The City Below (50 page)

Among the black protesters in back, Joe Grant, the long-time South End agitator in his trademark dashiki and sunglasses, was brandishing a well-worn sign:
Stop Urban Removal!
Other signs read
Deeds Not Weeds!
and
People Not Promises!
Terry felt a bolt of the old anger. The fools, didn't they know they'd won?

He saw Bright standing off to the side of the platform, near the flag-draped church steps that served now as stairs to the stage. His eye patch, as always, was what Terry fixed upon first. With Bright were Senator Kennedy, Mayor Flynn, and a man whom Doyle did not know, which was what attracted his attention. The man was short compared to Kennedy, Flynn, and McKay, and he wore a flashy dark fedora while the others were hadess. Something else struck Doyle about him, he didn't know what. But it didn't matter.

The bus door snapped open and Doyle faced his charges. "On behalf of the Southwest Corridor Working Committee and the Community Development Corporation, welcome to the future of Boston."

***

Blight's first position at the Commonwealth Bank had been with Community Affairs. Naturally, a black face in the window. But he'd insinuated himself into the counting rooms. Power over the movement of money was what mattered; it had enabled him, for one thing, to do this.

"You pulled it off, man." Terry pressed his friend's shoulder, affection and pride. McKay had just managed a stunning presentation, and shortly afterward, the ceremony had ended. "Your old man should be here."

Bright glanced over at the church. "Me, bringing back St Cyp's."

"Bringing back a lot of things."

With Doyle, he looked wistfully around at the scarred, empty expanse. "It was so fucking lively here once."

"It will be again."

"Think so?" Bright grinned, then added, "Let's see what these folks do. Our letter of agreement commits to nothing until the anchor drops. Joe Grant thinks it's all just cover for getting black people off the Orange Line, which is what it will be if—"

"We've got Madison Park, the campus high, Roxbury Community College, and Northeastern. And you know I'll get the office building nailed down."

"MWRA is balking, Terry. The governor—"

"Bright, come on. We're doing it, man. Four careful years. One step at a time. We're doing it."

"You're right. Christ, you're right." Bright slapped one hand into another and surveyed the scene again, swiveling his head in that odd way of his. "We'll bring back this whole fucking area. My old man wouldn't believe it. Me."

On the platform, aides were folding up the display boards,
Dudley Square Reborn, Ruggles Street Returns.
The crowd was dispersing. Some drifted into St Cyprian's, where the coffee was. Others headed to their cars. The VIPs were getting back on their bus. Flynn was gone, but not Ted Kennedy. Reporters had gathered at the platform in a tight circle around him, including the film crew Bright had hired. Without notes, Kennedy was enumerating the tides of the U.S. Code from which the funds he'd just announced were coming. Since his failed 1980 presidential campaign and his failed marriage, Kennedy had become corpulent, a man flirting with obesity. His rough-and-tumble life showed in his face, the uneven blotches of pink and red on his cheeks and neck, the veins in his nose. Yet there he was, citing appropriations and authorizations, many of which he'd sponsored, his voice clear, his mind sharp, a man entirely focused on what had brought him here. "And twenty percent of all moneys contracted," he said firmly, "to be expended on minority-owned enterprises. That's the law." He pointed across at the protesters. "Somebody go over and tell Joe Grant that."

Kennedy's young aide took his elbow and began to move him toward the car. But the senator glanced across at McKay and Doyle. He pulled himself free and came over, and in an abrupt shift of mood hollered, "Look at you two, a couple of new-age tycoons, doing well by doing good."

"Not that good," Terry said automatically.

"Not that
well
," Bright added.

"Not what I hear," Kennedy said, fixing McKay with a stagy look. "Not what I hear at all. How'd you bring the bank around? I heard that Van Buren pitched the governor. How'd you sell him?"

Bright smiled. "I promised him something from you, Senator."

"Oh, great What?"

"That he wouldn't have to go to your clambake."

Kennedy laughed, too raucously. Then he said, more quietly, "Seriously, how'd you get Van Buren to sign on?"

It was a question of Terry's too. Ruggles Street was well inside the bank's redline. None of the other Boston banks had committed themselves, even to the point of letters of intent.

Bright shook his head. "My secret."

"Even to me?" Kennedy produced a cigarillo and faced Terry, who from an old habit produced a light He used Joan's gold lighter, which she had given him when she'd quit smoking. After the senator got his smoke going, Terry lit his own cigarette, prompting Kennedy to poke him. "We're the last two left, Terry, who do this."

"Don't you enjoy it more for that?"

"Yeah," Kennedy said, as if just realizing it. "Yeah, I do." Kennedy laughed again, more jarringly than before. There was something manic about him suddenly. He threw an arm around each of them. "I miss you guys. I want you to come down to Florida for Easter. What do you say?"

Terry started to decline, but before he could, Ted blurted, "Bring Joan, bring Max." He turned to McKay. "Bring whatshername. Are you still with whatshername?" More raucous laughter.

Doyle and McKay exchanged a glance. Reporters hovered nearby, watching. McKay raised a finger at the film crew to stop. It was not like Ted Kennedy to shed his crafted, stately demeanor so quickly, and in the open. It was as if he'd been drinking already, but apparently he hadn't.

His aide had him now and began pulling him toward his car. "Call the office," Kennedy said. "Let them know about Florida, when you're coming."

"Thank you, Senator," McKay said, "but I'm also calling you about Amory."

"Oh good, I liked that guy." Then Kennedy turned and went to his car, leaving his two former aides to watch as the new young one held the car door open.

"Jesus," Terry said, "he's burning it at both ends, isn't he?"

"But oh, what a lovely light One way or another, Terry, the candle goes out."

Doyle did not comment until the car was gone. Then he looked at Bright. "Who's Amory?"

"Our new partner." McKay pointed at the man in the fedora. He was sitting by himself at the end of the row of chairs, the last person still seated, a tan raincoat folded over his arm. He was reading the fancy brochure, the cornucopia that would follow up and down the Southwest Corridor once Ruggles took off.

Bright said, "He's almost signed up."

"For what?"

"The showpiece, Ruggles Center."

"What do you mean?
I'm
Ruggles Center. Ruggles Center is Hammond's."

"I know. But I heard Hammond is shy about thirty million dollars."

"Which Amory has?"

"Not all of it. But he's collateralized at the bank. He gives me the bubble I need to float to the surface in. I've already run the numbers past Van Buren."

"
He's
your secret? And I've never heard of him?"

"He's from out of town. This is his first Beantown deal. Come on, I'll introduce you."

Following McKay, Doyle eyed the man carefully. He sensed now that Amory had only been pretending to read the brochure, and that his flinch of surprise at their approach was also counterfeit.

"Victor," McKay said emphatically, "here's Terry Doyle."

The man stood and removed his hat, exposing his baldness, a gesture intended to ingratiate, but it only underscored an impression of phoniness. His thin hair was neatly combed up from a part at his left ear. The strands pasted across his skull were a sad hint of how he fancied himself. A green boutonniere was pinned to the sewn-over buttonhole on the lapel of his coat. Eagerly, he put his hand out.

"How are you?" Doyle asked. "Neville tells me you're interested in our Center."

"I am indeed."

Glad to hear it. Retail, office, and restaurant, eight hundred thousand square feet—"we're going to build a beautiful building."

Amory waved the brochure. "I can see that Thirty stories tall. Very impressive." The man had a slight, vaguely familiar accent.

"Where are you from, if I may ask?"

"I'm from Naples. I just flew in this morning."

"Naples?"

"Florida. Naples, Florida. I build condos."

Bright touched Terry's sleeve. "Along the water, high-rises, Naples, Marco Island, and Fort Myers."

"With?"

"With iron beams, cinder block, and stucco. Nice marble also."

"With
whom?
"

Amory shrugged. "Just my brothers and me. A modest outfit. We're looking to expand up north."

"Ruggles Center will be held close, Mr. Amory. Hammond welcomes investors, but on this we retain title."

"That's the kind of deal we want, limited partnership, since we're new here. Although, point of fact, all three of us were born in Beverly. Our mother moved to Florida when we were kids."

Beverly, Beverly Farms, North Shore Brahmin—that was what his accent evoked. Victor Amory, spun out of an old Boston family, looking to return.

"Coming home," Amory said.

"Me too." Bright pointed at St Cyp's. "My father was rector of this church. I was a teenager here, long time passing."

Was McKay shifting focus here? What was going on? "Amory ... Amory," Terry said casually. "Cleveland Amory. North Shore?"

The man didn't miss a beat "My mother left after a messy divorce. My father's people are total strangers to me."

"Maybe you can rediscover them."

"Perhaps." He grinned oddly and put his hat back on. "I must be off. Thanks, Neville, for the nice meeting with Senator Kennedy. One of my brothers and I gave him a wad in 'eighty. None of us could stand that Jimmy Carter, 'I'll never lie to you' bullshit Ted's a guy who lives in the real world with the rest of us. I guess he didn't know it was me, though, huh?"

"I'll make sure he knows the next time, Victor."

"He's the last liberal. We're liberals, me and my brothers. That's another reason they're going to like this project. You can only build so many winter love nests for rich Jews, right?"

Instead of answering that, McKay let his smile stretch. Then he said, "I'll lay out your terms for Terry. We'll be in touch later. If you want to use an office while you're in town—"

"I got offices, thanks. Just leave word for me at the Ritz. I'll get back to you." He and McKay shook hands, then Amory turned to Doyle.

As they shook, Terry said, "I was admiring your lapel flower."

"Oh, this. It's shamrocks, a little bunch of shamrocks in with this lacy stuff."

"A sprig of baby's breath."

"Nifty, huh?"

Terry recognized the thin green wire, a single supporting strand wound around each of the dozen clover stems, keeping it upright even after it had wilted, a delicate creation but impossible to make money with. Now that he saw the thing, Terry's question was, Why the hell didn't I see it before?

"Welcome to Irish Boston, right?" Amory's face was distended as he looked down at his lapel.

"Where'd you get it?"

"The Ritz," he said. "The flower shop at the Ritz."

"Really?" Terry said with surprising calm. He gave no sign of what he was thinking: This lying fucker. Did Squire know he would see me? Was the kitsch boutonniere a message of some kind, or in the word Squire would use, a tickle?

***

Three things he loved above all: his wife and his son and a view of the city of Boston. He welcomed the return of spring because it was their custom, when the weather made it possible, to go together to the river before dinner, Joan and Terry jogging, and Max riding along on his bike. They lived off Brattle Street now, on Sparks, two blocks from the Charles, and it was a simple matter to get to the jogging path, which they followed, always the same way, along the stretch of Harvard, down the Cambridge side two miles to the curve around which the magnificent view appeared—to Terry, always like magic. It was a reverse of the view that had transfixed him from Bunker Hill as a lad. Indeed, the monument was a feature of it, standing like a sentry among the sweeping girders of the Mystic River Bridge. Not a sentry, an upright needle, because it still pricked him, his eye always moving away from the obelisk to the rich green skyline.

He headed for that point, aware of Joan pounding along beside him, and of Max gunning ahead. Max was eight, a sunny, blond child whose exuberance never served him better than on that bike, which was also, at various times, a motorcycle, a stallion, a dolphin, and the space shuttle
Freedom.
He was a true child of
E.T.
The sight of Max up ahead usually soothed Terry, but not this afternoon. Despite the presence of his wife and son, he kept returning in his mind to the awful moment with Bright They'd returned to Bright's office on the thirtieth floor of the Commonwealth Bank Building downtown. Terry had stood facing the floor-to-ceiling window of his friend's posh office, looking out over the Back Bay, watching a blue tourist trolley wend its way toward the bar on Beacon Street that inspired
Cheers.

"So what's the problem?"

And why hadn't Terry just come right out and told him? But he knew. One thing about which he'd never been direct with Bright McKay, the only thing, was Squire.

So Terry had answered obliquely, "What do we really know about this guy?"

"We know he's ready to put two million dollars cash into the deal, cash that's already been transferred into his account in our bank. I know it's there. And on the strength of it, Van Buren is ready to approve our loan to Amory for twenty million, and we have a verified letter of intent from his bank in Naples worth another twenty. That's forty-two million dollars for Ruggles Center. That's what we know."

"I heard all that the first time, Bright."

"And you think it's more likely we'll make a major-tenant deal with the governor? Requiring a bond that the legislature has to approve? Requiring several hundred state-hack micks to move their offices to deepest, darkest Roxbury?"