We Were Kings (28 page)

“He kicked your ass, you know,” Dante said, to bring him back.

“Yeah, I know. He was a hell of a fighter.”

“I thought you'd never get up again.”

“But I did, didn't I?” Cal looked at him through his one good eye and grinned. His teeth were black with blood, and with the damaged eye swollen shut he looked as if he were winking.

Cal stood before the sink in his room, wincing as he eased his hands into the water. Once they were submerged, he moved the fingers slowly, opening up the cuts so that fresh blood flowed. Gradually, the pain ebbed, and he moved his hands slowly, one over the other—an ablution of sorts. He didn't look up at the mirror; he didn't want to see his face or his shame. If he looked up he would surely hear Lynne's voice in recrimination or, worse, disappointment. He didn't need to be reminded that once again he'd failed her.

After he'd washed his hands, he cleaned his face, wiping away the hardened blood. He rinsed his mouth with water from the tap and spit repeatedly into the sink until the water ran clear. Then he drank, swirling whiskey in his mouth, burning the cuts and gashes there, and the whiskey spilled from his swollen gums onto his split lips. He drank the whiskey down and clutched the sink, wincing in pain.

He lit a cigarette and lowered his head, puffed on the cigarette tenderly as he clutched the basin and straightened his arms, feeling the bruised muscles across his back and shoulders go taut and rigid with spasms.

He put the last of the whiskey in his mouth and swirled it about, wincing again as it set the inside of his mouth and his inflamed gums on fire, and swallowed. He ripped off some tissue from a roll and bundled it up into small pellets and packed his nostrils. As swollen as his nose was, he couldn't breathe through it anyway.

The blood vessels in his eyes had burst and a bloody film lay across the whites. He could feel it there, pressing against the undersides of his eyelids when he closed his eyes. When he opened his eyes and finally looked in the mirror, he saw bloodshot slits peering through swollen flesh already beginning to discolor and darken. He looked at the whiskey tumbler in his hand, turned it slowly beneath the light so that the beveled glass sparkled, then lifted it up and threw it down, shattering it in the basin.

_________________________

South End

THEY WERE COMING
along Harrison Street toward Chinatown, the windows down and the night air heavy with humidity, the stars above the buildings lost in a haze illuminated from below by the city lights. Cal was searching the street for a bar where they might stop for a drink when Dante slowed the car and Cal looked up and saw the flashing blues and reds of a dozen or more patrol cars up ahead, blocking the road.

“They're detouring us to Franklin and Chandler,” Dante said.

“Yeah, something big's going on. Pull over where you can.”

Dante glanced in the rearview and eased the car into a spot halfway down the block, and they climbed out. Where the cops had diverted traffic was a notorious stretch of the South End known for its drug dens, prostitution, and loansharking. There were the bars that most people knew better than to step into and the diner that served only eggs and coffee and the corner store with an inch of dust on its boxes of sanitary pads and shaving supplies, all fronts out of which small-timers ran their meager businesses, but the area attracted only the true down-and-outs and there was a limited mob scene here. Violence usually involved beatings or brawls that escalated to stabbings. Cal had been called down here many times when he'd been a cop and there was such a chaotic and arbitrary nature to the crimes that were committed—all mostly acts related to drug use or despair. He remembered the john who'd fallen so obsessively in love with the prostitute he visited every weekend that out of jealousy he'd attacked one of her other clients and hacked off his penis with a broken bottle, and when the screaming woman rejected his advances, he'd done the same to himself.

Twenty or more people stood at the roadblocks looking at the scene unfolding; on the street beyond, the police lights caused flickering shadows to shudder and shake across the building fronts. A fire hydrant that had been opened by a resident earlier in the day due to the heat continued to gush, and the sinuous bands of water streamed across the street. The police were wearing padded riot gear and, in two teams, one from either end of the street, were systematically breaking down doors with battering rams and charging the interiors of homes and businesses. Cal and Dante watched as they led out the inhabitants of each building, men and women with bowed heads and hands cuffed behind their backs. A few struggled or yelled something at the cops, earning a billy club to the gut or the side of the head. Some at the roadblock began hollering and hooting, urging the police on, and when Cal looked at the officers at the barricade, he saw an excitement there also, a type of restrained fervor in their eyes and postures, as if at any moment, if given the signal, they might take off running toward the other police and join them in smashing property and banging heads.

Cal recognized one of the young cops and called out to him, and the kid came over.

“What's going on?” he asked.

The kid was beaming, sweat trickling down his narrow face, and Cal realized he was even younger than he'd thought. He still carried the gangliness and the energy of a late teen. “They're getting the bastards that did Owen,” he said.

“This lot?”

“Oh yeah, the chief has us planned to do a bust-up like this every night this week. See if we don't get those fuckers.” His eyes gleamed in his pale face and sweat beaded at the tip of his nose. There was the sound of splintering wood and breaking glass and the young cop looked behind him.

“Is Giordano here?” Cal asked, and the kid slowly turned back, the lights of the patrol cars swirling in his eyes.

“He's been here all night,” the kid said. Distracted, he looked away again, searched the street, and then pointed. “Over there, by the pharmacy.”

The kid's sergeant called for him and he said, “I've got to go,” and Cal watched him sprint toward the older man.

They'd smashed in another door, raided the building, and were pulling more inhabitants out—Dante nudged Cal, and Cal leaned in to hear him. “I know some of them,” he said. “They're just regular down-and-outs. What the fuck is Giordano doing?”

Cal nodded. A lot of them were down-and-outs, and the others were mostly low-level hoods and small-time drug dealers—and the cops were bending them over cars without discrimination and clubbing any who protested. They beat one guy particularly bad—Cal could hear his screams over the sounds of the crowd—and when they were done, they threw him to the ground, where he lay, unmoving.

Around the cops, the crowd was becoming more excited and agitated; Cal knew the heat had a lot to do with it, building up as with a pending thunderstorm. The crowd pressed against the blockade so hard that the sawhorses slid forward a few inches on the wet concrete; they cheered every time another door was smashed off its hinges or bowed inward beneath the police battering rams and when men were pulled, struggling, from a building and kicked relentlessly to the concrete.

At the far end of the street, Giordano, beneath the weak blue glow of the neon sign that read
Pharmacy,
stood with his commanders and captains, watching grimly as his men raided the flophouses, bars, and homes along Chandler and Essex, the flashing blue and red police lights reflected in the water winding into the gutter at his feet.

_________________________

Pilgrim Security, Scollay Square

WITH THE DEMOLITION
of Scollay Square, Charlie had moved his newspaper stand to the back of the Old South Meeting House on the corner of Milk and Washington, by the subway. It was here that the colonists had gathered to organize the Boston Tea Party, and knowing it was a breeding ground for revolutionaries, the British had gutted the building, using it as a stable and letting horses shit all over the place. They destroyed much of the interior and stole anything of value. Now it was a museum.

Charlie sat on his stool in the shade of an awning, chewing on a fat unlit cigar and dabbing at his forehead with a cloth napkin. Dante paid for the
Herald,
looked at the cover, and whistled under his breath. The police raids were front page, a black-and-white picture showing a street scene similar to what he and Cal had witnessed the night before, the streets ablaze with lights and the suggestion of flame and looking more like a war zone than the site of a tactical police maneuver.

“This town's goin' to shit,” Charlie remarked, looking up at him.

“Hasn't it always been?”

“Worse shit than before. We've got more murders than New York.”

“The police say they're taking care of it.”

“End of the fucking line, Dante. It's all gonna sink back into the sea.”

“Think it's worth it to play the sweepstakes before we go?”

“Only bums and chumps play the sweepstakes. It's a loser's racket. All that money goes directly to the government. You ever know someone who's won?”

“Didn't Isaac Kennedy win it all a few years ago?”

“Isaac Kennedy?” Charlie grimaced and spit. “They found him dead in his apartment down in the garment district last summer—he'd been dead for three weeks and no one knew. He didn't have a penny to his name or a pot to piss in but he had a hundred goddamn cats. Little fuckers waited a week before they started eating him.”

Dante bought two Italian subs with peppers and onions from a vendor working the grill of a food cart outside the Old State House. A few tourists were staring at a spot on the ground that a guide, done up like John Adams, was pointing to. It was the site of the Boston Massacre, where the first martyrs of the American Revolution—Crispus Attucks and four others—had been shot down. Trying to cash in on the meager trade, a bum with a tin whistle was attempting a sad, discordant version of “Yankee Doodle.” The tourists moved on quickly, and Dante watched John Adams, impressive in his period garb despite the heat, stalk up to the bum and tell him to fuck off.

Dante crossed State toward Brattle and into Scollay, momentarily surprised by the glare of the sun in the space where buildings had once been and the dark spans of metalwork at the far end of Hanover. Pilgrim Security was one of the few remaining businesses left and it showed the signs of struggle. The bottom-floor windows were splintered and cracked; a layer of dirt coated the building from the heavy construction traffic and from the earthen upheavals that seemed to press a constant stone ash into the air. The stairwell held the heat like an oven, and Dante climbed up slowly, measuring his steps on the rippled and cracked linoleum. The third floor was quiet; the secretarial services had moved out the year before and Scollay Realty had simply closed its doors. Scollay Square would be gone soon. There'd be no realty left.

Cal brooded at his desk. They'd lost the Chinese Merchants' Association Building contract in Chinatown and he'd spent the morning writing up half a dozen bids on various jobs around the city, including the Boston Garden and the John Hancock, all the more important now. Both potential accounts were extremely particular—he knew that—and he only hoped that his reputation for hiring ex-cons wouldn't derail him. He was bonded and insured but, in the end, that might not matter. He glared through the glass at the Pole and the Greek sitting on the visitor chairs in the outer office, drinking his coffee. They were still in their Pilgrim Security uniforms with their caps slanted rakishly on their heads. He felt like going out there and beating the shit-eating grins off their faces.

The ceiling fan above ratcheted out its revolutions, a dull grinding followed by a soft thunk as the fan caught, shuddering, and then turned again. The papers under his forearms were damp from his sweat; he peeled them off his skin and pushed them aside.

Dante tapped on the door frame and stepped into the office as Cal looked up. He dropped the paper on Cal's desk, gestured with his head toward the outer office. “What's wrong with those two?”

Cal shook his head. “The question should be, what's right with them? They come here between shifts like they've got no homes to go to and they drink all my coffee. I wouldn't be surprised if I came in one of these days to find them napping on the cot in the back room.”

He looked down at the newspaper. “What's this?”

“Check out the front page.”

Cal stared at the headlines and then read aloud: “‘Boston Police Sweep Through Gambling Dens and Bars of South End. After a wave of unprecedented violence in the city since the beginning of the summer and the shooting death of one of their own, Boston Police have stepped up their tactics in the fight against crime. Police commissioner Anthony Giordano says that police operations will continue in neighborhoods until those responsible for the shooting have been apprehended and the streets are safe again.'”

Dante pulled a chair up to the desk, pushed one of the subs over to Cal. Cal looked at it and then back at Dante.

“You never pack a lunch,” Dante said. “I know you're not eating well.”

“I'm eating just fine.” Cal sighed and picked up the sub. His jaw still pained him, and, carefully, he began eating without much joy.

Dante watched him. “One of these nights I'm bringing you into the North End for a real meal.”

“I can't believe that I thought Giordano might actually get something done,” Cal said after a few minutes, and he put the half-eaten sub on his desktop. “I thought that he'd get a bead on Owen's killers and nail them to the wall.”

He rose from the desk and went to the watercooler, filled two cups with water, and handed one to Dante. He was silent as he drank, then he threw the paper into the wastebasket, stood at the window, and looked out at the Central Artery bisecting the view of the waterfront.

“He never bought into the IRA story,” Dante said.

“No, he never did.”

Cal thought of what Father Nolan had told him:
Don't forget that to them, they're not in America. They're three thousand miles away but they're still home.
A fat dump gull swooped down onto the rooftop of the building opposite, almost immediately sensed Cal staring from the window, and eyed him beadily. Cal was the first to break eye contact. He hated gulls, especially the big ones. He had since he was a child, when he'd witnessed a group of bigger gulls tear a smaller gull apart on Tenean Beach. They'd pulled its thin legs from its body and ripped its wings straight off the muscle and tendon. In the end, his mother had pulled him away from what remained of it, a small sack of bloody yet still feebly flailing plumage.

“Owen asked us what we were going to do,” Cal said, and paused. “They won't be in the usual places where Irish Americans gather,” he said, and he turned to Dante. “They won't show up at the dance halls, but we have to go where they are. We have to get in their faces, push their buttons, and see what happens.”

“Where do you want to start?”

“I want to start with the tall guy, de Burgh's right-hand man. What's his name…Donal. He's the key. For all the control he shows, I think he's a powder keg with a short fuse. We push enough and he'll go off.”

He strode to the door. “Albert!” he called out. “Jimmy!”

The two men in the outer office put down their coffee cups and came to the door. The taller one looked in over the shoulder of the ruddy-faced blond. He was clutching
Bettor's Weekly
in his hand. They were big hands, the size of baseball mitts.

“You two, get in touch with everyone and tell them that whoever isn't working a shift tomorrow has a free night of drinking on the boss. It's been a while but I'm taking you all out on the town.”

Jimmy slapped the
Bettor's Weekly
against his thigh. He was grinning again. “This is a joke, yeah? April Fools', right?”

“No joke. Tell them to meet here at six sharp.”

“You got it, boss.”

As they were turning to go, Cal stopped them. “And don't forget to let Willie, Chow, Rolls, and Fitzy know.”

The thin one's eyes shot up with the names and he gave a knowing nod. “This is gonna be a blast,” he said.

“Sure it will,” Cal said and forced a smile, and the two left, roughhousing at the front door like a couple of schoolboys before they stumbled into the hallway.

Dante was looking at him. “Willie, Chow, Rolls, and Fitzy?”

“You'll see,” Cal said, and he bit into his sub with what seemed like a little more enthusiasm. He chewed and swallowed. “Just wait. You'll see.”