Dark Harbor

by David Hosp

  Finn eased his car down Dorchester Street and took a left onto Preble Street, finally merging onto William J. Day Boulevard near the shoreline. He pulled up behind Bostick’s battered blue Ford and got out. Bostick was leaning on the hood of his car waiting for him.

  “What the hell happened to you?” the private investigator said, frowning when Finn came close enough for him to see the bruises on his face.

  Finn rubbed his jaw nervously. It was time to test out his cover story. “I took a nasty fall playing hoops last night, caught the floor pretty hard,” he said.

  Bostick narrowed his eyes and took a closer look. The scrutiny made Finn even more self-conscious. Then Bostick whistled. “Looks more like the floor caught you, and more than once from the look of it—on both sides of your face, too.” He looked again. “You didn’t do anything to piss off this floor, did you? Hit on its girlfriend or something?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Bostick shrugged. “Suits me, you’re the one paying the bills. I’m just saying it might hurt less next time if the floor wasn’t wearing rings on its fingers.”

  “So, what’s so important you can’t tell me over the phone?” Finn asked, trying to change the subject.

  Bostick nodded at the derelict house in front of them. The shutters were kicked in, and the glass in the windows was broken. The falling-down structure sat at the edge of the road, close to the sidewalk, like something discarded on trash day. The only part that looked cared for was the mailbox, which gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  Bostick handed Finn a piece of paper. “That’s one of them,” he said.

  Finn looked at the paper. It was the list of three addresses he’d asked Bostick to check out. He looked over it, checking the street number. Sure enough, the crumbling structure was on the list.

  “So which one of our boys lives here?” Finn asked.

  “None of them,” Bostick replied.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. None of them lives here. In fact, I’m not even sure that anyone has been inside that building in years. This is supposed to be where Carter lives with his wife and two children. It’s where they supposedly lived for the last two years while he was a guard for the Massachusetts Transportation Safety Commission Guard Unit, but I’ve looked in the windows and, trust me, no one has lived in there for a long, long time.”

  Finn thought for a moment. “Could it be just a bad address?”

  “Yes and no,” Bostick said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that this is the correct address for this guy—this is where he’s had his checks sent every week—it’s just that the identification for the guy himself is all wrong.”

  Finn shook his head. “I’m not following you.”

  “What I’m telling you is that this is the correct information from Huron Security, but I’ve run this guy’s name through every database known to man, and I’ve come up with nothing. I ran him through search engines, through credit files, through the IRS—I even had a friend at the FBI do a search, and every single search came up empty.”

  “Empty?”

  “Empty. As in no information. As in, this guy doesn’t exist, he’s a phantom.”

  Finn looked down at the list in his hand and then back up at the deserted building, rechecking the addresses. They still matched, but he couldn’t seem to grasp what it all meant. “What about the other names on the list?” he asked.

  “Same deal. The social security numbers are all fakes, the addresses are dummies, and no government agency other than the Guard Unit has heard of these guys.”

  “So where do we go from here?”

  Bostick rubbed his hands together as if they were cold, even though the temperature was still in the seventies. “I don’t think you understand what I’m saying. I’ve already gone everywhere I know to go, and I’m not sure I want to go any further anyways. Do you know how hard it is to invent a whole person and get away with it?” He shook his head again. “I kept this all off the books—you’re not gonna be billed a dime—but I’m bowing out of this investigation if it’s all the same to you.”

  “Why?”

  Bostick stared at Finn, conscious that the young lawyer still wasn’t putting the pieces together. “Huron Security, which you represent, and which hired these guys for the Guard Unit, is one of the biggest companies in Massachusetts. It’s also one of the most difficult to get information on. It’s privately owned, and they don’t disclose anything to anyone, other than what they put on their info sheets to the state. But I did some checking with folks I know in the security business. Huron is connected with some pretty shady people. I don’t think I want this kind of company knowing I’m sniffing around. That’s more than I’m willing to do at this point in my life.”

  “What is it you’re worried about, exactly?”

  Bostick started to get frustrated. “Hey, look, what do I know, huh? It’s just that this company hires people using false identification, and then they disappear right after the Anniversary Bombing. These guys had access to the rail yard where the explosives were planted on the train that blew up. Who knows? Maybe these guys had a reason to disappear. I’m not sure I want to find out, y’know? What made you focus on these guys anyways?”

  Finn hesitated. This was a complication he hadn’t expected, and he wasn’t sure how much information he wanted to divulge about the Tannery case. “Nothing in particular, they were just potential witnesses we couldn’t put our hands on.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe there’s a reason you can’t put your hands on them. Maybe they had something to do with the bombing.”

  Finn shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. What possible motive could Huron have for protecting these guys if they had something to do with the bombing?”

  “Who knows? Maybe some wealthy Arabs paid Huron off. Or maybe they realized the security business would go through the ceiling if there was another attack. Or maybe they weren’t aware of the deception until afterwards, and they got so angry they made these guys disappear permanently.” Bostick drew his fingers across his neck in a gruesome gesture. “It doesn’t matter what the reason is, Finn. All that matters is that this feels a little too hot for me to deal with. I’m out.”

  “I still don’t buy it,” Finn said. “There’s got to be an angle we’re missing.” He frowned, thinking through the various scenarios. He’d found the guards’ names in Natalie’s notes, and sometime after she’d made those notes, she’d been killed. Finn wondered if there was a connection. “I need your help,” he pleaded.

  Bostick shook his head. “I told you, I’m out. It’s not worth the paycheck.”

  “It’s not worth the paycheck?” Finn echoed. “You said yourself you’re keeping this off the books, so nobody’s going to have any idea you’re involved. Besides, you used to be a cop. I would think that if there really were some connection between Huron and the Anniversary Bombing, you’d want to find out about it.”

  “I was a lousy cop,” Bostick said, shrugging.

  “Oh, come on. If you really believe that these people had anything to do with the bombing, you can’t be willing to let them get away with it, can you?”

  Bostick rubbed his face in exasperation. It was clear he was less than enamored with the idea of becoming involved in this case, but Finn had stirred up something in his conscience. “Aw, fuck. All right, what do you want me to do?”

  “All I want you to do is to run the names of more of Huron’s security guards through the searches you did to see if there are more phantoms.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, really, but something isn’t right here. I need to know if these guards are anomalies, or if there’s some sort of a pattern. It might also help us figure out if Huron had anything to do with the bombing. If not, it should let you sleep easier.”

  “Okay,” Bostick said. “But how are we going to get the list of names?”

  “We’re going to my
office right now to get it. We can use the computers there.”

  “You’re going to go to your office looking like that?” Bostick asked, pointing to the bruises on Finn’s face. “I’ve got to tell you, the basketball story doesn’t hold water.”

  Finn thought for a moment. He really didn’t want to be seen at the firm looking the way he did, but he needed answers fast, and the only way to get them was to go through the materials filed there. “It might not fool a former cop, but I think I can sell it to anyone we run into,” Finn said of his cover story. “Besides, I’ll try to keep a low profile.”

  Bostick nodded. “Okay, but after this I’m out, understood?”

  Chapter Fifty-three

  “IS THAT THE LAST NAME?” “That’s it.” “What’s the total?” Finn was standing behind Bostick, who was seated at a computer terminal in the Howery, Black war room. They’d been there for five hours, and they were both bone-weary and red-eyed. They’d walked into the offices quickly and quietly, with Finn keeping his head down to avoid any scrutiny of his bruises, and they’d been lucky. They hadn’t run into anyone who would have wanted to talk to Finn, and they’d managed to make it to the converted conference room without anyone noticing his appearance.

  Now the nerves of both men were frayed from staring at the computer screen, but they’d completed their task, plugging all of the names of Huron’s guards into various search tools and proprietary locator services. There were more than a thousand names in all, and it had been grueling work, but they’d done it—one by one—painstakingly investigating every individual. It was time to see how many of the names were fictitious.

  “One hundred and seven,” Bostick replied after a brief pause to tally the numbers.

  Finn let out a low, astonished whistle. “One hundred and seven,” he repeated. It was almost inconceivable.

  “That’s according to our searches,” Bostick pointed out. “The search engines we used aren’t perfect, although the social security database program that I accessed is pretty good. I would say that all these tools together have at least a ninety-nine percent success rate at locating people.”

  “So, any way you look at it, there are at least one hundred guards who don’t exist, who have been getting paid salaries and benefits by Huron, according to our information.”

  Bostick nodded. “I’d say that’s about right.”

  Finn whistled again. “Holy shit. We’ve stumbled onto some very dangerous information, haven’t we?”

  “I’d say so,” Bostick agreed. “I don’t get it, though. They wouldn’t need this many false identities to facilitate a terrorist attack, would they?”

  “No, but I don’t think this has anything to do with terrorism. This has to do with money. I don’t think these are false identities—I think these people never existed.”

  “But why?” Bostick asked.

  “The starting salary for a guard in the Massachusetts Transportation Safety Commission is more than fifty thousand dollars. Multiply that times one hundred, and you have five million dollars. I think this was government fraud, pure and simple. Somebody was pocketing this money. You said before that Huron is connected to some pretty shady people, didn’t you?”

  Bostick nodded. “Mob,” he said.

  “That makes sense. This kind of government scam is right up the mob’s alley.”

  “How could they possibly have thought they’d get away with it, though? Wouldn’t they have known that someone would catch them?”

  “Nobody did for more than two years,” Finn pointed out. “If it wasn’t for the Anniversary Bombing, I don’t know that anyone would have ever noticed. The mob has enough control over the unions to keep them quiet, and as long as they’ve got someone involved on the government side, who’s going to report them?”

  “Do you really think they could get someone in the government to go along with all this?”

  Finn thought for a moment about McGuire’s friendship with Governor Clarke. It had always struck him as odd. Perhaps this explained it. He wasn’t ready to tell Bostick, though. “I think it’s possible,” was all he said.

  “I can’t believe we’re the first people to figure all this out.” We’re not, Finn thought. Natalie must have discovered what was going on, too. She must have confronted McGuire or Clarke, and that was enough to get her killed. This had nothing to do with her older boyfriend, Finn realized; it was all about the litigation. And now that he knew about it, his life was in danger, too.

  Bostick must have been thinking along the same lines, because he turned to Finn and said, “I’m definitely out of this now.”

  “I understand,” Finn said. “You’ve already helped enough. Trust me, I’ll keep your name out of all of this if anything comes up in the future. I really appreciate all you’ve done.”

  “It’s no problem.” Bostick tapped Finn in the chest with his finger. “You be careful if you’re really going to pursue this. I spent a lot of time on the street when I was a cop, and I know what these people are all about. I’m not sure a high-priced lawyer like you can possibly know what you’re dealing with, here. These people are vicious and brutal. They won’t hesitate to take you out if you’re threatening their money supply.”

  “You didn’t know me when I was growing up. Trust me, I know exactly what sort of people I’m dealing with.”

  Chapter Fifty-four

  QUIETLY AND CAREFULLY. That was how Kozlowski wanted to proceed. It might be more easily said than done, though, given the public nature of the individuals they were investigating. He and Flaherty agreed that, other than Finn, Clarke and Loring seemed to be the most likely suspects. Kozlowski had some contacts in the Boston office of the FBI and the Justice Department, so he agreed to dig deeper into Loring’s past. Flaherty agreed to put in the legwork on Clarke.

  She started online, where most good investigators started in the modern world. There was no shortage of information on Massachusetts’s ninety-fifth governor; the problem was distilling it into a useful quantity.

  William Holloran Clarke was a descendant of Colonel Nathanial J. Clarke, who’d fought under General George Washington during the American Revolution. It was a storied lineage of privilege and sacrifice that included several early state senators, a leading abolitionist, and a Civil War general. The family had fallen on hard times in the second half of the nineteenth century, losing much of its wealth on speculative ventures out West, but the family’s fortune had been revived by Clarke’s father, who made millions liquidating the assets of bankrupt businessmen during the Great Depression. He had then parlayed that into an inestimable fortune by investing in real estate in and around Boston.

  The restoration of the Clarke family to wealth and power had afforded young William Clarke every opportunity imaginable, and he took full advantage. He attended Phillips Andover Academy, where he was a star athlete and president of his class. From there, he took his degree at Harvard, across the river from his father’s Beacon Hill mansion, where he graduated with highest honors. After that, he worked for two years before returning to Cambridge to get a joint degree in law and business. There’d been some controversy regarding his return to Harvard, coming as it did after his number had been selected in the military draft lottery, but strings were pulled, and his enlistment was deferred until after his graduation, and a sure tour in Vietnam ultimately morphed into a more mundane eighteen-month stint with the navy’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps. Few questions were asked.

  Once released from the military, he took up a key role running the family’s various businesses. His father passed away in the early 1980s, leaving an empire to his son, which William Clarke ran with efficiency and even, some would say, with compassion. While Clarke never failed to realize astonishing profits, he also became one of the city’s leading philanthropists, establishing homeless shelters, schools, and youth programs. The family’s extensive real estate holdings allowed him to couple commercial development with the dedication of public parks, works projects, and green sp
ace. The results were deemed not only good for Boston, but often resulted in enormous tax writeoffs for Clarke’s businesses. He was a man who seemed to have the Midas touch.

  It came as no surprise, then, when Clarke ran for the governorship and won handily. There were few knocks against him during the campaign, and all that his opponent had been able to come up with was some minor scandal involving an alleged payoff over the naming of a local park in Southie. It had never amounted to anything, and Clarke was elected in a landslide.

  Since his election, Clarke had focused his energies on massive improvements in the commonwealth’s infrastructure. The Big Dig was already under way when he took office, but he had broadened the project to include new secondary roadways and to increase the amount of green space planned. He’d implemented a plan to overhaul Logan Airport, and he’d created the Massachusetts Transportation Safety Commission, which had grown quickly into the largest bureaucracy in Massachusetts history.

  The only real attacks on his administration seemed to concern its lack of fiscal restraint and oversight—a surprise to many who viewed Clarke as a brilliant businessman. The state budget had more than doubled in the short time he’d been in office, and several well-known economists were predicting dire economic consequences down the road.

  Flaherty looked up from the news service printouts she’d been reviewing to see Kozlowski standing in front of her desk. She gave a start. “Damn it, Koz!” she yelled. “You’ve got to stop sneaking up on people like that.”

  He chuckled. “Sorry,” he said, though it was clear he wasn’t. “What have you got there?” he asked.

  “Nothing yet. I was just doing a background check on our governor, trying to get a feel for what sort of skeletons he might have in his closets.”