"I'm not raising that point. You are."
"'Blessed Mother person'—that's snide and condescending, Joan."
"Since when did you become a defender of that crap?"
Terry faced away, too furious to respond. He was aware that as he became more heated, she became colder. On the television, black children in their ironed shirts and Sunday dresses, a line of them, not ten years old, clutching pencils, marched past the cameras without blinking. Their mute, expressionless bravery awed Terry.
Joan said, "They're babies!"
On either side of these children, blocked by the police, were the gauntlet mobs. The camera zeroed in on an Irish teenager, grunting and hopping, pretending to masturbate a banana. Religious medals flashed at his throat.
"Well, there's a new one," Joan said.
Terry got up and snapped the set off. But Joan was right beside him, just as quickly turning it back on. "You can keep this from Senator Kennedy, but not from me."
"What the hell does that mean?"
Joan pointed at the screen, but still with a lawyerly detachment "Tell the senator what his people are doing."
"My people, Joan. My people. Isn't that what you mean?"
"But why haven't you told him?"
"What makes you think I haven't?"
"He'd be here. He'd be on that street there, with those children, helping them. The black children. If this was the South, we'd all—"
"Not we, you! You! I wasn't there, remember? Your famous sit-ins at the lunch counters of Williamsburg for the rights of Negroes who were back at campus making your beds every morning in residence halls designed by Thomas Jefferson! Did the civil rights movement ever get William and Mary students to make their own beds?"
"Thomas Jefferson was UVA, not William and Mary."
"Goddamnit, Joan." Now it was Terry pointing at the screen. "Those Charlestown women on their knees with the rosary go down on their knees at work too, making beds in freshman dorms in Harvard Yard, among other places. Believe it or not, they're maids, Joan. Just because they're white doesn't—"
"Terry, listen to yourself. Look what they're doing to those children. You don't agree with them, I know that But you're tolerating what they are doing. Why haven't you called the senator?"
"I talk to his office three, four times a day."
"Not his office, him." She lowered her voice, emphasizing its lack of affect. "He should be up here. Ted Kennedy. Bobby's brother. One of the few people in America who can talk to both sides."
Terry shook his head. "You're wrong. Those whites won't listen to Ted, and neither will their leaders. The pols, the ward committeemen, the priests, the muckamucks, they've all bailed out. That's what I've spent the last three weeks finding out. On busing, as far as the Irish in Boston are concerned, Ted might as well be Ed Brooke. To them this week, he's worse than Ed Brooke. He's a traitor. That, in fact, is what it's been my job to tell him, which is why he won't talk to me."
"Then what about the black children, Terry? Is he going to let them do this alone? They're his people too. Why isn't he here for them?"
"I don't see Senator Brooke coming up from Washington."
"Ed Brooke isn't a Kennedy."
"He's black."
"He isn't a Kennedy," Joan said with stark finality. "Think about it, Terry."
Doyle resented her cool analysis. What gave her the right to such distance? But, of course, he knew. She was born with it. He forced his feelings down, trying to match her tone, saying, "Ted's coming to Boston would make things worse."
"For whom? Him? How could it be worse for those children? If Bright were here—"
"There's the point, Joan. Bright is one of the people who has convinced Kennedy to stay in D.C."
"Well, if Bright could see ... this." She indicated the screen again, but it had gone blank for a commercial.
He said, "The thing is in flames now, Joan. What's needed is firefighters. Cops. Not Kennedy, and not the pope either. Once the whites see that the court won't back down, they'll stop."
"The senator should be here, in Boston. That's all I'm saying."
"Here? This is Cambridge, Joan."
"Where apparently he does have clout."
"Are you talking about your job? Is that what this is about?"
"Derek Bok, but not—" She stopped. "Name one. One of their leaders."
"Ray Flynn."
"But not Ray Flynn?"
Terry shrugged. "These aren't your tribes Joan. Not your religion."
"But yours. Your tribe. Your religion."
"Sad to say. Yes. Sad to fucking say."
Joan stared at him, then backed away until she reached the door of their bedroom. She turned and went through, closing the door with exquisite control.
He stood looking after her for a long, mystified moment. Then he turned the television off and went into the small kitchen to pour himself a drink. As he brought the glass of diluted whiskey to his mouth, his hand shook. "Jesus," he said aloud. After a stiff belt, he put the glass on the table, then placed his hands, palm down, on either side of it He pushed. "Jesus Christ, what's happening?"
Later, after undressing in the living room and turning out the lights, he entered the bedroom and slipped into bed beside her. She was on her side, turned away. As he listened to her breathing, his eye began to scan the ceiling, looking for cracks. An old feeling of sadness choked him.
"Terry?"
He thought at first he'd imagined the sound, so much did he long to hear it.
"Sugar, I'm sorry." Her voice was barely more than a whisper. She'd spoken without moving.
"I'm sorry too, Joan. But mostly what I am is ashamed."
Joan was silent, then she turned halfway toward him, so that they were alike in lying on their backs, staring into the void above. "But for the wrong reason, Terry. You're ashamed because it's Charlestown, when you should be ashamed that you're not doing anything."
"Don't start again."
"Well, don't be ashamed because it's Charlestown. That has nothing to do with you."
"You think." The talk was making Terry lightheaded, as if he were floating in the vacuum of darkness, the vault of time. Was this twenty years ago, the room with the slanted ceiling? Was this Nick next to him? Nick was the one who'd always made him feel both too emotional and too passive. Now it was her.
But Nick. "How do you feel about tomorrow?" he asked abruptly. "I mean, now."
"You mean, can I go to your family's house without being snide and condescending?"
"I guess so, yes."
"Don't worry."
Terry grunted, half to himself.
"Just don't be ashamed of the wrong thing, Terry. There's nothing wrong with where you come from, and there's nothing wrong with having left it behind. That's all something else."
"So tomorrow we'll just be like ... tourists, huh? Wonderfully detached anthropologists." He elbowed her as once, seeking recovery, he would have Nick. "In quest of the cult of 'this Blessed Mother person.'"
Joan put her hand on his thigh. "Your mother's house, sugar. That's enough. I wish I could have known her."
Terry was instandy aware of sharing no such wish. What a nightmare, the idea of introducing Joan to his apron-sucking mother. As always, the thought of her filled him with sadness, and so he pushed it away. He took Joan's hand and brought his face close to hers. "Rattle the headboard?" An old phrase of hers; the joke always was how odd it sounded coming from him.
"Not tonight."
"I didn't think so."
They kissed lightly and rolled apart, as was their habit A few minutes later Terry said softly, "You'll like my brother."
She did not hear him.
"Everybody likes my brother."
12
ALMOST SIXTEEN YEARS to the day after Guido Tucci and Deebo McCarthy took their fateful stroll down to Mystic Wharf on the for side of Charlestown, Tucci's son and Squire Doyle retraced it McCarthy had suggested the heart of the Town for his meeting out of an inb
red caution, but now, all these years later, Doyle had a more pragmatic reason for wanting Frank Tucci to see the Charlestown waterfront up close.
Still, thinking of that other meeting, Doyle was capable of indulging an admittedly twisted Irish nostalgia. Few in Charlestown had ever forgotten how for short McCarthy's caution had fallen that day in 1959, or how his failure to read an enemy had changed things in Boston. Old Tucci's shocking murder of the mick chieftain had given Squire Doyle's life, for one, its untouted shape and meaning.
Frank, the year after his father's death, had moved from Revere to a big house in Weston. With a discretion and swiftness that had surprised Doyle, he had solidified his hold on his father's organization, and expanded it. His grip was as iron-fisted as the old man's had ever been. Even the Patriarcas had found it prudent to give him room, and ultimately had formed an effective alliance with him that had deterred the Gambinos from moving into New England.
It was noontime Saturday, and though a bank of dark clouds blocked the sun, the sky was bright. The wind had picked up and feathered Squire's hair as he held Tucci's door for him. The car wasn't a limo, but Frank, unlike his father, always rode in the back seat.
"Hello, Mr. Tucci," Squire said.
They shook hands. Tucci was wearing a trimly cut double-breasted suit that evoked the Via Veneto. Gold flashed at his wrist and at his collar. His shoes were tassled. He carried a soft leather man's handbag, a true Italian dandy who didn't want his wallet ruining the line of his Armani. His appearance contrasted with the dark informality—that cardigan, that polo shirt, those loose trousers—of Squire's clothing. Except in the flower business, where it served his purposes to be a figure, and except in the Town, Squire had made himself more invisible than ever, and his way of dressing was part of that Frank, on the other hand, cut a swath in Boston: judges, cops, and newsguys knew him. The pois openly took his money. Squire knew that Tucci wanted it both ways.
"Thanks for coming over," Squire said. "You'll like the view from out here."
Frank hooked the loop of his leather handbag around his wrist The bag, hardly larger than an envelope, swung at his hand as they walked along.
The man who'd ridden in front with Tucci's driver had fallen into step several dozen yards behind them. Squire had seen him many times, hovering near Frank, and had long ago recognized him as one of the thugs at Boston Garden the day Kennedy came, an event Squire made it a point not to call to mind. Sometimes he could not help it, though. The shoe was in his face, there it was.
Doyle and lucci set out along the edge of the ball field nestled between the projects on one side and Terminal Street with its storage buildings on the other. Neighborhood softball teams were playing their end-of-the-season championship, and knots of spectators lined the field. A set of stands was full. Even as the air had turned blustery, mothers still pushed strollers and old ladies leaned on the arms of granddaughters, as old men on the arms of other old men stood watching the boys at play. All bright, Irish faces.
Those people knew very well who Squire was, and though they did not know Tucci, they were savvy enough to sense his importance. As the men walked along, other Townies nodded at Squire. If he sensed tension in some of their faces, or saw signs of the urge to speak to him, he knew it was about the busing bullshit They were parents who were keeping their children home from school, or brothers of guys on the police force who hated both sides, or their houses overlooked the corners where teenagers hung, acting more and more like juvenile delinquents. They would all want a word with him, advice or help. Goddamn busing. Everywhere he went in the Town, he saw how crazy it was making people.
At the railing of the backwater inlet, on one side of Mystic Wharf, they stopped. Doyle faced back toward Boston. Tucci did likewise.
They leaned against the railing, both pretending to look at the view, the ballplayers, the hill in the distance, the monument. In fact, they were each noting Tucci's bodyguard, who had hung back, and was now hunched over cupped hands to light a cigarette. To be certain they were not followed was the real point of this stagy stroll.
"City on a Hill," Squire said. "Fucking city is killing us."
"What do you mean?"
"Busing. The judge. The niggers. Fucking killing us."
"Oh, yeah," Tucci replied, but with a dullness meant to show that he didn't care about busing.
Squire hadn't meant to bring it up, but looking back at the city had made him feel its violation fresh. Now that he thought about it, he realized he was discharging the useless energy of his anticipation of Terry's coming visit. Fucking Terry, and his wife.
But Tucci—Squire forced himself to concentrate—was the brother that mattered now. This asshole, Squire thought, is more my brother than Terry is. And this asshole carries a purse.
Squire faced around toward Mystic Wharf and aimed a finger toward the sprawling, crane-dominated commerical dock, fronting on the deep-water channel. Charlestown had beat Southie out for these new piers, and Quincy too, the government making up for shutting down the navy yard. This was the new heart of Boston Harbor, where container ships tied up. "That's what I asked you down here to see." Squire was pointing at the new crane that dwarfed the buildings in Everett and Chelsea beyond—a bridge-shaped, automated offloader six stories high. Its two legs rode on parallel sets of railroad tracks that ran two hundred yards along the water's edge. Its hoisting mechanism yawned, empty now, dangling from the crane-bridge like the claws of a hovering bird of prey.
"It's big," Tucci said.
"There are only two cranes like that on the eastern seaboard. We got this one thanks to a guy named Kennedy who remembers that his brother got his start in Charlestown."
"You fucking Irish."
"Yeah, how about that In the year it's been here, shipping into and out of Boston doubled, and will again even sooner, but Charlestown still gets screwed. This crane practically operates without longshoremen. Instead of jobs, what the Town got is a caravan of heavy trucks rattling through Sullivan Square. Sea-Land trucks, you've seen them. The containers go right on the flatbed."
"Yeah, I've seen them."
"People see them go by, now they say, Fuck Kennedy. First these trucks, then the buses." Squire snorted.
Tucci stared at the crane, saying nothing.
Squire thought of Deebo McCarthy, twitching on this pavement with a knife in his gut. Did Frank even know how close they were to the very place? Probably not. What was Deebo's death to him?
"So why the fuck am I here? To get wet when it rains?" Even against blue sky, dark clouds were massing.
"I'll show you." Squire led the way across to Terminal Street, past a pair of potbellied men in baseball hats and nylon jackets who'd been fishing and were now packing up their gear. As Doyle and Tucci approached the fenced-off clock area, an airliner just taking off from Logan soared into the sky above them, its engines screeching. Squire pointed at it, Frank looked. Squire scanned the road behind them, the warehouses in the distance, the storage yards and the pier ahead, all quiet He took Tucci's arm and picked up the pace, heading for an innocuous gate in the high fence. A padlock dangled from its slot, but when Squire tugged it once firmly, the hook fell open. He pushed the gate and they went through.
Once inside the yards, with the gate closed behind them, the men stood for a moment, taking in the sight of metal massed like the granite blocks of which the monument was built: the boxcar-size containers on one side, some on truck beds and some stacked three or four high, as tall as buildings; and on the other, on the waterfront itself, the massive crane. The dark glass of the cockpit control booth at the top of the nearest leg was like an eye staring out over the harbor, toward the hills of Everett The crane, like everything else, was shut down. The black mushroom-shaped bollards on which a ship's lines would be secured were naked. The pier was empty of men. Nothing was moving.
"This way," Squire said.
He led along a wall of sealed cargo containers to a narrow, ad hoc aisle that ran between the rows. It wa
s like entering a maze, and with a single turn they were surrounded by the metal walls. Squire approached a particular container without hesitating, and he threw a latch. One side of a set of double doors popped open. Squire pulled it and drew back, revealing the cavernous dark interior of an empty container.
"Come on in," he said.
Frank followed him into the box, ducking, though at eight feet it was two and a half feet higher than his head. Opening his arms, Squire turned slowly. "Forty feet by eight feet by eight and a half." He slapped the flat of his hand against the nearby wall, jolting the air. "Two thousand of these babies offloaded in Charlestown every month last year. Four thousand a month next year, packed with everything from reed bathmats to sacks of coffee beans to mahogany furniture to Datsun muffler pipes to—"
"To your flower bulbs?"
"Yes. Dutch tulips. Daffodils. Hyacinths. Narcissus. Hardy bulbs, bred in ice-skating country, just right for tough New England weather. My wholesale bulb business gets bigger every year." He slapped the wall again. "I have four of these guys coming in over the next three weeks. I could sell eight. People are just catching on to bulbs. After dormancy, all they need is dirt, water, and rising temperatures, and poof! The glories of spring in your own back yard, in your windowbox. Bulbs. It's what made me see these fuckers." And once more Squire banged the wall. "Hear it?"
"What?"
Only using his knuckles now, he struck the metal again.
Tucci shook his head.
"It's hollow, Mr. Tucci. The walls of these containers are a double thickness of aluminum bolted together onto I-beams." He pointed out the ribs of the containers. "Twenty-four I-beams per container. Along each I-beam runs a hollow cavity. Here, see?" Squire knocked the metal, off the beam, then on it. The sound displayed the difference. "Each beam can take four and a half keys of packaged powder."
"Ten pounds?"
"That's right, each beam. Two hundred and forty pounds if you used every beam, which you probably—"
"Jesus Christ." Tucci put his little handbag under one arm, then ran his hand along the corrugated metal.
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