Serpents in the Cold (15 page)

_________________________

Boston Police District D-4, South End

A SOFT, WET
snow came down and the wipers clacked back and forth across the new windshield. Cal had the heater on and sipped coffee; every so often he lit a cigarette and let down the window to blow the smoke out. He'd swung by Scollay Square before following Owen and Dante to the precinct, had shuttered and locked the Pilgrim Security offices, and although he expected the phones to remain dead, he'd had their calls put through to the answering service. He stared through the bleary glass, wiped at it with his sleeve, watched the gray of the street: police cars moving in and out of their spots and cops and pedestrians trudging sluggishly up and down the stairs to the precinct. To the north the lights of the John Hancock Building flashed red, shimmering through the sleet. He checked his watch, and when he looked up, Dante was descending the stairs: so slow and disheveled he looked like a man who'd spent the weekend in the drunk tank, a man with nothing in his pockets and nothing to lose. Dante stood at the bottom of the steps and glanced up and down the street until Cal tapped the horn twice and got his attention. He climbed in wearily, and Cal stared at him, handed him the cigarette he'd been smoking.

“How'd it go?” Cal asked.

Dante sucked on the cigarette, blew smoke out from his nostrils. He looked through the glass and shrugged.

“I would have come in but it would have just made it worse for you. That fucker Giordano hates my guts.”

“He was okay. Someone had to ask the questions.”

“Was Owen in the room with you?”

“Yeah. He even told Giordano to lay off a couple of times.”

“Good for Owen, the prick.”

Cal put the car in gear and eased out into the street, past the old redbrick and brownstone row houses of the South End, and then onto Columbus. Dante hadn't looked at him since he'd gotten in the car.

“What did they want to know about you and Sheila?”

“I don't want to talk about it, okay?”

Cal focused on the traffic; they crossed one intersection and then another, idled as they waited for a light to turn green. He coughed into his hand, wishing there was a bottle in the glove compartment. He turned to Dante and noticed his eyes were red and glassy, as if he'd been crying.

“Was there something that happened between you and Sheila that you're not telling me?”

“I told you, I don't want to talk about it.” He was staring through the windshield, eyes glistening.

Cal kept his mouth shut, considering. After a moment: “Fine, then. We won't talk about it.”

On the road before them a green Ford swerved into their lane. Cal slammed down on the horn, cursed under his breath. The Ford straightened out and moved ahead.

“No matter what Owen says, I know Blackie had a hand in this. And if we get to Scarletti first, maybe we'll find out just what that is.”

At the intersection Cal gunned the car as the traffic light went from green to red. “So, this Shea Mack, how well do you know him?”

Dante turned and rolled down the window. Wind rushed through the car, and he sucked in the cold air.

“Shea Mack works Fort Point and the West End,” he said matter-of-factly, and turned an odd and strangely disquieting smile at Cal, as if he were opening doors to his past that he would rather have left closed. “And I know where we can find him.”

_________________________

Somerset Street, West End

A VOICE CALLED
from the room beyond the heavy curtains. Local and yet with a fake drawl, sickly sweet as it might come from a man mimicking a child while impersonating someone from the South. “Is that Dante, Honeydew?”

“It's Dante, Shea.”

“Well, show him on in. We's just taking care of some business here, ain't nothing old Dante can't see.”

The big man called Honeydew nodded, and Cal followed Dante's lead through the curtains.

The back room was dimly lit and full of shadows. At the center a young man with large, pleading eyes sat bound to a wooden chair. His pants and underwear were down around his ankles and his legs were held apart by rope. Half kneeling before him with a straight razor was a grinning Shea Mack. He eyed Cal and Dante as they stepped into the room and pressed the razor against the young man's bruised-looking testicles and then with the flat end of the blade playfully tapped the penis, which lay like a limp, withered worm against the testicles.

Cal glanced at Dante. “What the fuck is this shit?”

Behind the boy stood two young black men, one of them wearing leather gloves that glistened as if wet. Almost lost in the darkness, a large white man slouched on a sofa, his extraordinary belly pushing out of his gray T-shirt. He wore green khakis of the type truck drivers and city workers wore.

Shea pressed the blade between the boy's testicles and drew it back. The boy whimpered and strained against his ropes, the muscles in his thighs tautened, and a stream of urine spat from his penis, splattering the floor.

“Jesus,” Shea cried, grinning, “I haven't even started yet.” He shook his arm, the shirtsleeve now darkened and wet. “Now I'm gonna smell like piss.”

In the corner two other young men lay trussed and naked, kneeling, gags in their mouths, and eyes wide with horror. Another was sitting naked with his back to the wall. By the looks of him, he appeared to have been the first one tied to the chair and tortured. Both eyes were misshapen mounds of black bruise, a barely recognizable slit of an eyeball glistened from his right eye socket. His cheeks and lips were so horribly contorted it looked as if the swelling would soon split the skin. The kid couldn't move the bloodied pulp of his mouth, yet they could hear his moaning.

“You know what these here boys did, Dante?”

This was a mannerism with Shea Mack, a playful and manipulative banter in which the other person was always to assume the inferior role, responding to Shea's rhetorical questions, and so that he always held center court. Cal caught on right away—in the war he'd seen enough megalomaniacs with bars on their shoulders act in much the same way—and he resisted the game, but Dante knew better, and he knew it was dangerous not to play.

“What he'd do, Shea?”

“This boy, and his buddies—fucking frat boys from Tufts—decide they want to get some action in so they come over the bridge and take my Kitty here for a little joyride.”

On a stool sat Kitty, legs pressed tightly together, wringing her hands and squirming almost as much as the boy. She wore a floor-length ratty fake fur coat and a bright pink wool hat streaked with grime.

“Well, Kitty tells them how much it's going to be for each one of them and they agree, but when they get her to the room they change their minds and decide they're not going to pay. Not only that but what they want is no longer consensual—you see, these boys want to make her hurt—so they take what they want by force. Y'know, treat her like a dog. A bitch, a piece-of-shit whore they've found on the street. So they rape my Kitty, all four of them.

“They rape my Kitty, sodomize her, and beat her black and blue in the process…and that's not all they do…you'd think they'd never had mothers and sisters, what they did to her…animals…fucking animals.” Shea screwed his face up as if something foul-tasting had just come into his mouth, and spat in the direction of the bound-and-gagged students.

He stared over at them now. “Think they got more love for each other, don't you? More love for the little things between their legs. You know, I always figured men who hate women this much must have a love for cock. Bet deep, deep down, they missing their daddy's cock.”

Shea shrugged, still smiling. “So, what do you think we're doing about it, Dante?”

He moved the flat of the straight blade back and forth across the boy's scrotum. The ropes strained and the boy began gagging.

“You're making it right, Shea. Teaching them a lesson. They have to know they can't fuck with Shea Mack.”

“Yes. They have to know they can't fuck with Shea Mack. They have to understand the consequences.” He turned the blade slightly and the boy howled again; a trickle of blood slid down the metal.

“Enough,” Cal said, and Shea's eyes moved slowly toward him. Shea smiled coldly. The blade paused against the boy's scrotum. “Tell him why we're here, Dante.”

Dante took off his hat and raked a hand through his hair. “We're here about Blackie Foley.”

“Blackie Foley,” Shea murmured, and his eyes glazed. He seemed to have momentarily forgotten the boy in the chair. Shea ran the flat of the blade over his cheek. “That's one pretty man. Always has been. Ever since I first met him, I thought he was too pretty to be doing the things he did, hanging out with the people he did. Beautiful eyes has Blackie—you ever look into his eyes?”

Cal hacked, spat on the floor. Shea continued to eye him lazily and as if with a strange curiosity. “We think he killed one of your girls.”

“Who?”

“Margaret Hill.”

“Dear sweet Maggie,” and he sighed. “If it's Blackie, poor troubled boy—what are you going to do, Dante? No one in this town's going to step out against Blackie.”

Shea tapped the blade against the palm of his hand, stared as its edge caught the light and gleamed. “How'd he do it? How'd he kill her?”

“Strung her up on a meat hook, tortured her, and then sliced her open.”

Shea shook his head. “Shame. Even though she'd gotten old far too quick, she was a good girl. She really was. Always listened to what I told her. Always did right by me.

“Strange, though, it doesn't sound like Blackie, the way you describe it, not like Blackie at all. Why'd he do it? What reason would he have to kill Maggie like that?”

It was Cal's turn to smile. “Don't know. Figure he was just getting his kicks, a sick fuck, like you.”

Shea cocked his head to one side, and the light reflected off his black hair parted and slicked with grease, his clean-shaven face which had the pallor of a wax figure suddenly come to life. “Oh boy. If you think Blackie and me are alike, you need help, my man. Dante, your friend here needs to open his eyes. He's walking blind.”

“Don't worry about him,” Dante responded, but Shea disregarded him and kept his eyes locked on Cal.

“I would have expected more from you, war hero. Yeah, that's right. I know you.”

“Can't say the same, Shea. But you're almost exactly what I expected.”

“You're a funny guy, real funny, but if you're headed to collide with Blackie Foley, you're more of a fool. He'll tear you up into little pieces and send you to the grinders. You're not going to be so pretty when he's done. Shame, really.”

Shea tapped the razor absently against his lips, considered Cal with something almost like desire. Blood ran down the blade and onto his knuckles. He looked at it for a moment and then shook his head, glanced back at the boy strapped to the chair, watched the feeble movements of his chest, his legs as the muscles spasmed, the rapid convulsions of his Adam's apple.

“Honeydew! Show these fine gentlemen out. I don't want to offend their delicate sensibilities. We got business to take care of.”

_________________________

Massachusetts State House, Beacon Hill

IN THE WAITING
room of the windowless State House office, Dante sat in a chair beneath a bank of flickering, humming fluorescent lights. He squinted against them, felt a headache pressing behind his eyes. Over the last few days he'd measured out the remaining junk from Karl's, made his doses smaller and smaller, and staggered his fixes so that he might come off it without suffering serious withdrawals. He'd taken his last dose six hours before and knew he couldn't last much longer.

In his gabardine pants and stained shirt under an overcoat with only one of its four buttons remaining, he was suddenly self-conscious. He was aware of the stale sweat on his clothes, and how, as they started to warm in the heat of the waiting room, they were beginning to stink. He gripped his damp gloves in his hand, hoping they might lessen the shaking that grew with each minute he waited.

He'd called ahead and spoken to Mrs. Cushing, Administrator of Personnel, and made an appointment for ten o'clock, but the clock on the wall now showed nearly ten forty-five. Beyond the front desk he could hear the insistent tapping of multiple typewriters, as if in some competition to overtake and outduel the other, the noise pulling through his skull like a rusted steel thread. The door to the office opened again, and two clean-shaven men with rolled-up sleeves squared precisely just below the elbows emerged and walked briskly past—each carrying a leather-bound folder that gave them both an air of urgency.

A phone rang, followed by another. A woman's voice answered the first. “State House Employment. Can you hold a moment?” And then another, quickly lifted off its cradle, and as if an automated echo, the same words were repeated. “State House Employment. Can you hold a moment?”

The pit of his stomach expanded sourly as if he might be sick. There was too much noise and too much purpose. The way everybody seemed to have so much direction and intent made the edges blur even more. He wished he'd avoided the impulse to come here, and silently cursed himself because of it. The hallway door opened again, and a man in a tweed suit and an auburn mustache entered from the main lobby, glanced blindly at Dante as he were not even there. The phones dueled for attention once more. He tried to squeeze out the noise of the office, shut his eyes and lowered his head.

A woman's voice, harsh, with a thick townie accent, was calling to him, pulling him back through the black hole and into the office with its loudly thrumming lights and the insistent noise of typewriters and phones and disembodied voices. “Sir, are you okay?” she asked again.

He opened his eyes and saw a woman in a brown business suit standing before him. The suit was too big for her, hanging off her shoulders and falling wide over her hips. Its color matched the chestnut eyes that looked down at him.

“I'm sorry,” he managed. “Yes, I'm okay.”

“Well, you were nodding off there. Would you like a glass of water or something?”

“No, I'm fine, thank you.”

He was surprised to find her smiling at him. He noticed that her makeup seemed far too bright. In the harsh light, the pinkish rouge made him think of a young girl sneaking into her mother's bedroom and using her makeup in hopes of looking more like an adult.

“Unfortunately, Mrs. Cushing can't speak with you. She's been called in to an impromptu, very important meeting.”

“I won't take too much of her time. Just a few questions, that's all.” He stood slowly, pulling himself up from the chair, and only then realizing that he was trembling even worse. He took his hat in his hands, trying to calm himself, ran his fingers and thumb nervously over the worn brim. He felt like a vagrant asking for spare change after a Sunday service.

“I'm sorry but I'm afraid she has no free time. Today or for the remainder of the week.”

Dante raised his voice, louder than he wished. “That other woman said she'd be with me in a minute. I've been waiting nearly an hour.”

She sighed and gave him that same childish smile. Her lips curved and exposed large front teeth stained with lipstick. “Again, I'm sorry.”

“I just wanted to ask about Sheila Anderson.”

“I'm afraid I have to get back to my desk.” Her voice wavered. “Perhaps you can try to phone the office next week? You have a good day.”

He watched her walk away, her legs moving stiffly, large calves flexing and releasing as her sharp-heeled shoes clacked upon the floor. A run in her stocking stretched down behind her knee toward her ankle.

He went to the office door and paused there, looked over the front desk to the women working behind the partition and arranged in parallel lines. No woman seemed more than twenty-one or twenty-two. They had either platinum or dirty blond hair. And they were beautiful, a mirror image of one another: startlingly vibrant in the same fluorescent glare that made him look gaunt and emaciated. They kept their posture aligned with the backs of the wooden chairs, some of them with unblinking eyes scanning the documents they worked to transcribe with an effortless determination, others with phones cradled against their slender necks, stained lips forming words that were lost in the thrum of the office but that seemed to him precise and well rehearsed through repetition. For a moment he saw Sheila there, auburn head bent slightly, listening to her Dictaphone, then glancing up to look at the women around her. To have worked here she would have been dying inside; the Sheila he knew would have hated this place and these people. Not one of them looked up at him as he opened the door and let it close behind him.

IN THE BATHROOM
off the State House lobby, Dante stood at one of the porcelain sinks, polished and glimmering white, and ran his hands under the cold water, bent and splashed handfuls of it into his face. When he could no longer feel his hands, he shut off the faucet. Imprints of flames hung behind his eyes, fanned out and disappeared when he opened them. He dried his face and hands with paper towels and looked at himself in the mirror. In the glare of the light above, his features were pitted and stark, even more emaciated than usual, like something carved from shadow and bone. He hacked and spat into the sink, combed his hair with his fingers.

The main lobby bustled with people bundled in heavy jackets and scarves and hats, and as he attempted to weave through those coming and going, he bumped shoulders with a short, brown-suited man. The man glared at him, and then two women were pushing before him and he was caught in the current sweeping toward the doors. With a sudden surge of panic he pulled himself from the mass of bodies and stood for a moment by the glass windows, waiting for the crowd to dwindle and wondering what to do next. Outside on the street new snow was falling and the winds swept it up off the stairs and the sidewalk in a flurry. He turned back to the lobby and to a vendor who sat on a crate behind a small display of newspapers, candies, cigarettes, and several plastic buckets containing ratty-looking bouquets of flowers.

“
Globe,
please.”

The vendor seemed amused by the sight of Dante; a smirk creased his lips, and Dante tried to ignore it. He reached into his pockets for change but had difficulty even with that, and the vendor shook his head. “This weather is for the birds,” Dante said, in the hope that he might appear more normal.

Dante shuffled to an empty wooden bench. A security guard with a boozy, heavily veined nose and plum-colored cheeks glared at him as he sat down. Dante did his best to ignore him even though he could feel the man's bloodshot eyes examining him in the same way an ill-tempered drunk sizes up a man before a fight in a bar.

Dante's eyes moved through the front pages of the
Globe.
He saw the headlines but couldn't distinguish any of the words below the bold print. He squinted, but still everything appeared blurred and out of focus. There was a story about the Brink's job, another about the failures of utility companies, the race for the empty Senate seat, and the rise in fatalities due to the worst winter in history. He tried to read the sports page, but all he could think of was getting another fix, how he would make things up with Karl, how he would apologize and then beg and plead with him if necessary.

The sound of a woman's heels came to him across the polished stone floor and echoing up to the vast arched ceiling, and for a moment everything else within the wide lobby disappeared inside a vacuum.

He looked up. The brunette from the office, the one with the bright makeup and the run in her stocking, stood before him. She wore a lilac coat and matching beret that hung over her right ear, slightly askew. She was chewing gum, and her wide jawline pulsed sharply with each movement as she went at the gum. “Why were you asking about Sheila Anderson?”

“It's a bit of a private matter.”

“I knew her a little. Not like close friends or anything, but we talked about things sometimes. I don't know if it would help you any.”

Dante stumbled for words, folded the newspaper and placed it down on the bench, and stood. “Could I ask you a few questions? If you don't mind.”

She grinned, snapping the chewing gum with her back teeth and exposing the glistening pink of her tongue. “I'd be happy to. But I'm as hungry as a wolf. Why don't you be a gentleman and take me to lunch.”

She had her hand extended. He reached out and grabbed hold and shook it gently. He turned to the security guard, who was still watching him, and suddenly felt the urge to leave.

“Pamela Grubb,” she exclaimed as if he should already know her name, as if she were a person far more important than she really was.

“Dante Cooper.”

And as they walked back across the lobby, without his offering, she put her arm through his, turned her face up toward him, and smiled. At the exit, a young doorman opened the door for them and smirked, and once again, a sudden anxiety overcame him. He closed his eyes, focused on the pressure of the woman's arm in his. Outside on the sidewalk the cold air forced him to breathe naturally again. He raised his arm for a cab and was surprised when it turned toward the curb, slowing down and stopping before them.

“Are you a cop?” she asked, looking at him intently. Again, she was smiling.

He shook his head. “Not a cop. Just a relative.”

“Well, that's good. My father was a cop, you know…” He stepped toward the cab, held the door open for her. She'd already started in with her life story, where she'd grown up and how her father had treated her and her mother, and Dante put on the vacant grin he gave to people who talked too much, and although she continued to talk throughout the short cab ride, he was thinking of Karl again and of getting another fix and, until they arrived in the Theater District, he didn't hear a word.