The Town: A Novel (25 page)

B
UT HOW DID YOU KNOW?
” asked Claire.

“Know what?” said Frawley.

“‘Mortgage or sick kid,’ how would you know that?”

“Ah.” Frawley rubbed his cheek, a ruminative habit he had adopted since getting stained. The dye had faded to a coppery orange, like misapplied self-tanner. “The smell of coffee on the note. The way his first, failed attempt went down. And then just looking at him there, facedown in the playground. A kind of desperation I’ve seen before.”

They were seated away from the bar inside the Warren Tavern, over low-key drinks and apps. The place was crowded on a weeknight, and Frawley wondered how a colonial-era pub suddenly got so tony.

Claire wore a cream top with the sleeves shrugged up. She sipped her white wine, concerned for the robber. “And that’s five years in jail?”

“Federal sentencing guidelines are pretty strict. Between forty and fifty months for a first-time offender, then add on maybe a year and a half for the bomb threat. But I spoke with the assistant district attorney and recommended that only state charges be brought. It’s not up to me, but that would be less of a smack. This yo-yo might even be able to put his life back together after that.”

She said, “That’s because you’re a nice guy.”

“No, it’s because he’s not the kind of bad guy I’m after. Note-passing is the dumbest of crimes. Broad daylight, plenty of witnesses, and you’re photographed in the act. Hello. Fifteen hundred dollars against four or five years in prison. Banks attract dumb, desperate people.” An excuse to reach across the table and touch her forearm. “Bandits, not employees.”

She smiled. “Thanks for clarifying.”

“A professional crew that’s ready to hurt people, put them in the hospital—that’s what I’m here for. Not the sad case sitting in a Dunkin’ Donuts one morning, thinking his life is ending.”

She noticed him rubbing his cheek again. “Does that itch?”

“Only psychologically. I’m like half-cop, half-criminal. You should see the looks I get.”

She smiled and Frawley thought he was doing well. “So, why banks?” she said. “What is it about banks and you?”

“Have you seen those ads for the tornado movie coming out,
Twister
?”

“Sure, with the cow flying across the screen?”

“I grew up—well, I grew up all over. My mother had this knack for meeting men just as they were about to move out of state, and she would move with them, only to split up a few months later, leaving us out on our own again. We didn’t have much and kept losing things in the breakups. She carried around with her a couple of items she called her ‘treasure.’ Some photographs of her as a girl, her grandmother’s Bible, letters she had saved, my birth certificate, her wedding ring. So every new town we pitched a tent in, the first thing she’d do would be to go down to the bank and rent a safe-deposit box, store her treasure there. It became a routine—new town, new bank, new box. When I was eight or maybe nine, we were living in Trembull, South Dakota, and a tornado hit. Flattened the town, killed eight. We rode it out on the floor of a fruit cellar—my mother blanketing me, screaming the Lord’s Prayer—and when it was over, we climbed back upstairs, and the upstairs was gone. Roof, walls, everything. The entire neighborhood, people crawling out of their cellars like worms after a hard rain. Everything gone or moved and tipped over on its side. We all just followed the path of destruction into the center of town. Only, the center was gone too. Just a war zone of cracked lumber and debris—except for one thing. The bank vault. The bank building itself was gone, but that silver vault remained standing. Like a door to another dimension.”

Her frown had a smile behind it. “I hate people who know exactly who they are, and why they want what they want.”

“The next day the manager came and opened it up, and there was my mother’s treasure, safe and sound.”

“And where’s your mother now?”

“Arizona. Fourth husband, a cattle auctioneer. The guy answers the phone, I can’t understand a word he says. But of the thirty-four states she’s resided in, Arizona’s the first she’s lived in twice. So I’m thinking, this guy, maybe he’s finally the one.”

Claire smiled. “Explains why you’re not married yet.”

“I don’t know. I think it’s more because I’ve moved around so much with the Bureau. And hope to be moving again soon.”

“To?”

“The top job for a bank robbery agent is Los Angeles. Boston may be the armored-car-robbery capital of the world, but L.A. is the bank-robbery capital,
no contest. One out of every four bank jobs in the country goes down there. And with the freeway system, they have to do a lot more with tracking devices, gadgets, gizmos. Charlestown here, their methods are quaint compared to those out West.”

Claire nodded, swirling the last sip of wine around the bottom of her glass. He wanted her to have another. “So funny to me that you live here too.”

“It’s a great town. And I’ve lived all over. Great neighborhood, great people. It’s just that there happens to be this ultrasmall faction, this subculture of banditry.” He finished his Sam Adams. “Do we need another round?”

She looked from her glass to him. “I’m not clear on something. Is this work, or is this a date?”

He shrugged. “It’s not work.”

“So it’s a date.”

“It’s a pre-date. It’s appetizers, drinks.”

“Because,” she said, “and maybe this sounds crazy, but someone warned me that I shouldn’t speak to you again without a lawyer.”

“Wait—someone from Charlestown, right?”

“How’d you know?”

He dropped his voice a little. “Well, that’s the other thing here, this ‘Code of Silence.’ Born out on the docks, I guess, with bootlegging and longshoremen. Something like fifty murders committed in this town over the past twenty years, many of them with witnesses, and yet only twelve have been solved. The code was, ‘Talk to the cops, you’re dead, your entire family is dead.’ But it’s all unraveling now. People testifying against each other, rushing to cut deals. Ugly.”

She nodded, only half-listening. “Do you consider me a suspect?”

Who was feeding her this? “What makes you say that?”

“I don’t know. The questions you asked me at my parents’ house. It never occurred to me that you might think…”

“Well, early on, I had a kidnapping that resulted in the bank manager being released unharmed. Add to that the fact that she lived in Charlestown, and—where are you getting all this?”

“Nowhere.”

Nowhere? “Would I have asked you out here if I suspected you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Not if I’d wanted a conviction, evidence that would hold up in court.”

That seemed to satisfy her. She sat back, distracted. “Honestly, at this point? I almost hope you never catch them. In terms of testifying and all that. I just want to put this thing behind me and move on.”

“Well,” Frawley told her, “I am going to catch them. Don’t sweat the testimony.
Even if I bagged them tomorrow, court’s easily a year or two down the line. And with twenty-year federal mandies for repeat offenders using firearms in the commission of a violent felony, on top of whatever they draw for the crimes—those are tantamount to life sentences. And believe me, once you see these bozos in court, see their faces—oh, yeah, shit.” He searched his jacket pockets. “Almost forgot. Just a moment of investigatory stuff here.”

He handed her the color copy he had made from a beat-up library book about the history of the Boston Bruins. It showed a pair of melancholy eyes inside a goalie mask covered with hand-drawn scars.

Frawley said, “That’s Gerry Cheevers. Bruins goalie from the Bobby Orr era.”

She stared as though he had handed her a photograph of the bandits themselves. “Why those scars?”

Dino’s explanation became his own. “Every puck shot Cheevers took off his face mask, he drew the stitch scar over the resulting dent. His trademark.”

She looked a moment longer before handing it back, not relaxing until he had returned it to his pocket. “Hate hockey,” she said.

“Not so loud,” he joked. “Ice hockey and bank robbing are the two year-round sports here in Charlestown.”

Their server returned. Claire said, “I’ll take a coffee. Decaf.”

Frawley held up two fingers, masking his disappointment. “So what do you say we try a real date? Go see
Twister
or something?”

She nodded agreeably. “That might be great.”

“Okay.” He ran that around his head again. “Might be?”

“Could be. Would be.”

“Uh-huh. But?”

“But I’m seeing someone else too.”

“Okay.”

“I just thought it would be fair to let you know.” She smiled then, looking a little giddy and perplexed. “Why am I so popular all of a sudden? It’s like getting boobs again. Two interesting guys I meet, after this robbery—what happened? What changed?”

“Is this the piano mover?”

Her surprised look said that she had forgotten telling him about that.

“The guy you met in a Laundromat.” Frawley smiled. “I thought you stood him up.”

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.”

“You don’t want to hear this, but he’s helping me.”

“Good. That’s good.”

“He’s not a piano mover.”

“What’s wrong with piano movers?” Their coffees came, and the check. Frawley wasn’t worried. “Competition’s good. Raises the bar.”

She smiled at him, uncertain. “So there aren’t any FBI rules about this?”

“Against dating the vic? No. Just a personal rule I abide by.”

“Which is?”

“Never, ever do it,” he said, laying down his credit card and a smile.

D
INO DROVE A COP’D-OUT
1993 Ford Taurus, the police blues under the grille only noticeable if you were looking for them or if the sun hit them just right. It wasn’t an undercover car like Frawley’s staid Bureau Cavalier, but other than the whip antenna curling off the trunk, it was good enough for cruising the Town incognito.

The police radio squawked an “odor of gas” call—the attending patrolman acknowledging the 911 dispatcher not with
Affirmative
or
Roger
or the military
Over,
but rather with the distinctly Boston
I have it
—as Dino and Frawley rolled out from under the Tobin Bridge, passing two Housing Authority sedans idling driver-to-driver at the end of Bunker Hill Street.

“I’ve told them,” said Frawley. “I’ve said, you know, just get me an apartment here, set it up. Nothing fancy—just let me work this square mile exclusively, give me the
time,
give me the
space
. Let me play the
part
. I’d be a yuppie Serpico, you know? A yuppie Donnie Brasco. This town, the way it is—the streets are so narrow, so tight. Any change is noticed, any deviation from the norm. You can’t surv a house here, even if you have the manpower—even if there’s a vacant apartment right across the street and your target’s religion forbids window shades—because the people here, they’re too
involved
. Crack open a beer and a guy three doors down gets thirsty. You gotta be part of the landscape.”

“But they won’t do it.”

“Boston would okay it. The SAC could be persuaded, but not D.C. People not from around here have a hard time understanding what a fountain of banditry this zip code is.”

“Fountain of banditry,” chuckled Dino. “You got a way.”

The markets on lower Bunker Hill Street advertised their welfare-friendliness with window signs stating EBT Accepted, WIC Accepted. Above and to the left, the tapered spike of the monument rotated as they passed, the Town slow-roasting on an enormous granite spit.

“So what do you got on this phone company guy?” said Dino.

“Elden. Desmond Elden. What have I got? I’ve got nothing, that’s what I’ve got. Guy lives with his mother, holds down a steady job, pays his taxes in full and on time, and has never spent a minute of his life in a jail cell. Goes to mass three, four times a week.”

“And yet you’re convinced—”

“Oh, I’m absolutely fucking positive.”

“No record,” said Dino. “No time in double-A ball. Jumps right into the majors.”

“I don’t know the backstory, but it is what it is. As for getting into it later in life, I’d offer this guy’s father as Exhibit A.”

“Okay, go.”

“He was clean too, no record, nothing, when they found him on one of those streets we just passed, early 1980, two bullet holes in the chest. Don’t have the full read, but it looks like he was a bagman, not an enforcer, more like a buffer between the street and the guys he was collecting for. Arrest bait, this guy with a clean record. Fourteen years with Edison before that.”

“Gotcha.”

“This guy, Elden, he’d be their tech. Spotless work record, including attendance, except for a few important dates. Such as the sick day he took the Tuesday after the marathon. Your next right.”

Dino flipped on the blinker. “Okay, so it’s starting to come into focus.”

“Thus far, I’ve only made him with one other guy, ID’d from the Lakeville mugs. One Douglas MacRay.”

“MacRay?” said Dino.

“Yeah, ringing a bell?”

“My age, more like plinking a triangle. Bear with me. Mac MacRay’s son?”

“Bingo.”

Dino licked his lips, smelling something cooking. “Okay. Big Mac’s gotta be a good ten or fifteen in. Walpole, I think.”

“MacRay junior last saw twenty months for ag assault. Jumped a guy in a bar, no provocation, nearly killed him.
Would
have killed him if they hadn’t pulled him off. Shod foot was the deadly weapon, public intox, resisting arrest. Got out about three years ago. Note that this string we’re looking at now started up about six months later.”

“Hockey star, wasn’t he?”

“Something like that.”

“Yeah, yeah, high school hockey star, Charlestown. MacRay. Drafted, I think. Christ—was it the Bruins?”

“This is Pearl Street, where he lives now.”

It was a one-way street, the one way being straight down. Frawley pointed out the worst-looking house halfway down the suicide slope. With the cars parked along the right, there was barely enough room for the midsized Taurus to squeeze through.