A Town Called Malice

by Adam Abramowitz

  “You mean he also owns gas stations?”

  “Not quite, Zesty.”

  “Then what? He washes money through the Hacienda?”

  That gives Klaussen a laugh at my expense. “You’re not grasping the scope of the fortune my boss—who shall remain nameless—maintains, Zesty. I’m talking about the one percent of the one percent.”

  “Meaning,” Sid interjects, “that the money’s already clean. So then what’s with the visit and this security detail I hear you have? And I’m assuming this is where Zesty picked up that shiner and lost the gun that ain’t his. You didn’t just come back to Boston to find this dead girl. That’s why you hired Alianna here, to try and keep whatever else you’re doing separate, only it looks like that blew up in your face.”

  “Sadly so,” Klaussen agrees. “But it’s really just a hiccup. If Ms. Solarte agrees to stay on the case with Zesty, they can keep working and be paid well for it and I can accomplish what I’ve been sent here to do for my boss. Nothing’s really changed.”

  Alianna had started shaking her head before Klaussen had even finished his pitch. “I don’t think so.”

  “Why? Because you won’t take tainted money, is that it?”

  “Basically, yes.”

  “That’s a naive view of money, then. My boss is a businessman, internationally known, respected.”

  “But his fortune came from stealing.”

  “As the Bronfmans’ came from bootlegging during Prohibition and the Rockefellers’ from union busting. Don’t propose to lecture me on ethics if it doesn’t have anything to do with Camilla Islas. I’ve done the worst kind of wrong and I’m trying to fix that with your help if you’ll give it to me. The rest is just business. His business happens to steal gas from the pipelines, distributes it, provides protection for gas stations that sell his petrol, creates thousands of jobs along the pipeline routes from Guadalajara and Chiapas all the way into Texas and Arizona, where the focus is on stopping illegal immigrants, not money and gas. You don’t think the big data companies are manipulating your information, siphoning your data, and selling it to the highest bidder? Are you really that blind to the way the world works, Ms. Solarte, Zesty?”

  Alianna Solarte and I look at each other to see who’s more stung by Klaussen’s rebuke. It looks pretty much like a tie. And we could both obviously use the money.

  “So what will you be doing as Zesty and I resume our search for Camilla Islas?” Solarte speaks for us both.

  “I’ll stay out of your way, make sure Moreno and his men do the same while I work to accomplish what I was sent here for originally.”

  “Which is what?” Inquiring minds want to know.

  “Nothing illegal, I can assure you of that. Boston has certainly changed since I was here last; those towers going up in South Boston Waterfront have some magnificent views.”

  “They fuckin’ suck,” Sid says.

  “Yes, well, more business for your moving company once they are completed, no?”

  “They still fuckin’ suck.” Sid shrugs, but can’t deny the point. “So you’re doing what, looking at real estate?”

  “Yes.”

  “To invest in,” Solarte says.

  “For my employer. He enjoys a change of season.” Klaussen smiles. “Think of him as a reverse snowbird.”

  “Around here we call them vultures.” Sid’s face is a grim mask. He grew up splitting time between the South End and South Boston, but can’t afford to live in either one now.

  “If you say so.” Klaussen is unmoved. “It’s not my role to arbitrate housing issues. My boss sends me because I grew up here and he trusts my eye.”

  “Fucking real estate,” I say aloud, thinking of Charlie with no roof over his head, my overpriced closet on Union Park that I won’t be able to afford when the lease is up, of Detective Brill, who had to rescue his childhood home from being foreclosed on, of Darryl sitting and watching the skyline change as he scratches out days on the wall of his cell.

  And no doubt, nothing but penthouse views for whoever Karl Klaussen’s employer happens to be. Oil, drugs, money laundering, corporate tax breaks and corporate shell games, who the hell can tell the difference anymore? Boston doesn’t need to hire more street cops, they need an army of fucking masked accountants.

  “Yes, of course, real estate,” Karl says with the ugliest smile I’ve seen all week. “Really, is there any safer bet?”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Our open-mike night has shifted to Allston, to a new bar that splurged on a canvas backdrop of printed bricks and a stand-up microphone that looks like the kind those old-time torch singers would belt into. Dark stage. Monocle spotlight.

  “We missed you last night.” Hank Aroot pulls me aside to show me my spot in the line-up. There’s only a few customers at the bar. That’s probably a good thing since I haven’t sharpened any of my jokes since the firebombing and the only new thing that comes to mind is A rabbi walks into a bar in Dorchester.… That’s it. No punch line. No shortage of punches.

  “That’s a hell of a shiner there,” Hank notes with a wince. “Hazard of the job or something a little extracurricular?”

  “Little of both, I guess.” Depending on which job I want to claim for the damage. “But I’m here and ready to fail.” I smile.

  “Half the battle.” Hank pats my back. “You’re up after Caitlin. And let me just say, I admire your courage. Now go out there and bomb.”

  I don’t let him down, opening with: I saw a Who cover band the other night. They were called the Whom. And followed with: Terrible thing happened to me yesterday. I was arrested while loitering on the Stairway to Heaven. I should have left it there, but I sang it: On the Sta-ir-air-air-way to Hev-uun. And closed with: I auditioned for this superhero group called the Justice League of America. They said I couldn’t join. I asked why not. They said because we’re called the Just-Us League of America. Which means Just Us.

  Different club. Same crickets. Caitlin had killed before me. It was time to give that girl her due. She was just plain funny.

  And after the show, instead of continuing down Allston Ave. to where it intersects Commonwealth, I cross back into Brookline, stopping in front of my father’s house, where the blue wink of the television shines in the living room and I catch a glimpse of a playoff game in progress—green field, outfield wall—my father and Sid side by side on the couch now.

  And from an open window on the second floor, I see the Kara Walker outline of two large men behind the shades and hear the Rabbi’s deep locomotive of a voice reciting a familiar prayer, followed by moments of silence and then Zero’s halting voice delivering an echo of the Rabbi’s words, a phonetic retelling:

  Yit-gadal v’yit-kadash sh’mey raba,

  Magnified and sanctified

  May His great name be

  In the world that He created

  The Mourner’s Kaddish. The Hebrew prayer for the dead.

  TWENTY-SIX

  JJ Foley’s is a longtime Boston cop bar on Berkeley Street, one of those magical buckets of blood that used to exist in the shadow of the elevated Orange Line, which ran practically on top of it, blocking any hint of sunlight that might happen to stray down to street level. It was also a vampire bar. While all the surrounding shops were shuttered and closed, the industrial neighborhood on the outer edge of the South End neglected and falling into decay and disrepair, Foley’s stayed the same.

  A long L-shaped bar was there to greet you as you walked in the door under street signs written in Gaelic. The corners were dark enough to disappear into if the only solace and company you needed was in the form of a shot glass or a pint of Guinness.

  Was the proprietor Jerry Foley prescient? A Real Estate Whisperer? Master of the neighborhood reversal? Or did he simply decide that while the world spun outside, he would just keep doing what he did best, offering a warm home away from home for the cops, firemen, and municipal workers who toiled in the surrounding environs?

  My father freq
uented Foley’s practically his entire life and had made it into a picture or two on the walls to prove it. It’s a wonderful thing to drink where your father once drank. I also happened to be arrested inside of Foley’s once, got cuffed at the bar, kept drinking and still almost got laid. Top that if you can.

  Foley’s was also the place Sam and I had long ago arranged as a drop site in case he ever got jammed up, a likely occurrence had he not sold his fledgling hallucinogenic business and all the recipes to Cedrick Overstreet and Otis Byrd, Darryl’s lieutenants, who were holding down his spots until Darryl served his sentence at MCI Concord.

  And anyhow, it was always good to see Jerry working, a rare sight now that his sons had taken over and added a restaurant in a second room adjoining the bar; even Foley’s wasn’t immune to change as the neighborhood morphed into a monied playground.

  “Well, if my eyes don’t deceive me,” Jerry exclaims as I take one of the few remaining open seats at the bar. The place is packed.

  “Jerry, how are ya?” I say.

  “Grateful as always.” Jerry slaps a white rag over his shoulder. “Why has it been so long, Zesty? We’ve missed you around these parts.”

  “You’re too upscale for me, Jerry. Look at all these people. The only time I’ve seen your place this crowded there was a wake going on. Somebody die?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Blame my boys. The ambition of youth.” Jerry shrugs an elaborate apology. “I did all I could to steer them away from working the stick, you know that.”

  Indeed I did. All four of Jerry’s boys went off to college. Three of them came back to work the bar. One went into the priesthood. You don’t get much more Irish than that.

  “The world was their oyster. And what do they do? Restaurateurs.” Jerry enunciates the word with mock disdain. “And you? How’s business?”

  “Hanging in there.”

  “And your da?”

  “The same.” Jerry pours me a Guinness and two shots of Jameson without my having to ask.

  “Speaking of change.” Jerry directs my attention to a handful of pictures hanging above the ancient key-punch register, in the center a photograph of my father in his youth, drinking with Kevin White and Barney Frank. The last time I’d seen the photo it was yellowing at the borders, the corners curling toward the glass frame. When the restaurant construction was in full swing, the space where the picture once hung was blank and I’d assumed it was gone forever. But instead, it had been reframed and given a spot of prominence. I could now look across the bar into my father’s smiling face.

  “You do that?” I pretend to have something in my eye, pull at the short sleeve of my shirt to dab at it.

  “My boys. Hardheaded, but respectful.” Jerry lifts the shots and hands me one and we clink glasses. “To your da. May the road rise to meet him.”

  “To your sons.” We throw the drinks down.

  It’s about twenty minutes before Jerry pays me any attention again, returning with a small manila envelope with my name on it, which he places in front of me. Not an ounce of curiosity plays on his face.

  “How long have you had this?” I ask him.

  “Two weeks.”

  “You could have called.”

  “I could have also given it to Zero,” Jerry replies. “Would you have preferred that?”

  “He’s been in?”

  “Sure. Him and the Rabbi. I have to say, we don’t get many rabbis in here. Why do you think that is, Zesty?”

  I make an exaggerated show of looking around me, the pictures of cops and priests and ballplayers and firemen and politicians. Gerry Adams and Sinn Féin. Irish street signs. Irish politicians. Shamrock Heaven.

  “You got me,” I said. “You carry Manischewitz?”

  “No.”

  “Well then, mystery solved.” I open the envelope and shake a thumb drive onto the bar. Written on the black plastic casing in Wite-Out are the letters A.T.

  Anitra Tehran?

  If it is, why hadn’t Sam just sent it directly to the reporter? I don’t have a clue, but if Sam’s skipped town, I’m sure he has his reasons and I’m assuming those reasons are probably on this drive. I drink the Guinness. Jerry refills my shot glass and I drink that, too.

  Sam’s a sly bastard because he knows that if there’s one thing I can always be counted on to do it’s make the delivery come hell or bong water, and he also knows I consider whatever I might be delivering or why none of my business. I slip the drive back into the envelope and the envelope into my pack and finish my beer as two teams, neither of which is the Red Sox, play some fundamental baseball: the batter dropping a nifty bunt down the third base line, moving the runner to second; the infield playing the wheel, everybody shifting over to cover a base; even the outfielders twitching in case they have to back up an errant throw.

  “That’s what happens when they don’t take steroids anymore,” says the guy to my right, fresh off a buzz cut, silver stubble tapered to the back of his neck. He smells like he’s been marinating in a vat of Aqua Velva. A detective’s badge is pinned to his belt.

  “You mean boring baseball?” says his partner, a pretty brunette whom I haven’t seen since she was hammered at Foley’s on the very night I’d been arrested at the bar. She’s changed her hair since then, had it straightened.

  “Fundamentals,” Aqua Velva replies. “Like their daddies taught them.”

  I’m pretty sure she doesn’t recognize me. I spare her the embarrassment of telling her that her lips had tasted like strawberries.

  “I didn’t realize Zero was so religious,” Jerry says to me as I cup my hand over my glass so he doesn’t pour me a third shot.

  “The Rabbi works at Zen Moving. Between congregations,” I explain, echoing the Rabbi’s words.

  “Yet still imparting wisdom.” Jerry swipes at the bar in front of me even though it’s clean enough to lay out a body and perform surgery.

  “How’s that?”

  “The two of them, for hours, nothing but talk and hand signals. Rabbi Eleazar says this and Rabbi Akiva says that. Zero says this, the Rabbi counters with that. Strangest pair to walk through these doors in quite some time. Though to be honest, most of it was depressing.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I’m not a learned man, Zesty, but if there’s one thing we Irish do well, it’s death.”

  “You mean the wake?”

  “Indeed. A proper farewell. Eat, drink, share stories, make certain the deceased is deceased.” Jerry winks. “Drink some more, celebrate the life that was. If done right, it’s a party, laughter, tears, the works.” Jerry leans his elbows on the bar. “Did you know that the wake actually came about off the Jewish custom of sitting shiva?”

  “I did not know that. So you take a Jew, add whiskey, and you get an Irishman?”

  “Precisely! Some of the customs are still shared, the stopping of the clock at the time of death, the covering of the mirrors. But your seven days of sitting shiva last too long, don’t you think?”

  “You’re suggesting the Jews condense to the Irish version?”

  Jerry grimaces. “I’m not suggesting anything, just noting the comparison. And the Rabbi informed me your duties don’t end there. A year you’re supposed to grieve? It sounds exhausting.”

  “You mean the Kaddish.”

  “Ah, so you’ve talked to the Rabbi about this?”

  “No. In fact, I just met him for the first time tonight.” Jerry contemplates that fact in silence. “I overheard him teaching Zero the prayer at my dad’s place.”

  “Where he’s looking after your da, Zero tells me.”

  “So it seems.” Again, I’m out of the loop, last to know. “Is there anything else I should fuckin’ know about, Jerry?” I say, the two cops turning their heads to me. I didn’t mean to speak so sharply, but it’s too late to cram the words back into my face.

  “There a problem, Jerry?” the brunette says.

  “This is a private conversation, do you mind?” I look her in he
r eyes.

  She ignores me. “Jerry?”

  “Your lips taste like strawberries,” I say to her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I said your—”

  “Everything’s fine, Officer McKim.” Jerry makes like a matador, waving the bar rag in front of my eyes. On the television, the batter lines a single to center, the crowd roaring as the runner cuts sharply around third and slides home on a close play at the plate.

  “How’s that for boring?” Aqua Velva slaps the bar, challenging his partner.

  “That’s because the catchers don’t block the plate anymore. The whole fuckin’ game’s gone soft.” She throws back the last of her drink. Rifles her shot glass loudly on the bar. “Bunch of fuckin’ pussies. And by the way, Zesty, that’s your name, right?” McKim gets way up in my face, forcing me to lean away from her hot breath. “It was cherries, smart guy. Cherries. Learn your fuckin’ fruits.” She winks at me, not a trace of embarrassment in her eyes.

  I’m not quick enough to catch her number as she sashays out the door.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The Boston Globe offices on Morrissey Boulevard in Dorchester are barely two miles from Foley’s, but it’s a hard two miles with the cold autumn wind blowing in off the water between the JFK Library and the UMass campus. Talk was that the Globe would be moving downtown soon into a new high-rise on State Street, but right now it’s still on Morrissey.

  Not that it does me any good, Anitra Tehran insisting on meeting me at some bakery on the rounded corner of Dorchester Avenue and Adams Street, the most direct route leading me past the Globe offices. The bakery is closed when I chain my bike up outside, but the side door on Adams Street is unlocked as Tehran had said it would be, three bearded, tattooed men working large tables of dough as I walk in, the largest of the trio tilting his head to indicate the door into the shop.

  Anitra Tehran sits in darkness behind the counter with her computer, which I’d asked her to bring to the meet. There’s only a small puddle of light from a short lamp on the counter, but it barely reaches the reporter, who’s wearing dark jeans and a New England Patriots hoodie from the Steve Grogan era, the old one with the Minute Man ready to snap the ball, not the Elvis version.