The Guardian (21 page)

He considered that for a moment. After a brief internal debate, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the gun he’d taken off of Carlos McSorlly, put it on the table and nodded
to her.

She walked over slowly. ‘You sure?’

‘These aren’t local thugs we’re dealing with. These people are well-trained and fanatical. We’re a lot better off with two guns if we’re going to be thinking
seriously about dealing with them.’

She picked up the revolver and opened the cylinder. It was loaded; six shots. She closed it and held it up, feeling the weight and finding the balance.

‘You know how to handle one of those, I assume?’ Saunders said.

‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘But how do you know that you can trust me?’

‘I don’t. But I don’t have any reason to
dis
trust you, and I can’t say the same for the people who will be coming for the dagger.’ Saunders finished
reassembling his gun, pulled the release back. ‘Besides, if I think for a minute that you’re going to cross me, I’ll kill you.’

She looked off her aim and over toward him, the gun still pointed at the wall. ‘That’s not really fair,’ she said. ‘I’ve only got six shots, and you’ve got
sixteen.’

He shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t matter.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because, you’d be dead with my first shot.’

The noise came from the back of the bar, outside by the dumpster. It was a loud, dull thud against the back door, followed by an ear-piercing
meow
. At first Nick
O’Callaghan figured it was a cat chasing after a large rat. Normally he would go out to make sure that the cat was successful in its chase; rats were bad for business, even at the
water’s edge in Southie. It had been a long enough evening that night, though, that he wasn’t even going to bother with it. The dumpster had a solid lid, and it had been emptied two
days before, so there wasn’t enough trash to worry about the mess if an animal got in. He could take care of it in the morning.

When the noise came again, though, it made his hair stand on end. It was the same sound, but this time it continued in a slow, steady rhythm.

Thud . . . meow . . . thud . . . meow . . . thud . . . meow . . . thud . . .

The bar was dark, and he was alone. He had just finished cleaning the floors, and was about to wash down the bar before heading back to his nearby apartment. He had a rag in his hand, and as the
noise continued, he could feel the muscles in his hands tighten on the cloth.

For a moment he thought about calling the police. Then he remembered his conversation with his brother. He put the rag down and picked up the shotgun he kept behind the bar. No one was going to
scare him out of his place.

The noise continued as he walked toward the back door, growing louder as he drew close. There was a tiny window just at eye level in the center of the dark green steel, but it was caked over
with years of smoke and grime. It was dark outside, and when he flipped the switch to turn on the back light, nothing happened. He thought he remembered the light working the night before, but he
couldn’t be sure.

It was quiet now; the banging had stopped. When he listened closely, though, he could still hear the cat, alternating between a satisfied purr and an angry growl.

He stood next to the door, the gun at his side, rubbing at the tiny window, trying to see. Realizing the futility, he finally pushed the door open a crack, sticking the barrel of the gun out
first.

The light from inside the bar illuminated a sliver of ground in the alley out back, narrow and bright in close, spreading out in a diffuse fan further from the entryway. He narrowed his eyes,
searching at the edge of the darkness. ‘Anyone there?’ he called out.

His voice drew a response from the cat. She hissed angrily from six feet away, over near the bar’s brick siding. Her back was to Nick, but she was looking over her shoulder, baring her
fangs. Nick had seen the cat before. She was one of the thousands that wandered the street of Boston, fighting for any available scrap of sustenance. Her eyes were bright and threatening, but her
coat was mangy and insect-ridden; half an ear was gone, and ribs showed through her fur. After a moment’s territorial display, she went back to the prize hidden from view. She bent down, head
facing away from Nick now, sinking her teeth into something tough enough to require several pulls to dislodge a small chunk of stringy meat.

‘What you got there?’ Nick asked the cat, opening the door a bit wider. The light and the sound of his voice drew a renewed protest from the cat, and she turned more fully to face
him, adopting a pathetic battle-stance. Nick knew the cat would back down; he’d been dealing with strays his entire life.

‘Get outta here,’ he said, lowering the barrel of the gun toward the cat. He’d never been more tempted to shoot an animal than he was at that moment. Something stopped him,
though; threw him back into the doorway, his mouth hanging open.

As the cat turned to face him, she’d moved enough that he could see what she was chewing on. And even in the dim light, he could make out the knuckles of a hand. At first, he assumed that
it was some sort of a sick rubber toy, but then the cat went back at it with her teeth, tearing a patch of skin from just below the thumb, and a fresh patch of red muscle appeared. ‘Oh,
God!’ he exclaimed.

At that moment, the hand moved, jumping and bouncing of its own accord. The cat let out an angry roar as the hand skittered across the alley, pausing in the middle, as if to look at him, then
continued on. Nick was so stunned he couldn’t move.

When the severed hand made it to the far side of the alley, it flew into the air, spun around in a circle. At that moment, Nick could make out the silhouette of a man standing just at the edge
of the light cast by the doorway. He realized that the man was holding a string that was tied to the hand, and was swinging the hand around on the string like a lasso. After a moment, he slung the
hand hard across the alley, and the hand collided with the clapboards just to the side of the doorway, only a few feet from where Nick stood. The cat screamed and pounced on the hand as it hit the
ground. The man pulled the hand back toward him, the cat nipping at the flesh along the way.

‘You have something of ours,’ the man at the edge of the alley said. He spoke with a soft voice and a slight accent Nick couldn’t place.

‘Get out of here!’ Nick yelled numbly. He watched as the hand flew again across the alley, mesmerized by the grotesque display. It hit against the bricks even closer to Nick this
time, and landed so close to his feet, he could have reached down and picked it up.

‘Don’t you want to know what has become of Mr Phelan? My understanding was that he is an acquaintance of yours.’

The cat screamed again and pounced on the hand, grabbing it by the stump near the wrist, where the bones protruded, and the flesh was so worn that the grey-white skin flapped raggedly.

He could feel the man staring at him, but Nick couldn’t pull his eyes away from the hand as the cat continued to gnaw on it.

The man said, ‘Don’t you want to know what we will do to his sister?’

Sense overtook horror within Nick at last and he raised the gun, aiming at the man. ‘Where is he?’ he called. ‘What the fuck did you do to Charlie!’

At that moment, Nick felt a blade against his throat. Turning to his left, he realized that he’d left the front door open. Another man was standing behind him in the door, holding a combat
knife hard against his neck. He was a bald giant, with massive shoulders. ‘Put the gun down, Mr O’Callaghan,’ he said. Nick did as he was told, and the gun clattered against the
cement alley.

The man from the alley walked toward them. As he came into view, Nick could see a soft, kind face with a birthmark in the shape of a tear on his cheek. The man wound the string attached to the
hand as he walked, and once he was next to Nick, he pulled the string up, so that the hand dangled at thigh height. The cat batted jealously at it, letting out a long, frustrated cry as it swung
just barely in reach.

The man watched the hand for a moment as the three of them stood there in silence. Then he looked into Nick’s eyes. ‘We have much to discuss, Mr O’Callaghan, no?’

There is no accounting for a cop’s intuition. It comes with years of experience and careful attention to detail. The good ones become experts in the way people behave and
interact, and the best seem to have a window into the minds of those with whom they come into contact. It was that intuition that drove Detective Morrell to the street in front of the girl’s
apartment of Ninth Street early the next morning.

In Morrell’s case, it wasn’t just intuition; it was a touch of obsessive compulsiveness – another common attribute among detectives. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he
had seen her before. In addition, something about her behavior had bothered him the previous day. No, that would be an understatement. Something about her behavior had angered him the day before.
The nervous arrogance in her voice and the defiance in her posture sent warning flares shooting off in his head. The bloody mess down at his brother’s bar had taken precedence, but he’d
been unable to shake the feeling that something was terribly off about her.

As a result, Morrell found himself sitting in his car for an hour before his shift, sipping coffee, staring up at the apartment windows. It wasn’t a hardship to him; his job was all he had
now. The wives, thankfully, were gone. He had a daughter, but he hadn’t heard from her in more than two years, and her last words had been unkind. Not unfair, perhaps, but unkind nonetheless.
As for friends . . . well, he had long since determined that, for most, friendship was a convenience based on shifting self-interest. After a long list of petty betrayals, he no longer had the
strength to feign friendship. He was probably closest to Nick, but there was a distance to their relationship that seemed difficult to fully bridge. He supposed that was natural among
half-siblings. As a result, for the moment, the job, and those in whom he placed his temporary trust, were all he had.

At least the coffee’s good
, he thought as he sat there. The area was honeycombed with corner bodegas and delis and donut shops that opened early to sell egg-and-cheese sandwiches
and beers to road crews just coming home off the night shift. There was nothing better to Morrell than a cup of coffee from the first pot brewed. It made even the most boring parts of his job
bearable.

The morning hadn’t been a total waste on the investigative side, either. He’d discovered that he wasn’t the only person watching the girl’s apartment. Parked a half-block
ahead of him a man sat in a dull tan rented car, looking up at the windows that were the subject of their mutual attention. Morrell knew instinctively that the man was watching for the same
girl.

From what Morrell could tell, he was a young man, perhaps in his early-twenties, with dark skin and a thin beard covering his face unevenly. He didn’t behave nervously, but his focus on
the apartment was unwavering. Given the gunshots that had been reported the day before, it was enough to cause Morrell to act.

He opened the door to his car, got out, and started walking slowly up the street toward the car.

Akhtar Hazara didn’t see the man until he was standing directly beside his car window, rapping on the glass with a heavy ring. He’d been too caught up in his own
thoughts and worries to pay attention to anything other than the girl’s apartment.

The night before had been agony for him. He’d been sitting outside the bar by the waterfront, watching as it closed down, waiting for them to come out. He’d watched as four armed men
entered the place, and had listened to the sounds of the altercation – with the shattering of glass and the crashing of tables – followed by the sharp crack of a single gunshot.

The girl and her companion had emerged moments later and hurried to the man’s car, speeding away even as the sound of sirens approaching began off in the distance. Wanting no involvement
with the authorities, Akhtar had followed them back to her apartment, but there had still been no sign of Charles Phelan.

And so he’d sat in his car all night, drinking coffee to stay awake in case Phelan showed up, or the girl left. Now he was running on pure adrenaline, and he knew that was in short supply
at this point. He was raw and anxious, and he wondered whether he even had the courage to do what needed to be done anymore.

The knocking at the car window made him jump, and he considered reaching for the gun in the glove compartment. Fortunately he recovered his composure quickly.

He rolled down the window and looked up at a round, middle-aged man with more chins than hair. ‘Yes?’ Akhtar said. He tried to keep his tone polite but short; he wanted no
involvement with anyone.

‘You don’t have a sticker,’ the man said. The words made no sense, and for a moment, Akhtar thought his English had gone stale.

‘Pardon me?’ Akhtar said.

‘A parking sticker,’ the man said. ‘This street is for resident parking only. You need a zone sticker to park here.’

Akhtar was relieved that he understood. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘I am not parking, I am waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

Akhtar began to get annoyed. ‘That is not your business,’ he said. He glanced up and down the street, and took note of the fact that there were very few cars and plenty of parking
spaces. ‘I am bothering no one,’ Akhtar said. ‘Please, leave me alone.’

He rolled up his window and faced forward, thinking that if he ignored the man, he would go away. It didn’t work, though, and the tapping came again on the window. It was a different sound
this time, though; heavier. And when he turned to roll down the window, ready to be more aggressive in his tone, he noticed that the man was tapping with a badge now.

Akhtar’s heart began to beat with greater violence, and he willed his hands not to shake as he rolled down the window again.

‘Yes?’ he said. His voice was back to polite.

‘It
is
my business. What are you waiting for?’