The Town: A Novel (38 page)

Arnold Washton, 311 Hazer Street, Quincy.

Morton Harford, 27 Counting Lane, Randolph.

Take the coin tray off the cart, open up the safe, and start stacking bags.

Remember this ain’t your money and how nice it’s gonna be to get back home.

Ain’t gonna be no rematch. Say hello to my little friend.

We’re here for the popcorn, Mugsy. Yeaaahh, see?

They made him do the last line three times over until he read it straight, then allowed him into the bathroom for his unwanted piss before shutting him inside an interrogation room and leaving him alone for the better part of an hour. Soft carpeting covered the soundproof walls. Doug got up once to check the thermostat—he had heard this was how interrogators turned on hidden microphones—but couldn’t tell anything without lifting off the box. Instead he dropped a little whistling on his imagined audience, “The Rose of Tralee,” and hoped they liked it.

The one who came in introduced himself as a detective lieutenant assigned to the Bank Robbery Task Force, name of Drysler. He was long-armed and walked with the stoop of a tall man getting older. He set down a clipboard with Doug’s print card on top and pulled off a pair of reading glasses, folding his long arms like someone collapsing the legs of a card table.

“One chance,” he told Doug. “I’m giving you one shot, and this is it.”

Doug nodded like he was interested.

“You’re the first one brought in,” said Drysler. “So lucky you gets first crack at setting up a deal.”

Doug nodded and leaned close to him. “Okay, I did it,” he confessed. “Tell O.J. the search is over. I killed Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.”

Drysler stared, too old and too pro to get pissy. “Did you like prison, MacRay?”

“To that I’d have to answer no.”

“They say life is full of choices, MacRay, but it’s not. Life is lived choice by choice by choice. What you eat, what you wear, when you sleep, who you sleep with. You choose wrong here, MacRay, and you may never get the opportunity to choose anything again. That’s what life in prison means—the death of choice.”

Doug swallowed, the older detective’s words going down like razors, but he smiled through his pain. “If you got that printed on a bumper sticker or something, I’ll take one home with me.”

Drysler nodded after a long moment of consideration. “Okay, you can go.”

On his way out to the lobby, Doug passed a guy standing near the watercooler, jacketless like Drysler, a simple blue tie on a long-sleeved white shirt tucked deep into tan dress pants, shoulder rig prominent beneath his left arm. He was drinking water from a cone paper cup, watching Doug over the rim, and Doug found something in the guy’s eyes that was familiar.

The cup came down and the guy looked at Doug as he swallowed, showing attitude. Doug was past him before he realized who it was and stopped, turning back.

“Hey,” said Doug with a nod. “Rash cleared up, huh?”

The G-man just kept looking, wearing the same I’m-smarter-than-you face as do all the true believers in the Cult of the Gold Badge. The only thing different about this one was his hair, not straight and tight like a boy’s regular but a tawny morass of rings and tangles. Doug had two or three good inches on him, and at least forty pounds.

Doug said, “What, a little penicillin from the clinic took care of that?”

The look became a stare. Drysler came up on them to shoo Doug along, and Doug should probably have kept going to the lobby and out the door, but he couldn’t resist. He stopped again and snapped his fingers, pointing back at the G-man and his professionally insolent face.

“Red Cavalier, right?”

No answer, the G’s hand a tight fist at his side, trying to compress the paper cup into a diamond. Doug grinned, then turned and walked through the lobby, though by the time he hit the outside steps rising to the sidewalk, his grin was well gone.

*   *   *

S
PENCER
G
IFTS SOLD ASS-SHAPED
beer mugs that farted when tipped to drink. The mall store was deep, dark, and disorientingly loud, the clerk behind the counter—looking like a cross between an Orthodox rabbi and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea—mouthing the anguished lyrics of a screeching Nine Inch Nails song like a man mumbling prayers at work.

Doug felt ridiculous himself, having outgrown this place ten years ago, but the store was G-proof and the music made it virtually unsnoopable.

Dez arrived late, his black eyeglass rims achieving a kind of retro rightness as he passed a jewelry counter of body art and skull rings. He was all worked up, Doug holding out a hand to slow him down, giving him a quick fist-rap of reassurance.

“They picked me up in the parking lot at work,” said Dez. “This is after paying my boss a visit, checking on my story.”

Doug nodded, keeping an eye on the store entrance. “Easy, kid. Take a breath.”

“Trying to make me lose my
job
.” Dez brought his voice down. “This is a
federal grand jury
.”

“Relax. All that means is a roomful of citizens sitting around deciding if evidence is evidence.”

“Oh? That’s all?” Wild sarcasm didn’t look good on Dez.

“The cops. What’d you tell them?”

“What’d I tell them? I didn’t tell them anything! They didn’t even
ask
me anything, just, ‘Smile for the camera, open your mouth.’ I don’t even know if it was for the”—Dez looked back cautiously at two kids looking through Tupac and marijuana-leaf posters—“the most recent thing, or what. They didn’t say
anything
.”

“And neither did you.”

“
Christ,
of course not.
Jesus
. They take that swab thing of your mouth?”

“Yep. Your palm, knuckles?”

“Sure. That’s not normal?”

Maybe the van didn’t burn right. Maybe Jem did something asinine, like taking off a glove while eating candy at the glass counter. Or maybe it was nothing. “They’re just shaking the trees, trying to get lucky. Stirring us up.”

“Well—it fucking worked!”

Doug nodded, shushing him. “Newspaper said they brought in some fifteen other Town guys. A dragnet, all of them players—except you. Calling you in with no armed-robbery record, that shows they’re onto the other capers.”

“But how? How do they know?”

“
Knowing
means nothing more than a hassle. It’s what they can or cannot
prove
.”

Dez looked at a disco ball twirling on the ceiling. “Trying to make me lose my
job
.…”

Doug shook his head, amazed that Dez was worried about his job here. Two people walked in the front, just girls, not thirty years between them, with skunked hair and pierced ears more metal than flesh.

“Jem thinks it’s the branch manager from the Kenmore thing,” said Dez.

Doug looked hard at him. “Where’s that coming from? You talk to him?”

“No, not recently. This is from before.”

“When before? What’d he say?”

Dez shrugged. “Just that. That she told them something, or she knew something—I couldn’t really follow him. She’s bad luck anyway, you gotta admit.”

“How’s that?”

“Ever since then, you know? It’s been one thing after another.”

Doug looked away to hide his annoyance, his eyes falling on a Jenny McCarthy poster, the topless blonde clutching her tits like she was going to rip them off her chest and chuck them at his head. “Jem’s fucking up all over the place,” said Doug. “He went
Full Metal Jacket
in the movie theater lobby. Shot it up with one of the guard’s guns—for no sane reason.”

“He say anything about me?”

“About you? What, like you blabbed?”

“No. Wait—he thinks that?”

“Whoa, I don’t know what the hell Jem thinks, I haven’t seen him. What are you talking about?”

Dez tried to say it once, failed, exhaled, tried again. “Krista.”

Doug stared. With everything else he had completely forgotten about that. “Aw, for Christ,” he said in semidisgust.

“I ran into her at the Tap, the night of you guys’ thing.” Dez assessed Doug, wondering whether he should say anything more. “We hung out awhile, then she wanted to go back, watch the robbery coverage on the late news.”

Doug knew how Krista got when she drank. So did a lot of other guys. And so, now, did Dez.

“Kid, I’m gonna say this just once. You’re being played. She’s putting you in the middle of what she thinks is this epic tug-of-war battle between her and me, not understanding that that’s a rope I let go of a long time ago.”

“Duggy—”

“On top of that…” A guy in a polo shirt and a ballcap passed the entrance without looking in, Doug getting antsy, starting to feel trapped. “On top of all that, she’s running all over town doing errands for the guy who killed your dad.”

“Her uncle. She works for him, does his books.”

“A distant,
distant
cousin at best. And Krista’s not known for her algebra, Dezi.”

“What are you saying? About what she does for him?”

So idiotic, Dez getting all twisted up over Krista with these bombs going off around them. “Christ, will you cool it? What I’m saying is, she helps out Fergie the Florist from time to time, and I know what the Florist peddles and so do you. Clean those specs of yours.”

“My specs are clean, Doug.”

“Fucking fantastic for you. Oh, and one last little thing.”

Sour now, pissed. “What?”

“That guy in the Cavalier outside your ma’s house? He was at the police station when I was there.”

Dez’s face breaking, getting nervous again. “No.”

“And no rash disguise this time. He is the G, and he’s coming after all of us.” Doug thumped Dez in the chest with his finger. “You want something to worry about, kid, start worrying about that.”

H
E WATCHED HER THERE
a moment, kneeling and working in her garden, before making his presence known. The riot of color and life that surrounded her was at its peak, this long late week in June. Though gardening in general struck Doug as the ultimate in futility—bringing a plot of land to life only to watch it die again, a chore doomed from the beginning—something in the way she threw everything she had into it, regardless of the outcome, was lovable.

All this passed through him in the instant before she saw him: Doug watching her kneeling on the dark rug of soil that held his treasure, in the thin, sidelong light of the setting sun, her shadow reaching across her garden sanctuary.

“I
WANT TO BUY
you something,” he said.

They were in the plaza outside Trinity Church, part of an early-evening crowd surrounding a street performer juggling two bowling pins, a bowling ball, and a pair of bowling shoes. Only Claire watched the juggler—Doug watched the amusement in her face. The act ended to applause, Claire clapping prayer-handed under her chin.

“What do you want to buy me?”

“What do you want?”

“Hmm.” She retook his hand, twisting slightly on her heels. “How about a new car?”

“What kind?”

“I was kidding. I don’t want a car.”

He said nothing, waiting.

“You’re serious,” she said.

“It’s the first thing that came into your mind.”

“That’s because I was
joking
.”

“If we trade in your Saturn on top of it, you could do pretty well.”

She smiled, mystified by him. “I don’t. Want. A new car.”

“What do you want then?”

She laughed. “I don’t want anything.”

“Think. Something you wouldn’t buy for yourself.”

She made a thinking face, playing along. “Got it. Frozen yogurt at Emack’s.”

“Not bad. But I was thinking more along the lines of jewelry.”

“Oh?” She smiled at the sidewalk ahead of them. “Yogurt or jewelry. I could be up all night wrestling with
that
choice.”

Earrings didn’t excite him. He looked at her neck: graceful, bare. “How about a chain? Where would we go to look for something like that?”

She put her free hand to her throat. “Why—Tiffany, of course.”

“Okay. Tiffany it is.”

“You know I’m still joking.”

“I know you were joking before, when we were talking about a car. But once the topic of jewelry came up—I think you got a tiny bit serious.”

She laughed like she should have been insulted and hit him lightly in the chest. Then she looked at him more closely. “What’s gotten into you tonight?”

“I want to do this,” he said. “Let me.”

T
HE BROAD-HIPPED SALESWOMAN
with the jailer’s ring of cabinet keys waited as Claire turned and gathered up her hair. The woman worked the clasp and Claire turned to the framed mirror on the counter, opening her eyes and fixing on the diamond pebble glittering in the freckled scoop of her neck. Ringed in gold, the solitaire rode out a deep swallow.

“This is crazy,” she breathed.

“It looks good on you.”

“How can you… you can’t afford this.”