The Town: A Novel (57 page)

“Shut the fuck up.” Doug turned to the cashier. “Put these on the police account.” Without waiting for an acknowledgment, he walked out past Dez.

Dez caught up with him on the rainy sidewalk. “Duggy! What’s happening to you? You don’t need this—”

Doug shoved Dez back with an elbow. “I fucking told you not to come.”

Doug returned to the car first, his wet coat crinkling as he sat. “The fuck was that?” said Jem, before seeing the twin caddies of tall boys.

Doug said, “Thought you wanted to be there for my first one back.”

Jem’s smile grew wide and fierce, all-encompassing.

“Duggy Mac is
back
.” Doug passed one of the sixes over the seat to Gloansy as Dez returned, settling in, not removing his orange hood. Doug reached for his Leatherman, finding it missing. A twinge of panic as he pictured it sitting forgotten on his bureau—a tool he had carried with him on every job.

No matter. The trick, when you don’t have an opener, is to use one beer for leverage, inverting it and hooking the cap of the beer to be popped, then twisting and pulling back the top one like snapping a stick in two. Doug cracked one for Jem and one for himself.

Genie mist escaped out of its small mouth. Doug’s chest was pounding.

Jem waited for Gloansy to crack two, then said reverently, “To the Town.”

Jem rapped fists with Doug, neither one spilling a drop. Doug said, “Here’s how.”

He brought the bottle to his lips, the beer splashing hard to the back of his throat, tasteless at first, swallowed like seawater. Then came the tang, the bite. His throat worked the brew along until the bottle was empty and weightless, the taste settling into his tongue like surf foam sinking into sand.

The first belch was an echo from a dark abyss. He popped open another and caught sight of Dez, slow to drink his first, disappointment and disapproval evident in the sag of his shoulders. Doug drank harder.

The other part of Doug was coming out now. The old Doug MacRay, the one resigned to his fate. The Jem in him who was damned and knew it.
Never prison again.
His only goal now.

No tomorrow: that was what Billy T. had been all about. No consequences, nobody to disappoint, not Dez, not Frank G., not even Doug himself. Nothing could touch him now.

Jem cracked open his third, ahead of Doug, meaning Doug was without another bottle to open his. He was working on the cap with his Krazy Glue fingers when Jem let out a war whoop.

The red light was on over the ambulance door on Van Ness.

The silver Provident truck turned off Ipswich, starting down the road, slowing at the rising door. It swung around, stopped, and began to back inside.

The black Suburban pulled up at the curb outside Fenway as the bay door closed.

Jem dropped his empty on the floor, kicking open his door to the street and the rain.

Doug stood out on the sidewalk, the downpour cracking loud against his hood. Dez got out in front of Doug, standing there, not looking at him, waiting for Gloansy. Those two started up Van Ness toward the Suburban as Doug crossed the street through blowing wet sheets, side by side with Jem, walking toward the Gate D entrance and looking for the G in every raindrop, thinking,
ambush, ambush, ambush
.

J
EM PULLED HARD A
few times on the chained gate.

The red shirt sitting dry and comfortable on the folding chair inside looked up from his newspaper, then dropped it at the sight of the cops, hustling to the entrance.

Jem said, “Was it you who called?”

He was a young guy, cinnamon-skinned, puffy, maybe Samoan but not huge. “Huh?”

“Nine one one call, we got. Open up.”

“I didn’t… it wasn’t…”

“Robbery call. Who else is here?”

“Robbery?” He looked around, panicked.

“There’s no one else here?”

“Sure there is, but—”

“Call says you’re being held up. Right now.”

“Then I need to phone security.”

“Phone whoever you want, but we gotta get in there first, do our jobs. Then make your call.”

He nodded and unlocked the chain, admitting Doug and Jem.

Doug stiffened up to hide his jumpiness. “Go ahead, lock it back up if you have to.”

As the red shirt did, Doug and Jem both unclasped the bottoms of their coats, baring their holsters. With the rain and the lack of lights, it was darker than a night game in there.

“Where’s everyone else?” said Jem, starting down the ramp.

“Some around the corner there. Let me—”

“And what is your name, sir?”

“My name’s Eric.”

“Eric, point me in the right direction here. Let’s make sure everyone’s safe, then we can all sit down and make our phone calls.”

Eric nodded obediently and showed them the way, moving down the slope
toward the corner. Doug glimpsed the open Employees Only door, and then, wider, the tunnel.

The motorized flatbed pushcart was on its way toward the first aid station at the tunnel’s end, loaded with thick bundles of plastic-wrapped cash. One gray-and-black Provident guard operated the cart’s handle controls, the other backing him up with one hand on his holster. Doug double-checked their ears, seeing no wires.

Jem started after them, his voice booming inside the tunnel. “Who called 911?”

The guards stopped, turning fast, spooked.

“Who called it?” said Jem, hand at his waist, coattails flapping. Doug pushed Eric down to the floor, telling him to stay still, lie flat.

The guards looked at each other, hands on their holsters.

The anxiety in Doug’s voice worked as he said, following Jem, “We got a distress call. Who made the call?”

The guards stayed between Jem and Doug and the money cart. “No call from us.”

“Who called it?” said Jem, pressing closer.

“Hold on,” said one guard, raising his off-hand.

“ID!” said Jem, not stopping. “Let’s see some ID! Both of you!”

“Hold on, hold it, now,” said the guard, half into a protective crouch.

“Whoa,
whoa!
” said Jem.

“Don’t do that!” shouted Doug.

“We didn’t hit it!” said one guard.

“We’re on the job here!” said the other.

Two Fenway Park security blue shirts appeared at the mouth of the tunnel behind them. “What the… ?”

“Get down back there!” commanded Doug.

They put their arms out like this was all a big misunderstanding. “It’s okay!” they yelled. “They’re okay!”

Doug drew his Beretta, keeping it low at his hip, muzzle down. “Everybody on the ground, now!”

“For our safety!” said Jem, also drawing. “I want IDs from everybody!”

Twenty yards away, Doug just kept asserting himself. “Get down!”

“Wait, hey!” said the guards.

“On the floor!” yelled Jem.

The blue shirts lay facedown.

The panicky guard pulled his sidearm clear of his holster. Doug swung up his Beretta, aiming, bracing it on his opposite forearm.
“Gun!”
he yelled.
“Gun!”

“Drop your weapon!”
bellowed Jem, aiming his Glock. “Put it down
now!
”

“No, no!” said the other guard, covering his head, backing away.

Jem and Doug came at them gun-first, with legit tension: “Drop your weapon! We got a call! Put it down!”

Guard yelling,
“We did not call!”

Doug stopped ten yards away. The four of them barking back and forth over drawn guns until the retreating guard dropped to his knee, took his hand off his holster, and laid on his belly, arms out.

“Stop resisting!” they yelled at the other one.
“Get down! Get down!”

Cursing, the panicky second guard yielded, lying down arms-out, still holding on to his gun.

Doug and Jem came up fast, Jem stepping on the armed guard’s wrist, covering both guards, Doug going to the blue shirts beyond the cash cart, gathering hands and binding them with plastic ties. The can idled just around the corner from the mouth of the tunnel, backed in—the driver unable to see or hear anything.

Doug ripped off the blue shirts’ security radios and tossed them away. “Lie still,” he told them, rejoining Jem, pocketing the other guard’s gun and yanking his stiff hands behind his back. “Jesus
Christ,
” spat Doug’s guard, red-faced, gruff. “The fuck’re you two doing? We’re on the goddamn job here!”

“We got a call,” said Doug, binding the guard’s wrists. Doug then pulled up the black bandanna knotted around his neck, covering his mouth and nose and leaving only his eyes visible. Jem did the same as Doug turned and started back for Eric.

The puffy guy was already sitting up. Incomprehension, at first—masked cop with gun raised, coming at him—then Eric got to his feet and, with one hand on the tunnel wall, began to run for his life.

Doug yelled at him to stop as the round whizzed past. The crack of the gunshot echoed in the tunnel, and Eric turned, still galloping, his cinnamon hands reaching for the hip of his jeans as though trying to catch the bullet that had just entered his side. He ran like that a few more feet before collapsing—the shock of having been shot bringing him down, not the round itself.

Doug turned, seeing Jem with his 9mm still aimed, his knee and his opposite hand on the backs of the two squirming guards.

Doug rushed to Eric, who was gripping his wide hip in horror. But all four limbs were moving, and he had plenty of padding to absorb the round. Doug hoped the rain would do the same to the gunshot report.

He wrestled one of Eric’s wrists away from the tiny wound, then the other, binding them behind his back. “There’ll be help here soon,” said Doug, leaning on his shoulder for emphasis. “Stay down and shut up.”

He ran back to where Jem was, wasting a glare at him, then yanking his guard to his feet. The guard twisted and fought, Doug finally bouncing the guy off the wall, stunning him before muscling him around the corner.

Doug got the full view of the silver can there, the Provident medallion bold beneath the rear windows. He dumped the guard down against the brick wall and walked up to the passenger side of the cab to get the driver’s attention.

He hadn’t expected a woman. She was frizzy-haired and long-faced, throwing Doug off his game for a second.

She went white, jerking back and fumbling with the keys in the ignition, starting up the truck, diesel smoke coughing into the cave. Doug heard the locks automatically reset and watched the yellow rooftop beacon start spinning, the can going into lockdown. With the bay door closed in front of it and the iron girders behind it, there was nowhere for the truck to go.

Jem dragged the blue shirts over to the dazed guards, dumping them along the side wall. The driver peeked out the passenger window, now talking fast into the handset of a ceiling-mounted radio. “Assholes fucked up,” snarled one guard. “Sandy’s locked in there. She’s calling the law.”

Doug moved to the switch controlling the lamp outside, turning it off. He checked Jem standing over the four captives, bandanna puffing with breath, then started back past the trapped armored truck to the next bay door, pressing the call button on the cop-style two-way Motorola clipped to his shoulder. “Ready?”

“Ready,” came back Dez’s voice, breathless. “All clear out here.”

Doug hit the switch and the second door crawled up the wall to the ceiling, rising on the crashing rain and Dez in his orange cop coat and black bandanna, holding his Beretta on the driver of the tail car: a swarthy bodybuilder type in a collared shirt and jeans, hands bound behind him, pissed off. Dez walked him inside, and then the big black Suburban followed them into the bay, backing in trunk end first. The wet tires slid to a stop on the downward incline, Gloansy jumping out wearing his bandanna, and Doug hit the switch that closed the bay door.

Gloansy took control of the tail-car driver, walking him back to the others at the Provident truck as Dez touched the radio wire looped over his ear. He blinked and squinted as he monitored all police channels plus the security net inside the park itself, muttering something about his contact lenses. “There it is,” he said. “Call just went out from dispatch.”

The driver had done her job, calling in a Mayday.

They jogged back to the idling can at the first aid station, where the mouthy guard was still going at it: “I put in twenty-two years as a guard at Walpole, I have friends that’ll see to it you all live out the rest of your lives in rip-ass hell.”

Jem pointed his gun at him and the guy shut up.

Gloansy and Dez stayed on the five hostages—the two uniformed can guards, the two Fenway security blue shirts, and the Suburban driver—while Jem and Doug worked the pushcart, Doug thumbing buttons on the electric handle to roll it past the back of the can and down to the open rear door of the Suburban. The cash was sealed in clear, tight, shrink-wrapped bundles, roughly the size of four loaves of bread packaged side by side. Jem scattered the paperwork off the top and dumped off two heavy racks of coins, the rolls bursting nickels and dimes on the floor. They pulled folded hockey duffel bags from their coat pockets, Doug spreading them open in the back of the Suburban.