The Town: A Novel (30 page)

An advance poster for
The Rock
—an action movie about an old man who escaped from prison—worked on Doug like an omen, scaring him into his theater. The last preview before
Mulholland Falls
was for
Twister
. When the audience cheered a cow flying across the screen and continued to chatter about it over the feature’s opening credits, Doug saw a big opening weekend coming and smiled there in the dark.

N
EW HAMPSHIRE WAS THE
state where Massachusetts residents shopped to avoid paying a sales tax. It was also the state where Massachusetts car thieves went to steal cars.

The reason for this was LoJack, the vehicle-recovery service, a transponder unit installed inside cars that pinged its location to police once the tracking service was activated. Not a problem for joyriders and chop shops with a couple of hours’ turnover time, but if you needed work vehicles for anything longer than an overnight, no good. LoJack used no window decals to warn thieves, and the transponder and its battery backup together were about the size of a sardine tin, small enough to be hidden anywhere inside the car.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut all used LoJack, but not New Hampshire or Vermont. So: boost the car in nearby New Hampshire, then slap on a pair of stolen Massachusetts plates.

Doug drove Gloansy up-country. They needed three vehicles total for the job, and today’s target was the work car. They were looking for a minivan with tinted windows, Gloansy favoring the Dodge Caravan, though he would settle for a Plymouth Voyager or similar. Even a Ford Windstar, though not the new 1996 model. Ford had begun embedding transponders in the plastic heads of ignition keys, meaning that, even with the steering wheel column punched, the
starting system remained disabled without a corresponding key. Gloansy carried a volt meter to defeat the system, but measuring the resistance between wires under the dash and joining the matching resistors cost him an extra thirty seconds, a lifetime in daylight car theft.

“Fucking with my livelihood,” said Gloansy, working the Caprice’s factory radio, the stations dying one by one as they pushed farther north. “Like when robots put guys out of work at the factory—trying to make me obsolete.”

Doug said, “What’s a car thief with a young family to support gonna do?”

“Start
hijacking,
I guess. Keep the keys and roll the driver into the trunk. Then car owners’ll be
begging
to get rid of these immobilizer systems.”

“All of us,” said Doug, “getting outmoded. These wires.” Old telegraph poles spaced the country road, phone wires running taut. “Money juicing through them as we speak, right there over our heads. Credit card money, dollar signs flowing like electricity. Gotta be some way to tap into that. Turn all this one-zero-zero bullshit into actual cash.”

Gloansy had bought a couple of sour pickles at a country store and was chomping them like bananas, wiping his fingers on the Caprice’s blue velour seats. “Like how?”

“You got me. When it comes to that, then I’ll know I’m done.”

They found what they needed in a parking lot outside a stadium-sized Wal-Mart. A dull green Caravan with tinted back windows, parked a quarter mile from the store. The new Caravans had sliding doors on both sides, as well as removable rear seats, which was better than perfect.

A child’s car seat in back was considered bad luck by many boosters, but not Gloansy. He whistled his way across the lot to the Caravan’s door, working with dried Krazy Glue on his fingers to queer his prints. It was too warm for gloves. A baseball jacket in early May was suspect enough, but he needed the bulky sleeves for his tools.

Gloansy was at the door only a few seconds before popping the handle. He was a good minute behind the wheel before the engine started up, long for Gloansy, but then Doug saw him toss a red Club steering-wheel lock in back and understood. The Club itself was basically impervious, but the steering wheel owners clamped it to was made of soft rubber tubing, so Gloansy left the Club intact and cut through the wheel around it. Then he punched the ignition barrel on the steering with a slide hammer, started up the Caravan, and rolled past Doug without a wave, only the merest hint of a froglike smile.

Gloansy: A good enough guy, and yet there was something slick and sweaty about him that threatened to rub off, his surface eagerness masking something cold and reptilian beneath, an interior life just smart enough to keep itself hidden from view. It was no surprise to Doug that Gloansy had been the first of
them to father a kid, but Monsignor Dez would have been Doug’s money pick as the first one to get married.

D
OUG STOOD TWISTED OFF
the curb, leaning across Shyne’s doll legs, trying to get the frayed blue Caprice seat-belt strap fed through the back of the car seat so that he could secure the clasp. He tried hard not to curse, ignoring the little girl’s unwavering gaze and her sour breath, ignoring even her hand rubbing his cheek, his neck, his hair—all of it infuriating as he tried to make this fucking thing fit.

Krista turned around in the front seat. “Sometimes you gotta kneel on the thing. Kneel on it.”

He was a fucking centimeter away from catching the lock when Shyne slipped her finger inside his ear, and in shaking her off, he whacked his head on the car ceiling and roared like he was going to explode. She didn’t cry, nothing, her face still, her skin waxy like pesticide-glazed fruit. There was a slight odor of spoil about her, of sour juice, of urine.

Not his child. Not his problem.

He dropped all his weight on the sides of the seat and with one final effort made the clasp bite, then ducked out fast and arched his back, feeling those red arrows of pain from the TV commercials. Shyne looked at him the same way she looked at everything: as though for the first time. He swung the car door shut on her and she didn’t jump.

“Hell is Jem?”

Krista looked out her open window. “No idea.”

Doug went around to his side, scanning the street as he went, then climbed in, slowly rebending his back.

“I really appreciate this, Duggy,” Krista said, sitting next to him like she belonged there. “Shyne’s had this cough, and the only appointment they could give me was right away. I felt funny asking.”

Right. “How’s she doing on those other things?” he ventured, starting up the engine. “You were going to get her checked out.”

“She’s doing great now, she’s really starting to come along. Out of her shell. She’s just shy. Like her mother, right?”

Doug nodded at the attempted joke, pulling out past Jem’s blue Flamer parked curbside. “There’s his car.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I don’t know. He’s probably hungover anyway.”

“I thought you said he wasn’t home.”

“If he was, I mean.” She looked out her window, close-bitten fingers at her worm-thin lips. “He’s not reliable. Not like you.”

Doug dropped fast to Medford Street, still hoping to sit out the morning in
the parking lot of The Braintree 10. Shyne watched him through his rearview with that same passive, sad-eyed gaze.

“Gloansy’s wedding’s coming up, huh?” said Krista.

Doug understood now the nature of this medical emergency. He turned out along the wharves, pissed, pushing the Caprice.

“Nice, you being Nicky’s godfather.” She flicked at the musky orange Hooters deodorizer swaying from the cigarette lighter. “Jem says you might be going alone.”

“Did he.”

“Joanie said we bridesmaids can wear whatever we want, except white. So I bought this new dress I saw downtown, dripping off a mannequin. Backless, black. Comes down like this.” Her hands were moving low over her chest, but he didn’t turn to look. “Rides up high on the sides of each leg. Like a dancing dress, but formal. Sexy.”

He rolled under the highway past the Neck, crossing into Somerville toward the free clinic, trying to be impervious.
There is no way to compromise the hulk of an armored vehicle without at the same time destroying its contents.

“A cocktail dress,” she went on. “Which is funny, because I won’t be drinking any cocktails in it. I gave up drinking, Duggy.” She was watching him, her body shuddering with the potholes. “This time for good.”

Doug thinking,
The can is only vulnerable through its human operators…

M
ALDEN CENTER SMELLED LIKE
a village set on the shore of an ocean of hot coffee. With the coffee bean warehouse so close, sitting in Dunkin’ Donuts was a little redundant, like chewing nicotine gum in a tobacco field. But that’s what they were doing, Frank G. in a soft black sweatshirt, nursing a decaf, and Doug M. looking rumpled in a gray shirt with blue baseballlength sleeves, rolling a bottle of Mountain Dew between his hands.

“So,” Frank G. said, “what’s up, Sport? Let’s have it.”

Doug shrugged. “You know how it is.”

“I know that I get nervous whenever a guy strings together a bunch of noshows.”

“Yeah,” said Doug, admitting it, settling back into his chair. “Work’s been a bitch.”

“You should take on a wife, studly. And a house to keep up, and two kids who never wanna go to bed. And yet and still, I find the time to make it down here three or four nights a week.”

“Right,” said Doug, nodding, agreeing.

“It the romance?”

“Nah, no.”

“She have a problem with you not drinking?”

“What? No, nothing like that.”

Frank nodded. “So it’s over already.”

“Over?” Doug had blabbed way too much last time. “It’s not
over
over.”

“What is it then?”

“Guess it’s on hold.”

“She’s done with it, but you’re still into her.”

“No.” Doug shook his head. “Wrong-o. Other way around.”

“Okay. My concern is you trading one addiction for another. Like an even exchange, going up to the counter at Jordan Marsh with your receipt.
This booze thing isn’t working out for me so well. I want to trade it in for a pretty girl.
And they initial your receipt and off you go. Then the new one—the
positive
one, right?
’Cause it’s
love,
man. This
new
one up and dumps you, and what you’re left with then is a garage-sized hole in your daily life.”

“Christ, Frank—I skipped a couple of meetings. My bad. I been real busy.”

“Busy, bullshit. This is the heart and soul of your week right here. This is the oil that greases the engine. Without this you have nothing, and you should know that by now. Everything else will just go away.”

“This is like friggin’ high school. You show up on Tuesday, they yell at you for skipping Monday.”

“This isn’t anything like school.” Frank G.’s anger surprised Doug. “I look like your truant officer? You don’t go to meetings—that means I get to bust you up about it. That’s how this works.”

Doug looked at the table and nodded. He waited.

And waited.

“Fine.” Frank G. checked his watch. “Let’s cut this short then.”

Doug looked up. “What?”

“You come and make time for me at meetings, I’ll make time for you. As it is, if I hustle, I can make it home for my kids’ bedtime, read them a story for a change.”

Doug shrugged, hands high. “Frank, I missed some fucking meetings here and there—”

“Do the work, then you get the perks.”

“Perks? Did you say perks? Sitting in a Dunkin’ Donuts in Malden Center at eight thirty at night, this is a perk?”

Which was stupid, stupid. Frank G. stared at Doug, then reached for his yellow windbreaker, starting to stand.

“Frank,” said Doug. “Frank, look, man, I was kidding. That didn’t come out the way it sounded.”

“See you in church.” Frank G. was checking his pockets for keys. “Maybe.”

Frank was walking past him. Doug had fucked up. “I’m going to see my old man tomorrow,” he blurted.

Frank G. weighed his keys in his hand as though they were Doug himself, a fish he might throw back. All Frank knew about Mac was that he was in jail. “How long’s it been?”

“Good long time. He asked me to come in, see him about something.”

“Uh-huh. And how’s it gonna go?”

“Power of positive thinking, right?”

“A lot of it’s up to you.”

“Then it’s gonna go splendid. And he’ll go back into his cell, and I’m good for another year or so. That’s how it’s gonna go.”

Frank G. nodded and started for the door. “See you ’round.”

*   *   *

T
HE NAME
MCI C
EDAR
J
UNCTION
sounded like one of those corporate-brand stadiums, with naming rights purchased by a long distance phone company or a logging concern. MCI stood for Massachusetts Correctional Institution. When Doug’s father started his tour there, the place was called MCI Walpole, after its host town, but at some point during the mid-1980s, Walpole’s residents realized that sharing their name with the state’s toughest prison—it was also home to the DDU, the Departmental Disciplinary Unit, known as The Pit—placed a slight drag on property values and sued successfully to have it renamed after a long-abandoned railroad station.