We Were Kings (24 page)

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Day Boulevard, South Boston

FITZGERALD SAT IN
the car parked at the curb beachside a ways down from the house and smoked a cigarette while he read the paper. Bobby and the two others stood on the beach in their undershirts and trousers with the cuffs rolled up. It was a little after seven o'clock and the sun had just cleared the surface of the blue horizon. It felt good to be in the sun and feel, even this early in the morning, the sand warm beneath his feet. The humidity had broken for now—a series of heavy thunderstorms had passed through during the night, keeping Bobby awake as he stared at the ceiling and watched its crackling light show displayed across the walls, listened to what sounded like distant artillery pounding an enemy's position, and then the rain had come lashing at the window, sending the panes shaking.

Far out, above the outer harbor islands, silver heat shimmered as everything began to build again, but for now the temperature was hot but pleasant. High white cumulus clouds like dandelion clocks, with fat mushroom heads, moved slowly across the sky. Bobby and the other two were attempting to throw a baseball like the Americans did, and they had difficulty not laughing as they tossed the ball back and forth, repeatedly failing to catch it in their fumbling hands. They didn't know the proper mechanics to throw and so instead merely pushed the ball from one to the other, and it kept falling into the sand. For a while, in the absence of Fitzgerald, Bobby could forget why they were there. One thing they had feared was being noticed as outsiders—here in Southie, it seemed everything and anything out of the ordinary was detected, the locals being far more vigilant and safeguarded than any police force; they patrolled their own streets better than the cops. But so far, being on the beach had served the men well. New Irish immigrants were hardly given a second glance, and at this time of the morning, the Avenue was mostly deserted, but four men sitting cramped in a car and smoking cigarettes, one after the other, on a warm July morning would have drawn suspicion.

Here and there, he noted people—someone walking a dog; a runner, shirtless and sweating, pounding the pavement toward Pleasure Bay. Farther down, a couple of men left the bathhouses with small duffel bags, presumably containing their clothing from the gym.

Kinsella stopped throwing the ball, sat down at a park bench, and watched them, shaking his head and offering advice but mostly criticizing. “Jaysus! What a right pair of goms the two of you are. You couldn't hit a sack of potatoes the way you're throwing that yolk.”

“You give it a go, then,” said Egan.

“I will in me arse. I'll let you two make the fools out of yeselves.”

“Shall we get to a baseball game before we head home? Go see the Red Sox?”

“What? And sit there for hours watching a game that we don't know the rules of, like right fucking eejits?”

Fitzgerald came up the pathway to the beach, the newspaper folded under his arm. “He's left,” he said. “Same time as before. Do you know the route in and out?”

“I do,” Bobby said.

“Show me on the map. I want to know how we're getting out once it's done.”

“No maps. Maps are dangerous things to have on you.” Bobby tapped his temple. “It's in my head.”

“Well, tell us.”

“I'll show you on the way out.”

Kinsella shifted on the bench and stared out at the sea. “As long as we're not doing it on a Sunday,” he said.

Fitzgerald looked at him. “We do it when I say we do it.”

“Not on a feckin' Sunday, I won't.”

“The same here,” said Egan.

Bobby tried to hold his tongue, knowing anything from him was sure to irk Fitzgerald and perhaps put him into a rage. “Every morning, he says farewell to his wife and child at the door,” he said now. “I won't be party to killing a man in front of his family. We need to pick another place, another location, anywhere, just not in front of his family.”

“What do you think this is? Who do you think we are? The Society of St. Vincent de Fucking Paul? We've put too much time into this for it to be wasted now. This is the most straightforward way and the easiest. We have, as you said, clear points in and out. The streets are mostly deserted in the morning. By the time police get here, we'll be on the highway heading north or south in the other car. We do this the way we planned to on fucking Monday, and that's it. Am I clear?”

“There's no reason to do it before his family.”

“Are you walking away from this one? Like you did before? They're giving you one last chance to prove yourself. I already told them they were fools for sending you with us, that you'd find a way to bollix it up. If you're not up to this, you can fuck off now and we'll settle it later. I need to know.”

“I'm ready, but I'm telling you it's wrong.”

“You never mind what's right or wrong. You leave that to me.”

“When all this is done, we're going to have some things to settle between us. Just you and me.”

“I'll look forward to it with pleasure.”

Bobby nodded and Fitzgerald held his gaze, then said between barely parted lips, “If you fuck up, I'll put a bullet in you meself.”

The four men walked back to the curb and got into the car, Bobby at the wheel. He drove like a tour guide, mindful of the speed, reminding them to take in their surroundings. They traveled along Day Boulevard before Old Harbor, gulls shrieking over Pleasure Bay, and, to their left, Marine Park and the decrepit cathedral-like aquarium, the cod-shaped weather vane flashing above its peeling cupola, and there was the statue of Admiral Farragut, casting his impressive bronze gaze out to the gray sea. Then they turned west onto the Shore Road and East First Street, toward the Edison plant stacks pumping gray smoke into the blue sky, and with the sea breeze coming through the open windows, ruffling their shirt collars and heavy with the smell of fried food from the few small eateries by the park, and the airplane from Logan arcing slowly above the fort at Castle Island before them, they might have been tourists out for a lazy drive on a summer day in Boston.

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Grealish Boxing Gym, Dorchester

CAL, IN A
T-shirt and boxing trunks, stood before the wall with its faded photos of champions who'd trained at or visited the gym. There was Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, who'd come to the ring as part of a marketing campaign promoting their second fight and had posed in boxer's stances for the picture captioned
The Manassa Mauler and the Fighting Marine,
and legendary John L. Sullivan, the Boston Strong Boy from Roxbury, the last heavyweight champion of bareknuckle boxing.

Then there were the boxers who'd become local legends even if they had never made good in the professional ranks. There was even a picture of Cal himself there, as a much younger man, standing with Conn Grealish and his brother Matty, but Cal rarely looked at it even when people new to the gym noticed it and asked if that was really him. Only the older locals had known him before the war and before the damage to his leg. He knew the younger boxers referred to him among themselves as the Gimp—his injury was like a disease, a contagion that, in their fear of mortality, eventual decline and decrepitude, they believed they might catch if they came too close. Hell, some of them wouldn't even spar with him.

His father was in the picture too, smiling and proud, apparently, and handsome too, Cal had to admit. He could almost smell the sweat off him as he had as a teenager, sharp and sweet from whiskey, and combined with concrete dust, a fresh scent that seemed to come through his pores as if he'd just stepped out of a furnace. There was a cruelty that hid beneath the smile and the good looks that made his father all the more foreboding, the strength in those massive hands that could snap finger bones in their grip. God help the man or woman who took that look for anything other than what it was. And, over time, even the trainers—Conn and Matty Grealish and Conn's sons—came to recognize it.

Cal thought of his meeting at St. Anthony's with the Pioneer and the warning to keep out of their business. If the man knew him at all, he would've realized that that was the last thing he should say. Cal went over to the heavy bag and worked it with more anger than he'd had in some time.

He kept at it until he was drenched and the wooden floorboards were stained dark with a pool of his sweat, and then, to cool down, he did twenty minutes of jump-rope work, slowly and off balance because of his bad leg, but the warmth and the exercise helped, and after ten minutes, the muscles and tendons, though they would hurt later, began to loosen. When he was done and still breathing heavy, he toweled off, and with the towel draped about his neck, he walked through the gym and, thinking of his father, searched out one of the Irish boxers that he knew well.

Packie McGuire, whom everyone called the Lip, was climbing out of the ring in the back room, Matty Grealish holding the rope for him. Packie had come over eight or so years before Cal shipped overseas, and everyone knew him because he was with the city's Department of Public Works. Most of the neighbors tipped the sanitation men at Christmastime, and Cal and Lynne had always received a thank-you card back from Packie. Cal waved to him, and Packie, bowlegged and canting to the right, sat heavily on the bench. He removed his mouthpiece and put out his hands for Cal to pull his gloves off. Grunting, Cal got them off and laid them on the wood. Packie was breathing heavily and wincing with each breath, although Cal could see no damage to his face; he looked like he'd just barely broken a sweat.

“What are you panting about? You couldn't have been in there for more than two rounds.”

“I wasn't, but sure didn't Matt get me good in the kidneys, the bollix. He kept going low too, and tapping my feckin' balls, the effer.” He eyed Matty as he headed to the lockers.

“Drive him into the ropes next time,” Cal said, “and put your thigh hard in his crotch and he won't do that again.”

Packie nodded and lowered his head, inhaling and exhaling deeply. “Aye,” he said after a moment, “I'll certainly do that.”

They talked about family and recent fights and upcoming bouts, about the June match between Rocky Marciano and Ezzard Charles and the approaching rematch.

“I tell you, that Ezzard Charles is some fighter,” Packie said. “Jesus, Rocky couldn't get him down.”

“He took a ton of punishment.”

“They both did. Rocky looked as if he would drop from swinging his arms so much. I don't think he could believe that Ezzard was still standing.” Packie shook his head and wiped at his mouth absently; it was a smoker's gesture, and Cal could tell that he was dying for a cigarette, but Conn Grealish didn't allow smoking in the gym. The same was true of alcohol.

“Packie,” he said. “You've always got an ear to the ground. Has anything come up lately among the Irish to do with the IRA?”

“IRA?” Packie looked at him quizzically.

“To do with all the recent shootings. You've heard about them?”

“Yeah, terrible stuff.”

“Well, what are people saying?”

Packie looked about the room and then stood, pressing on the muscles of his thighs. “C'mon,” he said, “I'm still winded by that gobshite. Let's see if I can't get me breath back. Lend us a hand at the heavy bag, would you?”

Packie put out his hands again and Cal pulled the gloves up over the tape, made sure they were secure, and tied them, and then they went to the heavy bag and he held it as Packie began with slow, methodical combinations, and focused on his breathing.

“They say,” he said, and he punched, left-left-right, left-left-right, “that the bodies of the dead are going back home, with condolences and prayers for the departed.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Cal said, his head against the bag, his body dripping with sweat even though he wasn't the one working. Packie looked about him and then paused. There was a group of three men in the corner of the room lifting weights; Cal and Packie heard the resounding clang of metal against metal as the bars banged the braces of the bench. Every now and then, the three looked in Packie and Cal's direction.

Packie mock-blocked and then laid off six combinations in a row. Just watching him made Cal exhausted. “They say,” he continued, “it's not just the bodies that are going home to Ireland but also some gifts for the Cause. Lots of the lads are already patting themselves on the backs that they got one over on the cops.”

Cal listened intently and considered what Packie was saying. The absence of the sound of metal striking metal drew his attention. The group of men lifting weights had stopped what they were doing and were eyeballing them.

A pulse pounded hard in Cal's neck. The Pioneer's warning came to his mind, and he wondered if he had been followed, if he'd become so complacent he'd let something like that happen. He was filled with an immense anger, but there was fear there as well.

“You know those guys?” Cal motioned with his head toward the corner, and Packie glanced over his shoulder, turned back, and struck the bag twice. “Some Irish lads—I think I've seen them here before but I'm not sure.”

“What the fuck are they looking at?” Cal said. “Hey,” he called out, “you lot, what the fuck are you looking at?”

“Would you whisht, Cal. Sure they're not doing any harm.”

“Then why are they eyeballing us like that?”

Cal stepped away from the bag and limped toward the men. Packie watched him silently.

He stood a few yards from them and shouted again, “What the fuck are you looking at?” The rest of the gym had fallen silent. Cal was aware of the eyes of others on him.

“I can remember every one of your faces, you got that?” He tapped his head. “So now it's up here and I won't forget.”

Joe Castiglione, the manager of the gym, and Conn Grealish, the owner, were at his side. Joe touched his shoulder. “Whoa, Cal. What's going on here?”

Cal kept his gaze on the three men. “These—” He glanced briefly at Joe and Conn, and then nodded toward the men. “They fucking won't stop staring at me. If they want to have a go at me, I'll give them a fucking go.” Cal was shaking now, trembling with rage, and he spit as he spoke. He felt Joe's hand tighten on his shoulder.

“You guys,” Grealish said, “what's your problem?”

“You know who we are, Conn.”

“That's right, I know who you are, but I asked you what the fucking problem is. Are you here to work out or what?”

“We're here to work out.”

“Yeah, we're here to work out.”

The third man nodded.

“See, Cal,” Conn said, turning to Cal, trying to placate him, “they're here to work out, that's all.”

“Tell them to get out of my shit. Tell them if I see them doing it again, there'll be trouble.”

One of the men laughed, and the man to his right slapped a training glove against his side. He continued staring at Cal.

“They've got it, Cal,” Joe said. “Don't you, lads? They'll be no trouble here.”

“C'mon, Cal,” Conn said, and he guided Cal back to Packie. “Let's get you set up at the bag.”

Cal allowed himself to be led but waved Conn away. “Nah, Conn, that's all right. I was getting ready to leave anyway.” And he turned to look at the men, who had picked up their weights again, and raised his voice so that they could hear. “There's a fucking stink in here that I can't get out of my nose. I'll take a shower and head home.”