“Keep me out of this.” Wells holds up his hands in mock surrender. “I’m just here for the elusive laughs.”
“You write for the Globe.”
“I do.” Ms. Tehran beams me perfect teeth before turning back to Wells with a quizzical look on her face.
“I didn’t know he could read.” He winks at her. “Plus, didn’t I tell you not to dress like Lois Lane?”
“I’ve seen your byline. I liked that series you ran on the Midnight Basketball League,” I tell her.
“I had lots of help, but thanks. Too bad not everybody felt the same way.”
That was because the articles were far more than just puff pieces about the citywide league that had originally been formed to keep at-risk youth off the streets during the summer witching hours, when gun violence spikes in the densely populated and ever-shrinking communities of color. Ms. Tehran’s reporting exposed something more sinister: rosters infiltrated by the gangs themselves, teams sponsored with drug money, coaches with long criminal histories, and a complicated snake pit of gambling and money laundering that ensnared a rising star in the state senate who had spearheaded the outreach and public funding for the project.
“So, is Detective Wells, like, your department-issued bodyguard?” I say.
“What makes you think I need one?”
“Where do I apply?” Wells extends his glass between his legs to avoid getting dripped on as Anitra Tehran deposits her elbow into his ribs. “Actually, it’s beyond bodyguard status already, Zesty. Anitra’s just entered the witness protection program. I figured what’re the chances of getting spotted here on a Sunday night?”
“Pretty high if you introduce her to everyone.”
“Good point. I’ll work on that.”
“This a new direction for you, Zesty?” Anitra indicates the stage with a tilt of her head.
“Not according to Detective Wells and his partner,” I say.
“You got that right.”
“Batista,” Anitra chides Wells playfully, nudging his leg under the table. “Be civil.”
“Define ‘civil.’” Detective Wells wolf-grins at her; curls his lips to a snarl in my direction as I silently mouth Ba-tis-ta.
“Right now stand-up’s just a hobby.” I turn back to Anitra Tehran’s question. “But I’m a glutton for punishment, so who knows. What brings the two of you here to amateur night?”
I know it’s not to see me because the only recognizable name featured on the marquee belongs to Hank, who at the moment is standing to the side of the stage chatting with Otto Helms, Hank’s default smile sliding off his face as Helms explains something to him with animated hands and an aggressive belly. I can’t make out what the fat man is saying but Hank doesn’t seem to like it, his face turning red as Helms spins away.
“Blind luck.” Wells raises his eyebrows, points to the stage where Hank’s resumed his emcee spot.
For a fat man, Otto Helms moves nimbly up the side aisle toward the rear of the club, Hank eyeing him only momentarily as he launches into the second half of the show and the next introduction.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hank’s smile is firmly back in place, the deal with Helms not enough to knock him off his professional perch, “I’d like to introduce to you a really funny and imaginative comic, but unfortunately I’m stuck with this guy. Please give a warm welcome to…”
By the time the show wraps up I’m sitting at the back bar sipping a Coke, my classmates buzzing happily, chatting up the bartender and cocktail waitress, their voices a little too loud, throwing back drinks at a hurried clip, washing down the excess energy of their performance, exulting in killer bits while lamenting blown timing and fumbled punch lines. In the corner, Caitlin jots loose lines onto a cocktail napkin, hoping to mine them into comic gold.
As soon as the club empties Hank will gather us to review our performances, provide some feedback on our material and delivery, suggest things to work on if we really want to improve and survive in front of a paying audience.
Anitra Tehran flashes me a wave as she goes out the door, Detective Wells right behind her, his hand momentarily riding the small of her back before grabbing her roughly around the neck and throwing her to the ground as the open front door explodes inside its frame, a waterfall of glass cascading to the sidewalk.
Someone in the club screams and everybody hits the floor as Wells dives on top of the reporter, grabbing for his ankle holster under his Levi’s. I hear the outboard throttle of a motorcycle open up, the sound of a broken bottle shattering on the sidewalk, followed by the soft oxygen pop of ignition as bright orange flames illuminate the window and climb up Wells’s jacket as, from his knees, he arcs from right to left tracking a moving target with the small black gun he’s pried from his calf.
As I reach the door Wells is scrambling to his feet, the flames riding up his sleeve like a lit fuse, the gun, unfired, held rigidly in two hands, shielding the fallen reporter behind him. I catch a glimpse of a lime green motorcycle as it scars the corner onto Tremont Street and then hurl a pitcher of soda over Wells’s shoulder, a hissing balloon of black smoke punching him in his face, causing him to stagger backward.
Anitra Tehran looks shaken: There’s glass in her hair, blood from a cut on her sculpted right cheekbone and elbows and knees from being thrown to the sidewalk, one of her stylish high heels broken and lost in the crush of glass. One strap to her dress is off her shoulders but it looks like she’ll live to write another day.
Someone inside the club has started to spray the flames with an extinguisher, killing the flames before they spread. On the sidewalk, most of the gasoline from the homemade bomb has already burned off harmlessly, only blackening the curb. Coal-faced, Wells rips at the fabric of his smoldering jacket, muttering curses in my direction.
“Christ, who’s your tailor, DuPont Chemical?” I help Tehran to her feet. “You do know wool shouldn’t burn like that, right?”
Wells abandons his alterations, sheds the jacket and flings it into the narrow street. “You get a look at them?” He coughs into the crook of his elbow.
“Probably only what you saw.”
“Tell me.”
“Two black jackets, black helmets. Jeans. Kermit the Frog bike. A Honda, maybe?”
“So, fucking nothing.” Wells holsters the gun back at his ankle.
“Nothing but nyet,” I try for the third time tonight.
I hear Anitra Tehran chuckle behind me.
“Thank you very much. I’ll be here all week.” Actually, that’s not true. The shows will move to different venues throughout the week before culminating upstairs at the Hong Kong in Harvard Square, where one of us will be chosen for our first paying slot. I’d assist in dusting Tehran off but my hands can’t be trusted around that many curves so I let her shake herself out, do my best to avert my eyes.
Detective Wells surveys the scene, pulls his wallet and cell phone from his pants pocket. Shards of glass from Anitra Tehran’s dress tinkle like wind chimes as they dance on a square of burnt-toast pavement. As Wells punches numbers, a blue and white cruiser with its siren wailing and blue lights flashing turns sharply off Tremont, its side-mounted lamp finding him in its blinding glare.
“Well, look on the bright side, Zesty.” Wells squints through a half grin into the light from the squad car, shouldering the phone and letting the wallet fall open to reveal his gold detective shield. “Least now you can say you’re not the only one who bombed tonight.”
“For real?” I look to Anitra Tehran hoping for a measure of support, but get only a reporter’s objective view.
“It must be the spotlight.” She uses my shoulder to balance herself, snapping off the heel of her good shoe to match the other flat. “I’ve noticed it does things to people.”
TWO
Sunshine comes grudgingly to the alley off Berkeley Street, a dented box of tepid light tumbling through the open door of my shared office, an overpriced former coal room in a Back Bay brownstone. On the cusp of
darkness is the way Martha, our collective’s do-all dispatcher, likes it, the better to work her Victorian pale year-round.
“Tan lines,” Martha once told me, deep in shade beneath a sun hat that doubled as a landing pad for Black Hawk One, “are for morons and dermatology waiting rooms.”
Personally, I liked cultivating a good tan but knew better than to argue the point. As undeniably smooth and unblemished as Martha’s skin is, her tongue tends to be sharper than sriracha on an open wound. I’ve learned the hard way (as I do most things) to pick my battles judiciously.
“A watched phone never rings,” I greet her, bobbing and weaving like a middleweight; from memory dodging the severed pipe ends of some ancient heating system that still jut out from various points in the low basement ceiling. When we moved into the space a few years back we’d covered these protrusions with foam rubber and spray-painted them in bright Day-Glo colors, but at some point Martha had removed the padding and filed the ends into spikes, an unspoken message that the sunken lower portion was her domain—enter at your own risk.
I take my chances only because I’ve come bearing gifts, a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans, which I drop on her desk, Martha, unlike me, preferring her caffeine in crunchable form. Come to think of it, Martha prefers most things in crunchable form, having long ago perfected the art of talking and chewing at the same time. Where all the calories go, I couldn’t tell you. I’ve yet to see Martha break a sweat, but from one year to the next she stays thinner than my credit score.
“Aren’t you a doll.” Martha passes the unopened bag under her nose and squeezes me a tight smile. “Wow, and the good stuff, too.”
Above her, an overhead tangle of Christmas and chili pepper lights bathe her in a weak but demonic glow. It’s only when my eyes adjust to the dimness that I realize the smile had already filtered from her lips.
“Don’t start,” I warn her, plopping to the couch, unmooring a black avalanche of overstuffed contractor bags that slide over my lap and onto the floor.
If Martha were to start, she’d likely begin with the homily that those who fail to learn from their past are doomed to repeat it, followed by a detailed recitation of all the times I’ve tasted Boston pavement during the course of my duties. She’d then remind me that the last of these helmet-free crashes has left me with a thick crescent scar cutting through my right brow and a rare neurological condition that sometimes causes white-hot static to build up between my ears, painful prelude to an ever-changing playlist of songs that tumble off the airwaves into the silver fillings of my teeth.
But here’s one of many great things about living in the Hub of the Universe: It’s an academic, research-happy city always pining for those rarest of lab rats. So despite a health plan consisting of a first-aid kit, an ever-ready joint, and a bottle of Jameson, I’ve had the good fortune to be poked, prodded, and scanned by some of the world’s leading neurologists for my condition, the end result being an official diagnosis of musicis phantasiae, which, in the literal sense, translates to musical hallucinations.
For all intents and purposes, I house an old-school jukebox between my ears, my brain, without much warning, prone to dropping needle-scarred 45s on a turntable with the volume cranked to Early Hearing Loss.
It’s a pretty rare affliction, generally limited to those who’ve had the odds-defying misfortune of being struck by lightning or suffering some sort of massive right-brain hemispheric stroke. And the symptoms vary greatly. Through the course of my therapies I’ve met a plumber who hasn’t picked up a wrench in a decade, his days filled with a feverish attempt to complete Bach’s unfinished Art of Fugue on harpsichord. I’ve also played countless hours of waiting-room cribbage with a librarian who can’t stop singing 1950s-era show tunes, and pulled dozens of bong hits on the roof deck of a Louisburg Square brownstone belonging to a lightning-struck surgeon who’s become obsessed with mastering the entire guitar score of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, though she never previously played an instrument.
In comparison, I’ve made out like a bandit, my only complaint being a jolt of high-pitched frequency that leads into the auditory equivalent of an upturned hornets’ nest between my ears, painful opening act to my ghostly DJ dropping his two-ton needle on the record. The timing of these musical hallucinations are unpredictable, too, but there’s no denying my Head-Spin DJ kicks ass, rotating a killer collection of vintage soul, New Wave pop, and home-grown Boston rock and roll between my ears; not a weak track in the mix.
In the last couple of days I’ve surfed a repaved Harrison Avenue on the cold-wave electronic pop of the November Group’s “Shake It Off,” scattered a group of Japanese tourists wandering the Freedom Trail to Ministry’s “I Wanted to Tell Her,” and battled the hurricane crosswinds of Milk and Summer streets to a live version of Joy Division’s “Something Else”; not quite fast enough to accommodate pedestrians intent on committing suicide by messenger, but getting there, rounding my way back into shape again after a long recovery.
I’m told there’s not enough medical precedent to predict if this soundtrack inside my head will ever go away, but I’ve grown accustomed to the songs and figure it’s a reasonable price to be paid for surviving. At least until Pandora gets wind and sends me a bill.
Unfortunately, the fact that these musical hallucinations resulted from a crash that wasn’t an accident only bolsters Martha’s argument that eschewing a helmet on Boston’s twisted streets easily constitutes the most dangerous act of vanity ever recorded. Only my hair’s grown out past my shoulders again, my flying locks as much my calling card in this city as anything else, and I’m not about to cover up now.
“All I was go-ing to say,” Martha, satisfied her point’s been delivered, resumes full-on mastication, “is you look like crap. You having those dreams about Gus again?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Only to me, baby.” Martha’s voice softens. “You still haven’t talked about this with anyone?”
“Does the cat count?”
“Only if he’s billing by the hour.”
“Then no.” What he charges me is a daily ration of kibbles and the consistent shredding of my most valuable possessions. If my cat ever got picked for The Price Is Right, I swear he’d kill. And then drag his prizes home and claw them to pieces.
“Seriously, Martha, can we drop this?” I spring from the couch, tired of rebuffing the repeated advances of the garbage bags. “Gus wasn’t my fault. I get it. I just haven’t shaken the dream yet.”
What I don’t say is that since I’ve recovered from the crash and my near-death experience with McKenna, I’ve actually found myself becoming more reckless on my bike, taking even greater risks on Boston’s nonsensical streets. Almost as if inviting that kiss of the windshield, the stiff caress of the flung-open car door. I don’t carry a death wish, but maybe I’ve subconsciously adopted Neil Young’s better to burn out than fade away credo, my father’s continued decline into Alzheimer’s a constant reminder that my genetic road is paved with potholes large enough to swallow my memories whole. Dark thoughts, I know, but after all, it is Monday.
“Fine, then let’s talk business.” Martha sweeps her arm toward a short wall of boxes beyond the couch. “You told me you were going to take care of Charlie’s shit this weekend.”
And now instead it’s grown. Aside from Martha, whose salary is split three ways in our little messenger collective, Charlie is my only full-time employee, the business in a continued downward spiral since my fifteen minutes of front-page infamy had expired.
“And note the sleeping bag and pillow. What does that tell you?”
That Charlie had crashed here again last night. Though it wouldn’t be the first time for any of us, the office often doubling as a clubhouse after business hours are over, situated as it is within stumbling distance of a hundred bars on Newbury and Boylston streets. I’ve had my own share of nights passed out on this couch. Only it’s never been with the forethought of a sleeping
bag and pillow.
“No.” Martha cuts me off before I get a word out. “I’m not listening to you spin this. If Charlie got hammered last night, you know he’s not moving until I stick my foot up his ass. Only he wasn’t here when I got in this morning and that’s, like, never happened before.”
“You’re saying he’d planned on bunking here?”
“I’m saying take care of this. And since when have you known Charlie to plan on anything?”
Not to paint the courier ranks with too broad a brush, but Martha could have been talking about the bulk of messengers who populate the trade in this historic landfill, the job not exactly rèsumè gold. Which is not to say we’re total slackers—the work is hard, the hours long—only that at some point we’ve all answered the siren call of these insane and incoherent streets, drawn to the flexible hours, miniscule dry cleaning bills, and in varying degrees, a heightened addiction to risk and speed.
But if there’s one upside to my injuries besides the tough-guy scars I carry on my face, which now mirror my father’s—a lightning bolt scar below my bottom lip and shattered, slightly off-color front teeth where the bonding has yet to darken and match the lower portion—it’s the realization that I’m more at peace when on the move; more accepting of my station in life, which from the outside looking in probably doesn’t look like much, but provides me with exactly what I need.
My point being, the job has less to do with chasing dollars as hunting a certain feeling. Only, if I’m being honest with myself, that feeling’s been getting harder to catch in this new and ritzier Boston, these reconstituted post–Big Dig streets having lost their edge, out of focus and unfamiliar to me unless I’m attacking them at warp speed; God help the pedestrian whose head doesn’t swivel both ways.
When I’d first met Charlie, he’d been working as a somnambulant doorman on Newbury Street. He’d done two tours in Iraq and lost his leg to an IED while on patrol outside of a town most Americans will never hear of. But he discovered he could still ride a bike with the prosthetic he wore, the city streets reawakening him from the depressive, near-comatose slumber he’d been in.
A Town Called Malice Page 2