All Our Yesterdays (35 page)

“And?”

Mary Alice smiled again at Flaherty.

“We’re more alike than one would think,” she said.

Flaherty waited.

“And I just figured if things happened that other things might happen. Gus might make some changes.”

“Like dumping the old lady?”

“You never know,” Mary Alice said, “once things start happening, there’s a momentum….”

“But he hasn’t,” Flaherty said.

“Not yet.”

“And you’re still fucking him in case he might?”

“And because I like to,” Mary Alice said.

“And you’re fucking me because you know that the whole idea may go sour and you want an edge when I start handing out blame,” Flaherty said.

“And because I like to,” Mary Alice said.

Flaherty put his hands in his hip pockets and stared at her for a moment, then he turned and went back and gazed out his window at Quincy Market again. He laughed.

“You are a liberated broad, Mary Alice. I’ll give you that.”

Below him in the Marketplace the last summer tourists milled slowly about in the Market, eating at the food stalls, buying Boston T-shirts and dark blue plastic-mesh Red Sox hats. There were jugglers there
and strolling musicians, and people who sold little plastic balls with a winter scene inside. There was fried dough, and oysters, and kielbasa, and pizza, sweet and sour pork with pineapples in it, and spinach pies, and beer and doughnuts, and lobster rolls and apple pie and cheap wine and baked beans and bagels. There were also surely pickpockets and mountebanks and men who liked to grope women in a crowd.

He loved all of it.

“I’m going to put Chris on the murder of that girl,” Flaherty said to Mary Alice, with his back to her, still staring down at the Market. “Before I blame him for the crime wave, and fire him.”

“That’s the smart move,” Mary Alice said.

A
t six-fifteen in the morning the Greyhound Bus terminal, hunched among the taller buildings off Park Square, was nearly empty. Tommy, who was there wearing sunglasses, a light tan raincoat with the collar up, and a Snowy River slouch hat that he’d bought at Bean’s, went to the Burger King in the terminal and bought a cup of black coffee. He sipped it as he stood near the entrance, glancing occasionally at his watch, as if he were waiting for a bus. He let his eyes drift around the terminal, as he had yesterday. As he would tomorrow … until he found her.

A fat, middle-aged black woman in a too-small flowered blouse and too-tight stone-washed jeans pushed a broom past him. She paid him no attention, moving past him silently on a pair of Reebok running shoes with a cutaway area on her right shoe giving ease to a sore toe. One ticket window was open, but there was no one behind it. The smell of the terminal always reminded him a little of the smell of the monkey house at the Forest Park Zoo in Springfield, where once he had gone with his aunt.

He went to a newspaper rack, put in a quarter, and bought a copy of the
Boston Herald
. He took the tabloid to a bench, and sat in the corner of it nearest the door. He put his coffee down on the bench beside him and began to leaf through the paper. The contents didn’t register. It was merely something to do, while
he waited. He felt the bottomless feeling in his stomach. His throat was tight. His face felt hot and there was a trembling feeling along the backs of his arms down to his hands.

A panhandler in a filthy maroon parka came by and asked for change. The fur trim on the parka hood was matted into a nearly colorless fringe. Tommy shook his head, and the panhandler muttered, “Have a nice day,” and moved away.

A bus arrived from somewhere and three people got off and came through the terminal carrying their cheap luggage. None of them was She. He waited, turning the meaningless pages slowly, conscious of his breathing, of how shallow it was; hearing his breath go flatly in and out.

Through the door from the St. James Avenue side of the terminal came a young girl wearing black lipstick and a lot of eye shadow. She had on a shiny crimson baseball jacket, a short denim skirt, and cowboy boots. Her hair was tinted maroon. She appeared to be around eleven years old. She was carrying no luggage, not even a purse, and she looked around the terminal as if she were frightened.

Tommy felt as if his skin were stretched to its limit, as if it might give way, and his self would scatter.

He stood slowly, and walked toward the girl.

“Hi,” he said.

She looked at him, her eyes small, and fearful, and appraising.

“Are you alone?” he said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Could I buy you some breakfast?”

The girl smiled. Familiar ground.

“Sure,” she said. “Why not?

T
hey gathered again on the day after Labor Day, with a gray rain falling on Quincy Market outside the mayor’s window. Gus stood in back of the couch; his raincoat was unbuttoned, his hands in his hip pockets. Sullivan, the police commissioner, was there, and Robinson, the DA, wearing a polka-dot bow tie. Fiora Gardello, Robinson’s chief prosecutor, stood by the window, looking at the rain. Chris sat on the couch beside Mary Alice.

Flaherty stood behind his desk with his coat off. He wore a white shirt with French cuffs, and red suspenders. His pinstriped suit jacket hung on the back of his chair. There were copies of the
Globe
and the
Herald
on his desk, as well as neatly typed transcripts of television news programs and radio talk shows. The
Globe
headline read, FEAR GRIPS HUB. The
Herald
said, MORE MURDER.

Without preamble, Flaherty picked up one of the transcripts and began to read:

“‘Death played a doubleheader yesterday in the Athens of America.’”

Kendall Robinson said, “Parnell, we’ve all heard this.”

“Shut up,” Flaherty said. “‘The slaying, gangland style, of thirty-eight-year-old Marty Kiley in City Square, and the apparently serial murder of an as yet
maica Pond … blah, blah, blah … the failure of the police, and of the mayor’s Ivy League special prosecutor to stem the blood-dimmed tide underscores the unraveling of our civic fabric … blah blah.’”

Flaherty looked slowly around the room, still holding the transcript.

“That,” he said, “is from a Channel Three editorial that ran yesterday at six and eleven. It’s restrained. The
Herald
guy says the special prosecutor was imported from the Planet Cambridge and promised a lifetime supply of Brie. The Johnny Rollins show this morning invites callers to discuss the fact that three children have been shot this summer.”

“Three white children,” Gus said.

“Don’t get starry eyed on me, Gus,” Flaherty said. “The electorate doesn’t give a fuck if the coons shoot each other.” He looked around the room. “Anybody got anything more than what’s in the media?”

“Girl’s name is Trudy Boudreau,” Gus said. “Eleven years old, a chronic runaway from Lewiston, Maine. She took a bus to Boston and apparently got out at the Greyhound station in Park Square. Lewis-ton cops say she ran away a lot because her old man probably molested her.”

“Swell,” Flaherty said. “How ’bout you, Chris, you got anything?”

“Nope.”

“Anything on the other girl?”

“Probably killed by the same guy.”

Flaherty slammed the flat of his hand down on his desk.

“Don’t tell me ‘probably,’ Goddamnit. How about the gang war?”

Chris shrugged. Flaherty circled the room with his gaze. No one spoke.

“Okay,” Flaherty said, “it’s head-rolling time.”

Chris looked at Gus, and ran his forefinger across his Adam’s apple. Gus nodded.

“You got that right, Chris,” Flaherty said. “Nothing personal, and I know it’s not your fault. But it’s got to be somebody’s fault and you’re not running for the Senate. I’m going to wait until next Monday, so it won’t look like I’m knee-jerking to the media, and then I’m going to fire you.”

Chris said, “It’s not going to change anything. What are you going to do when the killing doesn’t go away?”

“I got two months till the election,” Flaherty said. “If we get some kind of break in the crime wave, good. If we don’t it’s time for smoke and mirrors.” Flaherty looked at the police commissioner. “Can you get Gus off this case, Sully?”

“Be easiest,” Sullivan said, looking straight ahead at Flaherty, “if Gus was to resign.”

“How about it, Gus,” Flaherty said. “Ready to step aside?”

“Fuck you,” Gus said.

“I’ll take that to mean no,” Flaherty said. “Can you reassign him, Sully?”

“I guess I got the legal right, Parnell,” Sullivan said.

“Then do it.”

“Gus could kick up a lot of dust.”

“Do it anyway,” Flaherty said. “You want to get in a pissing contest with me, Gus?”

Gus didn’t speak but their eyes locked and Flaherty felt a jolt of fear. It startled him. He knew people were afraid of Gus, but he wasn’t, or he hadn’t thought he
was. He hadn’t thought he was afraid of anyone. He raised his voice a little.

“If you do you’ll regret it, because I got the machinery, the troops, you understand, to blow you and the kid right out of the water. If I have to I can make the public think you two are personally responsible for everything since Sacco-Vanzetti. You think I can’t?”

“Don’t get shrill,” Gus said.

He put his hand on Chris’s shoulder. Then turned and walked out of the room. Chris stood and looked at Flaherty for a moment, and then went out after his father.

W
hen Mary Alice came into her condo, Gus was there looking out Mary Alice’s window at East Cambridge across the river. A Nike gym bag stood, zipped and uncompromising, on the hassock in front of the leather chair in the living room.

Mary Alice looked at the gym bag and at Gus.

“Clean out your part of the closet?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“Were you planning to leave a note, or just let me figure it out when I came home and found your clothes gone?”

“I waited for you,” Gus said.

“What a guy!”

Gus turned from the window.

“We don’t love each other, Mary Alice.”

“You’re so sure?”

“We like to fuck, and we’re friends. But …” Gus shrugged.

“Say it’s true. This is a news flash? You just discovered it?”

“No.”

“Then why now?” Mary Alice said. “Why today did you decide you had to move out because we don’t love each other?”

“You ever been in love?” Gus said.

“Who knows, Gus? Who the fuck knows?”

“You got a right to it, you know.”

Mary Alice stared at him.

“I got a right to it,” Gus said. “You and me, maybe we gave up on it too easy.”

“Or maybe you did,” Mary Alice said.

Gus shook his head.

“No, you’re not it, Mary Alice. You’re a nice woman, but … you’re not the one.”

They stood across the room from each other in silence. Mary Alice was standing very straight. She walked slowly to the dining alcove and put her purse on the table. Then she went to the kitchen and got out some single malt Scotch and poured a shot into a short, thick glass. She carried the glass back into the living room and leaned on the wall by the front door and folded her arms and took a small sip of the Scotch.

“So,” she said. “Who’s the one?”

Gus shook his head.

“Sure as hell isn’t Peggy,” Mary Alice said.

Gus shook his head again.

“Got anything to do with Flaherty firing Chris?”

Gus shrugged.

“I can’t prevent it,” Mary Alice said.

“I know,” Gus said. “I’m not blaming you. It’s just …”

Mary Alice sipped some more Scotch.

“It’s just what?” she said.

“I need a drink,” Gus said.

Mary Alice jerked her head toward the kitchen.

“You know where,” she said.

He went and mixed a strong Scotch and soda with a lot of ice in a tall glass. Even under duress he’d never liked it straight. He brought the drink back to the living room. Mary Alice hadn’t moved. He went back
to the window and stared out at East Cambridge again.

“It’s just what?” Mary Alice said.

“It’s over,” Gus said.

“You and me?”

“Everything,” Gus said.

Mary Alice waited. He might talk or he might not. But she knew pressing him was useless.

The days had shortened. To Gus’s left, upriver, the sun was setting out of sight beyond his field of vision. Its low-slanted peach-colored light showed faintly on the river before he lost sight of it as it flowed under the Longfellow Bridge. There were a few white sailboats scattered on the wide, dark water where it backed up behind the dam.

“My life’s caught up with me,” Gus said. He made a sound which could have been a laugh. “And my old man’s life before that. Time to put it away.”

Mary Alice waited some more, but Gus didn’t say anything else. Finally Mary Alice spoke.

“Is there somebody else, Gus?”

“Maybe,” he said. “But there won’t be next week.”

“Gus,” Mary Alice said, “what are you talking about?”

Gus finished his drink in a long swallow and went to the kitchen and rinsed the glass and put it back in the cabinet over the sink. Then he came back in the living room, picked up the gym bag, and walked to the door.

“Good-bye, Mary Alice,” he said.

She stared at him for a moment and then turned her head away. He opened the door.

“I hope it works for you, Mary Alice. You’re a nice woman.”

Mary Alice didn’t speak or turn her head back. Gus went out and closed the door. Mary Alice stood silently with her arms crossed beside the door staring at nothing. Then she walked slowly into the kitchen and poured another shot of Scotch. She raised her full glass as if to give a toast.

“Well, Parnell,” she said aloud, “it looks like you and me.”

Then she drank some of the Scotch and walked slowly back to the living room, hugging herself.

T
hey were heading west on the Mass Pike in Newton.

“Where are we going, Gus?” Tom Winslow said.

Gus didn’t answer. It was the start of the evening rush hour and the pike was thick with traffic heading for the western suburbs.