The City Below (60 page)

Terry said nothing.

"So what the hell are you doing here?"

Terry pointed to the safe. "Squire has something that belongs to us. I was trying to open this last door."

"What? What does he have?"

McKay said, "Tapes, Didi. Tapes he made of meetings with me."

"Wait That's something I don't want to know about."

"It's important."

"And you can't find them?"

"This inside door is locked. I don't have a key."

She looked at Bright "These tapes...?"

"Will put me in jail."

She stared at him, then looked at Terry mournfully before crossing to the roll-top desk. She flicked open one of the small drawers, took the key out, and held it up. "This?"

Terry took it and knelt at the safe. Now the door opened. He saw the cigar box and took it out. He opened it There they were, ten small cassette tapes—no, eleven. He looked up at McKay. "How many?"

"We met three times."

Each cassette was labeled, numbers and names. Flipping through them, Doyle read, "Farrell-Joyce, Farrell-Joyce, Amory, Farrell-Joyce, Amory, Amory, Amory." Then, in succession, he read, "McKay, McKay, McKay," and finally "Mullen."

He took Bright's three out, closed the cigar box, and slipped it under his arm. He held one of the cassettes up for Didi. "See?"

"Show
me,
Charlie," a voice said from well inside the other room.

Didi's eyes locked on Terry's, and he saw, like a bolt in the dark, her absolute fear. It was Nick. Terry put the three cassettes in his jacket pocket.

Even before Squire appeared in the doorway, the stench of alcohol wafted into the room. Yet when he stepped into view, he appeared as self-contained and erect as ever, dressed as always in neat, dark clothes. He said, "Am I invited?"

He made a show of taking in the sight of the open safe, of the cigar box under Terry's arm.

Terry said, "You have Bright on tape. The meetings you had about Amory. That's what we came for."

Squire looked at Bright. "So you told him." He paused for a sly wink "Did you tell him everything?"

"In point of fact, Nick, your brother is the one who told me."

"That so?" Squire entered, pointedly ignoring his wife. He was not quite as steady on his feet as it first appeared. He made his way to the safe, closed the heavy door, spun the dial, then settled his haunch on the bulking steel cube, so that his face was at the level of his brother's chest He smiled up at him. "So you remembered the combo."

"I guess so."

"I didn't think you were one for remembering, Terry."

"Some things."

"Ma called," Didi said. "Jackie never came home. Was he with you?"

Squire slowly faced her. She was standing a few feet in front of the walk-in. She looked frumpy and disheveled in her raincoat and canvas shoes. "Meeting Terry," he said, "I'd have expected you to do something with your hair."

"I wasn't meeting Terry. I was looking for Jackie. Where is he? Do you know?"

"No."

Bright said, "We should go."

Squire ignored him, still eyeing Didi. "But you showed him the key."

"Nick," Terry began.

But Squire held up his hand. "Didn't you?"

"Yes."

"How did you know where I kept the key?"

Didi shrugged wearily. "I have no idea how I knew that"

"You just knew."

"I guess."

"She walked in on us," Terry said. "She didn't know we were here. I made her show us the key."

"Made her? You
made ber?
How did you do that, Charlie?"

"He didn't make me. I was glad to show him. Whatever it is you're doing, I'm on their side."

Squire took her statement in, his face a chillingly impassive mask.

"Let's go, Terry," Bright said.

Squire stretched his hand toward his brother without looking at him. "Give me my box."

Until that moment, it had not occurred to Terry to keep the cigar box—the other tapes, Amory's as well as Joyce's and Farrell's. But this defiance, so long in coming, had to be total. "I'm holding on to your whole collection," he said calmly. "It all implicates us."

"This doesn't involve you."

"When you involved McKay, you involved me," Terry said. "Once he's out, I'm out. That's why we're here. To shut down your sting. Isn't that what your handlers call it? Sting?"

"I should think you'd be proud of me, Charlie. After all these years. My doing what's right."

"What? A gangster's two-bit gofer finally sells out his
patrono?
"

"Jackie sold
me
out, get it?" Squire's knuckles were white with the downward pressure he was exerting on the safe. "Sold me out!"

Didi stepped between them. "Where is he?"

"Get home," Squire said sharply. He came to his feet and grabbed her arm. "Get home, you bitch."

Terry took his brother's arm just as fiercely. "Let go of her."

"Jesus Christ," he said coolly. "Look at this, will you? I mean, will you fucking look at this, or what? Aren't you a little late, asshole?"

"Let go of her, Nick."

Squire did, but shoved her roughly. "Get home."

Didi caught herself at the doorjamb. She looked back at Terry, and with a sudden plaintiveness asked, "Do you have a favorite song?"

Terry released Squire. "What?"

"A song. A favorite song."

Bright and Squire looked at Terry, as if only his answer could make sense of her question.

Terry knew at once what she wanted to hear. Without understanding how it could be a weapon, he knew it was, and so he gave it to her. "The Everly Brothers, 'Dream, dream, dream.'"

Didi looked triumphantly at her husband; it was the song she still drove him crazy with. How many times had he come in on her listening to it, singing it even? "When I want you..." In the old days she would dance around the bedroom, a hand on her hip, flaunting her nakedness while Squire watched, as if the song had reference to him. Before they'd stopped having sex, she had even hummed it sometimes in the drifting moments after orgasm.

She started to leave, but Squire said, "Wait." He hooked his fingers, stretched them palm side out. He tried for a cocky nonchalance but fell short, his voice quavering somewhat when he said, "So it's to be Trivial Pursuit, is that the game? Twenty Questions? Truth or Consequences? Will the real asshole please stand up?" He faced Bright, his eyes hooded, head nodding like a car toy. "Do you have a favorite night spot, Nightspot?" His eyes bulged open, a stagy imitation of William E Buckley. "The wet spot on your sheets, perhaps? Sheets—there's a good idea!"

Bright touched Terry. "I really think we should leave."

But Squire reached out and grabbed his brother's coat. "And you, Charlie, now that we know your favorite song, perhaps you'll tell us who your favorite basketball player is."

"You're drunk, Nick."

"No, really. Was it Bean Nicolson?"

"What about Bean?"

"That coon embarrassed the hell out of BC, remember? When their all-time high scorer went to the slammer?"

Terry took a fistful of his brother's sweater. They each held the other now. "Was that you? You bastard!"

"My trained animal. Two years. We made a fortune off that baboon."

"You fuck. You ruined him! That was you?"

"You betcha."

"It crossed my mind, Nick. When the scandal broke. But you know what? I dismissed the thought because I was sure you wouldn't do that
to me.
What an asshole I am, huh?"

"You think
that
makes you an asshole, Charlie? Bean Nicolson, that's nothing. That's just fucking basketball. That's sports." He let his eyes go wide again and tried to do that Buckley thing with his tongue. "Let's move on to the world of fine art. Perhaps you'll tell us your favorite statue. Something by Michelangelo, perhaps?"

Terry took a step toward the door. But Squire, jerking forward, grabbed him again. "Or ask Joan."

"What?"

"Ask Joan what her favorite statue is. She'd say Mick-elangelo, of course, as if the wop was Irish. Why do they do that? Why do they say
Mick
instead of
Mike?
Ask her for me, will you?"

"No." Terry answered coldly. But he remembered Mullen sprawled on the street behind Fenway, desperately calling, "Ask Joan!"

"Ask her for me, okay?"

"There's nothing I need to ask Joan, Nick. Nothing." Terry did not move out of his brother's grasp.

Didi said, "You're a bastard, Nick."

Squire smiled to have scored on her. He dropped Terry's arm, as if finished. "Two can play your game, babe." But then Squire swung back to his brother. "Well, if you won't ask Joan, ask Max. The clue is Michelangelo. See if maybe Max has some unconscious feeling for—"

"Jesus," Didi said in disgust, and she started to leave.

"Didi!"

She stopped and faced Squire again.

He said, "If Jackie still isn't home, tell your mother she should call in. She should report him missing. Tell her to call Captain Lundgren and report Jackie missing."

"I saw him this morning, Didi," Terry said. "He wasn't in great shape."

Didi looked from one to the other. "What are you telling me?"

Squire smiled weirdly. "Truth or Consequences, babe. Trivial Pursuit."

They could all see a shudder move up her back and curl her shoulders. She went through the door, across the storefront, and out into the rain, slamming the door. The noise sank slowly below the surface of an oceanic silence.

This, Terry thought while staring into his smug brother's face, is where I am supposed to fall apart He knew that he had spent his entire life avoiding this confrontation because of an inborn assumption that he would not survive it And he knew that that assumption had been far from groundless. Apparently calm, in fact he was completely cut off from his own inner reaction to the things Squire had said. Max? What
about
Max?

Finally Terry looked over at Bright. "Okay, let's go." They began to move.

"About my box."

Terry faced Squire from the threshold. "If you want this box, you'll have to kill me for it."

Squire shrugged elaborately, but he could not hide his confusion. Had he just lost after all? But hadn't he played his ace? His Max? He hesitated before saying glumly, "I'm no killer. Don't you know that about me?"

"Nick, I know nothing about you."

"That's not true, Charlie. Just look at yourself. We're not so different Whether you'll ever admit it again or not, we're brothers, you and me. Always will be."

Terry just shook his head. He'd come here to protect Bright, but now he saw how he had to protect himself—from the truth of what Nick was saying.

"Right?" Squire came unsteadily toward him. "Aren't we brothers?"

Terry backed away, clutching the cigar box in a way that drew Squire's attention.

Squire threw his hand toward it "Hell, I don't need that shit anymore anyway. Take the tapes. I don't care."

Terry left, but not before having seen the meaning of all those years of kicking away the clutching hands that had sought to draw him back. Now he saw whose hands they'd always been.

***

Squire did not move for a long time. The pops, he decided, he should never have had those pops. He'd felt so blue before, which was why, after wandering aimlessly around the Town for an hour, he'd found himself outside the Harp, saying, What the fuck. At the bar, he'd hoisted his beers like the other guys, and had done his best to join the annual April grousing about fat-assed Don Zimmer and that fingerfucker Haywood Sullivan. "I'll tell you the trouble with the Sox," he'd heard himself pronouncing at one point, as if he gave a shit. "Twenty-seven players, twenty-seven cabs!"

"What?" Slats Moore had asked, leaning in on him with rotten teeth.

"After games, they always leave Fenway separately," Squire explained. He'd read this in the
Globe.
"The whole fucking team, twenty-seven players, twenty-seven cabs. None of those guys are friends, and none of them loves the game. They just do it for the money. Fucking Red Sox."

"I'd do it for the fucking money."

"You would, you shitbag."

Brushed back by Squire Doyle, Slats had shut up and moved down the bar. "What's he doing in here anyway?" he'd muttered when the bartender set him up again.

Squire knew why he was so slow to move off the safe. It was not because of his wife or his brother, or because of Tucci either. After all these years, he was ready for Tucci, high fucking noon, scarface, the man who shot Liberty Valence. It was because of Jackie.

Two players, two cabs.

He'd never, in all the ways he'd pictured the last inning of this game, pictured it with Jackie blocking the plate. Right in front of the goddamned plate, in a Yankee uniform. Squire still couldn't believe it.

As if to prove to himself he'd been dreaming—dream, dream, dream—he pushed up from the safe at last and went over to the walk-in. The chrome handle, as always, was wonderfully cool in his hand when he jerked it down.

And there, when he pulled the door open, was Mullen, still curled on the floor like a giant shrimp, with coins scattered around him. He stank of piss. On his head was a stain of blood, which, in that shadow, seemed black. His mouth was still taped.

"Jackie?"

To Squire's surprise and relief, the figure stirred.

Squire stooped. "It's me, pal." He brought his face down as close as he could. Jackie opened his eyes, but they were so swollen. "You look like a fucking Chinaman," Squire said. He took his handkerchief out and began to dab at the gash on Mullen's forehead. "It's stopped bleeding. You're okay. Right?"

Mullen managed to nod.

"Atta boy, Jackie. Because you got to help me. Tonight's the night, pal. Will you help me?"

Again Mullen nodded, his eyes blazing, even through their half-shut puffiness, afire with pleading.

"Good, Jackie." Squire reached into Mullen's pocket and withdrew his creds folder, which held his ID and badge. He put it in his own pocket, then stroked his friend's head, his matted hair. He felt the old affection come streaming out of him, into his hand, his fingers, which moved tenderly at the edges of the wound. "You were there when all this shit started. You should be there when it's finished."