Boston Noir (20 page)

Paul leaned against the kitchen sink holding a glass of water, while their father sat in his chair at the same spot at the same table they'd had since Michael was a small boy.

"Here he is, Dad," Paul said. "I'll go slay the fatted calf."

"Michael. How've you been?" His father stood and offered his hand.

"Hey, Dad." They shook. "You say that like you haven't seen me in years. I was here, what, two weeks ago?"

"Yeah? Seems longer."

"How's Ma?"

"Go up and see. She's awake, we just put her in the chair."

Upstairs in the front bedroom, their mother was propped up in her wheelchair looking out at the street. While on chemo for breast cancer, she had a stroke, or a
shock
, as his aunts called it. Her left hand had curled into a claw, and her whole left arm was as rigid as the left side of her face was slack.

"Hi, Ma." He kissed her forehead and put his chin on the top of her head. His eyes stung, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose until it hurt enough to stop the tears. He kissed her cheek and sat at the foot of the bed, hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, as they both peered out the window.

"Michael?" Her voice sounded like she'd swallowed shards of glass, and the way she said his name broke his heart. "When will it stop?"

Michael stared down at his feet. "Pretty soon, Ma."

It was a warm day and the windows were up as life passed by on the street below. Kids on Sting-Ray bikes with towels draped around their necks hollered at each other on their way to Wollaston Beach; young mothers pushed strollers carrying big-headed toddlers; cars rolled by, windows down, volume up, sharing the thump with one and all, like it or not.

It was hard for Ma to speak, but his three sisters were here every day, and their kids visited several times a week, so she had more family news than he did. The result was Michael stretched out sideways on the bed with his hands folded on his stomach, talking to her about his softball team, which was just fine. What he said didn't matter, she just needed the comfort of his voice.

He heard the steps squeak and a few seconds later his father came into the bedroom. He sat in an armchair and they talked about Yaz and the Red Sox. If Michael wanted to avoid the AA jive he had to stay on his toes. When the conversation began to slow, he moved rapidly to other safe topics, like politics, war, and religion. Yet the old man could spot the smallest opening and race through it, turning an innocent remark about the weather into a tale of winos in winter. Many were the trolls pulled from under a bridge and into a meeting by a hazy memory of free donuts--but not all who were called by the pastry were chosen by the higher power to live clean, dry lives, and those who were gave thanks to the program, the program, the program.

His mother was snoring softly in her chair. She'd sleep on and off until late evening. Most nights she'd lie awake in the dark, listening to Larry Glick on the radio.

"She's been asking me if I think you're going to stop soon," his father said.

"Yeah, I'll stop by again soon." Michael looked at his watch and stood up. "Now I gotta scoot. I'll be back in the next few days, okay?"

"Yeah," his foiled father said, a note of resignation in his voice. "Okay."

Paul was still downstairs and he walked out with his brother.

"Did you ever deliver to Pat's Vending down in Providence?" Paul asked.

Michael looked up to his mother's window as they walked across the street to his car. "A number of times. New candy and tonic machines, mostly."

"They own a ton of cigarette machines too, in bars and strip joints. The owner's son is going to take the Blue Ribbon load. He'll get top dollar in the machines."

"This won't do your new boss Salezzi any good, will it?"

"Probably not." Paul smiled and shrugged. "It's a tough game."

At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Rosie the dispatcher handed Michael the BPM delivery papers. "You get our first load from this shipper, Mosely. Try not to screw it up."

Michael walked out of the terminal into the truck yard and climbed up into his tractor, a spotless red U-model Mack. He turned the key to the on position and pushed in the black rubber nipple on the dash, kicking the diesel to life. At the top of the long sideview mirror he saw dull gray smoke roll out of the stack. He fed the noisy beast some fuel, and the smoke, now thinned by heat, shot out of the pipe. He pushed in the clutch, wiggled the stick into second, and, with the heel of his hand, whacked the pentagonal red button on the dash. With a sharp
whoosh
, the tractor brake was off and so was he, over to the trailer pad, searching for the right trailer, number 5432. There were five rows of trailers, about a hundred in all, but the high-value load would be in the first row. He found it, turned the truck away from it, and stopped fast, skidding the eight tires on the rear axles. He looked at the three mirrors while he wiggled the stick into reverse, took a bead on the trailer, and rushed the tractor backwards at the box. He stopped when the fifth wheel was about an inch from the bottom of the trailer. He pulled out the red pentagon to lock the air brake, slipped the vehicle into neutral, opened the door, and swung himself out.

Standing on the grate at the back of the tractor, between the tractor and trailer, he unhooked the hoses for the trailer brakes and the light cord that hung on the back of the Mack, then coupled them with the connections on the trailer, swung back into the cab, popped it in reverse, and rammed the fifth wheel under the trailer. The box lifted as the Mack wedged underneath, the kingpin locked, and Michael put the stick in first gear, left the trailer brake on, and tried to pull back out from beneath the box. He rocked the coupled unit violently, trying to break the grip. The last thing he wanted was to make a turn out on the road and see the trailer uncouple and go zipping off alone. The trailer felt light, but he was used to pulling loads out of P&G; a full load of soap could weigh forty-two thousand pounds.

He switched on the lights and flashers and got out to do a series of visual checks, along with bopping the tires with a mallet, checking for flats. At the back of the trailer, he checked the security seal on the doors. To open the doors, the skinny metal strip had to be cut. It was stamped with a unique number that had already been called in to BPM security. The guard at BPM was supposed to come out to verify the seal number, but he wouldn't have to today.

Michael walked toward the front of the box and rolled up the landing gear. He climbed into the Mack, slammed the stick into second, and punched the brake buttons. The brakes released with a great hiss, then he popped the clutch and the tractor roared and jumped ahead, slamming the driver's door closed with a metallic bang, as the trailer slid out of its hole. He was in fourth gear by the time he swept around the corner of the building. At the far end of the yard the security gate was closed. He aimed at it, building speed and pulling on the air horn cord, and the gate seemed to jump before it rolled aside.

Thirty minutes later, Michael was stopped at a red light on Route 106. A hand reached in the open passenger window, pulled up the lock button, and TJ climbed in.

"There's no seat here." TJ crouched, like someone would be right along to bolt a seat to the floor underneath him.

"Close the door and sit on the floor. Get down, will ya!"

"People are supposed to see me so you can say you were hijacked."

Michael had no answer to that, so he just glared straight ahead. The light turned green, the truck lurched, and the matter was resolved by TJ falling on his ass.

At Route 18, they headed south.

TJ stretched to see the sideview mirror. "Is Larry still behind us in the van?"

"Silly bastard is so close I can't even see him," Michael said. "It's like he's skid-hopping me."

"Boy, you're a real grouch. Is it because you're hungover? Or not drinking?"

At the Middleboro Rotary they picked up Route 44 west and had the road almost to themselves.

"That the sign?" Michael took his foot off the accelerator.

"That's it," TJ affirmed. "Weir Brothers Saw Mill."

Michael checked his mirrors, braked, then geared down the transmission and pressed the fuel pedal, swinging into the turn.

"Man, you took that fast. It's a miracle you didn't tip this over."

"We were going too fast to slow down. You go into a turn on the brake and you wreck."

They bumped along a wide asphalt road until it became a single-lane cement dust strip. At the end, in the middle of an enormous hangar wall, was a rusted corrugated sliding door, twenty feet high, forty feet wide.

"We're supposed to drive right in."

"I vote we open the door first," Michael said. He rolled the truck up near the door and stopped.

"Paul said we should drive right in."

"He may have assumed that between us we'd figure out what to do if the door was closed. I think we should try to open it first. I can always crash the truck through it, you know, if nothing else works."

Thomas Jefferson Moran jumped out like a parachutist, landed, and walked toward the door, turning a 360 as he went, glancing in all directions. He grabbed the handle on the metal door with his right hand, leaned all the way to the left, using his weight to slide the door open. He almost fell when the door rolled easily. He turned and gave his accomplice the finger.

Michael put on his headlights to see a wide cement floor inside the hangar. He played the clutch out, and the truck crept inside, TJ walking along beside it. Michael hit the high beams and about a hundred yards off, at the back of the hangar, he could make out piles of unfinished picnic tables. He swung the steering wheel left and right, using the tractor like a giant flashlight, looking for the empty rental trailer that was supposed to have been left inside. Back in the van, Larry had lengths of metal rollers they were going to use to convey the freight from the Triple-T trailer to the rental box. But all Michael saw in front of him was the inside of a cavernous, abandoned saw mill.

Larry pulled the van inside the building, up near the front of the trailer. He stopped and was getting out when Michael jumped down from the tractor.

"Where's the empty trailer?" Larry asked. "They were supposed to leave it by last night at the latest. What's the story?"

"How would I know?" Michael answered.

"Should we just leave this trailer here?" TJ said. "Should we unload it?"

"I don't know," Michael snapped. He walked back to the trailer doors, took out a jackknife, and sawed at the seal until it broke. He opened the doors carefully in case the load had shifted. There was always a chance something could fall out and land on your head. But not today; the trailer looked almost empty, other than some cartons he could see in the nose. "Aw, shit." Michael climbed in the trailer and walked up to the nose. When he returned, he went to the back end of the trailer and looked up at the number stenciled in black at the top inside corner. "Forty-five seventy?" he said.

He jumped down, grabbed the trailer door, pushed it closed, and stared at the four-digit number affixed to the door:
5432
. He pulled at the corner of the number on the outside of the trailer door, peeled the decal off, and revealed a different number underneath:
4570
.

"He put phony numbers on."

"Who?" TJ asked. "How?"

"How's easy. There're cartons full of number decals in the repair shop." Michael looked at his watch. "Let's go. Quick." He gestured to Larry. "Give me the van keys."

Michael drove the van, Larry rode shotgun, and TJ sat on the floor between the seats.

"What was up in the front?" Larry asked.

"Eight pallets of Cocoa Puffs."

Michael pulled the van into one of the spaces in the drivers' parking lot at Triple-T Trucking.

"You gotta say something, man," Larry mumbled. "What are we doing here?"

Michael looked at his watch. "Good. Five of 8."

"So," TJ said, "are we surrendering or what? You got a plan?"

Michael pointed toward the terminal building, a monstrosity the length of three football fields that had dock doors numbered 60 through 140 on the side facing them.

"See the ramp? And all those red Macks parked in rows? At 8, it's going to look like a jail break. About fifty guys are going to come down that ramp, jump in those tractors, and start driving around, all over the yard. Some will hook up to trailers backed into the dock doors, the rest are headed to the trailer pad in the back to hook up out there. I'm going to go in the repair shop and get a dupe key from the cabinet. Jimmy, the Waltham driver, is on vacation this week and nobody will use his tractor. He eats his lunch in it and throws the bags on the floor. It smells like a restaurant dumpster."

"Why? What are you doing?" Larry asked. "Why don't we call Paul?"

"On what? You and him got shoe phones?"

"On a pay phone," Larry said.

"Okay. Where is he? Where do I call?"

"I don't get what we're doing," TJ said.

"These guys don't screw around. If we want to keep breathing, we need those cigarettes."

"What cigarettes? That's my answer," TJ said. "We don't have none. Never did."

"Which guys? Who we're stealing from? Or selling to?" Larry asked.

"Both, probably," Michael speculated.

"I
knew
this was a bad idea," TJ said. "My grandmother was right. First time I got pinched, she said, 'Thomas, be careful. Life's going to be tricky for you because you're a complete fuckin' idiot.' I said, 'Me? No way.' She had me pegged."

"Why do you think the load is here?" Larry asked.

"What's a better place to hide a forty-five-foot Triple-T trailer?" Michael said. "They're on 4570. Not the real one, but one here with that number on it. Look, you want to, go home, I'll keep you guys out of it."

"Screw you," Larry said. "We stick together."

Larry looked at TJ, who closed his eyes and nodded. "It's what we do."

The receiving department for Pat's Vending was around the back on a side street. Although cars were parked on both sides of the road, there were
No Parking
signs posted near the receiving doors so Michael had plenty of room to draw the trailer up along the curb. He pulled out the plunger on the dash and the engine shuddered and died. He turned the key off and jumped out.