H
E WATCHED HER THERE a moment, kneeling and working in her garden, before making his presence known. The riot of color and life that surrounded her was at its peak, this long late week in June. Though gardening in general struck Doug as the ultimate in futility-- bringing a plot of land to life only to watch it die again, a chore doomed from the beginning-- something in the way she threw everything she had into it, regardless of the outcome, was lovable.
All this passed through him in the instant before she saw him: Doug watching her kneeling on the dark rug of soil that held his treasure, in the thin, side-long light of the setting sun, her shadow reaching across her garden sanctuary.
* * *
"I WANT TO BUY you something," he said.
They were in the plaza outside Trinity Church, part of an early-evening crowd surrounding a street performer juggling two bowling pins, a bowling ball, and a pair of bowling shoes. Only Claire watched the juggler-- Doug watched the amusement in her face. The act ended to applause, Claire clapping prayer-handed under her chin.
"What do you want to buy me?"
"What do you want?"
"Hmm." She retook his hand, twisting slightly on her heels. "How about a new car?"
"What kind?"
"I was kidding. I don't want a car."
He said nothing, waiting.
"You're serious," she said.
"It's the first thing that came into your mind."
"That's because I was
joking
."
"If we trade in your Saturn on top of it, you could do pretty well."
She smiled, mystified by him. "I don't. Want. A new car."
"What do you want then?"
She laughed. "I don't want anything."
"Think. Something you wouldn't buy for yourself."
She made a thinking face, playing along. "Got it. Frozen yogurt at Emack's."
"Not bad. But I was thinking more along the lines of jewelry."
"Oh?" She smiled at the sidewalk ahead of them. "Yogurt or jewelry. I could be up all night wrestling with
that
choice."
Earrings didn't excite him. He looked at her neck: graceful, bare. "How about a chain? Where would we go to look for something like that?"
She put her free hand to her throat. "Why-- Tiffany, of course."
"Okay. Tiffany it is."
"You know I'm still joking."
"I know you were joking before, when we were talking about a car. But once the topic of jewelry came up-- I think you got a tiny bit serious."
She laughed like she should have been insulted and hit him lightly in the chest. Then she looked at him more closely. "What's gotten into you tonight?"
"I want to do this," he said. "Let me."
* * *
THE BROAD-HIPPED SALESWOMAN with the jailer's ring of cabinet keys waited as Claire turned and gathered up her hair. The woman worked the clasp and Claire turned to the framed mirror on the counter, opening her eyes and fixing on the diamond pebble glittering in the freckled scoop of her neck. Ringed in gold, the solitaire rode out a deep swallow.
"This is crazy," she breathed.
"It looks good on you."
"How can you... you can't afford this."
"It's cheaper than a car."
"Lasts longer too," said the saleswoman, smiling.
Claire's eyes never left the diamond. "I almost wish you wouldn't." She turned her head and watched it sparkle. "I did say
almost,
didn't I?"
The saleswoman nodded. "Will that be credit, or do you need to finance?"
"Cash," said Doug, reaching for his pocket.
* * *
CLAIRE STOPPED BEFORE A window a few shops away, checking her reflection again, this time over a display of fountain pens and sport knives. She touched her collarbone in exactly the same manner as the women in diamond advertisements. "I have to buy a whole new wardrobe now, just based around this."
Doug noticed her bare wrist. "There was a matching bracelet too, you play your cards right."
She admired it a few more moments before her hand fell away. "I should never have let you buy me this."
"Why not?"
"Because. Because the intent on your part was enough. The impulse you felt-- I love it, whatever prompted it. That was the magic. A stronger person maybe, she would have told you that-- and meant it-- and let it go right there. A more secure person, maybe. But you didn't have to do this."
"The guilt," marveled Doug. "It's immediate."
"It is, isn't it?" she admitted, smiling a moment. Then she turned toward him, the smile gone. "Doug-- I did something today, I have news."
A little heat came into his forehead. "What's that?"
"I quit my job."
Doug nodded slowly. "The bank."
"I had to. And really it was only a matter of time before they fired my ass." A flash of a smile at her slang, again quickly replaced by earnestness. "I was slacking off so much, I was no use to them anyway. Ever since the robbery... I won't bore you with that again, but I just couldn't do it anymore. Not because of what happened there. Because of me. I needed to make a clean break. I just-- I can't believe I actually did it."
"It's sort of sudden, though, isn't it?"
"I guess. Why?"
"I'm just thinking about the police. A few weeks after the robbery... and now you're quitting the bank."
Her hand went to her open mouth. "Oh."
"I mean, maybe they won't..."
"That never even occurred to me. You don't think..."
He did. This was sure to bring renewed attention from the FBI. And if they started watching her, how could he keep seeing her and stay out of their crosshairs? And then, if they ever put him and Claire together...
That made him think. "You still talk to that FBI agent?"
Her hand came away from her mouth. "You think he'll be talking to me again?"
Doug felt icy suddenly. He wondered why he hadn't thought of this before. "What's he look like? Anything like on TV?"
They were moving again, through the Copley Mall toward the escalators, the Tiffany & Company bag dangling in Claire's hand. "He said he's a bank robbery agent, that's all he does."
"What's he like, a haircut in a suit?"
"Not hardly. He actually lives in the navy yard somewhere."
"The yard, huh?"
"Like my height, maybe an inch taller. Thick brown hair, kind of wavy-curly, all over the place. In fact-- it's probably gone now, but he had this reddish sort of stain on his skin from this guy he was chasing, a bank robber who got a dye pack. Do you know what a dye pack is?"
They were on an elevator going down, which was lucky, because Doug could barely move.
Too convoluted, the whole thing. Too massive, he couldn't break it down. Had he fucked up? Had this bank sleuth somehow been feeding off him through Claire?
He watched her at the revolving doors, pausing in her story about the bank robbery agent getting stained in order to eye her necklace again in the reflective chrome.
She knew nothing. Maybe the sleuth knew nothing either. Maybe.
Outside, they crossed a brick-and-stone plaza, commuters flooding the street from the Back Bay station, jumping curbs and chasing down taxis. Claire took his hand. "Delayed sticker shock?"
"No," he said, coming back around. "What are you going to do now?"
"Right now? I don't-- "
"No, I mean-- now that you're out of a job."
"Oh. I've got some money saved, I have a cushion. What do I
want
to do?" She looked up at the tops of the skyscrapers. "Stay out of banking, that's for sure. My parents are going to freak out. I thought about teaching, but-- what I do with the kids at the Boys and Girls Club, that's not really teaching. It's not social work either. It's nothing you can make a living at. Though I did talk to the director over there, in case a paid position opens up."
Thoughts came to him as fast as the commuters swarming around them. "What would you think," said Doug, "if I quit my job too?"
She laughed a little. "I guess then I'd have company. But why?"
"I got some money saved too. My own cushion. Hell, I got a whole sofa stashed away."
They walked a few more steps against the crowd, then she looked up at him, remembering the necklace. "A whole sofa, huh?"
"Matching love seat, even."
Everything seemed threatened now, everything converging. Like his old life had suddenly been condemned, explosive charges being laid on all the load-bearing beams, a crew of badass demo hard hats advancing on it with crowbars and sledges.
"You know how everybody's always got that place they want to go-- their
if-only
place? You know,
If only I had the money,
or,
If only I had the chance
."
Claire nodded. "Sure."
"I never had a place like that. I bet you do."
"Only about half a dozen."
"The problem is-- no one ever goes to their if-only place."
"No, they never do."
"Well, why not? Why couldn't we be the first?"
She smiled, finding a different angle on his face, discovering something there. "Know what, Doug? You're a romantic. I think I knew it all along, only you hide it so well."
"Things are changing for me, Claire. Changing fast, like hour to hour."
"There's one small problem I foresee with your if-only plan."
"What's that?"
She smiled. "There's no Charlestown anywhere else in the world."
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, that is a snag."
And he left it floating there like that: mere talk. Twenty-six years ago his mother had walked away from the Town. Maybe now it was his time to follow.
31
Keyed
C
LARK MAYORS WAS A locksmith with a small key-making shop on Bromfield Street, one of the narrow lanes off the cobblestone boulevard of Downtown Crossing. The night-duty agent had given Frawley Clark's pager number, the Boston FO being without a good lockpick and contracting the sixty-year-old keymaker for side gigs, both on and off paper. Clark was a careful, square-faced, solidly built black man with a pleasant, home-cooked smell and half-glasses over snowy cheek stubble. His no-questions fee of a hundred an hour was coming straight out of Frawley's own linty pocket.
Just a few hours before, Frawley had been sitting in the backseat of his new Bureau car, a banged-up, navy blue Ford Tempo, trying to stay awake half a block down from Claire Keesey's door. The muscular growl of a Corvette engine roused him in time to see the two of them nuzzling in the front seat, then her getting out and going into her place alone. Frawley put off his plan to drop in on her then, instead rolling out after MacRay.
The bold green sports car seemed headed for the interstate, in which case Frawley wouldn't bother trying to keep up, but then MacRay cut sharply toward the Schrafft's tower at the last moment, crossing the Mystic north into Everett. He turned off Main Street down a dim residential road, Frawley thinking MacRay had made him, only to see the Corvette's round brake lights turn into a driveway. Frawley backed off and waited, parked up on Main trying to figure out his next move, when just in time he recognized MacRay's second car, the dumpy white Caprice Classic, parked right in front of him. Frawley took off and made a slow loop past a funeral home, and by the time he returned, the Caprice was gone.
Frawley's adrenaline had hardly subsided from then until now, watching Clark work on the side door of a broad garage. The only light source was a pale blue spritz coming off the next-door neighbor's backyard Madonna.
Clark first snaked a worm scope under the door, previewing the interior bolts and checking for alarms. His handheld, gray-and-white monitor showed no booby traps, nothing tricky. Then he hiked up his pants and knelt before the padlock, a folded rag under his knee, an old black curtain draped over his shoulders and head to swallow his working light. Frawley kept an eye on the street-- the neighborhood struck him as one likely to mete out swift street justice to housebreakers-- listening to Clark's patient click-scratches.
The cloak was whisked away and Clark straightened with a soft grunt, lifting his Klein Tools bag off the ground and nodding to Frawley. Frawley gripped the knob with his break-in gloves and it turned easily, no creaks or whines to worry the night. Clark followed him inside, Frawley quickly shutting the door.
Clark turned his flashlight back on-- a white spray off a wire hooked to his half-glasses-- and found a wall switch screwed to an unfinished beam by the door. He gave the exposed box the once-over, fingering each electrical connection, and then with the aid of Frawley's stronger Maglite, followed the stapled wires up to the ceiling rafters and the lamps clamped overhead.
