We Were Kings (22 page)

_________________________

North End

ACROSS THE STREET
from Dante, a person walked with uneven, staggered steps. Nearly at the apartment building, keys already in hand, Dante assumed it was just another bum winding along the sidewalks in search of a drink. Drunks unfamiliar with the city came from Scollay into this neighborhood all the time.

The person stepped off the curb, momentarily leaned in between two parked cars, and then stumbled into the street.

Something was off, and Dante couldn't quite pin it down.

A car was coming, and seeing someone in the middle of the street, the driver pressed down on the horn. Headlights flashed, and the face was lost in shadow.

“Watch where you're fucking going!” the driver screamed from the open window.

When the person got to the curb, Dante realized it was a woman. He heard a strange mewling coming from her mouth, the sound of a dog that has been brutally beaten. A word took form, a horrid moan. “Dante,” she said.

The streetlamp's flickering light touched the face and showed him who it was. He stepped in closer and caught Claudia before she fell to the pavement.

Lifting her head into the light, he saw that her right eye was completely sealed, knotted with bruises, and the skin above the left eyebrow was scraped raw, crusted with dirt and bits of gravel. Her mouth was almost swollen shut by the egg-shaped contusion that doubled the size of her left cheek. Blood and spit came dribbling from the thin space that was her mouth, a pinkish string of it hanging off her chin.

He reached around and held the back of her head and pressed her to his chest. Her voice was clogged with tears, and that horrid sound continued to bleat from her throat.

“Who did this?” he asked.

He could feel the feverish heat coming off her body. Blood seeped into his shirt.

“Who fucking did this?” he asked again.

“It was him…Vinny.”

Dante took her into the foyer of the apartment building. The bright fluorescent lights showed how awfully she'd been beaten, and he tried to look away but couldn't. This was his sister. This was Claudia. Blood was bright on her face, neck, and shirt, which was torn at the shoulder and showed bruises along her arm. He made sure she could stand on her own and fiddled with the front lock until the key slid in and he opened the door.

There was no elevator in the building and he took his time bringing her up the three flights of stairs. With his help, she climbed the steps slowly. Inside the apartment, he turned on a small amber-glassed lamp to keep the light low and made her sit on the couch. After getting some towels sopping wet with cold water, he did his best to clean her up.

“I'm going to find him. Where is he, Claudia?”

She was breathing steady again. With the blood mopped off her face, the swollen cheek appeared even more obscene—it looked unreal, like the makeup in a Lon Chaney film, grotesque but not actually flesh and blood. She put a cigarette in the side of her mouth and, with a shaking hand, managed to flick a match and light it.

“Earlier he said he was going to watch the bocce games. By the water.”

Dante reached under his khaki jacket, grabbed his revolver. He flipped it open and saw the silver ends of five bullets. With a whip of his wrist, the cylinder snapped back into place. The sound startled Claudia and she looked up at him. She shook her head. “There's nothing you can do now, Dante. Nothing.”

“Maria is next door. She can't see you like this, so you stay and rest. When I get back, I'm going to take you to a doctor.”

“I'll talk to Vinny later. Stay out of it.”

Dante walked to the door, then turned, expecting her to say something else. Clumsily, she tried to put out the cigarette. Half crumpled in the ashtray, it smoked wisps of a charcoal blue. She lowered her head into her hands, and he left the apartment, closing the door quietly behind him.

He knocked on Mrs. Berardi's door. After a moment, it opened a few inches, the chain lock dipping and then leveling taut as she peered out. The old woman saw it was Dante, closed the door, unhitched the chain lock, opened the door again.

“I thought I heard you come home,” she said.

He spoke so low it was almost a whisper. “I'm sorry but I have to go do something. Can she stay just a little bit longer? I'm really sorry and I won't let this happen again.”

The old woman sighed, and, unwilling to make eye contact, she looked down at the floor. “When will you be back?”

“Soon. It's okay, right?” He asked the question but was already sidling toward the stairs, raising his hands in an apologetic manner.

Just as Dante turned in the stairwell, he saw the old woman bless herself three times over, probably hoping to ward off the aura of trouble he'd left behind. Hurriedly, she closed the door and turned the lock, the bolt slamming into its groove so loudly that Dante was sure it had startled even her.

Across the inner harbor, the Bunker Hill Monument speared the night sky above Charlestown. Like clusters of cotton being pulled apart, clouds stretched in slow-fading wisps across the yellowed moon. At the opposite shore, the skeletal shape of the USS
Constitution
appeared in the night like a shipwreck, and down a half a mile, Dante could see tiny clusters of fireworks sparkle and reflect against the still, dark waters, their explosions muffled and sounding minuscule from so far away.

Off the sidewalk and down a grassy incline was the section of park where the bocce games were played. Two courts ran parallel to each other, and ropes twined with white lights, their bulbs blazing, hovered above them, illuminating the two games being played simultaneously. Clusters of mosquitoes danced around the lights, and below, groups of men congregated on the borders of the two courts packed down with dirt, granite, and oyster-shell flour. Smoke from their cigars and cigarettes clotted the humid air. Some of the men rubbed halved lemons against their skin to ward off bugs. There wasn't a woman in sight.

Most of the men watching were middle-aged with potbellies, white T-shirts and suspenders. A few younger men stood out. They wore loud-colored shirts and smoked fancy cigarettes and drank liqueur from plastic cups. There were elders too, stoop-shouldered, white haired, and they were sitting in foldout chairs with a clear view of the players.

It was a festive scene—the loud chatter, the playful bad-mouthing in Italian, the clattering of the balls, and the cheers that followed when somebody rolled a shot in to kiss the
pallino,
all of it augmented by the wine flowing from homemade jugs.

And then Dante saw him.

Vinny stood near the scoreboard on the first court looking like he didn't have a fucking care in the world. He was smoking one of his cigarillos, the smoke escaping his mouth a toxic yellow, and he held a cup of wine that he drank from casually.

Dante moved down the grassy incline, making sure to stay within the darkness. From his limbs came a great weight that bore down on every inch of him. It felt as if everything had been sucked right out of him, and the only emotion left was a sharp, intensified bloodlust that drummed maliciously at his temples and allowed his eyes to catch every detail, every shift of light, and every slight movement.

The two games ended, and a young boy cleared the scoreboard. Another group of players manned the ends of the courts, eager to get in a last game before it was time to call it a night. Vinny crumpled up his cup, dropped his cigarillo, and ground it out in the grass with his heel. He shook hands with a couple of men and then walked toward the water, where a path wound its way back to North Station.

Dante waited until Vinny was out of the other men's sight, and then he followed him.

The gravel path curved around a small island of shrubbery and thornbushes and then straightened as it ran beside a wrought-iron railing that protected pedestrians from a fifteen-foot drop into the harbor.

Dante took this turn slowly. Close to the bushes, he felt a thorn branch clinging to his leg, and he pulled it away. If Vinny knew he was being trailed and was waiting for him to get closer, Dante wanted to have enough room to get at him first. He knew if Vinny got him down, he was probably done for.

A breeze came off the water, and the metal No Trespassing sign clattered on a gate that led down to a small boat dock. An orb-like light on a lamppost hung over the path, and the big man stood under its diffuse glare, lit a match, and puffed at another cigarillo until its tip burned red. Dante could hear him hack, and then spit, and then whistle with a razor-sharp intensity, as if he were calling out some secret warning.

Suddenly, the heaviness in his limbs left him, and Dante felt light and weak, as if he might float away and never touch ground again. He quickened his step, and Vinny stopped and slowly turned around.

Dante raised his gun, and he heard a click of a blade snapping out of its handle.

“You son of a bitch!”

The world turned slow again, the gravity pulling him down. A glint of steel flashed and cut the air.

Dante sucked in his gut and arched back. The knife sliced through his shirt, and a burning pain flared on his skin. He swung the gun toward Vinny's head, but the fat man threw up an arm. The gun clattered to the ground, and before Dante could reach down for it, Vinny put all of his momentum into a second swipe of the blade.

It missed Dante's face by inches.

Lumbering as though weighed down by broken stone, Vinny tried to straighten up, but he stumbled. Dante squared up and brought a left fist against the jaw. Pain rattled the bones in Dante's hand, and he reached in with his other hand and raked his thumbnail across the man's left eye.

The big man grunted and cursed, crouched down, and, like a bull, rammed his shoulder into Dante's midsection. Dante left his feet and landed on his back. The breath was knocked out of his lungs, and he clutched his chest and gasped for air. His vision quivered but he was still able to see Vinny pressing a hand to his damaged eye.

“You fight dirty, you no-good prick.”

Dante's fingers grappled at the gravel. One fingernail cracked and bled. Where had his gun gone?

“Figured a piece of shit like yourself would sneak up on a man like that. I know all about you, I know what you've done. I know that you and that mick buddy of yours fucked with the Brink's job, stuck your noses where they shouldn't have been. I'm surprised you lasted this long.”

Dante waited until the man stepped closer, then he reared back his right foot and kicked out. The thick of his heel shattered the bone right below the man's knee. Vinny cried out as he fell forward, his chin bouncing hard off the gravel, head snapping back.

Dante got to his feet as fast as he could.

Vinny rolled onto his back. “You don't know how connected I am. You have no fucking idea.”

Dante reached down and grabbed the switchblade off the ground. His stomach was still burning, and he lifted his shirt to see the undershirt soaked through with blood. He was lucky he wasn't cut too deep.

Vinny tried to sit up. Dante wound up and kicked him in the face with the sharp tip of his shoe.

“Why'd you do it?” Dante asked. “What did she do to you?”

Vinny's nose was broken and his mouth was black with blood. When he grinned, it appeared that he had no teeth left. “The crazy bitch got what she deserved.”

Quicker than Dante thought possible, Vinny reached down to his belt, where a snub-nosed revolver was hidden. Dante fell on top of him before he got it all the way out. With one hand, he pushed him down, and with the other, he shoved the blade under the man's ear and pushed it in until its tip ground against bone. A horrible hissing came deep from Vinny's throat. His eyes locked onto Dante's. His pupils dilated, wide with shock as the reality set in that he was going to die. There was a ferocity blazing in his eyes but then they dimmed as the heart slowed and the blood flow stopped. Dante could feel the life leave Vinny—one pull on the switch and all of it gone forever.

The stench of shit came to Dante, and he gripped the handle of the knife and pulled it out. Blood came out of the wound. Dante stood up, drew back his arm, and threw the knife over the gate. He heard the splash it made in the night-covered waters. He took Vinny's gun, considered holding on to it but then hurled it into the harbor as well.

I should call Cal,
he thought.
I should call the police and tell them I did it because I had to. They'd see Claudia's face and then they would know. It wasn't murder. It was doing what's right.

Time skipped ahead, and he found himself hunched over, his hands gripping the corpse under the arms, dragging it to the bushes alongside the path. There was a small clearing inside. The thorns clawed at him again, snagged at his skin. An animal rustled in the darkness beside him and then fled. He gazed down at the body and wondered what to do next.

The only way out was to dig a hole so deep that nobody would ever find him. Make this no-good fuck disappear.

There were lakes and reservoirs where desperate people dumped their cars for insurance money. There were the quarries in Quincy and the Mystic Lakes in Arlington and Medford. His mind fired off possible solutions, but he couldn't come to a decision yet, and he walked back into the night toward the city streets.

_________________________

Mystic Lakes, Medford

THE STAGGERED WHITE
lines separating the lanes seemed to elongate under the headlights' glare. From the sides and from behind, darkness pressed against the car. Slowly, sensation came back to Dante. He felt as if he'd just risen to the surface and was now opening his eyes to the reality of what had happened earlier. He rolled down the window and tried to air out the car. It smelled of Vinny's feces, the stench of death taking over.

He was driving a stolen car, a Plymouth Plaza, light blue, white interior. He remembered spotting it on a side street off Washington and jimmying the lock with ease. How lucky he was that nobody had seen him.

An exit sign for the Medford Mystics materialized from the night. He eased the car off the main road. The houses on quiet lawns silver with moonlight were as silent as crypts. This was a part of Greater Boston he wasn't that familiar with. Maybe this was a mistake, coming all this way.

Headlights flared on the road up ahead. He prayed that it wasn't a cop. Closer, the headlights beamed through the windshield and lit the interior of the car, and he could hear the voices, the rock-and-roll music blaring shrilly from the speakers of a convertible with its top down. The Pontiac went by in a blur, and Dante glimpsed a teenager's blond hair and a kid with a crew cut in the backseat finishing off a whiskey bottle. And then came the shattering crash of the bottle, and, in the rearview, the taillights bent and swayed at a turn in the road.

On the dash, the gas gauge showed he had less than a quarter of a tank. That wouldn't be enough to get him back to Boston, but then he'd be walking home anyway.

To kill the silence, he turned on the radio. The owner had left the dial on a station playing a big-band number, all strings and saccharine, and he reached over and turned it up.

He had to squint at his watch: 1:15.

The closer he got to the Mystic Lakes, the bigger and more stately the homes appeared, all of them sitting behind well-manicured hedges on lush, green lawns with weeping willows and Japanese maples.

The car passed under a streetlamp, and the white light slid over the hood and moved through the interior of the car in a liquid motion, illuminating Vinny's body in the passenger seat for a dragging moment, showing all the blood covering his neck and shoulder.

Did he just move?

Was that a twitch?

A smile?

Dante tried to quiet the panic in his head while straining to hear if the man was breathing. He listened for the slightest whistle of air escaping his nostrils, the tremble of phlegm in the throat. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement, but when he turned, the body was still. The right front wheel hit a pothole and the body shuddered and leaned closer to the door, head resting against the window.

“Don't fuck with me, Vinny.”

Dante lit a cigarette with the car lighter and sucked at it until it flared bright, a lone ember in the dark cavity of the car. He eased his foot off the gas pedal, slowing down to twenty miles an hour, then reached over with the cigarette and ground it into Vinny's cheek. The hiss of it burning and the charred smell of skin immediately hit Dante's senses and turned his stomach. But that was it. Nothing left. Vinny really was dead.

Dante flicked the cigarette out the window, where it bounced and sparked on the tarmac. He passed through a rotary and then on his left came the glitter of moonlight rippling on the lakes and he knew he was close.

Dante found a dirt road that led down to a wooded lot that was wide enough for the Plymouth. First thing he had to do was check to see how deep the water was.

At the lake's edge, Dante undressed down to his boxer shorts. Above him, the sky was full of stars that momentarily captivated him, made him feel dizzy and small, a miserable speck in the universe.

He took a long stick and walked out. Muck curled up between his toes. The water cooled his feverish skin and awakened his senses. The bottom took a quick drop, and he was submerged up to the chest. Another step, and he was up to his neck.
This will have to do,
he thought as he let go of the stick and swam back in.

Onshore, he dressed again. In the dark around him, the cicadas buzzed their nighttime song.

He scrabbled in the dark brush until he found a rock weighing about forty pounds. The underside of the rock was moist. Something slithered across his knuckles, and he assumed it was just a pill bug or some other type of insect. He laid the rock back down on the ground, opened the passenger-side door, leaned in, and dropped the rock on the body's lap. Blood spotted his jacket and spattered his neck. He pushed back out of the car, took off his jacket, and used it to wipe at his skin.

Wearing just his white, bloodstained undershirt, he stood there in the quiet, undisturbed dark. He found a prayer gathering in his head but he turned it away and let it fade into nothing. A man like Vinny could rot in hell for all he cared.

Even with the tank running low, the car started with ease. Dante found another heavy rock, smaller than the one on Vinny's lap, and propped it against the gas pedal. The engine rumbled, the smell of gas rising from the hood, and when he thought it was time, he slammed the door shut, reached through the window, and put the car in drive. He got out of the way just in time.

The dark husk of the car disrupted the placid, moonlit waters, and he couldn't tell if it was floating or if it was grounded in the shallows. Seconds passed, and the air churned, belched, and bubbled from the open window, and then the car went down quickly, thank God, and soon there were just ripples on the surface.

Mosquitoes attacked Dante's face and neck, buzzed hungrily against his ears. He didn't want another cigarette but he fired one up, hoping the smoke would keep them away. He waited and smoked and paced the dark brush, took off his shirt and put the jacket back on. Perhaps Vinny wasn't really dead. Perhaps the door would open and somehow he'd swim to the surface. Dante couldn't think this way. What was done was done, and there was no going back.

The walk home would take him hours unless he hitched or miraculously found a taxi. Thoughts collided in the husk of his head. Soon, his feet were traveling the road. On his right, between the gaps in the trees along the shore, the lake looked even more beautiful, glimmering shards of moon coalescing on the water. The song “Moonlight in Vermont” came to him. He hummed the song loudly, but no matter how loud he hummed, he saw the Plymouth settled into the silt and scum at the bottom of the lake and, above, the moonlight dancing on the surface but unable to penetrate deep enough to illuminate Vinny's grave and its forever-dark silence.