The City Below (53 page)

"Because Schrafft's is going out of business next month, and Domino Sugar is sure to close up its waterfront depot shortly after. Schrafft's and Domino have kept their payroll accounts at Sullivan all these years. You got a bargain because what's that one-room bank without those payrolls?"

"I'm a sentimental guy."

"Nobody put a value on a long history of big money moving through such a little bank Interesting, huh? Nobody but you."

"Interesting, yes."

"Even interesting little banks need big partners downtown these days." Special Agent Farrell studied one of his flashy black-and-white wingtips, turning his foot this way and that. "Are you ready to get married?"

"Let's say I'm ready for a little action on the side." Squire grinned. "I'm already married. Very happily." Squire let his eyes drift across the vacant plush seats to the third Irishman, the deputy chief of the State Police's Office of Special Investigations, John P. Mullen. "Right, Lieutenant?"

"Right," he answered. Jackie.

***

Not long after the meeting at the Kennedy Library, Squire went into a bar alone. The smoke, the throbbing jukebox, the crush of bodies—but the bodies were different The place was full of men in blue jeans and T-shirts that clung to worked-over curves, pecs and biceps, also buttocks. The short hair struck him, the smooth tanned skin, the stench of cologne. The men looked like models.

Buddies was a no-announcement, blanked-window gay bar on Huntington Avenue, across from Copley Place, the mall where Ralph Lauren sold his underwear. It wasn't only the dress of the clientele that set Buddies apart from pubs in the Town. Mirrors covered the walls and the ceiling, and at every corner light pulsed from blue neon tubes in synch with the music. Day-Glo bulletin boards listed wines and exotic coffee drinks. As Squire made his way toward the bar, he thought of raucous clubs he'd passed in P-town, but these men were not drag queens. They did not look all that queer. They were dressed with casual flamboyance, but it was easy to imagine them in Lauren's idea of cordovans and gray flannel. He'd been told that Buddies habitués were affluent Boston comers, businessmen and professionals, but still—

To reach the bar, he had to move through knots of hand-holders and easy flirts, whisperers and laughers, men draped over each other. But Doyle was past master at stifling repugnance, letting nothing show of what he felt Though he was older than the men into whose midst he moved; though his body was softer, if larger; though he wore his loose-fitting, distinctive, but decidedly unchic dark sweater over nondescript dark trousers, he found it possible to move among the homosexuals as if he were one of them. Inhibited? No, just reserved, cool. A marvel of self-possession. At the bar, he pushed between groups and ordered a Diet Coke, which the bartender served with a nonchalance that said lots of guys were off the hard stuff these days.

Doyle stood aside with a preoccupied air intended to discourage advances, and it was true that he was looking for someone. After a few minutes he left the bar and walked easily through the crowd, aware of all the double images, the mirrors everywhere, how the men kept snagging their own eyes, stealing glimpses of their own good looks. On the far side of the next room, a subdued enclave where paired-off men sat talking at small round tables along the walls, Doyle saw him. He was at one of the tables with a young friend, but the mirrored wall made them seem a pair of twins. Focusing on the one, Doyle still saw two men with black skin, two men with gaunt features, two men with the telltale eyepatches, two men with head-back, vigorous laughs and cigarettes.

"Honor Bright," Doyle said.

McKay looked up, disoriented in the haze of his own smoke. It amused Doyle that his brother's old friend did not recognize him. Bright was dressed in chinos, polished loafers, no socks, a yellow Izod shirt that contrasted dramatically with the deep color of his arms. He wore a gold Rolex watch and a thin gold chain at his throat.

"It's Nick," Squire said, putting his hand out.

McKay reacted at once, an overly effusive greeting that made Doyle instantly aware that he'd had a lot to drink. If he was embarrassed to be identified here, he did not show it.

"Jesus, Mary, and Squire!" He was on his feet, slapping Doyle's shoulder, his face charged by an apparently heartfelt, joyous recognition. Their handshake was as overlong as it was warm, and Doyle realized that Bright's show of familiar affection was succeeding, as it was intended to, in undercutting the confidence of the well-built, tanned young white man opposite him at the table.

Before Bright turned to introduce him, the man got up. "I need a freshener," he said, raising his glass. And he went away.

Bright watched the young man go, and when he slapped a buddy's ass, Bright's face clouded over briefly. "Well, shit, Squire," he said, gesturing at the chair, "have a seat."

"I guess I better—before someone else does." Squire laughed. "It's obviously a privilege." The mirrored wall, the sensation of sitting next to himself, made Squire dizzy.

"My animal magnetism," Bright said. "That's what draws them."

"Or maybe it's that they think you're Sammy Davis Jr." Doyle grinned.

But Bright stiffened. "What are you doing here?"

"Is that your standard icebreaker?"

Bright only looked at him, awaiting an answer.

"I came to see you."

"But here? Surely you could have found me at the bank. You know where I work."

"Yes."

"Then am I right to assume our encounter comes wrapped in a little message?" Bright said. "Same old Squire."

Squire sipped his Coke, watching Bright put a match to one of his fat cigarettes. "You still smoking those things?"

Bright waved the match out. "How's Didi?"

"I forgot you knew her."

"I knew her before you did."

Squire shook his head. "Shit you say. I grew up with Didi."

Bright shrugged. "What I should have said was, I knew her before I knew you. She worked with us in 'sixty. Hell of a worker, a great girl."

"In the Town, Didi could be a grandmother."

"Whoa! Jump back! That means—"

"Yeah. Me too. Imagine that?" The bittersweet pleasure of the passage of time. For a moment it joined them, and it felt as if they'd been friends.

But then Bright adjusted his forever stilted glance so it went to the mirror. Doyle followed, and they made eye contact through the reflection. "So, what did you want?" Bright asked.

"Moving right to the point." To Squire the encounter seemed unreal, an effect of the strange men around them, of the mirror, of the blue light, of the eye patch. The odd angle at which McKay had to hold his head made him seem suspicious.

And McKay's voice was indeed laced with ice when he said, "Unless you wanted to talk about rimming, fisting, water games, or HIV"

"No."

"So?"

"Banking. I wanted to talk to you about banking." Squire paused, but Bright only waited. "I own a bank now. Or rather, I own a company that owns a bank."

"I used to hear more about you, Squire. I assumed you weren't doing so well lately. I guess I was wrong."

"Always looking to diversify. Isn't that good business?"

"Which bank?"

"Sullivan Square Savings Bank."

"Never heard of it."

"It's in Charlestown, near Everett."

"Well, no fucking wonder I never heard of it I thought Charlestown seceded from Boston when they let niggers cross City Hall plaza without a flagpole up their ass."

"Come on, McKay. Don't start that shit."

"You still haven't said what you want."

They were still looking at each other through the mirror, as if they could not talk any other way. Little Richard's "Good Golly, Miss Molly" was on the jukebox now, and the frenzy of the blue light's pulse had jumped, and with it the mood of the bar. It seemed to Squire that he and Bright were in their own private bubble. Indeed, for all that those around them cared, they were. Squire said, "A client of mine needs to move some money. I'd like to move it through you."

"I'm in PR, Squire. I'm a VP for Community Affairs. Not in the counting room. But surely you know that about me, if you know that I come here."

"I know that you've been trying to get into the real estate end of the bank. For obvious reasons they like to keep you out front But I also know that you deal with Van Buren and Hayes all the time, either one of whom could approve the arrangement I want to propose, and either one of whom would be thrilled to share the credit with you for the fees my client would be paying. Shall I speak directly?"

"Please."

"My depositor needs a bank that's set up to make wire transfers out of the country."

"As in, to the Cayman Islands? Or to Panama?"

"Switzerland, as a matter of fact."

"How traditional. Why? Closer to Italy? Shall I guess the rest? You need a bank official who's willing to oversee these transfers without observing the federal reporting regulations."

Squire raised his eyebrows, and with his fingers he made a pair of Nixon V-for-victory signs. "That would be illegal, Bright." He smiled, and both men turned, as if on cue, away from the mirror to look at each other. Squire continued, "That's the beauty of what I'm proposing. Sullivan Square Savings Bank, the receptor institution, carries the legal burden of currency reporting. We take care of that. When we send fluids on to Commonwealth Bank, there is no legal requirement on you to report anything. No federal statute regulates wire transfers."

"That can't be true."

"Check it out. Financial institutions are required to retain records of wire transfers out of the country in excess of ten thousand dollars, but there is no reporting to authorities required. And there is no definition in the code of what 'record keeping' means. Nothing says it has to be accessible. Tell Van Buren to have his lawyers check it out."

"And I suppose you're anticipating sums in excess of ten thousand."

"Eventually, the high six figures a day. Of which Commonwealth will receive its usual one percent handling fee and the benefits attached to accounts maintained in the millions of dollars. Other fees to be negotiated."

"Why would your depositor maintain accounts with us if all he wants is a pass-through?"

"Because he'll be bringing money back from Switzerland as well as sending it over."

"It comes back clean."

"Of course." Squire flashed his born-to-bring-flowers smile. "The way it starts."

"And
when
it starts at Sullivan Square, the bank owned by the company you own—your name is on the charter?"

"No."

Bright nodded. "And
when
it starts at Sullivan Square, of course the CTRs will be filed with the proper authorities?"

"Does it matter to you, Bright, how I answer that?"

"Yes."

"Because you'd have to answer Van Buren."

"Yes. If I were to speak to him."

"Then the answer is, Of course. We will file everything just the way we should."

"And the enterprise generating this largess is?"

"Real estate. Florida real estate. My client has made a killing on the west coast down there. He banks in Switzerland because he has international partners who insist on it Paranoid Latin Americans, you know. He'll be happy to meet you. He'll be happy to meet Van Buren, if you like. I have the impression he'll be looking to invest around here. Maybe in Boston proper, even. Isn't pushing local investment an area of yours, Bright? Isn't that
mainly
what you do?"

Bright used the cinder edge of his cigarette to flatten the ashes in the ashtray, then to cut canals in them.

Squire added with quiet emphasis, "It's legal, Bright. Check it out. For you and Commonwealth Bank, it would be entirely legal."

"And for you?"

Squire answered by sipping his Diet Coke.

Now McKay did raise his face, and his eye went right to Doyle's, no mirror, no reflection. "Does Terry know?"

"About this?" Squire indicated, with a first show of distaste, the nearby patrons.

Bright laughed. "This isn't secret, Squire. That man you just snickered toward is a partner at Choate, Hall and Stewart. That other guy is on the governor's senior staff. You thought what, you would blackmail me? I have nothing to hide."

"So Terry knows you're gay?"

Bright did not answer.

"I thought you guys were still friends."

"We are," Bright said, but he was unable, despite an old resolve, to keep from feeling shame. "What I meant was, Does Terry know you're approaching me?"

Squire shook his head. "Terry doesn't have the elbows for shit like this. You remember how weak he was under the boards. Besides, I don't see Terry all that much. I assumed you knew that."

"I did. I guess I did."

"I would assume also that your oldest friend would know about you—if you have nothing to hide, that is."

Not shame now, but hatred was what Bright felt. He could not speak.

"How's my brother doing? How's that fancy wife of his? How's that nephew of mine?"

"They're good. They're fine." Bright's hand trembled enough so that both noticed it as he lit another cigarette. He sat staring at the match for a long moment, a deliberate contemplation.

Then he stood up abruptly. Everything had fallen from his face except a look of deep anguish. A line of moisture glistened at the edge of his eye patch, but his good eye was dry. He dropped his fresh cigarette onto the floor and crushed it with his shoe. "The answer is no. Nothing doing."

Squire took another sip of his Coke. "Okay. That's fine. I was just asking." Now he stood, and he pressed Bright's shoulder firmly, pushing him down again. "You sit. I'm the one who leaves, remember?"

Bright adjusted his eye patch to wipe his cheek, lifting the black oval momentarily, giving Squire a glimpse of the walnut socket he did not want to see. Then Bright looked up at him. "You're the same son of a bitch you've always been."

Squire opened his hands. "Hey, I just wanted to help build the new Boston. Isn't that what you call it?"

"How does it make you feel, you bastard? The shit you do?"