We Were Kings (34 page)

“Then you must like kids,” he said.

“You could say that. I'm much more at ease with the young and innocent than with the old and tarnished that come in here.”

She brought down the beer and joined in a conversation with two men as if she'd been part of it from the beginning. With how attractive she was, it wasn't surprising that the men entertained her with wide eyes and flattering words. Five minutes turned into ten, and Dante stood up from the stool and put down a five-dollar bill.

She came back to him. “Leaving so early?”

“Yeah.”

“I was just going to offer you one on the house.”

“I couldn't do that. By the looks of the crowd, you'll be lucky to scrape two dimes together for tips.”

She grabbed a rag and started wiping down the bar top. “Moody told me about you. He likes you, you know. And he's a good judge of character, so sit back down and let me buy you that drink.”

“Only if you'll let me buy
you
a drink. Not here, somewhere a bit more respectable.”

She took his glass and refilled it. “I'm not sure that's too wise. On your end or mine. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.”

And with that, a group of four men, three black and one white, came to the bar and pulled Isabelle's attention away from Dante, who sat and finished his drink, hearing her charm the men and them charm her back. He wondered if it was all an act or if she'd really meant what she had said.

On the stage, Louie Bierce fumbled at the keys and started over on a song he seemed unfamiliar with. At the bar, one of the men bought everybody a shot of vodka, even Isabelle, who downed hers with ease. Dante dropped another dollar on the bar top and left the club.

_________________________

Day Boulevard, South Boston

A FADED RUST-COLORED
bloodstain still marked the concrete pathway leading up from the sidewalk, and Cal and Dante paused briefly before it and then proceeded up the porch steps to the front door. Cal had been dreading this and he glanced at Dante as he rang the doorbell and it chimed somewhere deep in the house. A large dump gull, fat as they always were from the greasy french fries beachgoers threw to them, the type that sat on the roof of Sullivan's food stand at Castle Island, landed on the sun-bleached lawn, nosed about for a bit, and then stared at them. Footsteps padded down the hall, the curtain parted for a moment, and then the door opened. Anne looked worse than she had the day of the funeral, and she hadn't yet dressed. She was still in her robe, a green thing with gold shamrocks or flowers—Cal couldn't tell—filigreed across the collar and on the sleeve cuffs. It looked like something that had been given to her as a present and that she might only have worn once.

“Cal, Dante,” she said and stared at them. Cal noticed the unfocused quality of her eyes, the slow contraction of the pupils, and assumed she was either still in shock or heavily medicated. “Come in, please come in.” They went to move forward but Anne stood in the doorway, gazing out, and it took her a moment to realize she was in their way, and she shook her head and laughed awkwardly and stepped back into the hall. “Sorry, sorry, please come in.”

Anne closed the door after them and they stood in the hall, the light through the side window casting a pool of amber on the wood floor and creating the effect of a puddle shimmering about their feet. A clock ticked on a side table. Along the wall hung various family pictures, one of Owen in uniform directly out of the police academy. Cal had been at that ceremony. Anne didn't speak, merely hugged the robe tightly about her and looked at them.

“How are you?” Dante said.

Anne nodded as she considered the question. “I'm holding up, I think.” She tried to smile but it seemed manic and stretched on her thin, pale face. Cal reached out for her hands and held them. “Could we look through his belongings, Anne? We think there might be something he left that could help us find his killers.”

He thought she might shy away but her grip tightened as if with a reflex of fear, uncertainty. There was a blur of movement, a small figure rushing through the rectangle of light at the end of the dark hall, and Fiona sped from the kitchen into the living room, out of sight. She called out to her mother then, plaintive and questioning, but it took a moment for Anne to respond.

“It's all right, Fiona, it's just Uncle Cal and his friend. I'll be there in a minute.”

Anne sighed and let go of Cal's hands. “The detectives have already gone through all of his stuff,” she said, “but if you think it would help.”

Upstairs, Cal and Dante searched through his drawers without luck. Mechanically they slid open closet doors, parted his suits, pants, and shirts upon the rack, felt for anything that might have been left within them, ran their hands along the wall edges of the closet tops and bottoms. Cal felt an immense sadness as they went through Owen's clothes, as he touched the fabric, trying not to think of the man who would never wear them again. It reminded him of when he'd packed away Lynne's clothes and given them to the Salvation Army. The smell of the living was still here, in all of these things, and he imagined that Owen might come walking into the room at any moment and ask them what the hell they thought they were doing.

In Owen's small office, a personal safe sat by his desk with its iron-plated door left open. The police had rifled through it, and Cal noted that they'd had the decency to neatly stack the items they hadn't taken. Anne watched them from the door. A strange, resigned smile touched her lips but her eyes were far away—perhaps lost in a memory of standing in this same spot and watching Owen work at his desk.

“Owen always used the same combination,” she said. “Fiona's birthday.”

Inside there were citations, one medal, a rolled-up award, a Boston City Hospital card showing the imprint of their daughter's infant feet and her weight and length, all of their baptismal records, the deed and title for the house, envelopes filled with canceled paychecks and tax forms, and a bundle of small notebooks, the kind that Owen kept in the pocket on the inside of his suit, bound in elastic. Cal pulled them out and glanced at them—a list of contacts, cases opened and closed, suspects, names of innocents and the wrongs done to them, names of villains and their criminal pasts and prison records, dates of various events, leads, questions—the dialectic of the cop searching for some manner of illumination. Pedantic, measured, patient, methodical, dating back to his first year as a detective.

“They went through those,” Anne said. “Took a bunch but said they weren't hopeful that they'd help any.”

Cal nodded. “Yeah, they pretty much took everything that was necessary.”

“They took some of his clothes too.”

“When they're done with them, do you want me to ask for them back?”

“No.” She shook her head. “That's all right. He has other clothes too—” Anne waved distractedly, as if thinking were causing her pain or distress. She winced. “Downstairs,” she said. “I have so much laundry to do, Cal…I just haven't gotten around to it.”

“What?”

“Downstairs, in the cellar. He has clothes I never washed. I can't…I can't touch them…not yet. And Fiona's clothes too. She's been wearing the same thing for almost a week…”

“Did you tell the police?”

“I didn't, I didn't think—” She put a hand to her face and began to cry softly, and Cal and Dante looked at each other. Finally Cal went to her and held her shoulder, and with her eyes closed she placed her hand over his and they stood there for a while longer as she cried. She opened her eyes, red-rimmed and bleary, and stared at him. “I didn't think it mattered,” she said. “Why would it? For Christ's sake, it's only his dirty clothes. What kind of woman am I that I can't wash my husband's or my daughter's clothes?”

At the top of the stairs, they pulled on the chain for the bulb and then descended into the dirt cellar. The furnace heaved and sighed in the middle of the room, the flames through its grate showing in the dim light. A single bulb hung suspended over a washer and dryer lifted on four wooden pallets arranged side by side. The rest of the basement was dark. To the left of the washer were two laundry baskets full of soiled clothes and a gray slate soapstone sink in which a dirty rheum of wastewater sparkled. It smelled like laundry detergent, old sweat, the ash and oil belches from the furnace grate, and all of it cocooned in the damp heat. Cal began to lift the clothes from the first basket—dresses, skirts, tights, underthings—carefully placing them on the dryer. Beneath their clothing lay Owen's shirt and blazer, pressed down in the basket, where Owen had put them perhaps the day or night before he'd been shot.

Cal lifted out the crinkled shirt and creased jacket and spread them atop the washing machine. From upstairs came the sound of the child crying. He ran his hand along the top of the jacket and felt the bulge. He looked at Dante, his eyes wide, then reached into the inside pocket. It was another of the small notebooks, bound in elastic to keep the pages intact. Cal stripped off the elastic, opened the book, and leaned into the light of the bare bulb.

On the first page in Owen's tight, small script were his notes on the victims of the recent shootings and their possible connections to the first murdered man, the tarred-and-feathered victim, all leading back to the arrival of the boat,
Midir,
in Boston Harbor. Cal turned the page and scanned its contents: the arrival date of the boat, when Owen had first expected it to arrive, and its contents, the cargo of arms and ammunition, the letters
IRA
underlined twice.

“Here it is,” said Cal; he looked at it, squinting for a moment, and then abruptly thrust the notepad toward Dante. Dante looked at him. Cal's jaw was working, the muscles flexing as he ground his teeth. Dante leaned over the washing machine, held the open book toward the bulb, scanned the sheet, and stared at the bottom. Next to the informant's telephone number were initials in bold capitals:
M.B.
Cal said, “And I know the number, because I've already called it.”

It took a moment for his words to make sense to Dante. “Jesus,” he said. “The informant, it's Martin Butler.”

_________________________

Scollay Square

STRIPPED DOWN TO
his undershirt, Cal leaned over the sink and splashed water onto his face. He emerged from the bathroom wiping at his cheeks. For a moment he held the towel there so that only his eyes, bright and blue, were visible. Dante was at the window staring at the dark thunderheads that had turned the skies above Boston black. The air was still and charged. Even the breeze had died. A colony of gulls reared up over the rooftops and, shrieking madly, swooped toward the northwest. Then there was silence again.

When the phone rang it startled both of them. Cal draped the towel around his neck and picked up the receiver.

“They're coming,” the voice said, lilting and formal. “There's nine of them.”

“Butler—” Cal began but the line was already dead. “Bastard.”

“What is it?”

“It was Butler; he said they're coming and there's nine of them.”

“What's his game?”

“He's playing us off one another, using us to take them out. They think they have the drop on us and he wants them to keep thinking that.”

“How long have we got?”

“I don't know, twenty minutes? You should call Shea Mack now.”

“He may not get here in time.”

“Then we'll do the best we can. We can't run. They'll just track us down.”

Dante nodded and went to the phone. Through the window, beyond the pile drivers and wrecking-ball cranes, Cal could see the first arcs of lightning breaking like spiderwebs upon the bay. The thunder, when it came, was still so distant it seemed almost playful. This was going to be a big one and it was going to last. The table lamps flickered and ebbed, then grew bright again.

On the other end of the receiver, static crackled and popped and Dante had a difficult time hearing the operator. He almost had to shout the phone number to her. The storm was descending on the city and in a short time the skies would let loose—everything was about to break apart.

He had just gotten off the phone with Shea Mack when the lights flickered again and dimmed. This time they went out and stayed out, and Cal and Dante looked at each other in the dimness. Outside, the darkness pressed at the corners of the streets and alleyways. They could smell the charged air, the sense of it crackling like fire racing along a fine line of ethanol. Dante shrugged and put the dead phone in its cradle.

“Well, he knows,” he said.

“And?”

“I didn't ask him what his plan was. We have to hope he keeps his word.”

Cal lay the green duffel bag on the table and dumped its contents out. Two land mines with trip wires, two StG 44 machine guns, a pump-action shotgun, and four automatic pistols. Four boxes of bullets, a half a dozen 9 mm clips, and as many machine-gun magazines. He looked at the German S-mines, tapped their steel casings.

“We have to be in position when they come. We'll take watch at the front and back windows in the hallway; that way we'll have an eye on both stairs. We'll use the fire escape in the office as a retreat point if we need it. Once we're in the alleyway, we can use the dumpster for cover and return fire.”

He picked up the land mines and considered them. “And these,” he said. “These we'll use to slow them down at the door.”

“And we'll hope Shea Mack comes through,” Dante said, and paused. “You don't look scared.”

“Not scared? Jesus, I'm shitting myself right now. I was just hoping you wouldn't notice.”

Dante smiled but in the dim light his face was pale.

They took their time loading the guns, taping extra magazines to the machine-gun stocks, and then Cal set the mines by the door to the front office. When he was done, he stood and looked about the room. A strange sense of fondness for its dirty walls and cracked plaster, the windows with their taped glass, came over him.

The black sky had opened up and rain came down in a loud torrent, quickly flooding the streets. White lightning burst over the city, striking the highest points, and very soon they could hear the distant wail of fire engines. They looked to the north and watched as the lights of the city went out block by block, and then they were in darkness, listening to the rain and the thunder. Multiple lightning strikes came again—Cal counted ten strikes within seconds of one another—and as the room shuddered with thunder, they heard in the distance a distinctive electric popping followed by a succession of booming explosions.

“A bunch of transformers have blown,” said Dante. “Looks like we're stuck in the dark.”

“That might be a good thing.”

They stepped out into the hall, Cal taking the top of the front stairwell and Dante taking the back. They stood in the dim hallway sixty feet apart and looked out the windows onto the rain-washed street.

“What time is it?” Dante asked.

Cal didn't want to look at his watch; some superstition about bad luck nagged at him. The time was no longer important—that was for people who expected to be living in the next hour, and although he was trying to keep up a good front, he didn't know if that would end up being true, and he didn't want to dwell on it.

“Does it matter?”

“No. I suppose not.”

Dante lit a cigarette and smoked for a bit. Cal rested the StG 44 against the wall. The windows were open to their screens and rain splashed in off the windowsill and peppered him with water, but it felt good and kept his senses sharp. Every time lightning ripped across the sky the hair stood up on his neck and arms, created a brief buzzing at the back of his mouth. Three cars moved slowly down the street with their headlights on and then pulled up to the curb opposite the building. Dante put out his cigarette, leaned the pump-action shotgun against the wall, out of sight, and took up the StG. The men exited their cars wearing rain slickers and walked quickly across the street. Cal counted nine, just as Butler had said. They split into three groups, one group at each door of the building and one in the side alley toward the rear.

“You ready?” Cal said.

He stepped away from the stairwell and pressed himself against the wall. In the gloom Cal had the sense that Dante nodded. “Right, then,” he said and, hoisting the machine gun, he nodded too.

“Wait until they're on the stairs,” Cal said.

The front door and back-hall door banged open and they heard the men's voices and then their footsteps on the stairs, quick and methodical. Cal stepped from behind the wall and Dante did the same. Together they emptied the magazines down their separate stairwells.

Cal's bullets tore up the plaster walls and wooden banister and shattered the glass of the front doors after going through the two men. Their bodies, riddled with bullets, thumped heavily down the stairs and then lay together in the vestibule, still and unmoving.

In the back-hall entrance the rear man had died first and fallen forward, trapping the lead shooter, and now he slumped against the wall, six ragged bullet holes in his shirt spouting blood and an empty gory space where his left eye had been. Dante stared down at him, at the young, pale face still gleaming from the rain, and felt the gun in his hand hot and its barrel steaming slightly, then he grabbed the pump-action and broke into a run toward the office doors.

Cal, breathing hard through his nose, met him there, slammed the door behind them, and quickly set the trip wires.

From the back office they climbed out the window and onto the fire escape and were immediately soaked. Directly below was an industrial trash dumpster into which hordes of rats were streaming, slick and black from the rain. Cal and Dante faced the brick rear of buildings and a crooked rectangle of three alleyways. To their left was an open shot to the North End, or they could take the alley back to Hanover. The right took them to Cambridge Street. Across from the fire escape was the alley that eventually came out on Brattle.

The rain was beating down so hard they could barely hear anything above the downpour. Only the thunder, when it came, was louder, and the ground seemed to shake beneath it. The rain pounded the walls and the railings, blinding them as they descended to the alley.

They were halfway down the fire escape when they felt the concussive blast of the explosion and the windows blew out above them. They lowered their heads as shards of glass razored down and the railings shook. Dante dropped his gun and slipped as he reached for it and then they were descending again as fast as they could on the slick metal. Bullets ricocheted off the railing close to Cal's hand. They made it the last ten feet down the fire escape to the dumpster, where they crouched, listening as more bullets pockmarked the metal and pinged, scattering into the corners.

“I can't see,” said Cal. “Where are they?”

Dante squinted through the rain and then leaned back. “Two of them, both on this side of the alley, just down from the street.”

Cal nodded. “I'll have to get across to the other side of the alley to get a position on them.” He looked at Dante, his hair flattened and rainwater dripping down his face into his mouth. “Ready?” Dante nodded. “On the count of three. One. Two.
Three!
” Dante rose from behind the dumpster and opened up the StG 44, spraying the top of the alley with bullets, and Cal lunged across to the other side, running the twenty yards as best he could on his bad leg.

He stepped into the protection of the wall, and before Dante had finished firing he began his own volley, seeing the dark figures of de Burgh's men positioned in the far alley across from him. He heard one of them scream out a slew of curses, and then the brick and mortar before Cal's head exploded, sending shards into his cheek and across his face. He stepped back, pressed himself against the alley wall, and breathed deeply. He could feel the blood seeping down his left cheek and jaw, and his left eye seemed to be filling with it. He turned his head up into the rain and let it wash the blood away, then stared out across the alley again.

Dante was pinned down for a moment behind the dumpster, but Cal could tell by the rate of gunfire that, for now, he was facing a single shooter. He'd shot one of them, he was sure, and he ran the numbers through his head again. Two in the front stairwell, two in the back. At least one dead at the door to the office from the land mine, and now one more, wounded at least. And the other one accounted for with Dante. That left maybe two more men.

He put another cartridge in the assault rifle, watched as Dante rose and fired, and then leaned out and sprayed the corner again. One man was down—he could see his legs sticking out, flat on the ground, and the other shooter was forced to slip back into cover as Cal and Dante kept up their fire. Cal paused, waiting a moment, and then the shooter came into view again. It was Donal, the Pioneer. Cal was about to let another volley go when he felt the gun at the back of his head. He hadn't heard the man come down the alley behind him.

He turned his head slightly, glimpsed the face, but couldn't place it. Blondish hair plastered against the scalp, and bloodshot eyes, rain dripping from his brow. “Easy now,” the man said.

“What are you waiting for?” Cal asked. Rain banged and clattered off the tops of trash cans in the alley. It gushed from overflowing roof gutters and spilled down on them. The gunfire and the thunder seemed to have no effect on the rat population—their only concern was drowning, and they moved about the men's feet, sniffed for a moment, and then kept going.

“You knew we were coming,” the man said. “Someone tipped you off.”

Cal could hear the thump of his heart, at first quick as a trip wire, and now slowing. He sighed, waiting for the bullet. There was nothing more to say, and he only hoped Dante could get out of this, that Shea Mack might arrive in time, that he hadn't deceived them both.

Another man from the far alleyway was shouting, screaming at the shooter to kill Cal; sharp and distinct, Cal saw the sawed-off at the other man's side, slipped through his belt loop, the weapon that had killed Owen. The large, bald man was waving his other gun—an automatic—madly.

“I'm not going to kill you,” the man behind him said. “I'm done with it, done with all of it.” He stepped back farther into the alley. “There was only one other person knew we were coming here. It was Butler, yeah? All along, Butler, and now he's sold us out, just like he sold out the others.” He didn't wait for a response. His gun was still raised on Cal as he moved quickly backward.

Through the rain and before a peal of thunder silenced him, Cal heard the man across the alley shouting: “Myles, you're a fucking dead man. We'll be coming after you, ye bastard! We'll be coming for your head, you fucking tout!”

When Cal looked again, the man was gone. It was as if he'd parted the rain like a curtain, stepped through, and closed it after him. Cal flattened himself against the wall. The man with the sawed-off was still shouting about how they were going to come after the other man and kill him.

Cal lifted the gun. He spit rainwater from his mouth and waited for Dante to emerge from the dumpster and start shooting. His heart began to speed up again and the sickness of adrenaline swirled in his stomach. He tried hard to focus on the shooters that remained, fought to maintain his hold on the gun and resist the shakes that he felt throughout his body. He exhaled deeply and briefly closed his eyes. “It's all right,” he said to himself. “You're still alive. We're still alive. It's all right, Lynne, Jesus, Lynne.”

A series of lightning bolts shredded the sky, so close he could feel the air ripple with their charge, striking the high rooftops, and Dante began firing again. And then Cal took a deep breath, stepped out from cover, and ran toward the shooters, the StG 44 shuddering with bullets pumping from the magazine and ejected in a stream of smoke from the chamber.

The man with the sawed-off in his belt emptied his 9 mm and reached for the shotgun. Cal's bullets seemed to strike everything but the man—they spattered and skittered through the puddles about the man's feet, tore divots out of the brick at his back—but he continued shooting, and then, from Dante's angle, multiple machine-gun bursts punched holes in the man's side, his arm, and his shoulder. A chunk of his neck erupted in gore, and he fell to the ground soundlessly.