The City Below (54 page)

With relief, Doyle realized only then that he had this sucker hooked. It would take a while to reel him in, but he had him. And McKay knew it too, which was why he was angry. Squire said, "Can I answer your question like a mick, with a question of my own? Can I?"

Terry's old friend let his stunned half gaze slide into the mirror again, where Squire met him and asked, "Why do they call it 'gay'? I've never understood that. You're all obviously unhappy. Why 'gay'?"

***

Terry Doyle's drive into Boston took him across the Charles at the bridge by Soldiers Field and then down Storrow Drive along the broadening stretch of the river, past BU and Back Bay. It was the morning after the gala at Symphony Hall, the day after the ceremony at Ruggles Square. A night rain had drenched the road, but the day had broken free of weather already, and now, at the rush hour, the clean chill of a New England spring had cleared the air. Tires hissed on the wet pavement, but the commuters drove as fast as ever, bunched slot cars. Doyle's mind was always blank on the way in to work, and sometimes he arrived at his garage downtown with no memory of having driven there. This morning was no different—except for the hole in his throat, the morbid, sick feeling that he had not shaken since waking up for good at three-thirty.

He made a split-second decision to get off Storrow Drive at Arlington Street, as if the pain in his chest were a tail he could shake. He cut right onto the ramp that would take him through the absolute worst of downtown traffic, around the Common and into the maze of colonial-era cow paths. But also, first, it would take him past the Ritz-Carlton, which sat on the edge of Back Bay like a disapproving dowager.

As if he'd arranged for it ahead of time, a parking space was open across from the hotel, a Back Bay miracle that made the impulse behind this detour seem preordained. The spot was on Arlington, at the head of Newbury Street; after pulling into it he realized that from that vantage he could see both entrances to the Ritz. Was he a genius or what?

He shut his engine off and sat there for some moments, the traffic passing on one side, the dewy lawns of the Public Garden on the other. Doyle drove a Volvo. Joan's old Healey they kept garaged in Somerville, and soon enough she would have it out again. But for his purpose that morning, the dull gray, all too Cambridge sedan was perfect.

He got out, crossed to Newbury Street, and walked briskly to the door. The doorman touched his hat, as if Doyle were staying there. At the bank of lobby phones, he picked one up and asked for Victor Amory. The operator said "Surely,"' and seconds later the room was ringing. Now what?

When he heard the upswinging inflection of Amory's hello, he hung up. The receiver handle was moist, and only then did he notice his perspiring palms. What was he doing? Taking this one step at a time, that's what He crossed the lobby to the flower shop. A lady in a pink smock over a tan cashmere twin set of the sort Joan favored was spraying mist onto the banked flowers.

"Good morning," Doyle said, swinging in. "I was hoping for something for my lapel."

"Good day, sir. Certainly, sir. Right here." She put her copper mister down and crossed to the cooler. "These lovely bluebells..."

"No, no. I was hoping for..." He craned his neck to look past her.

"A small iris, perhaps?" She pointed with a hand so bejeweled Doyle wondered why she had to work.

"No. Shamrocks."

"I'm sorry?"

"Shamrocks, in a sprig of baby's breath."

"I've never seen that."

"You don't sell shamrock boutonnieres?"

"No. I rather doubt that shamrocks—"

"You're sure you didn't sell—"

Her prim smile cut him off. "Not shamrocks. Ever. Of any kind. We don't sell novelties."

"Of course you don't. Foolish of me. Thanks anyway."

On the way out of the lobby, he cursed himself for calling Amory's room, alerting him. He wasn't good at this. A fool. He was a fool. He glanced back at the flower shop, expecting the woman to be watching him. But she had gone back to spraying blossoms.

He waited for the doorman to turn away before crossing Arlington, back to his car. He got in and closed his door quietly, and realized that precaution was foolish too. This whole thing was foolish.

He waited an hour, smoking, listening to
Morning Pro Musica,
Mozart and Bach, their greatest hits. He observed every person who entered the hotel—no Squire; and who left it—no Amory. For most of that time, he kept at bay a sense of the absurd figure he'd become, but eventually a feeling of claustrophobia closed on him. The car interior began to seem small and airless. He imagined Joan sitting next to him, exuding disdain in her cashmere, her drawn-back blond hair: We don't sell novelties. But Joan had, in fact, encouraged him to think that at the Ritz they would. Why?

No sooner had the stain of his suspicion spread to touch his wife than Victor Amory appeared, barreling through the revolving door. Dressed in the fedora and the tan raincoat he'd had on his arm yesterday, he held a black carry-on bag in one hand. When the doorman reached for it, Amory veered away, heading up Newbury Street away from the cab stand, which told Doyle he didn't need the car. He got out and began to follow. He maintained the half-block separation they'd started with.

Often, when he had serious thinking to do, Terry hit the sidewalk, wandering aimlessly, as if hoping to get lost. He could pass shop windows, cut through crowds, and cross busy intersections without altering the self-assured pace before which others gave way, his mind working the whole time. In his brain he was making brilliant moves, square to square, against his friends who were enemies, yielding a pawn to Killian at the BRA, castling Zimmerman, trading Hammond's interest in the Fan Pier for Marty's redundant piece of Park Square, always, always, where to find money, how to keep it, money the queen, money the king, money the everything. The development game in boom times was less Monopoly than gilded chess, but Doyle constantly had boards on every side, a dozen opponents at once, bomb-rigged master's clocks running on every move, and the miracle was, he kept making them. What he never had was time to separate out in his mind the reasons for his instinctive choices, how two or four moves ahead he knew, he knew. He never had time, either, to answer his largest question, why his trade—which after all
was
a game of building blocks, buying and selling, borrowing and dealing—could feel so dangerous. Now and then a desperate need to think about it took him out of his office, out of the building on Liberty Square, as if the sidewalk itself would answer him if only he trod enough of it.

But now he was moving automatically, not thinking. Block after block of Newbury Street went by, the chic stores and galleries, the ultimate cafes, bowfront windows shimmering with paintings, vases, sepia lithographs—but it all passed in a blur. The field of his concentration was entirely taken over by the bobbing, distant figure, like a hypnotist's charm, of Victor Amory.

Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield—how those Yankees had hoped to wake up English if they only named enough streets for Brit manor houses. At Hereford Street Amory turned left. By the time Doyle caught sight of him again, he had crossed Boylston and stopped. He had put his suitcase down on the sidewalk, and stood there shaking his arms, an indication of the weight he was carrying. Doyle stalled in the open alcove of a fire station, then set off again when Amory did.

At the next corner, at the Cheri movie complex, he turned right onto a side street Doyle reached the corner in time to see, to his amazement, Amory mounting the stairs of the least conspicuous Catholic church in Boston, St Cecelia's. It was a towerless brick of a church, built at the turn of the century for Irish servants of the prim householders of Back Bay. Amory took the stairs warily, as if he knew that, long ago, his kind had gone there only to demand to see the pastor, to dispose of their outrageously pregnant maids. He pushed against the large wooden door and it swung slowly open. He glanced toward the street once, perhaps seeing Doyle, perhaps not Then, without taking off his hat, he disappeared inside the church.

Doyle was out of moves. He remained outside, dispirited and confused, not realizing that the decision to stop was also a move. He crossed the street and stood in the arched doorway of one of the row houses. He lit a cigarette and watched the church entrance, soon finding himself fatigued. This peculiar thing with Amory, with Bright—with Joan—was less than a day old, yet the distrust it implied seemed now very familiar, and his sudden weariness made him feel that it had been years since he'd had a good night's sleep.

St Cecelia's, the servants' church. He counted the steps. He traced the outline of the door, the ribs of the sooty window above. To the right of the entrance was the sign announcing Mass and confession times, and below the schedule was the line
REV. JAMES ADLER, PASTOR.

Jimmy Adler! Doyle hadn't thought of him in years, the kid who'd pulled him through the tunnel of the seminary. Jimmy Adler, freckle-faced, forever grinning, always at Terry's door with a word of cheer, affection, gossip, a joke. To Doyle's dismay, when he thought of Adler now it was as a child, a boy, and then he realized it was as
his
child. Jimmy. Staring at Adler's name in the space before that impossible ecclesiastical word "Pastor" was like looking at a mirage, a fact without past or future.

But Jimmy Adler had betrayed him, and wasn't it so like Terry Doyle to draw that up from the well of his memory last? Adler's careful notes on Terry's heresy, sitting on the rector's desk, evidence that Doyle had conspired with Protestants, Blight's father, that he had refused to take an oath, that he had lied in confession because he could not think of a sin.

Jimmy, you bastard. And this is what they give you. Doyle thought of their favorite play,
A Man for All Seasons,
More's response to his betrayer: To lose one's soul not for the whole world, but for Wales, Rich?

But for St. Cecelia's, Jim?

The church door opened. Doyle tossed his cigarette aside, ready to move. Victor Amory came down the stairs quickly, looking neither right nor left, and he headed back the way he'd come. Amory's hands swung nervously at his sides, conveying an urge to escape. Amory's hands were empty. He'd left his suitcase in the church.

Without realizing it, Doyle had built his previous perception of the man around that piece of luggage, as the day before he had done so around a ridiculous knot of clover on his lapel. Only now, with its disappearance, did the suitcase's importance come to the fore. The suitcase was what he'd followed. Amory would return now to the Ritz, Doyle was sure of it. Instead of following, Doyle watched him round the corner and vanish behind the theater.

Now what? Enter St. Cecelia's? Confront Jimmy Adler? How have you done it to me again?

Doyle remained where he was, stymied. Seconds passed, or minutes. Perhaps an hour. The church door opened once more. A man appeared and Terry knew him at once. Not Jimmy Adler but Didi's brother, Jackie Mullen. He took the stairs at a clip, gingerly carrying Amory's suitcase.

Doyle began to move. Mullen headed up the sidewalk toward Massachusetts Avenue, going fast. Doyle began to run. Half a block up the street, Mullen stopped at a parked automobile, a dark green Plymouth. Vacant. He opened the passenger door and tossed the suitcase in, closed the door, then hopped quickly around to the driver's side. Doyle ran faster, pouring it on like a jock doing wind sprints. Mullen got into the car without glancing back, while Doyle scrambled along the sidewalk in the cold shadow of low-class brick houses. His shoes echoed on the pavement. His suit coat flapped up at his elbows.

Mullen had the engine going and was edging away from the curb when Doyle reached the car, on the passenger's side. He slapped the steel once, then lunged at the door handle. The car was still moving. He opened the door and jumped in, hitting the suitcase.

Only then did Mullen react. He slammed the brakes, jolting the car to a stop, and reached to his belt for a weapon.

"It's me, Charlie!" Doyle screamed. "It's me!"

Mullen leveled a gun at him. "Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing?"

"Jackie, Jackie, come on." Doyle flapped his hands apart.

Mullen grabbed at the suitcase, which blocked the seat between them. "What the
fuck
are you doing? Christ, Terry. Jesus Christ!"

"You too, Jackie!" The adrenaline kept Doyle going. "What are
you
doing?" He reached for the zipper on the suitcase and pulled it The black leather flap fell open, exposing only a corner, but, because of what he saw, exposing enough. Bills. Banded stacks of money.

"Fuck!" Mullen slapped his gun against Doyle's head, knocking him back. He closed the zipper, yanked the suitcase free, and threw it into the back seat.

A radio speaker attached to the dashboard crackled to life: "Seven-one, Haymarket Square." The voice was simultaneously gruff and blasé. "Seven-one, OP relief. Check. Seven-one." The police radio fell silent The message had meant nothing.

Jackie's lips twisted once more around the same words. "You fuck! What are you doing?"

"What are
you
doing, Jackie?" The pain in Doyle's head seemed to focus him.

"Blowing your fucking head off, that's what." Mullen pushed the barrel of his gun against Doyle's cheek. He seemed insane, his eyes jittering. "Who else is here?" He pushed the steel snout harder. "Where's Squire?"

Squire? Terry recognized Mullen's fear without understanding it He moved his eyes toward the money, then back to Jackie. "He'll be right along. Want to wait?"

"No!"

Mullen looked wildly around. The street appeared to be deserted. He grabbed Doyle's coat and hauled him across his own body, forcing an exchange of seats. "Drive. You drive!"

Terry got the car into gear and pulled away. Mullen continued pointing the gun at him, but his eyes were on the street now, behind, ahead, everywhere.

Terry said calmly, "Squire will be following us, Jackie. He and I are together in this. He knows where I am."