Third Rail (20 page)

“I know that feeling.”

“I'm sure you do,” she says. “Anyone who's lost someone close to them is left with unfinished business.”

Harkness shifts the conversation gently. “I was surprised to hear Captain Munro had health problems, ma'am.”

“What problems?”

“Didn't he have some kind of leukemia?”

Mrs. Munro shakes her head. “No, Bill was very healthy. Never missed a day at work. Always got a clean bill of health at the doctor's. I would know. I always accompanied him to make sure he actually went to his annual checkup. He hated doctors almost as much as lawyers.”

“Sorry, I must have heard wrong,” Harkness says.

Mrs. Munro stands and straightens her black dress. She walks into the kitchen and returns carrying a thick white envelope with Harkness's name written on the front in the captain's familiar, precise hand. “I found this in his desk,” she says. “I'm assuming it's some kind of police business.”

Harkness takes the envelope. “I'm sure it is,” he says. “Thank you.”

“If you hear anything at the station, anything I should know, I hope you'll pass it along to me,” she says. “I don't have electronic mail, but I think you know where you can find me.” She smiles. “Somewhere between this house and Saint Michael's Parish.”

“I hope you'll let me help out in any way that I can, Mrs. Munro.” Harkness stands. “I loved the captain. I really did. From when I was just a boy.”

“Of course, Edward,” she says, then stops. “I believe there's one way that you could help honor his memory. One that could ease the burden of his passing.”

“What would that be, ma'am?”

Mrs. Munro's hand tightens on his and she pulls him close. He smells whiskey and toothpaste.

“Find whoever drowned my husband, Edward. Hunt him down and make him pay. Without an ounce of mercy.”

***

The floorboards creak as Harkness paces around the loft.

“Nothing you can do can get Mach to call tonight,” Thalia says. “I left a message that said we knew he had your gun and we were ready to deal. But he does whatever he wants, whenever he wants.”

Harkness knows that cases aren't always about action, about breaking down doors and barging into apartments. There are lulls and empty stretches waiting for one piece of data to show up and click into place—though this realization doesn't make the waiting any easier.

Thalia goes to the fridge and pours two iced coffees. “Here, drink this. We can get all wired and stay up all night waiting.”

A week ago, she would have been handing him a bottle of whiskey. Harkness welcomes this cleaning up of their act. Thalia is less convinced.

“Got any ideas about how to keep busy until the phone rings?”

Thalia reaches to her shoulders to push the straps of her dress to the side. The dress falls to her feet like a stage scrim to reveal her breasts and the auburn delta between her pale, strong legs.

“May not be that original,” she says. “But it definitely passes the time.”

 

When Thalia's cell phone finally rings, gray morning light is already filtering through the loft's tall windows. She jumps up from the futon and stalks across the dark loft.

She sits at the kitchen table and shouts in what sounds like Hmong to Harkness. The only words in English are
motherfucker
and
douchebag
.

Thalia clicks the phone closed.

“You speak Hmong?”

She nods. “Mach taught me a little on slow nights at the bar.”

Harkness sits next to her. “What'd he say?”

“Says he'll think about selling your gun back to you.”

“Think about it?”

“It's just his way of starting the negotiations.”

Negotiating with a grudge-holding sociopath is a challenge, one that Harkness would rather tackle himself. But only Thalia can get through to Mach. She's an insider—though how much of one isn't clear.

“What does he want?”

Thalia shakes her head. “Wouldn't say. Wants us to make an offer.”

“Any ideas?”

“Fitzgerald and his chums were willing to pay ten grand for it just to fuck with you,” Thalia says. “Now Mach's going to want even more.”

Harkness closes his eyes. His Glock is worth about seven hundred dollars without the extortion bonus. “That's crazy.”

“Besides a lot of cash, Mach wants Jeet's photos—prints, files, everything.”

“Surprise.” Somewhere in Dorchester, mayoral candidate John Fitzgerald is sweating Guinness.

“So what do you think he'd take?”

Thalia shakes her head. “I don't know, Eddy. What does it matter? We don't have that kind of cash.”

Harkness walks to the refrigerator and pulls open the freezer door. He reaches his hand behind the bag of flour and the ice trays, then tosses the frost-rimed Apple Store bag on the table.

“What the fuck is this?”

“My offshore bank account.”

“Really, Eddy.”

“You don't want to know,” Harkness says. “And I don't want to tell you.”

Thalia opens the bag and flips through the stacks of cash. “Jesus, Eddy. That's a lot of cash.”

“Depends on how you look at it,” he says. “Tourists drop that on a couple of handbags and dinner on Newbury Street.”

“We could get the hell out of Boston.” Thalia's eyes widen. “Move to New York and start over. Think about it.”

“I have, believe me.”

“Might be a smart move.” Thalia lights a cigarette, her last remaining vice, as far as Harkness can tell. Besides the occasional lie. “Maybe we should short him and keep some of the money.”

“We're just going to make him an offer, pay him, and be done with it.”

“Mach isn't just going to take your money and hand you your gun. He doesn't work that way. He hates
obvious
. He's always working a second angle. Maybe a third.”

“I know that.”

“You think you do.”

“So?”

“So we were just at one funeral. And the captain's is coming up. I don't want you to end up like him.”

“I don't intend to.”

“Neither did he.”

L
EE SQUINTS AT
the two tapes on
the counter in front of him. “Wow, this is like audio archaeology, Eddy. Analog media. These tapes ought to be in a museum.” They're sitting in Lee's office in the back of the empty Nagog Five and Ten.

“Look like little cassette tapes to me.” The two tapes were the only contents of the white envelope that Mrs. Munro gave Harkness.

“The one on the right is a microcassette.” Lee points. “The one on the left is a minicassette.”

“What's the difference?”

“I think one format may have been more popular than the other,” Lee says. “But I honestly don't know which one. Maybe one was for answering machines back in the day. Not sure. Do you ever think about all the information on cassette tapes that's just going to get lost forever—mix tapes dudes made for their girlfriends, interviews, messages?”

Harkness pauses. “Not really.”

“I do.” Lee's eyes turn a little misty. “I mean, what if you never heard these tapes? Would it matter?”

“I don't know, Lee. I have no idea what's on them,” Harkness says. “That's why I came here.”

“Maybe you never will. Let me see what we have for tape players.”

Lee disappears into the storeroom.

Harkness stares at the tapes.

Lee rushes back with a package so old that the plastic has turned opaque. He tears it open to reveal a gray plastic tape player. “This one's mini. From like 1994 or something, Eddy. I can probably find a micro player on eBay.”

“Thanks.”

“But for now, let's see if this works.” Lee opens up the hidden cavity in the cassette player and presses in two thin batteries.

Eddy hands him the tape.

Lee clicks it in place, pauses for a moment, and presses
PLAY
.

Harkness startles when he hears Captain Munro's familiar voice, distant and tinny, come through the speaker.

 

For Edward Harkness upon the occasion of my . . . death.

 

Captain Munro pauses, stopped cold when he realizes that the words he's saying will outlive him, like an echo. Then he continues.

 

In 1981 I met Anne Harkness, a school principal, and fell in love with her. She was beautiful, vivacious, intelligent. And we were both married to other people.

 

Lee clicks the tape player off. “Eddy, Anne Harkness is your mother, right?”

Harkness nods. “Right.”

“This sounds pretty personal, Eddy. Maybe you should just take it home and listen to it.”

“Why?”

“Just want to make sure I'm, you know, respecting your privacy.”

“I don't care, Lee. We've known each other since . . .”

“Third grade, Mrs. Pettengill,” he says.

“Right. If I can't trust you, I can't trust anyone.” Harkness reaches over to press
PLAY
. “Anyway, I hate secrets.”

 

In time, our relationship grew closer and closer. We became . . . intimate in 1982, and in 1983, Anne gave birth to my son, though I couldn't claim him as my own. I am recording this tape to register my shame at bringing a child into the world that I could not acknowledge until now, after my death. And to tell you, Edward, as I should have so many years ago, that . . . you are my son. I almost told you hundreds of times. But Anne forbade me to. Red suspected but never knew. And it would have broken Katherine's heart and destroyed my family. So it remained a secret, revealed now by my death. Don't be angry at me. Just know that I loved you as much as I could, given the unusual circumstances of our . . .

 

Now Harkness shuts off the tape. The captain's words slow time and make the air feel close and under pressure, as if the store has dropped suddenly to the ocean floor.

“Wow, Eddy. Do you think it's true?”

“Makes perfect sense,” he says.

It explains why the captain always seemed to be around, keeping an eye on him as a boy, visiting his mother. It explains why his father played Harkness and George against each other like pit bulls. Red must have known, in some way, that his second son was his in name, but not by birth. And it explains why, when no one in hardhearted Boston would show him any kindness, the captain invited him back to Nagog, a homecoming motivated by love, Harkness realizes only now, too late to return it.

“Thanks, Lee. Look . . . I got to get to work.” He picks up the tape player and the second tape and barges out of the store, leaving Lee sitting dazed in the back room.

***

Watt shuffles around the slab, hands jammed in the pockets of his leather jacket.

Harkness closes the squad car door and walks toward Watt. “You okay?”

Watt nods. His brow is visibly furrowed, parallel lines marking the pale skin of his forehead beneath his buzzcut. He looks like a glowing human question mark.

“Want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Whatever's bugging you.”

“The captain,” Watt says finally. “I know you were his friend and all, so don't get all freaked out.”

“Okay.” The captain was much more than a friend, but this news will remain a secret.

“He didn't kill himself, Eddy. I mean, everyone knows that. It's not exactly rocket surgery.”

Harkness puts his hand on Watt's elbow and leads him over to the far edge of the slab, out of sight of the station. “Something else you want to get off your chest?”

“Yeah.”

Watt huddles close, his breath steaming in the cold morning air. “Sergeant Dabilis and the captain were getting payoffs from someone, maybe at that drug lab you've been checking out. Captain tried to stop it, maybe he started to feel guilty, maybe . . .”

Harkness just stares. “Watt, I got to tell you, I'm surprised.”

“Surprised about what's going on or surprised that I know about it?”

“Little of both.”

“You're not the only one who pays attention, Eddy,” Watt says. “They call me Forty Watt and Blinky and give me a hard time and all. But I've been staying late and digging into Dabilis's files. And I can tell you this—the guy is definitely not on the straight and narrow.”

“Why're you doing this, Watt?

“What?”

“Messing with your superior officer. Doing freelance investigating—the kind that can get you fired.”

“I like this town a lot.”

“So do I, Watt. Maybe too much.”

“There's worse things than giving a shit, Eddy.”

“That's right.” Harkness pauses for a moment. “Watt, given what you already know, I think you need to know about a side project I'm working on out at the Old Nagog Tavern.”

“Sure, Eddy. What?”

Harkness leans over and tells him.

H
ARKNESS IS ON FOOT
patrol alo
ng Main Street when a red Porsche convertible glides by with its top down.

“Hey, hey, hey.” A stranger in cargo pants and a white T-shirt grabs Harkness's arm and steps into the street to get a better look. “Know who that was?”

“I don't even know who you are.”

“It's me . . . Thom. Henry David Thoreau? Citizen Garrett?”

“Oh yeah,” Harkness says. “Sorry, Thom. Didn't recognize you in civilian clothes. So who was that guy in the nice car?”

“Seth Braeburn.” Thom whispers the name like an incantation.

“Never heard of him.”

Thom pulls off his Ray-Bans. “The Dark Prince of Biotech?”

“Got nothing,” Harkness says.

“Started out at Google. Now he's doing biotech venture capital—investing in stuff that's way out on the edge. Enhanced LED lights that beam down antidepressants. 3D printers that make human cells. Can't believe he's here in Nagog.”