Serpents in the Cold (7 page)

Mr. Baxter, the owner and patriarch of the house. Someone had used a tool to bash in the poor bastard's skull. Probably the same someone who'd ransacked Sheila's bedroom searching for something. At the body's feet, the rug was ruffled and bunched up. With the handkerchief held tightly to his mouth, Dante offered up a muffled prayer. He glanced about the room. A small table and a wooden chair tucked under it. A phonograph, an unmade hospital bed in the corner, and a reading chair next to an aluminum table covered in books. With his free hand, Dante took an old afghan from the arm of the reading chair and tried to lay it over the upper body and head, but it bunched together and fell to the side. With the motion, a black cloud of buzzing flies flew up from their feasting, causing the head to shudder slightly, and then the head canted to the right and the skin came away from the skull. Fighting the urge to vomit, Dante backpedaled from the room.

_________________________

Boston Garden, North Station

FIERRO AND OWEN
were already seated in the nosebleed section high in the rafters of the Boston Garden when Cal arrived, out of breath and clutching three beers. Far below them on the undersized rink, the hockey players were throwing themselves against one another, fighting for the puck against the boards where heckling fans crowded. As Cal watched, the Bruins' captain, Milt Schmidt, crushed one of the Habs just past the visitor's bench so violently the wood shook and the crowd went wild banging the boards.

“You boys look like you've got a head start on me.” Cal squeezed by them to his seat, handing out the beers as he passed.

Owen, still in his police blues, stood and leaned back. “All in your honor, Cal,” he said, and squeezed Cal's shoulder. “All in your honor.”

“You made it,” Fierro said. “Jesus, your balls must be frozen blue.”

Cal grinned, but it was a tired gesture without humor. “What balls? Can't feel anything below my waist.”

He sat hard in the wooden chair, took off his hat. He left his coat on, drew his shoulders in; the cold had seeped deep into his bones and his mood had soured.

Owen lit a cigarette and handed it over.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Terrible thing about Sheila,” Owen said. “How's Dante taking it?”

“Seems like he's holding up, but you never can tell. I didn't think he had anything left after Margo's death.” Cal shrugged. “I guess we'll see.”

“Yeah, we'll see.”

“What does that mean?”

Owen sucked on his cigarette till his cheeks hollowed. When he was done he was still frowning. “It means to watch your back. I don't trust him.”

“Jesus, that's a hell of a thing to say after what's just happened.”

“He's a junkie.”

“You don't even know him.” They were both looking down at the game as they spoke.

“I know junkies. I know he'd sell his own mother out to get what he needs when he needs it.”

“Dante's always done the right thing by me.”

“Look, I'm not arguing with you, I'm just saying. The guy can't help himself. I mean, look at him. He could have saved his wife, and he didn't. He knew she was sick and he left her rotting away in their apartment, never once went for help. He let his own fucking wife die. And how many days did he lie in that bed with her for?”

“I don't know.”

“I don't know,” Owen mockingly echoed. “Well, I know. Four fucking days, that's how long. They should have kept him in Mattapan State for the rest of his life.”

There was a pileup in front of the Canadiens' net and a Bruin came free with the puck on his stick. A great roar went up from the crowd and everyone stood in their seats and then swore and moaned. Fierro stumbled back into his seat, spilling his beer. When the crowd sat, Cal could see that the Canadiens were driving past the blue line, three on one.

Owen turned to him. “You gonna let the cops do their job?”

Cal squinted through the cigarette smoke. “Sure,” he said.

“Sure?”

“Yeah, I'm fucking sure. What gives?”

Owen raised his hands in mock surrender and laughed. “Okay, okay. I had to ask even though I already knew the answer. Giordano, you remember him, don't you?”

“Giordano, Jesus, I went through the academy with that piece of shit.”

“Well, he rose through the ranks while you were away, and he's in line to be promoted to commander this year, so I'm betting he doesn't want anything messy on his plate. Just stay out of his way.”

WHEN HE HAD
finally settled into the game, he found he had to lean around one of the iron beams to see the action on the left side of the rink, and he cursed Owen and Fierro aloud for taking the good seats, but they were already drunk and took no notice of him. He scanned across the other seats, the rafters from which the 1929, 1939, and 1941 Stanley Cup championship banners hung. He fumed for a few minutes, knocked back his third beer in silence, and tried to follow what he could see of the game. Suddenly, Owen and Fierro were loudly discussing the ponies.

He waited a moment and then said, “We're watching a hockey game,” and they turned to look at him bleary-eyed. “Never mind,” he said, gesturing for them to continue. “Carry on. It's just a fucking hockey game against the Canadiens and we only need to win the damn thing if we have a shot of getting into the play-offs. And it's the middle of fucking February for Christ's sake, but if talking the odds at Suffolk Downs is more important to you, then be my guest, go ahead.”

An usher in a red sport coat and a hat with gold trim on the brim eyed them warily from the upper concourse. Cal slapped the back of his hand against Owen's shoulder and gestured that it was time for another beer. “I have to hit the head,” he said, took up his hat, and made his way back down the line of chairs. Fierro rose awkwardly and followed him. They climbed the steep stairs to the top concourse. At other times the long lines outside the few toilets snaked through the Garden's musty concrete corridors, but tonight they were in luck and the urinals were mostly empty. “The drunks are all staying in their seats,” Cal said. “They're too cold to move.”

“I agree, Captain,” Fierro said, and Cal glanced back at him, watched him lurch up to the olive-green cast iron basin that ran the length of the bathroom.

A grime lay upon the glass sconces above the toilets, and the light they gave off cast an oily sheen over everything. The radiators thumped with steaming water, and a long stream of hissing air sounded miserably through the valves. From one of the stalls came a painful-sounding groan, and someone shouted, “For Christ's sake, give us a fucking mercy flush, would you!” Outside, the sound of the game, the growing cheers, and then the sudden, exasperated moans of the Garden crowd. The amplified, barely intelligible voice of Frank Ryan came from the loudspeaker.

Fierro swayed at the urinals and splashed the tin loudly. Cal stepped to his right away from him and when he was done went outside and waited. He stared into the dark stands. It was so cold inside the Garden, most of the fans hadn't bothered to remove their overcoats. He cupped his hands together and blew into them. Fierro was at his shoulder. “C'mon,” he said, “follow me to the bar.”

At the beer stand Fierro ordered two cold ones. He raised his glass and eyed Cal blearily. “You need something warm in you,” he slurred, reached into his overcoat and pulled out a silver flask.

Cal watched Fierro as he drained half his beer. “Anthony, I've never seen you so drunk. Something get under your skin today?”

Fierro nodded slowly, pursed his lips. “You could say that.”

“You found something, yeah?”

“She was pregnant, Cal.”

“Pregnant? Sheila was pregnant?”

“It sure seems that way. She'd given birth recently.”

Cal reached for the flask, unscrewed it, and poured a liberal shot into his mouth.

“How long before her death, you think?”

“I don't know. It's tough to say. She was still healing. A few days perhaps—a week at the outside. She wouldn't have been in good shape before her death. Very weak.”

“She had no chance, then, before he tied her up and tortured her.”

“She would have had a hard time fighting back.”

Cal hit the flask again. He drained what was left of his beer and he turned the empty glass in his hand. Fierro stared at his own.

“Is this in the medical report?” Cal asked.

“Yes, of course, but we don't release that to the press. Owen doesn't think it's a big deal. But I just thought you—and Dante—should know.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

Cal went to move his feet, but they were stuck to the concrete floor. He lifted his shoe, tried to scrape off what was stuck there: popcorn, peanut shells, bits of hot dogs and buns made sticky by spilled beer. As he turned away from the counter, he looked up and caught the malevolent glare of two rats staring at him from beneath the slatted seats in the top row of the balcony, and he paused, glared back at them, but the rats didn't budge. Rats thrived in the Garden. It had been this way when he was a kid, too, and he wondered if they ever cleaned the Garden's floors. If anything the number of rats had multiplied.

“So,” Fierro said, spreading his hands, “what do we do now?”

Two blood-smeared fans were trading blows in the balcony and they'd caught the attention of the crowd, who seemed to be more interested in watching the two men go at it than watching the game. Cal looked toward the scoreboard and lowered his head. The Canadiens were up, 4–1. An uproar of cheers and screams and taunts came from the left side of the balcony as another group of men went at it, a drunk man falling headfirst over into the next row and a big square-jawed man pulling him up by the hair and driving a fist into his face. It seemed hopeless at this point, Cal thought. Fucking savages everywhere.

Below, Cal could see that Owen had left his seat and was making his way up to the beer stand, weaving among and momentarily lost in the crowd. He sighed, turned back to Fierro, and smiled grimly. “What do
we
do now? We get the fuck out of here and get us a drink somewhere more civilized. That's what we do.”

_________________________

Scollay Square, Downtown

NEAR DUSK CAL
wandered Scollay's back alleys and side streets. He'd made the rounds of the abortion doctors in the West End down to Fort Point and back again, asking about Sheila, but none of them remembered a girl of her description. Only Chang on Milk Street had given him any grief, but he'd put an end to that, too, by threatening to bring the detectives down on him to investigate the death of a Chinatown teenager, named Anita Chan, from the year before. She'd died from a botched abortion—Fierro had told him about that one—and Cal had always known that Chang had to be involved.

In the Square the lights of the Old Howard, ringed in phosphorescence, blazed across the sidewalk. Fresh-shaved young men, Harvard students, gray middle-aged businessmen, hair patted down with pomade, stood around smoking, stamping their feet in the cold, waiting for the burlesque star Sharon Harlow, main attraction of the marquee skin show, to come out. Cal heard the hollers as she exited the side doors. Slick-haired Harvard boys from over the bridge in Cambridge and young ruddy-faced hicks down from New Hampshire and Maine called out her name or waited red-cheeked and silent as she slowed to autograph napkins and photographs.

At the other end of the Square, beyond the cold glitter of the burlesque shows and bars, a flatbed and truck were parked before the two intersections of Tremont Row, blocked by BPD sawhorses. On both sides of the truck large placards announced
CONGRESSMAN MICHAEL FOLEY FOR U.S. SENATE
and showed the stoic, strong-jawed face of the congressman, his prematurely silver hair held down with oil and combed back from his forehead. At the tailgate, volunteers were handing out voter registration slips and bread rolls and, from the spigot of a dented vat, cups of steaming soup to a growing crowd of down-and-outs. Cal stopped for a moment, sheltering out of the wind, and watched the spectacle. A group of bums with their backs to him stood a little ways away, looking at the same scene.

The line at the flatbed was forty deep, and more were quickly pressing in. Off to the side of the flatbed, six cops stood with billy clubs in gloved hands, leather collars up and hats lowered just above the eyes. There were two other cops farther down the street, standing by a black limousine. Smoke billowed from the tailpipe, reflected the red neon lights of the Crescent Grill.

A gasoline-powered generator chugged dully on the flatbed and from speakers mounted atop poles on the cab of the truck came a distorted and crackling version of Boston College's fight song, “For Boston,” the words altered to sing the praises of the congressman. The sound reverberated tinnily throughout the Square so that the barkers for the vaudeville shows halfway down the block might have been calling from miles away. During the chorus one of the volunteers shouted through a bullhorn, “Who you gonna vote for?” And the other volunteers shouted, “Foley!”

With the urging of the volunteers and the promise of hot soup and bread, the crowd slowly began to reply in the same manner to each subsequent rallying call, and gradually a hesitant response rose to a loud if monotone refrain. When a few dozen registration slips had been handed out, a volunteer clambered onto the rear of the truck and slid its door up. From the back he began to heft frozen hams to other volunteers, who handed them to those with slips, crowding the truck in staggered lines.

Cal watched as a group began to gather by the idling limousine. Someone was stepping out of the car; flashes from camera bulbs lit the air. He heard one of the bums say, “There he is.”

“Who?”

“Michael Foley.”

There seemed to be a photographer from each of the five city papers snapping shots of the congressman talking and shaking hands with several bums handpicked for the purpose. Another pair of policemen wearing long navy trench coats now stood outside the group, and farther off, a cop atop a horse.

Cal lit a cigarette, bent his face low against the flame. Michael Foley looked better fed than he had in their days together on the Avenue as kids and more like his father, a longshoreman who'd turned to politics and graft and had dominated the unions in the late thirties. There had even been a time long before that when both his own father and Foley's had been friends. The congressman stood over six feet, broad-shouldered, wearing a tan wool coat, leather gloves, and a fine fedora with a feather angled under the black silk band. He shook hands with a few vagrants, patted one on the shoulder, and nodded enthusiastically when another said something to him. A reporter called out beside him, and he turned with a natural grace, put his hand on the back of a bearded man wearing a tattered raincoat, and posed as several more flashes went off.

“Christ, what a load of shit,” someone said.

Cal tightened his collar and moved to the rear of the crowd. There, the wind cut a little bit less and he could hear Foley speaking.

“I'm not going to stand here and tell you I can give you a home and a job right away. And I'm not going to say that the road ahead will be an easy one. But I can tell you that as your future senator, I can bring more opportunity, more money into this city, eventually get you back on your feet, and put some pride back into your lives.”

More bulbs went off as the photographers moved within the circle trying to capture the best angle; Foley in the forefront, tall, almost regal, and all those decrepit faces looking up at him. Foley even took off his fedora to create the brief illusion that he and those before him were more alike than not, and so the crowd and the press could see his face plainly, the harsh wind pressing back his oiled, leonine hair. It was an image taken right out of Mayor Curley's notebook, and Cal could imagine how it would look on tomorrow's front page.

“Foley, you're a fucking lowlife!” someone hollered, and Foley paused as heads turned searching for the culprit. Then it came again, and an old man standing shook his fist. “Who do you think is the bigger crook?! You, or your no-good brother?!”

One of the cops hooked his club through the loop on his belt and went to the man. Foley raised a hand as a peace offering—another flashbulb went off—shook his head, and went back to conversing with two homeless men.

“You're a crooked blowhard, Foley! Just like your father who fucked up the unions, just like your criminal brother. Full of shit, that's what you are!”

A thin man with a hard, sharp face and wearing a fur-collared greatcoat whispered something in Foley's ear and then walked back to the limousine, where a chauffeur stood. The chauffeur opened the rear door and, after the man climbed in the backseat, carefully shut the door behind him.

“You're a no-good, cocksucking crook!” the old man continued, and then gestured wildly to the crowd. “Don't fall for his bullshit, none of you fall for it!”

The cop grabbed the old man by the arm and pulled him away from the crowd. The man spat in the direction of Foley, but with the wind against him, it didn't get very far. Phlegm hung from his lower lip; he struggled and cursed the cop holding him. “Get your filthy hands off me!” he shouted as another cop took hold of him and dragged him out of the crowd.

Cal turned to watch them, and a young woman with bright cheeks and a red, white, and blue stovepipe hat came at him out of the crowd, pressed a large button into his hands.

“What's this?” Cal said, looking at Foley's face on the embossed tin smiling up at him.

“It's in support of Congressman Foley, our next senator.”

“What makes you think I'd vote for him?”

The young woman opened her mouth, stared at him wide-eyed and incredulous. The wind whipped the hair into her face, and she pushed it roughly away.

“Why, if you want a better Boston, a better state, of course you'll vote for him, sir. Are you registered to vote? If you come over to the truck we can have you registered in no time. It's every American's duty to vote.”

Cal shook his hand free. “Lady, I already did my duty,” he said, thrust the button into his coat pocket, and stepped away from the crowd.

On the next street over, Cal stopped at the top of the alley, watched as the two cops worked on getting the old man from the rally into a paddy wagon. One reached for his arm, but the old man shook him off with surprising strength and vehemence. Spittle caked about his lips, his mouth clamped down on the nearest cop's hand and the cop hollered, “He bit me, he fucking bit me,” and then the two of them went to work on him with billy clubs. The sound of wood smacking flesh and then the cracking of bone came to him and he fought the impulse to step in. He didn't need any trouble with the cops—not yet, anyway, and not with him and Dante searching for Sheila's killer. The cops' arms came down again and again, fog pouring out of their mouths as their breath ran ragged, and soon the old man stopped flailing and was still.