.

Terry let those words in, but only so fir. "Here are your car keys," he said. Then he flipped them up over the lip of a rancid Dumpster.

A few minutes later, having cut across the edge of the newly turned community garden plots on the apron of the stagnant Fens, and having hurried down Boylston to Mass. Ave., Doyle headed out onto the Harvard Bridge. He was going into Cambridge, toward Harvard and the Fogg, despite his infinite desire to go the other way, warn Bright, murder Squire, do anything but act upon Jackie Mullen's self-serving, vicious dare.

For once, he was indifferent to the view of Boston, the golden dome, the brick hill, the glass skyline that he and his friends had planned into being. The season's first sailboats had broken out across the river basin. He saw the white blades against the blue water and bluer sky, but the sight did not tug at his heart or put him in mind of all that he had been deprived of.

Halfway across the bridge, he stopped. A cast-iron manhole cover in the sidewalk had caught his eye. He'd seen it a thousand times, jogging here. MIT kids had painted it lavender and drawn a pair of arrows out from it on the cement, sign of the male organism doubled. He looked behind and ahead; no pedestrians were approaching. Passing motorists weren't giving him a second look. He knelt, put his forefinger in the crowbar hole, and pulled. A second mighty jolt freed the lid, and it came up. One of the traditional lownie capers in early April was stealing the much larger DPW manhole covers, then selling them to boaters at the navy yard for use as mooring mushrooms. He had never done it himself, but he had noticed.

This iron lid covered a small well that held knots of electrical wiring, switches and patches for the streetlight system on the bridge. He unhooked the shoulder strap of the suitcase and pulled one end through the hole in the iron lid, tied it back to the bag, which he then opened. He took the gun from his pocket and put it in with the money. The fucking money.

He zipped the case closed again. He made sure all the zippers were fastened. Then, with an abrupt lunge upward, a power press, he picked up the suitcase and the lid together and threw them over the railing. It took two or three seconds for the thing to hit the surface and sink. When the water splashed, droplets caught the sun and flashed, and he realized how pitilessly the morning light illuminated every failure.

He turned and walked quickly off the bridge, reversing himself to go away from Cambridge, from his wife, back into Boston, not to his brother, but to Bright.

J
ACKIE DOYLE
was fifteen years old now. He attended a special school in Quincy, and every afternoon the school van arrived to drop him off, not at the big house up the hill, but at the flower store. Squire had turned the second floor of the old building into his offices, but he always made a point to be down in the store when his son came lurching through the door like the happy puppy he mostly was.

"Dad," Jackie cried, "Dad, Look Look."

Squire stood at the trimming table, idly sorting through bunches of cut daffodils. He looked up expectantly. "Hey, buddy." And he held his hand up, palm forward, which was how Jackie knew to cross the room and slap him five.

And then, more triumphantly still, Jackie said, "Look!" The boy held up a small gewgaw, a molded but unglazed piece of plaster of Paris, a tiny vase shaped like a Jack-and-Jill watering can.

"Hey, Jake, that's fine." Squire took it with a show of admiration. "God, Jake, it's great, it's really great."