The Town: A Novel (60 page)

Vested Frawley and some commando cops were coming up slow on Jem. Doug didn’t understand Dez’s concern—until, at once, he did.

The grenades on Jem’s belt.

“Hey!”
Dez started to yell.

The commando cops would never hear him through the rain.
“Dez!”
said Doug, calling him back. Regular cops coming from the burning car.

Dez ran a few steps forward, waving an arm. His stand here had to do at least as much with getting some final triumph over Jem—thwarting his grand battlefield exit, Jem’s plan to take a few of his enemies with him—as it did saving the cops’ lives.

Dez drew his gun and fired it for the first time that morning, straight up into the rain, then a few times low at the road around Jem. It worked, the only way to back the cops away from that distance.

The blast was like a road mine exploding, Jem erupting into lumpy pieces. The bag coughed money into the air, cash fluttering like confetti shot out of cannon, drifting back down to the wet road.

The cops near the smoking Civic were drawing on Dez now, yelling. All confusion in the slapping rain, Dez trying to see, his eyes bothering him, arms rising to his face.

The first shot spun Dez around. The second jerked him the other way, his vest vulnerable at close range, Dez dropping to the asphalt with a splash.

Doug drew and started after him. But already half a dozen orange raincoats were advancing on Dez where he lay.

You gonna shoot at cops?

Doug watched Dez squirming on the ground until the encircling cops blocked his view. Dez was down. Gloansy was caught. Jem was dead.

Something washed over Doug then, with the rain. He holstered his gun and turned and walked away.

*   *   *

T
HE RINGING IN
F
RAWLEY’S
ears was his mind screaming as he picked himself up off the wet road and stumbled back toward the pieces of Coughlin. It was snowing money now, and he moved gun-first through the flurry of cash to the double yellow line.

Coughlin’s armored vest was cracked open like a bloody husk. The fucker had blown himself up and tried to take Frawley and everyone else with him.

Frawley looked down the road to where the shots had come from, his thoughts too shrill to even speculate about what had happened. Someone was in custody down there. Frawley only hoped it was MacRay.

D
OUG SAT ON HER
stone bench. The willow was weeping rain into her garden, and he was trying to understand what it was he was feeling, until finally he realized—he felt nothing.

He got down on his knees in the muck. Rain battered the purple impatiens as he thrust his hands wrist-deep into the soil, as though he could reach all the way down to his money, take it, and leave. As though he had anything to run to now. As though he had anything to run for.

Nothing left in him but vengeance. Sirens wailed out on Boylston as he stood and shed his orange coat, starting back toward the Town.

D
OUG WALKED OFF THE
T at the Community College stop and crossed over Rutherford Avenue on the elevated walkway, seeing the soaked Town before him, the shoulders of its twin hills shrugged against the rain.

He walked along Austin Street between the rink and the Foodmaster plaza toward Main Street, umbrella people nodding at this drenched beat cop passing them on the sidewalk, kids in slickers and rubber boots staring up at the man in blue. Doug didn’t see any of it. The only thing he noticed other than the bricks at his feet was the State Police helicopter cutting through the rain over the city across the river, looking for him.

The bell over the front door giggled as he entered the flower shop. He heard harp and fiddle music, “A Little Bit of Heaven” serenading the thirsty plants and squatting stone gargoyles. Doug stood alone among the pale blooms for a few airless moments, until Rusty, the Florist’s guy, pushed through the black curtain hanging over the door behind the back counter.

He wore a green tracksuit and was eating a lettuce sandwich out of tinfoil. He looked at the sodden blue cop in the store as just another customer, until he recognized the face.

For a moment it seemed that Doug wouldn’t have to shoot the ex-IRA man. Rusty had nothing but a cold sandwich to defend himself with, and Doug thought the guy might just bend to the will of force and time and step aside.

But a glance at Doug’s empty hands showed him that Rusty had too much pride. The Florist’s guy dropped his sandwich and lunged for something under the counter.

Doug cleared his holster and fired twice, the white-haired Irishman falling back against the wall to the floor. Doug passed the counter on the way to the back, Rusty facedown and gasping for air.

Doug pushed through the black curtain gun-first. The Irish music was louder there, warbling out of an old turntable. The glass-doored walk-in cooler was empty, Fergie’s workbench standing across the room.

Doug heard a toilet flush. He turned toward the latch door as it opened.

Fergie wandered out carrying a newspaper, wearing his tight, hooded sweatshirt, long work pants, and maroon suede slippers. He saw the cop there with

the gun in his hand and at first just looked annoyed. Then he pulled off his reading glasses for a clear look at the cop’s face. The half-glasses fell against his chest.

He said Doug’s name and Doug filled the air between them with smoke. Doug did not stop firing until Fergus Coln lay beneath the workbench, barefoot among the stem clippings, condolence ribbons unspooling over him.

It was a while before the Irish music returned to Doug’s ears. He never heard the bell over the front door.

Two gunshots punched him high in the back of his vest. Another round bit into his left rear thigh, a fourth skipping off his shoulder to slice into his neck.

Doug twisted and dropped to the floor, firing from there, aiming back through the curtain into the store. He heard something fall, then the giggle of the doorbell.

He pushed himself to his feet. The lead in his leg burned and blood was spilling down the front of his shirt over his fake silver-and-blue badge. He felt a warm, pulsing hole in his neck and closed it with his palm, pressing hard and hobbling to the doorway, tearing down the black curtain.

Rusty hadn’t moved, dead where he had fallen. Among the floor pots in front lay a body on its side, a young guy quaking, his black boots thumping the tile. A tear in the back of his T-shirt was blooming red, just over the belt of his fatigues. Doug limped over, his left hand holding the blood into his neck, his right hand holding his gun.

One of Jem’s camo kids. The giggling bell had been the other one getting away.

Doug stood over him, waiting, but the kid refused to look up, lying there shaking in the scummy pot water he had overturned.

Doug holstered his gun and started away, leaving the kid twitching on the floor.

F
RAWLEY SAT INSIDE THE
McDonald’s, still trying to count all the shots he’d fired. There was going to be an FBI investigation as well as civil liability hearings, and he would be held accountable for each and every round. He had already surrendered his Remington for ballistics.

“I’m going to be fired,” he said.

Dino was drinking a strawberry shake next to him. “Easy, now.”

“Look out there.” The street was filled with umbrella-toting city, state, and federal lawmen, Suffolk County coroners, city hall lawyers, and news crews pressing against BPD sawhorses. “Shots fired in Fenway Park. A goddamn grenade blowing up a car.” Frawley sat up. “I killed a man in the street.”

“You shot him pretty good, but technically I think it was that crazy mofo’s hand grenades that cashed out his tab.”

Frawley’s wrinkled FBI vest lay before him. “They can’t clip me right away. Wouldn’t look good. Got to wait for the inquest to run its course. Transfer me somewhere cold in the meantime.”

“You at all curious about that other one down the street?”

Frawley grimaced. “Okay.”

“It was Elden. The one in the Suburban, that was Magloan—with what looks like the entire take in the trunk, minus whatever got blown up out there with Coughlin.”

Frawley waited. “And MacRay?”

“We’ll find him. Bringing in the Canine Unit to search the ballpark.”

Frawley looked at the half-eaten breakfasts left on the tables by the windows, empty high chairs, open newspapers.

“Dean,” he said, unable to look the older man in the eye. “I did some stupid things with this. I did some things I probably should have run by you first.”

Dino looked at him, quiet, maybe counting slowly to ten.

“Nothing illegal,” Frawley stressed. “But I pushed it. I put myself inside this. I got involved.”

Dino took a long draw on his shake, then set the cup aside. He stood. “You’re in shock, Frawl. Couple of hours, we’ll talk. Rather—you’ll talk.”

Dino walked away, leaving Frawley staring out the window, thinking about cold weather. He still had his law degree. Maybe this McDonald’s was hiring.

Outside, he watched two detectives jump into an unmarked Grand Marquis, driving fast out of the parking lot.

Frawley read excitement on the faces of the remaining patrolmen. He pulled himself together and went outside. He asked the youngest-looking uniform what was going on.

“The Florist’s shop in Charlestown,” said the cop. “A bloodbath, gangland style. Looks like somebody got Fergie.”

Frawley’s mind seized up like a fist. All that time he’d been sitting there on his ass in a McDonald’s, feeling sorry for himself—

Claire Keesey.

He took off running across the street, back up Yawkey toward his car.

D
OUG PRESSED THE BELL
again and hung his head low so that the badge on his hat was in the spyglass.

Claire opened the door to the cop. She saw Doug’s face and his bloody hand at his neck and her hand went to her mouth, eyes widening.

Doug’s first step over her threshold was okay. He faltered on the second step
and went down hard on the third.

Claire screamed.

He could not move his hand from his neck. Pressure was the only thing keeping him alive. This slow throb against his palm was his clock running down.

He got himself into a sitting position and used his free hand and the heels of his shoes to push back from the open door. Making it to her place was all he’d thought about in the rain. Now he just wanted to push in deeper. He got to the small table outside her kitchen and slumped back against the legs of a chair.

He went away for a little while. Then he came back.

“Made it,” he said. He needed a yawn in the worst way, but couldn’t get one.

Claire came toward him. Impossibly tall, her hands covering her mouth, eyes screaming tears.

Doug fought down a swallow. “Why?”

She started to kneel, hesitated, remained standing.

“In your garden.” He spoke in hoarse bursts. “That last time. I wanted you… to tell me not to do it. I wanted you… to stop me.”

She shook her head in horror.

“I wanted you… to give me a reason…”

“But nothing
I
could have said…”

She still didn’t get him. “I would have done… anything for you. Even save myself.”

She slipped to her knees, sitting on her heels at his outstretched feet, mystified. “Why? Why leave that to
me
?”

And there, in her bewilderment, he recognized his grave mistake. He had surrendered himself to Claire, just as Krista had to him. When you give someone the power to save you, you give them the power to destroy you as well. That was what Frank G. had been all about—not relinquishing that grip on yourself.

A man coming at him down the front hall, gun out. The sleuth, Frawley. Doug tightened his grip on the side of his neck.

F
RAWLEY WENT IN THE
open door, seeing the trail of blood and rain, his SIG-Sauer out of his armpit. MacRay was in a cop uniform, slumped against a chair on the floor, Claire kneeling before him.

MacRay’s gun was in his holster. One hand was wet red and clamped over a neck wound, blood dripping from his bent elbow to the lemon yellow carpet. No grenades on his belt.

MacRay, dying, frowned at Frawley’s gun, then at Frawley himself.

Frawley came up behind his SIG to MacRay’s side, smelling blood, reaching across and tugging the Beretta from MacRay’s cop holster while MacRay sat there and watched him take it. Frawley backed away past Claire, easing up on his aim, putting the Beretta in his back pocket. He saw a telephone on the table and circled to it, picked it up.

“Don’t.”

MacRay’s voice was as bloodless as his face. Frawley put down the phone, moving back into MacRay’s line of sight.

Claire turned her head to look up at Frawley through tears. “Did you do this?”

Her words cut him. She was asking,
Did you do this because of me?

MacRay worked hard to breathe, harder still to speak. “She dimed me?”

He seemed to know the truth already. Frawley said, “That’s right.”

MacRay swallowed with difficulty. He looked at Claire until his eyes fell, then blinked back to Frawley. “Why let it go so far? Why not take us… at the hotel?”