Third Rail (11 page)

“It stands for
Own It, Eat It, Excrete It
,” she says
. “
It's a proven process for getting rid of anger. First you own the anger, recognizing that it's there and where it comes from. Then you take in the anger, challenge it, and devour it.”

“Side order of anger, hold the fries,” Thalia mutters.

“You can make fun of O-E-E all you want,” George sputters. “But it helped me with my anger. It really fucking helped.”

“Apparently,” Harkness says.

“In the final phase, you excrete the anger,” Suzanne says, “the way the body naturally rids itself of all toxins. The anger you shed can serve as fertile soil for growth and renewal. That's why we call it
emotional composting
.”

“Good name,” Harkness says.

George gives him the dismissive stare that no one but a big brother can. “No one asked for your opinion, Eddy.”

 

Thalia and Suzanne drift off—Thalia to the bar, Suzanne to the ladies' room—to escape a dinner that drags on like a drive to the Cape on Memorial Day weekend.

When they're both gone, Harkness leans toward his brother. “Hey, did you check on Allison Nevis?”

“She's definitely on the list—aggrieved party from the Nagog Teachers' Union.”

“How much is she in for?”

“Three-quarters of a mil, maybe more. She's retired now. Lives somewhere on the South Shore. Why do you care?”

“Ran into her son the other day. I think he may know something about my gun.”

“Probably wants to get back at us,” George says. “I get threats all the time—on the phone, e-mails, even old-style anonymous letters. Hey, maybe that's who was fucking with you tonight.”

“Maybe.” The inept attackers at the station seemed too normal to be Dex's friends.

“Better just keep emptying the parking meters, bro,” George says. “They can't fight back. How much is time going for now?”

“In Nagog, fifteen minutes for a quarter,” Harkness says.

George reaches into his pocket for his wallet, takes out a dollar bill, and sets it on the white tablecloth, crumb pocked and splotched with sauce. “I'll take an hour.”

Harkness picks up the dollar and tucks it in his pocket, then tosses some coins on the table between them. “Here's your thirty cents.”

George's face reddens as he picks up his steak knife, deftly palms it point down, and drives it into the table next to Harkness's forearm. A wineglass rolls off the table and shatters on the floor. Waiters scramble. Businessmen turn and stare.

Harkness raises his arm but the blue shirtsleeve stays pinned to the table. “Hey, that's my best shirt.”

“Not anymore.” George is still laughing when the bartender hustles them out of the restaurant.

 

The brothers walk down Park Street with their girlfriends hovering close behind them.

Sudden happiness sweeps over Harkness for a moment, brought on by the saxophone echoing in the distance from Park Street station, the click of Thalia's favorite boots on the brick sidewalk, the glowing statehouse dome late at night, even the familiar presence of his annoying brother.

George takes a swing at the side of Harkness's head and misses.

Harkness shoves George away. “Cut it out.”

Suzanne flutters toward them to intervene. She trips and falls on the street, legs splayed, purse dumping out into the gutter. Thalia rushes over to help her but Suzanne pushes her away.

“You people are like animals,” she shouts.

George lurches toward Harkness again, hunched down like a pinstriped prizefighter. The extra pounds he's carrying tighten his white shirt, collar overrun by his razor-burnt neck. He's drunk but still pretty fast. He tries to punch Harkness in the stomach but Harkness grabs his wrist and spins his arm behind him in a classic come-along. George yelps in pain.

“Stop it!” Suzanne scrambles up from the ground and rushes at them.

Thalia sticks out a long leg and Suzanne's down again, triggering applause and whistles from bums sprawled on the edge of the Common.

Harkness marches George toward his black Audi. “Your girlfriend's right. Get a handle on your temper.”

“Can't help it.” George's huffing like a marathoner. “You know that.”

“You're just giving in to it like a big baby.”

George struggles to get free.

Harkness reaches into his brother's suit coat pocket to find his keys. The car beeps and the trunk pops. He moves a tennis racket to one side and pushes his brother inside. George's kicking but Harkness grabs his legs and shoves them in, slamming the trunk.

“Nice move!” George's muffled voice comes from the trunk.

Harkness tosses the keys to Suzanne. “Drive him around a little to quiet him down, then let him out. He'll be fine.”

George's thumping around inside the trunk like a pair of high tops in a dryer.

Suzanne stares at them for a moment. Her face is smudged with street grime and there's a crescent of dog shit clinging to the knee of her pants suit. She opens her mouth to deliver a final assessment but just shakes her head and climbs into the Audi.

George shouts inside the trunk. Then Suzanne roars off and runs the red light at the intersection with Boylston Street.

Thalia and Harkness watch in silence until the taillights disappear into traffic.

“Another night of Harkness family togetherness,” he says.

“You guys are kinda tough on each other.”

“Dad liked us that way.”

***

Harkness lifts Thalia gently from the futon at the end of each thrust to push even further inside her. The only light in the quiet loft comes from a bodega candle guttering on the kitchen table next to an empty wine bottle.

“Tell me,” he says.

Thalia's been drinking wine and whiskey, followed by an hour on the futon, Harkness intent on extracting the truth however he can, even if it's with sexual waterboarding.

“Tell me,” he whispers again.

“I . . .”

“Tell me.” His request turns to a demand.

“I . . .”

“Tell me, now.” The demand becomes more urgent.

Thalia's breathing faster now, barely able to get enough oxygen. “I want you, Eddy.”

Harkness presses his eyes closed and lowers himself to cover her flame-lit body.

 

Harkness wakes and climbs from Thalia's futon. He walks to the loft window and watches for his gun to drift by in the hand of a local. Or maybe a glowing Glock 17 will appear like magic in the gutter, waiting for him to come downstairs and claim it. But tonight all he sees are damaged night creatures crawling from the banks of the oily industrial canal that runs toward Albrecht Square—hairless rats, a red-eyed opossum with a row of shiny pink tumors along its spine, and scrawny black cats with leering mouths spiked with long white teeth. They lurch down the sidewalk, stopping to nose through garbage, sniffing the burgeoning decay, then moving on to search out fresh rot.

C
ANDACE WATCHES OVER MAY
, sleeping in her car seat next to their table. “Where's your uniform, Eddy?”

“I'm off duty this morning.”

“So you're not always a cop?”

“I'm always a cop. I just don't always wear my uniform.”

Candace's bracelets jangle as she reaches for her coffee with her good hand.

“What's it like working here?”

Candace looks around the Nagog Bakery. “It's okay, I guess. If you want to get knocked up. Cindy the Cougar. Princess Sparkle Thong. Nancy Nothing Fancy. Vicky Veneer. They all got pregnant. Something about breathing the yeast or the sugar or whatever. Me? I can't blame the bakery.”

“Did Declan work here?”

“Dex? You kidding? He doesn't work for anyone but himself. Never has, never will. But I'm all about the team.” She points over at the overstuffed couches in the corner with her plastic hand. “That's the Mom Pit, where all the moms hang out. Then there's the
Escaladies
,
skinny chicks who drive those enormous Cadillacs. Or the earth mothers, always breastfeeding and organizing the community. And now I'm part of their team. Go, Team Breeder!”

Harkness says nothing.

“Remember that Replacements song ‘Customer'?”

“Sure.”

“It's like that around here. Customers always want something they can't get.”

“Doesn't everyone?” Harkness thinks of his Glock 17.

“Well, sometimes it's me they want,” Candace says. “Once a week or so, some guy comes up and starts talking shit after ordering a latte or something. I'm like their daughter's age. Gross, right? But I came up with a killer line.”

“What's that?”

Candace leans over the table and turns her pale face slightly to the side. Anyone in the bakery would think they're about to kiss. “I get close to them, like this. Then I whisper the magic words.”

Harkness takes a deep breath. “Which are?”

“You're old
.
”

“Nice.”

Candace stares at Harkness, her dark brown eyes inscrutable. She looks around the bakery. “Dudes all think they're special.”

“Everyone does,” Harkness says. “They think they're different but they're not.”

“Learn that at Harvard, did you?”

“No. Picked that up later.”

Candace narrows her eyes. “We're not having coffee so we could share our world-weary insights, I'm assuming.”

“No,” Harkness says. “I have some . . . questions.”

“Like what?”

“Dex's friends seemed pretty out there at the hospital. They always like that?”

“They're okay. Just too fucking smart and weird. I mean, Dex may be the only guy who dropped out of MIT because it was too easy.”

“Really?”

“That and his mother ran out of money. Got screwed on some investment thing.”

Harkness looks across the bakery.

“I've always had kind of a soft spot for strays,” she says, “but they can seriously mess you up.”

Harkness thinks of Thalia.

“Where'd you meet him?”

“You know, in high school. We co-founded the Club with No Members. We had to shut it down when we joined.”

Harkness stares.

“Seemed funny at the time.”

“People say that a lot.”

“I mean, Dex isn't a bad guy. Supersmart. Just not particularly warm and fuzzy. We used to have a lot of fun back in the day—road trips to San Francisco, going to concerts, pulling pranks with his MIT chums—like hacking the state website and posting a bunch of threats from North Korea. What could be more fun than triggering an international incident?”

“Not much,” Harkness says.

“But now we have a baby, my dad's dying, and he won't help with anything.” Candace stares out the bakery window. “None of them help. They're supposed to be fixing up the house but they just spend hours on their laptops, jabbering on Skype. It's getting cold outside and our living room doesn't even have real windows, just plastic staple-gunned over them. There's cables and wires and Xbox shit all over and it smells like
dude
. I'm fucking sick of it.” Candace smacks her plastic hand on the table like a gavel.

“Then get out.”

“Not that easy,” she says.

Harkness remembers how Dex grabbed his friends. “Ever hit you?”

She shakes her head. “Comes close sometimes, but no. He's smart enough to know that would mean
game over
.”

Harkness pauses before he asks the big question, the one about his gun.

“Listen, Eddy,” Candace says. “I really don't want to talk about Dex anymore. I've got to get back to the hospital.”

Harkness stops, realizes it was wrong to think that Candace might tell him anything about her boyfriend. Even if she had something to complain about, why would she tell a cop? “Look, if you ever need help, just give me a call,” he says. “I can be there in minutes. I know every back road in this town, believe me.” Harkness writes his cell number on the back of one of his Nagog Police Department cards and pushes it across the table.

Candace gathers her courier bag from the floor and checks on May, still asleep. Then she balls up her napkin and throws it on the table next to their empty coffee cups.

“Someone else can clean up after me for once. I'm sick of being the world's waitress.”

 

They're almost at the front door of the bakery when Candace stops, puts down the car seat, and reaches into her coat pocket. “Almost forgot to give you this.” She hands Harkness a folded piece of paper. “That thing you asked me to sign. Saying Dad was trying to kill himself when he ran into the monument. His lawyer told me not to sign it. But fuck him. It's the truth.”

Harkness looks at the paper. “You're sure you're okay signing this?”

“Yeah. Dad left me a long good-bye note back in his office.”

“Really?” Harkness thought about his father's office. No note, no explanation. None needed.

“Said being dead seemed better than the life he was living. At least that's how he felt that morning, when he decided to go on his dramatic drive into history. All the booze and drugs probably had something to do with it.”

Candace bursts into tears and rushes toward Harkness, wrapping her arms around him. He backs away, then wraps his arms around her and feels her shaking. She pushes her tear-covered cheek against his chest and presses her eyes closed.

They stand in the entrance to the bakery, customers walking around them, Candace's baby sleeping in the car seat at their feet.

“It's going to be okay,” Harkness says.

“No,” Candace whispers. “It's really not going to be okay.”

***

As Harkness walks down Main Street, he considers the quirks of every parking meter he passes. Like people, some are easier to deal with than others. Most simply do their job, taking in quarters and tracking time. But there are always freaks and troublemakers, meters that jam for no reason or that flash error messages just to get attention. And there are victims, meters that get smashed and bent and never work quite right again, even when all the pieces are back in place. As he walks by tilted meter no. 453, nudged by a snowplow last winter, Harkness gives it a consoling pat on its metal head.