The City Below (59 page)

In Bright's office, once they had the door closed, the two men clasped each other by the arms, like a halfback and his blocker in the end zone. Bright had taken his coat off, and his shirt was stained with perspiration.

"Jesus Christ, Bright, you did it! I think you pulled it off!"

But Bright moved away, looking chastened. "Not everything. Van Buren just told me, with Otis at his elbow, to forget Ruggles Center. No loans from Commonwealth. They're cutting us off."

"Shit."

"I saw it coming."

"Screw them, Bright Weil get it somewhere else. With Ted Kennedy on board—"

But McKay cut him off. "Same old fucking story. Back to zero for the wasteland around St. Cyp's. I hate that bastard Van Buren. He knew what we were doing as well as I did. Could you believe what he tried to pull on me?"

"Every man for himself, especially micks and coons. Boston is still Boston."

"You're Boston. You saved my ass."

"Not just me. How about Billie Holiday, your Lady Day lawyer. Where'd she come from?"

"A
new
Boston, Terry. See, it's true. But I got to tell you, when Logan first walked in with her, and it became clear that she was the quarterback, even I said to myself, Whoa! Where's Perry Mason? Get me James St Clair." Bright laughed. "Serves me right for backing Shirley Chisholm." He moved to his desk He took two cigarettes from a pack, Vantage now, not Gauloises. They lit up. Bright leaned on the edge of his desk "The irony is, every point of law she made backed up what Squire had told me."

Terry looked up, then made a sudden, frantic motion with his hand, sweeping the air, mouthing the word "Bug!"

"Oh, bullshit, don't get paranoid on me."

Terry turned away. The weight of his intuition, now that he'd admitted it, only grew heavier, but he said easily, "Talk about paranoid." He looked out the window. "I was waiting for one of the airplanes coming in and out of Logan to crash. Those airplanes, man, hanging in nothing, defying the laws of gravity."

"Which is what you just did."

"When I—"

"In relation to—" Now Bright too looked at the ceiling, and he was only half joking when he then mouthed the word "Squire."

"I know," Terry said.

"A long time coming. You put his name on a list he has apparently succeeded in staying off."

"But you noticed how the FBI guy led away from it. Nobody followed up, they asked me nothing, not his address, not the name of his business, nothing."

"So maybe they know."

"It means what Jackie said was true. He's working for them somehow, or they think he is."

"I think they're confused, Terry. They don't expect shit like this at Commonwealth Bank, for one thing."

"Notwithstanding all its Latin-American branches?" Terry ticked his fingers. "Commonwealth Bogota, Commonwealth Caracas. Panama City. What they don't expect Commonwealth Bank-Boston to do is report itself."

"Well, what you just did," McKay said, the nonchalant tone gone now, "whatever it meant to them, it means a lot to me."

The two men looked at each other for an ungainly moment This time there was no question of a direct statement, however.

"But we're not finished," Terry said finally. "Or have you forgotten?" He joined Bright at his desk, picked up a pencil, and scrawled on a yellow pad the words "No violation in absence of evidence establishing intention!" And then he drew a circle around the word "evidence."

"I know," Bright said quietly, then whispered, "I think I said some things I wouldn't want on tape. Not now."

"He still has it, if we can believe Jackie. And I think we have to. So I'm going home to get it."

"You still call that home?"

"Did I?"

"Just now."

"Christ."

"I'm going with you."

Terry shook his head. "It's still no man's land over there for you. Why don't you buy a drink for Billie Holiday?"

"Shit, you know how women like that intimidate me. Are you still trying to get me married?"

"First, I got to keep you out of..." The last word he said inaudibly: "Jail."

McKay picked up the silence, and now when he spoke, it was in an even fainter whisper. "I'm going with you."

"Okay." Doyle put his mouth by McKay's ear, as if this would be the gravest secret of all. "We can't go into Charlestown until after dark anyway, when they can't see you."

T
HE WEEKLY HOLY HOUR
at St. Mary's, with the rosary, the novena, and the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of the few things Didi Doyle did only for herself. She loved the church at night, the way the stained-glass window beside her pew was opaque because of the darkness outside, the blue candles flickering at the feet of Mary on one side of the sanctuary, and the tray of red ones on the other, at Joseph's sandaled feet She continued kneeling while others around her left the church, banging the door in the back. She felt the blast of the damp wind intruding from the rainy April night, and a familiar shudder curled through her, regret that the service was over.

She buried her face in her hands, absorbed in the old habit of preparing to go home again by hurling herself against the rock of her disappointment, which knew of her existence no more than her rapacious children did, or her stone-hearted husband. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she said. She still stamped their initials on every page of the prayers she uttered. She looked up and saw the monsignor, unvested now, removing the sacred vessels from the altar. And she realized it was time to go.

At home, the phone rang even before she'd removed her plastic rain hat or checked on the kids. Given that timing, she shouldn't have been surprised at whose voice she heard.

"Is that you, Deirdre?"

"Hello, Ma."

"But is it you?"

"Of course it's me."

"I called before, and where were you?"

"Molly is eighteen years old, Ma. Old enough to babysit while I go to novena."

"Is Jackie there? I'm calling for Jackie."

"He's not here. Why would he be here?"

"He gives me my medicine. I can't go to bed without my medicine. You know that."

"Did you call the Harp?"

"He said he was going to the flower store when he left here, to see Nick."

"When was that?"

"Before dinner. He never came home for dinner. I made meat loaf."

"Ma, it's nearly ten o'clock at night. The store's been closed for hours."

"But that's where he said he'd be."

"So call there."

"Nick doesn't like it if—"

"Nick doesn't care," Didi said, so wearily.

"Is Nick there? Is Nick home?"

"No, he isn't here, Ma." Didi thought of the placard
Thy Will Be Done.
Had that been her mistake, praying such a thing? Asking for it? Let this perfect emptiness swallow me?

"So would you check?"

"What, Ma? The store? Check the store for Jackie?"

"Tell him to come home. I need him."

Oh, brother. The poor dope, living with her still. Didi was in danger suddenly of feeling blessed.

***

Terry and Bright parked the car on Main Street, near the church, two blocks away. They walked quickly in the light rain to the Common and cut into it. All the way across the deserted patch of grass, benches, and trees, they watched the building on the far corner. It was dark, rising in the mist, in Terry's mind, like the bow of the Spanish galleon it had been to him. Terry knew that the upper floors of the bowfront triple-decker were unoccupied, and that because of the staid character of the surrounding streets, especially on a night like this, there was no particular boldness in their coming before midnight. On the contrary, the neighborhood, with its light-sleeping elders and relendess busybodies, would be less suspicious of dark figures now than later.

Both wore windbreakers, baseball hats, and tennis shoes. They moved across the footpath soundlessly, and except for a rare tire-hissing speedster on Winthrop Street, no one else was out Bright carried his hands in his pockets, as if to show as little as possible of his black skin. He was feeling like an interloper as they approached the flower store, not first because this was the Town, but because it was Terry's. In more than twenty years of feeling closer to him than to anyone, he had never been here, and the outrage of that was ambushing him—the violation of any real meaning their friendship had had. But then, of course, he quickly saw, as he often had before, that it was on his account, more than anything, that Terry had cut himself off from this root—or, rather, cut through this root inside himself.

At the door of the shop, as if it only then hit Bright what they were doing, he took Terry's sleeve. "Jesus, how do we get in?"

And Terry held up a single key in the glow of his broad grin. "You'll never guess where I got this."

"Where?"

"My grandfather himself. As I entered the seminary, presumably never to come home again, he slipped this into my hand and he said, 'Charlie, this is yours. Never hesitate to come home.' But do you know what the kicker was?"

Bright waited.

"His calling me 'Charlie' meant, really, he could only see me as his chaplain."

"Jeez, Terry, you always took that name so personally. It was just—"

"What finished me with Gramps was Cushing. When Cushing died that next year after I walked off the altar, Gramps said I killed him. I gave him his heart attack."

"But he didn't take the key back?"

"Shit, he'd forgotten."

"And you held on to it, I notice. Was that nostalgia, or hope?"

Terry shook off the question and put the key in the slot.

Bright said, "Here's hoping it still fits."

"This is the Town. You don't change locks in the Town."

"No alarm? You white folks are trusting motherfuckers."

"Aren't we, though?"

Inside the store, with the door closed, Terry took out the small Swiss Army flashlight he'd borrowed from Max, but he didn't turn it on yet The plate-glass windows admitted ample light, and they stood there taking in the shapes of the room.

"Flowers," Bright whispered. "Smells nice."

"This is nothing compared to what it was. Gramps had flowers and potted plants all over the floor, with just an aisle." Terry made out the form of the old captain's chair in the corner, next to the brass cash register. He could feel the warmth of the old man's affection. "When he smiled on you, it was like being smiled on by the ancient king of Ireland, or by God himself. I wanted his approval more than anything."

"But not enough to kneel to Cushing."

"I was an arrogant fool," Doyle said calmly, as if to the vacant chair.

"Not to me, you weren't It matters, what you—"

"What matters is finding the tapes Squire made of you, and getting our butts out of here."

"Lead, kindly Light."

"Squire has offices upstairs now, where we used to live, but my hunch..." Doyle crossed the room. The muslin curtain that had hung in the doorway, blocking customers from seeing into the cluttered back, was gone now. The doorway was simply open, but the darkness from the rear room seemed wall enough. Going through, Terry tripped on the threshold, stopped, and moved the loose board back in place. Then he snapped on the narrow beam of his son's flashlight.

The old roll-top desk, the massive worktable, the elaborately paneled walnut door of the walk-in cooler; as the cone of light swept the room, Terry half expected to see, lounging in those corners among flowerpots and flats, his grandfather, his brother, his brother's friend. He made another sweep of the room.

"There it is," he said, aiming at the floor safe next to the desk Terry moved past some cartons to get to it. "My grandfather bought this thing from a salesman he felt sorry for. He was afraid he'd the and no one would know the combination. He made us both memorize it, and he used to make us open it, to be sure we could." Doyle laughed. "But whenever he got up to a hundred bucks, he put it in the bank"

"Smart man."

"But it became part of the routine anyway, part of what made the place his, like the brass cash register. I knew Squire would keep it, and I bet he uses it for more than a hundred. Here." Terry handed the flashlight over. Bright aimed the beam at the safe's handle. Terry knelt and began to finger the dial, but he'd blocked the light and had to wait while McKay adjusted.

"Shit," he said a moment later, when his jerk on the handle budged nothing. He bent and tried again. This time, when it worked and the massive door swung smoothly open, he bowed, as for applause.

Terry took the flashlight back The safe's open shelves held bundles of bills and rolled coins and several packs of envelopes banded together, no tapes. "This door," he said, fingering the small inner compartment, its keyhole, "was never locked. I didn't know it
could
lock. Shit" He stood, reining an impulse to kick the thing. He felt, oddly, that Squire had locked the inner door expressly against him. He was turning toward Bright when the lights went on in the main part of the store behind them. After the stutter of the ceiling tubes, the garish illumination flooded in on them.

There was no time to think of hiding.

"What the hell are you doing?"

In the threshold stood a large woman in a raincoat and a plastic rain hat that shielded her face.

Terry snapped the flashlight off and guiltily slipped it into his jacket pocket, unconsciously protecting Max.

When the woman raised her arms to remove her head covering, Terry supplied the snarling face of a busing protester. He was caught in Charlestown with a black man.

"Didi!" he said when he recognized her. He took his Red Sox hat off. "It's me, Terry."

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Terry, what are you doing here, besides giving me a heart attack?"

"You didn't seem that intimidated, Didi. Look who else is here."

"Hey, Didi," Bright said. "Long time."

"Bright?"

He held his hands out.

To everyone's surprise, surely including her own, Didi threw herself on McKay, embracing him. "I've thought of you a million times," she said.

"I've thought of you too, Didi." Bright kissed her forehead, and, shy suddenly, she pulled away from him. She looked at Terry and only shook her head. "And you, my old sweet T. You son of a bitch, you were going to come and visit Your wife and I were going to become friends."