John Finn

by Vincent McCaffrey

  I made no attempt to deal with all that. I just listened.

  He was angry again, the same way he had sounded on the phone. With every word he leaned closer. “Well, I’ll spend every last dollar I got from my parents for the best fuckin’ lawyer in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts if I have to and she won’t get a damn penny more out of it. She won’t get a dime. But I’ll have this.” He waved at the house around us. “This is in a trust. I’ll eat my own tomatoes and cook on a wood stove if I have to. And if she comes for this, I’ll kill whoever she sends to take it. I’ll die here. You can tell her that.”

  The pacifist I had once known had spoken.

  I said, “I’ll tell her. But can I have another piece of bread first? I don’t know Milly, but I’m in love with her bread.”

  He sat back. He smiled again, “Yeah. We have plenty of bread.”

  I had hung my coat over the back of the chair, and I pulled the manila envelope with Zoe’s court papers from the pocket and put it out on the table. When he came back with the cutting board and the rest of the loaf, he picked the envelope up without opening it and held it in one hand silently like a piece of evidence before dropping it to the table again.

  He said, “So John. What the hell have you been doing since your divorce? Is that Connie Mac’s name I see on your car door? You work for Connie now?”

  I cut a slab of butter for the bread. He got up again and grabbed a bottle of honey off a shelf and set it in front of me, before cutting another piece for himself.

  I said, “Sort of. It’s his company. I took a partnership, you might say. I’m just another security guard, really. For now. Mostly I get to sit at small desks in badly designed lobbies and ask people for their identification.”

  He poured more coffee in my cup.

  “Great! What a waste. John. What a fuckin’ waste! You were going to write great novels. Remember? What happened to your New Hampshire school teacher? Ely Morgan wasn’t it? What happened to Ely? You leave him in that damned cornfield?”

  ​This surprised me. “You remember Ely?”

  “Yeah. I liked Ely. I told you, all he needed—”

  “Yeah. I remember. James Crockett said the same thing. Maybe you’re both right. I just wanted him to be a bit truer than that. That’s all. Why does every novel have to have a romance. What about Huckleberry Finn? Moby Dick?”

  He shrugged, “Would either of those get published today? We’re in a lesser age, John. If there are enough explosions and the cars are fast enough, I guess. But Mr. Chekhov would agree with Crockett. It’s all about love or it’s all about money. It’s the only way to tell the good from the bad.”

  Wasn’t there a contradiction in Gary’s view of life? Or was it just the old Irish conundrum of Mr. Yeats: love was the matter, whether the woman was a muse, a succubus, or a wife. Chekhov never dared such questions unless he already had the answer. Like a good mathematician.

  I once took a writing class. I lasted three or four sessions. Less than a month. I caught on to the instructor’s game and it made the whole exercise impossible. The son-of-a-bitch was a Chekhov geek. He knew nothing himself. Everything he said was a rip-off of the old Russian. I didn’t need to be paying $50 a week for that. I’d already read my share of Mr. Chekhov by then, courtesy of Gary Apple.

  There are some days I think Chekhov is the greatest writer not named Shakespeare, and other days I believe he got what he deserved—a secondary part in a science fiction fantasy.

  As it is, I debated a good bit of that over again on the ride back from New Hampshire. I wasn’t thinking about Izaak Andrews anymore. I was thinking about giving my sad Ely a wife after all. Someday. Maybe even next summer. But only after I’d figured out what happened to poor Mary Andrews four score and seven years before. Then I would try re-writing my Civil War novel. At least I could give my Ely somebody he'd left behind who might offer him a sense of direction. Especially if it was true north.

  17. Once I knew a cop

  Once I knew a cop in Hingham who thought that it was the metal in guns that somehow short circuited the minute electrical impulses of the brain and made people act stupidly. This same guy also ate seaweed, kept a swarm of stray cats he had picked up on the job, and worked out for about three hours every day at the gym. Obviously, he did not have a lot of time to think his theories through. But he had gotten me to think twice about guns.

  I didn’t own a gun but Connie loaned me one of his. Lately, I was going to the range every other week to take some target practice. I agreed with Connie that I should know how to use it, even if I didn’t want to carry it. Situations can change. My Army training was over twenty years old and mostly involved an M-16. Besides, practice was paid for—part of the company insurance plan. I had received my license to carry in late October.

  The cop in Hingham was half-right, in any case. I wish I could thank him for that. As Mae West knew, having a gun in your pocket did short-circuit your thinking. It was always too easy to stop at that solution rather than work things through a little further.

  The cop, Harry Bellows Jr., got himself run over at a construction site on Route 3 a few years ago by an eighty-year-old man in a Buick. Maybe the metal in cars has an effect on some brains as well.

  I have wondered more than once if maybe I would have enjoyed being a cop. Not for any intellectual engagement. There’s too much regulation for that. And too much of the job that isn’t paperwork involves sitting around at construction sites. Or, like poor Harry, getting out to stretch your legs.

  But I have the ability to cultivate boredom. And I was thinking about Harry.

  One Saturday, well after midnight, I was sitting in my car up on Pinckney Street, almost in front of Walsh Higgins’s building because it was the only space I could find and there is no room for double parking up that way. Higgins’s window was dark, but I could not keep an eye on it from that angle. I listened to the radio a while but that was already stale. After an hour or so, I gave up hope that someone else would move and got out of the car to stand in an opening where the continuous line-up of brick fronts and doorways was interrupted for a setback and one of the few old wooden houses that are still sandwiched in up there. It was a remnant of what the whole Hill once looked like before a few fires ravaged the area a couple hundred years ago. Naturally I got to looking at the architecture of the wooden house, illuminated by the gas flame of the street lights the city of Boston keeps burning for the tourists. I began to wonder how much it might even look like the one Izaak Andrews and his family had occupied while they were forced to wait in Boston before the evacuation. Pretty soon, a fellow walking his dog comes up across the street and stops and gives me the eye. The dog is a pit bull and the guy looks like he might be able to take care himself except that he is standing so close to the light post, and his head is so bald, that it glows in the gaslight.

  He says. “You lost?”

  I say. “No. How about yourself?”

  He smiles. It’s a deliberate sort of smile. The dog is at attention.

  He says, “A little late for sight-seeing.”

  I say, “Too dark for that. But did you ever notice how gaslight catches the clapboards? The shadows are like bars on the wood.”

  He looked. I had him right there. You can always tell if you’ve misdirected someone. It’s hard to fake.

  He says, “You live here?”

  I say, “I wish.” I pull the leather case for my security badge out of my pocket and let it catch the light. He is about twenty feet away. He can’t read it. I say, “I’m just looking. How about yourself?”

  He points with his free hand to one of the bricks toward the corner at Joy Street.

  “I live there.”

  Now I’ve caught enough of his voice so that I know he’s not from Boston.

  I look over that way and say, “Nice place. You like it?”

  He says, “Yeah. Good enough. But not for a dog.”

  I say, “No. Not for dogs.”

  Just then a co
uple came around the corner.

  The fellow with the dog looks in their direction and then says, “Good night.”

  I nod at him and turn back to my pseudo-scientific study of shadows.

  The couple cross the street in my direction. The woman is rubber legged and in high heels and the guy is holding her up. I realize only when they’re right behind me that it was good I was looking away because it was Higgins. The woman is the receptionist I had met before.

  Back in the last week of October I had the late shift at the headquarters of a politician running for governor. There’s only two of them running, and this one is the guy, so you can guess. But to keep Connie happy, I’ll call him ‘Davis.’ Connie can’t afford to loose any good contracts right now.

  In any case, I was bored stiff. My ability to cultivate the situation was failing.

  My third night a fellow came in the door who did not look like a voter or a volunteer. Campaign volunteers come in all sizes, but most of them have a look. They are not just doing a job. They’re friendly. Earnest. Sometimes they are overflowing with nervous energy, as if every second counts. The fellow who came in was looking tired and took a pretty weary breath at what he saw. He gave a slight shake to his head. I imagined he didn’t think much of it. Because I was the only one who was paying him any attention, he comes right over.

  “Where’s Davis?”

  I say, “On the road somewhere. Can I help you?”

  He says, “You work for the campaign?”

  I say, “Yes.” Essentially true.

  He says, “You a cop?”

  I’ve been told I look like a cop before. I don’t wear any kind of uniform, but I do have a plastic badge on my jacket. This fellow can’t focus his eyes enough to tell what the badge says. I figure he’s in his late forties. He’s got a Frank Sinatra style hat on and I suspect there’s nothing beneath it but bare scalp. I’d already been thinking he was probably a cop himself, just from the shoes and the coat, but now I see the threadbare edges on his cuffs, I decide he’s an ex-cop. At least it turned out I had that much right.

  I answer, “No. Security.”

  He says, “Good. Here. Do me a favor. Give this to Davis when you see him.”

  It was a padded shipping envelope, sealed, with something hard in it about the size of a small book but lighter. A DVD. Easy to guess. Everybody has gone digital these days, but the last time I owned a TV, we still used tapes.

  I say, “What is it?”

  He says, “That’s not your business. It’s for Davis. He’ll want it.”

  I say, “You don’t know what my business is, and I don’t know yours. For all I know, you might just be trying to make the evening news.”

  He tries to grab the envelope from my hand, but I pull it away.

  He says, “Give it back.”

  That was the moment I knew for sure he was an ex-cop. There was something in his voice. Something broken. He was someone who had made too many mistakes. I could sympathize with that.

  I say, “I’ll give it to Davis.”

  I had both size and weight on the guy, but he stood his ground, close enough to give me a kiss.

  He says, “It’s important.”

  I can see in his eyes that it means something to him. It’s not just a job. He’s not just a delivery boy.

  I say, “He’ll get it.”

  He stands down. His eyes scan the office to see if anyone has been noticing. Everybody looks busy. He nods. Then he says, “Thanks.”

  That sealed it.

  A couple of seconds after the guy is out the door again and into the night, one of the campaign staff people comes over.

  He says, “You got something there for us?”

  This guy is too young and too thin and way too eager. I’ve noticed him before. I lied.

  “It was just one of our guys with something from my boss, Connie. It looks like I have to work another job tonight after this one. Harry tracked me down with the keys. Son of a bitch.”

  The staffer smiled at nothing. Nodded a couple of times. Then he retreated back toward the desks where they were working the phones.

  I don’t trust politicians in general. For all the usual reasons, but more. I’ve known a couple. Poker players will tell you to always cut the cards, and when your brother is dealing, cut’em twice. When a politician deals, always get a new deck.

  But this fellow Davis is easy to like. Doesn’t show his pretenses. He looks at people and answers what’s being asked—even if it doesn’t seem to make you any smarter. And he’s working hard for the job. He didn’t check in until nearly midnight. Most of the phone work is done from home, but the dozen or so who were working from the office earlier were mostly gone. About half a dozen volunteers and staff were still there, drinking Coke and eating pizza at the back. The eager fellow was on a cell phone at a desk. Just then Davis came in with a reporter at his shoulder, already talking.

  I interrupted, “Sir, can I speak with you a moment?”

  Davis reads my face and excuses himself to take my arm and walk to the side with me.

  “What’s up?”

  “I have something for you. Hand delivered. The guy looked like a private detective to me. No name. He wanted to get it directly to you. Something about it seemed important enough.”

  I had just given the envelope to Davis when the eager fellow, who had popped up from his desk and practically run in our direction, butted in.

  “I thought that was from your boss?”

  I ignored him and kept my eyes on Davis’s face. “My guess is it should be seen by you before anyone else.” Davis gripped the package hard enough to understand what was in it and then nodded.

  He said, “Thanks.”

  I backed away. Mr. Eager has a big frown on his face. He gives me the dirty look of a schoolyard punk.

  The reporter, a good-looking woman I’d seen before, had been watching all this and picking up on the nuances. As Davis returns she says to him, “Anything important?”

  Davis smiles. “Probably not. We’ll see.”

  A little later, when Davis is eating some pizza with the remaining staff, I can see that his jacket pocket in full and the emptied envelope is in a can of garbage by a desk.

  About one in the morning I’m out of there and on my way home. The temperature has dropped down below forty and the sky is dark enough to see a few stars, even in the city haze. The streets out of Oak Square are empty that time of night, but I was taking it easy. I was tired, but I’d noticed. Someone was following me. Over the bridge and through Harvard Square I keep an eye on it. Whoever it is, I don’t want to take them home with me, so before I get too close to Porter Square I park at the end of a block I know on Mass Ave that hasn’t had a street light in years. The other car pulls up about a hundred feet behind me. I take my time getting out. I ignore him, lock the car door and walk around the corner.

  Thirty-seconds later, here comes the guy. Even in the dark I can see it’s the ex-cop, but what happened then happened without a lot of thought.

  It must have scared the crap out of him to have me standing right there. His right hand went into the front of his coat. I punched him there where his hand went in before it could come out again. I thought I heard something break, either a rib or a finger, as the air went out of his left lung. He fell straight back and bounced his head on the cement.

  Now I was scared. I had visions of Holly Martins and Harry Lime skulking about the mean streets of post-war Vienna in The Third Man. But this was yuppified Cambridge. What was I doing? I did not want to spend another night sitting on a hard bench at the precinct station waiting to find out my fate. And I was very glad I was not carrying a gun.

  I went down on my knees to see if the guy was still alive. He gasped. Breathing must have hurt. He's blinking tears from his eyes. The Sinatra hat is crushed beneath the back of his head. Both his arms were crossed over his chest. One hand was still in the front of his coat, so I reached in after it and removed the gun from the holster.
>
  I said, “Why the hell’d you do that?”

  It was like asking myself at the same time.

  He answered in a whisper, “Reflex, I guess.”

  My own answer was about the same. Some stupid kid had tried to mug me one night not long ago, just the other side of Porter Square, and it had put me into the wrong frame of mind. I was feeling stupid again.

  I slipped the gun in my own pocket.

  “How bad is it? Can you move? Can you stand?”

  He sat up. Coughed. Gasped. I helped him stand.

  Finally, he says, “I’m okay.”

  I say, “You’re not okay. Something broke. You might have a concussion.”

  He says, “Did you give him the package?”

  I said, “Yeah.”

  He took a small breath. “Then it’s okay. I’ve had worse.”

  “Why were you following me?”

  “To see where you lived. In case you didn’t give to him.”

  I say, “You’re an idiot.”

  He says, “Yeah,” and brushed my hand away. “Give me my gun.”

  I picked his hat up instead. He gave me a look, a bit like one of my daughters when she thinks I’m playing the father role a little too much. Both his arms are still gripping the front of his coat, but I see it’s his right hand that’s pressed under his arm. I figure it was a finger that broke against the hard edge in his holster. I was thinking, what would Holly Martins do?

  I gave him the hat. He pushed it down over the bald swath of his scalp and winced. Then I gave him his gun. He took it gingerly and stuck it inside his coat.

  Then he said, “Thanks,” and he turned and carefully made his way back to his own car.

  I called after him, “What’s your name?”

  He didn’t turn back to answer. I imagine it might have hurt for him to turn. He just spoke out into the empty street.

  “Jim Lunz.”