Brighton

by Michael Harvey

  “We need to talk.”

  “About what?”

  “Sit down.”

  Bridget remained standing. Bobby Scales’s eyes never left her. “I need to disappear for a while.”

  “What do you mean ‘disappear’?”

  “Exactly that. For a month. Maybe more.”

  “Why are you telling me?”

  “I want you to keep an eye on the business while I’m gone.”

  “I don’t collect, Bobby.”

  “Finn will take care of that. You just make sure the money gets where it’s supposed to.”

  “Don’t I always?”

  Bobby didn’t nod yes or no. Didn’t move a muscle. Bridget wondered what he knew about her and Finn.

  “Are you afraid to be alone with me?” he said.

  “Should I be?”

  “No one knows we’re down here.” He smiled and it was like a terrible flash of lightning.

  “You need something else?”

  “A favor.”

  Bridget snorted. “What else is new?” She picked up a sharp stone, tossing it from hand to hand, testing its weight.

  “The thing between us was a mistake, Bridget.”

  “You think that’s what I’m talking about? Don’t flatter yourself.” She fired the stone at a squirrel, nearly catching him in the flank as he scuttled up the side of a tree.

  “Will you help?”

  “When he cut me, you were the one who did something about it.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I’m just saying. That’s why I’ll help. Nothin’ else.”

  “Okay.”

  “What are they after?”

  “The Curtis Jordan thing. And two others.”

  “Others?”

  “Two women. The cops will come around, take apart my apartment, nose around Joey’s.”

  “They’ll try to get us talking.”

  “So talk. You don’t know anything anyway. Just don’t leave any of the paperwork around.”

  “I’m good at hiding things.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  Bridget felt a thrill, soaked in equal parts lust and fear. Her whole life she’d been the watcher. Or had she?

  “After a month or two, things will settle down and I should be back. If not, do what you want.” Bobby’s voice trailed off.

  “You ain’t coming back.”

  He swung his eyes across. “What makes you say that?”

  “I know about the produce market. They say someone’s coming up from Providence. Might already be here.”

  “I’ll straighten it out.”

  “Don’t go back to your place.”

  His fingers twitched.

  She inched a little closer. “I can help, Bobby. I mean really help.”

  “No, you can’t.”

  “Yes, I can. And the beauty of it is, no one ever has to know.”

  He tipped his head a fraction, as if he’d heard a soft, round note in the distance. “What are we talking about?”

  After she left, Bobby remained where he was, perfectly balanced, staring hard at the roofline of 8 Champney, wondering about everything Bridget Pearce saw and everything Bridget Pearce knew. There was a rustle behind him, and Finn stepped into the clearing.

  “Where is she?” Bobby said.

  “Waiting for the bus.”

  “What do you think?”

  Finn shrugged. “She’s a devious cunt.” He leaned his weight back against a flat slab of rock, stomach stretched tight against a blue Boston Red Sox fleece. Bobby watched the red B heave up and down as Finn panted in the heavy air. The hike through the woods had taxed him.

  “What is it?” Finn said, itchy under Bobby’s gaze. Bobby jumped down off his perch, prowling the edge of the clearing as he spoke.

  “You ever get the rest of the money that Irishman owed us?”

  “Sorry, B. I never got the chance.”

  “What are the cops saying?”

  “He got stuck in the gut or chest or something. They found him behind the Winship.”

  “You said you drank up the Corrib with those guys?”

  Finn pawed at the ground with the toe of his shoe. “A little bit, sure.”

  “But you’re not going in there tonight?”

  “Why the fuck would I go in there?”

  “Good. Go home. Grab an early night in bed. And stay away from Bridget.”

  “Bridget?”

  Bobby stopped pacing. “You think she’s skimming off the book?”

  “Bridget? Fuck, no.”

  “I know you’re banging her, Finn.”

  “Was banging her.”

  “Come here.”

  Finn made a meal of shuffling closer but hardly moved at all.

  “Come here.” Bobby grabbed him by the thick shank of muscle between his shoulder and neck. Finn winced and dropped to a knee.

  “Fuck, that hurts.”

  “Look at me.”

  Finn looked up and found a gun tickling his cheek. “How long we known each other, B?” His eyes were wide and swimming with broken blood vessels.

  “Is that all you got to trade?” Bobby slid the gun down so it was under Finn’s chin. “Take it.”

  Finn wrapped his lips around the barrel and waited for whatever was next.

  “I know what you did, Finn.” His friend tried to speak, but Bobby held up a finger. “Now, I need to know if you’re solid.”

  Finn nodded once.

  “You understand what that means?”

  Another nod. Bobby ground the barrel in until it hit the soft back of his throat. Finn never broke eye contact, unblinkingly offering his life in the hope he’d be allowed to keep it. The moment hung on a hook, then Bobby put the gun away and helped his friend to his feet. “Go home and stay there. I’ll swing by later if I get the chance.”

  Bobby half listened while Finn mumbled his apologies and promised to do better. Bobby patted him on the back, then gave him a hug, and sent him on his way back through the woods. Finn looked a little shook, but probably not as much as Bobby would have liked. That might wind up costing Finn his life, but it was so hard to tell. When it was quiet again, Bobby followed Finn out, a gym bag hanging from the fingers of his right hand. Six minutes later, he was standing on the roof of 8 Champney, enjoying the view. He squatted down and zipped open the bag, pulling out the nickel-plated nine with the black grip. Next came the thirty-eight he’d used to kill Curtis Jordan. He laid down both guns, side by side, and looked at them. Bobby didn’t have a lot of time, not if Providence had already sent its man. But he didn’t need a lot of time. And whatever happened after that, happened. He reached into his bag again for a beige envelope thick with photographs and dealt them out like a run of playing cards. Rosie Tallent and Sandra Patterson were the first two, then two more. Chrissy McNabb and Seamus Slattery. All of them, except for Patterson, the fucking dregs of Brighton. Bobby hung his head between his shoulders and studied the images. There was one picture missing from his collection. One person who was still breathing. And that was a distinction that wouldn’t last for long. Bobby stalked the roof’s perimeter, then walked back to front. When he was satisfied, he got to work.

  38

  A SKINNY guard with food in his mustache unlocked the door to Kevin’s cell and motioned for him to follow. They put him in a small holding room with a table and two chairs. The Middlesex cops hadn’t booked him. No prints. Just took him to a lockup in Cambridge and dumped him in the cell. That was almost seven hours ago. Kevin heard the scrape of metal as someone turned a key. Lisa Mignot walked in and sat across from him.

  “Aren’t you out of your jurisdiction?”

  “The sheriff owed me a favor.”

  “You want to tell me what I’m doing here? Or should we discuss it in the context of the lawsuit I’m gonna file.”

  “You’re not going to be suing anybody, Kevin.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Lisa measured out a long br
eath before answering. “I stashed you here for two reasons. First, I didn’t want DeMateo to pick you up for questioning and parade you around downtown. Second, I wanted to let you know your friend’s gonna be arrested on the Patterson thing.”

  “You told them about the reservoir?”

  “Hell, no.”

  “Then what?”

  “They have links between Scales and Patterson. Links between Scales and Curtis Jordan. The gun will tie in Rosie Tallent.”

  “It’s all circumstantial.”

  “You ever hear of an Irishman named Seamus Slattery?”

  “Why?”

  “He turned up dead last night behind a grammar school in Brighton. Stabbed in the chest. Coroner says around eight or nine P.M.”

  “So what?”

  “Scales and Slattery had some history. The feeling is Slattery might have owed him money.”

  “Bookies don’t usually kill people who owe them money.”

  “DeMateo’s gotten pretty comfortable with the idea your buddy’s involved in a lot more than gambling. By the way, what time did you hook up with Scales last night?”

  “Around eleven.”

  “No idea where he was earlier?”

  The image of the bandage on Bobby’s hand flashed through Kevin’s head. “No.”

  Sounds from the hallway. Iron scraping iron. The whine of a hinge as a door swung open and shut. Somewhere, someone swore. Laughter.

  “Was Slattery done like the others?” Kevin said.

  “No ligature. No gunshot. But there is something. The margins and angles on the Slattery wound were identical to Patterson and Tallent.”

  “Same knife?”

  “We think so. The M.E. also was able to map out the actual wound paths. We couldn’t do much with Tallent, but in both Slattery and Patterson it appears there was a nearly identical flaw at the very end of the blade. At first we thought the tip might have broken off during one of the attacks, but I went back through the M.E.’s files this afternoon and couldn’t find anything.”

  “What were you looking for?”

  “Sometimes if a knife breaks during an assault, it will show up in x-rays. In this case, it would have been a tiny piece of metal that looked like an inverted ‘v.’” Lisa held her fingers about a quarter inch apart.

  “But you didn’t find anything?”

  “I looked at all the x-rays we had. Nothing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means the case against your friend isn’t perfect, but it’s more than enough to get things rolling.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  “I used you. I used our relationship. And I’m sorry for that.”

  “You can keep the apology.”

  “Fair enough, but tell me how that helps you? Or your friend?”

  “So it’s business?”

  “Either way, he’s going down, Kevin. I’m just trying to make it a little easier all around.”

  He could smell her skin, still fragrant, still compelling even now as she sat across the table and bargained away his friend’s life. “Bobby needs a day.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “Can you find him?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She held up a finger. “One day. If he runs, they’ll arrest you on the Jordan thing and march you past all your buddies in the media. Believe what you want, but I don’t want to see that happen.” Lisa pulled out her key to the apartment in Beacon Hill and put it on the table. “I moved my stuff out this morning.”

  Kevin stared at the key, a crooked reminder of all that was dead and all that was dying, then pressed it into a pocket. Lisa climbed wearily to her feet.

  “Come on. Let’s get you out of here before my boss finds you.”

  “Can I get a look at the autopsy files you were talking about?”

  “They won’t help.”

  “I’d still like a look.”

  “I’ve got copies in the car.”

  Lisa was parked on the street. She pulled a brown binder from the backseat wrapped tight with several rubber bands and gave it to Kevin. After he left, she clicked her nails on the steering wheel and thought about her final throw of the dice, wondering if she’d made a mistake giving him the files. And if maybe she wasn’t being played herself. Fuck it. Lisa was all about Lisa. She knew that now, clear and hard as the painted eyes that looked back at her in the rearview mirror. So why did she feel like opening the door and getting sick in the gutter? She took out her phone and punched in the number for Bridget Pearce.

  39

  THE SHELF was still heavy with Hemingway and Steinbeck, the kitchen had all its pots and pans, and the Red Sox schedule was taped to the wall. But Bobby was gone as fuck. Just like he’d promised. Kevin walked over to Bobby’s desk and opened a drawer. Inside was the usual—pens, pencils, rubber bands, a handful of old bills. Kevin could almost hear his friend chuckling as he pulled open the rest of the drawers, then ran his hands underneath the desk and down the back and sides, looking for anything that might be taped there and knowing there was nothing to be found. He rummaged through the kitchen drawers and Bobby’s only closet, then returned to the books, shaking them out one at a time before cracking open the trunk under the bed. Kevin was on his hands and knees tugging at a loose floorboard when the barrel of a gun nuzzled his ear.

  “He kept something down there, but it’s empty now. Get up.”

  Kevin got to his feet. Someone gave him a shove in the back and he stumbled across the room.

  “I found a rag and half-empty bottle of bleach on the counter. Sit down.”

  Kevin took a seat at Bobby’s kitchen table. The man with the gun walked over to the windows and pulled down the shades. Danny DeVito. He was a dead ringer, except instead of crazy Taxi eyebrows this guy just had crazy eyes—amber with traces of current and a little bit of the end of the world running through them.

  “Why do you suppose your friend . . . he is your friend, right?”

  Kevin nodded.

  “Why do you suppose he had out the bleach?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The man leaned neatly against the window frame, holding the gun across his wrist like it was an extension of his hand. “I might wipe down the place with bleach if I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been here. But this is your buddy’s apartment, which leaves one other possibility.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He killed someone here.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “You want some coffee? One thing he left behind was the coffee.”

  “No, thanks.”

  The man stuck the gun in his belt and rummaged around, whistling some sort of old jazz tune as he found filters, measured out coffee, and filled Bobby’s machine with water. He stopped at the bookshelf and pulled out an album—Bach’s mass in B-minor.

  “The most perfect music ever written,” Kevin said.

  The man looked up from reading the back cover. “Your buddy tell you that?”

  “He did.”

  “Yeah, well, he’s right. Except it’s composed, not written. Bach composed.”

  “I think that’s what he said.”

  The man grunted and put the album back where he’d found it. He didn’t seem concerned that Kevin might make a dash for the door. When the coffee was ready, he poured himself a cup in a chipped mug and took a seat at the table. “It’s not bad. You sure you don’t want some?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  “Suit yourself. So what were you looking for?”

  “The police are gonna search this place tomorrow. I wanted to see if there was anything here . . .”

  “Fucking with the cops. I like it.” The man showed a quick grin full of thick, white teeth. “What do they want with Scales?” It was the first time he’d mentioned Bobby by name, and the sound rang like a hammer striking stone.

  “They think he killed some people.”

  “P
eople?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My theory with the bleach doesn’t look so stupid after all.”

  “Bobby’s not a killer.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Kevin.”

  “Kevin, that’s the first lie you’ve told me. Tell me another and I shoot you in the knee. Tell me a third and I put one in your head. Then I wrap you up in plastic and stick you in the back of my car. You want to walk over to the window with me and see my car?”

  “No.”

  “It’s got a big fucking trunk.”

  “I believe you.”

  “So we understand each other?” The man studied Kevin like a butcher might study a cut of meat.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell the truth and I’ll be on my way. Maybe I find your friend, maybe I don’t. To be honest, it makes no difference to me.”

  Kevin wasn’t sure why, but he believed the man and felt himself relax a fraction. “I was looking for a gun. Thirty-eight caliber. Maybe a knife.”

  The man nodded. “My name’s Lollipops, by the way. Don’t ask why.”

  “I wasn’t gonna.”

  “Good. I already searched the place. No gun. There’s some knives in the kitchen. You wanna take a look, go ahead.”

  “I already did.”

  “Why would your friend leave a gun or a knife behind?”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “But the search made you feel good.”

  Kevin flicked his shoulders. “I guess.”

  “Maybe there was something else you were looking for?”

  “I’m an investigative reporter. Going on fishing expeditions is pretty much what we do.”

  “Who do you work for?”

  “The Globe.”

  “Cops interested in you as well?”

  “Probably. That doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters.” Lollipops took another sip of coffee and waited for the story he somehow knew was coming.

  “Bobby saved my life when we were kids.”

  “How’d he do that?”

  “He killed a man.”

  “And now you want to make everything square?”

  “You don’t understand.”