Her words drove him back a step. "Claire. Wait-- "
"Don't you
ever
fucking speak my name again." She held out the phone with her thumb over the numbers. "If you make me call, I will tell them everything."
He stepped back again, the phone like a gun in her hand. "All I ever wanted-- "
She pressed her thumb down.
"Nine."
"Don't do this."
"You better run now." She pressed again.
"One."
He was going to stay. He was going to face whatever came.
Then she lost it, screaming at him,
"Get out!"
-- backing him down the hall to the front door by the sheer force of her emotion--
"Get out!"
-- shaming him down the steps and out alone onto Packard Street.
37
A Beating and a Meeting
T
HE OLD DOOR GAVE in like it had been waiting years for someone to put a good shoulder to it. Doug brushed past the cardinal's picture and the holy-water bowl to Jem's game room, where the stereo was on, the CD long over, the volume turned way up on nothing, speakers emitting a dry auditorium PA hum. The couch of green leather was empty.
Seeing the plastic tea bag underneath the glass coffee table was like finding the last piece to a jigsaw puzzle Doug didn't even know he was working on. If he had been paying closer attention, he wouldn't have needed that one final piece to make out the complete image.
The late-night music. Jem's disappearances, his raccoon life. The camo kids. His dukes to Fergie.
Doug tore back down the hall, banging open Jem's bedroom door along the way and whipping blankets off the heap of cushions Jem called a bed. Then into the front parlor and its bow windows with torn screens overlooking Pearl Street. Jem's woodworking tools were laid out on sheets of newspaper, and there, atop an old end table, stood a nearly completed dollhouse. It was a scale replica of that very same triple-decker, all three stories with the western wall cut away. Doug lifted his boot to crush it, but some small voice of mercy told him the house was a gift meant for Shyne. Instead he kicked over a standing lamp and stomped in its head.
Then he heard the familiar revving of the overtuned engine and went to the center window. The Flamer was pulling up curbside on the street below. Doug was downstairs and outside in a flash.
Jem smiled his broad, Joker-faced grin as Doug strode toward him, the grin fading just as he saw Doug's fist coming around-- no telegraphing it, no buddy-boy slo-mo-- Doug tagging his chin with a "Fucking mother
fuck
!" and Jem banging off the trunk of his car and rolling into the gutter. A shopping bag spilled out of Jem's hand, little paintbrushes and tubes of modeling paint and wood glue tumbling into the street.
"Chrissst!"
said Jem, getting up on his knees and touching his mouth, his fingers coming away bloody.
"You kept your mask, you fucking
psycho
-- " Doug kicked him under his shoulder, high on his ribs, bouncing him against the bumper of his car.
"Wait. What?" Jem was back up on one knee. "Hold it. Duggy. Hold it."
Then Jem sprang at him from a crouch, burying his neck and shoulder in Doug's midsection and running him back across the sidewalk, slamming him hard against the clapboard siding of the house.
Doug took a fist to the hip. He hammered Jem's back, trying to throw him off, but Jem anticipated this and shifted his weight as Doug tried to muscle him around, Doug falling ass-first to the slanting sidewalk.
Jem was on top of him now, head still buried in Doug's gut, arms swinging strong. A hockey fight, Doug with Jem's shirt almost up over his head, the freckled spray of his back exposed.
"Fucking duster!" shouted Doug. "How you stayed up all night after the wedding, huh? Why you shot up the place? I pulled a job with a fuhhh-- "
Jem landed a shot on Doug's kidney. He was working hard, wrestling his way up Doug's chest, a lot bigger and stronger than he used to be. With just a little more leverage, Jem would have him pinned.
Doug was losing this fight. If Jem got up onto his chest, Jem would hammer him into the sidewalk.
Doug reached under him and grabbed Jem's belt with one hand, his shoulder with another. In a burst of righteous fury, Doug used all his strength to lift Jem off his chest, the dust-head's work boots kicking in the air as Doug boosted him up and over, Jem coming down hard on his shoulders and back, Doug rolling away free.
Jem scrabbled to stand but Doug was up and running at him, grabbing shirt and shorts and ramming him headfirst into a neighbor's pickup. Dented and dazed, Jem tried to kick backward at Doug's balls, but Doug caught the boot and spun him around, grabbing him up and teeing off, landing a good hard punch, undeflected, in Jem's face.
His nose burst its blood and Jem crashed back onto the hood of a car, sliding down off the corner headlamp and dumping onto the street in a heap.
There he lay, squirming on his belly, holding his face with both hands. Doug stood over him, head roaring from the madness of savagery and the earlier fall to the sidewalk. The wet things in his eyes: they were tears.
"Get up."
Jem rolled over, curling in pain. Blood hung in snotty ribbons from his chin and a gash had opened over his nose, street sand matted in the bloodstain on his cheek. "Did it few, man," he said.
"Get up."
"I did it few." His words came out in gobs of bloody drool. "Did it fuss. Why her, man? All udder chicks in a world. Why?"
"Get up, Jem, so as I can
knock you the fuck down again!
"
"Fuckin' who you better 'an? You better 'an me?"
Onto his knees. Far enough. Doug tagged him in the chin and Jem dropped back, sprawling.
Jem smiled now, bloody-toothed, lying there in the street. "Din't even touch'er, man. Jest a warning. I true her back. Small fiss."
"Good for you. Then you'll live."
Jem wanted to sit up but his ribs wouldn't let him. He rolled to his side but couldn't get up that way either, so he gave up and lay back, grinning up at the sky.
It wasn't enough for Doug. He bent down and grabbed Jem's bloody shirt, lifting him off the road. Jem's white eyes lolled as he smiled at Doug's fist.
"Why 'on't you hit yousself," said Jem. "Jest fucking hit yousself."
Doug wanted one more. He wanted it bad. But he feigned it first, and Jem didn't flinch, his eyes cloudy like dishwater.
Doug let him drop. Jem coughed, giggling as he bled. "'Appily ever after," he muttered.
Doug walked away unsatisfied, a dark cloud carrying a massive electrical charge, still needing release.
Krista was out on the sidewalk. She had stood there and watched her brother get the Irish kicked out of him-- and remained there still as he lay muttering and giggling in the street. She looked at Doug, taking a step toward him-- but Doug was already starting away up the slope, hands aching, ears roaring, half-blind with despair.
* * *
FRAWLEY'S SUBLET CAME WITH a parking space in a low-ceilinged garage just off First Avenue, the main road bisecting the decommissioned Charlestown Navy Yard. On the land side of First stood the old brick shipbuilding factories, including an obsolete ropewalk building a quarter mile long. On the water side stood the redesigned wharves, brick foundries that had been carved into waterfront two-bedrooms. The redeveloped yard was more campus than neighborhood, skewing predominantly toward successful single professionals. Frawley imagined the old dockworkers and longshoremen coming back from the grave to find their stomping grounds turned into a community of high-rent condos populated by the young, the clever, the uncallused.
The ninety-minute commute home from Lakeville had nested in Frawley's lower back, and he stood out of the dread Tempo, both hands on its roof, stretching the pain away. He was examining the car's fading blue finish-- gray spots spreading across the roof like mold-- when he heard footsteps coming up behind him, hard and thudding, like boots. Frawley instinctively reached inside his jacket before turning.
MacRay was empty-handed, unshaved, and hungover-looking in a faded gray T-shirt and jeans, moving fast through the sulfurous light.
Frawley gripped the butt of his SIG-Sauer 9mm but did not draw, and MacRay stopped within an arm's reach, breathing hard, homicide in his eyes.
Frawley was shocked and trying to conceal it. Pulling his gun would have been prideless. He slid his creds out of his breast pocket instead, folded them open.
"Special Agent Frawley, FB-- "
MacRay swatted the billfold out of Frawley's hand. It fluttered like a wounded bird and dropped to the concrete a few feet away.
Frawley's heart fell just as fast. The rudeness of the act, its near childishness, settled on his face like a dark pair of sunglasses, helping him move past fear.
"Don't make a mistake here, MacRay," said Frawley. "I want to take you down, but not for this."
MacRay stared, more controlled than Frawley had first thought. He looked past Frawley with expert distaste. "Upgraded to the Tempo, huh? Nice ride."
Frawley fought off questions: How long had MacRay been on him? How had MacRay known he would be here?
MacRay said, "Know what happened to me? Some fucking douche bag keyed my Vette. You believe that shit?"
Frawley saw the emerald green car parked along the wall, saw its long silver scar.
"Fucking with a man's ride, that's some cowardly-ass shit, don't you think?" MacRay went on. "I mean, what do you call someone who would do a thing like that, huh? A punk? A pussy?"
Frawley said, "I take it she dumped you."
"Hey,
fuck
you."
Frawley worked up a smile. "How long did you think that was going to last? What was your play there, MacRay?"
"You don't know nothing about it."
"Reminds me of smokehead ATM jumpers. Password thieves, they get the secret code, they think they can ride that card forever." Frawley then noticed MacRay's open, anxious hands-- the crook's knuckles cut, swollen like walnuts. Frawley said, "If you laid a hand on her-- "
"Fuck you," said MacRay, dismissing him with a wave. It was convincing, but Frawley would have to check on Claire Keesey himself to be sure.
MacRay backed off a little, walking in a tight, agitated circle like a dog in a cage, while Frawley stood in repose.
"Like your sponsor there," said Frawley, pushing back at him now. "Firefighter Frank Geary. The wife-beater, trying to school me. You reformed drinkers, you're the worst."
MacRay came back at him hard, pointing. "Listen to me. You stay the fuck away from him, got that? Who's this between? You want to know something about me? Here I am. What?"
Frawley held his composure. "I have nothing to say to you."
"'Course not. You'd rather go slinking around, talking to everybody else
but
me. Who had the balls to face who? Fucking little dink."
"You came here to call me names, MacRay?"
"Just thought I'd swing by, introduce myself personally."
"Damn neighborly of you."
"Strip away some of this bullshit between us. This dance."
Frawley said, "I'm not dancing."
"Yeah? Me either." MacRay looked out through the open walls of the garage to the lights along First Avenue. "What you think, you're undercover here? You think you live in Charlestown? The yard ain't Charlestown. You got no idea what's going on."
"I know plenty."
MacRay squinted, taking Frawley's measure. "So what is this? This about her?"
Frawley frowned him a
fuck you
. "This is about a bank."
"Yeah." MacRay turned away, his circular pacing again. "Sure it is."
"About a movie theater too."
"Movie theater?" MacRay cocked his head like he might not have heard that right.
"You fucked up, MacRay. You and your crew."
MacRay continued his circuit. "You lost me back at the movie theater thing."
"Surprised me, that. Armored-truck heisting with the crusts cut off. A soft job. Maybe you're gun-shy. Maybe you're a little more afraid of me catching up with you than you'd like to admit."
Frawley was inside his head with a bullhorn, MacRay walking faster, mad.
"Struck me that maybe," Frawley went on, "maybe this was a job pulled by someone thinking about getting out. Even hanging it up for good. For the love of a good woman, perhaps. I'm thinking it's fifty-fifty you came here tonight to tell me good-bye."
MacRay slowed then, denying Frawley the explosion he expected. "She doesn't want you, man," MacRay told him. "Nothing you can do will change that."
