The City Below

by James Carroll

  "Good day, sir. Certainly, sir. Right here." She put her copper mister down and crossed to the cooler. "These lovely bluebells..."

  "No, no. I was hoping for..." He craned his neck to look past her.

  "A small iris, perhaps?" She pointed with a hand so bejeweled Doyle wondered why she had to work.

  "No. Shamrocks."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Shamrocks, in a sprig of baby's breath."

  "I've never seen that."

  "You don't sell shamrock boutonnieres?"

  "No. I rather doubt that shamrocks—"

  "You're sure you didn't sell—"

  Her prim smile cut him off. "Not shamrocks. Ever. Of any kind. We don't sell novelties."

  "Of course you don't. Foolish of me. Thanks anyway."

  On the way out of the lobby, he cursed himself for calling Amory's room, alerting him. He wasn't good at this. A fool. He was a fool. He glanced back at the flower shop, expecting the woman to be watching him. But she had gone back to spraying blossoms.

  He waited for the doorman to turn away before crossing Arlington, back to his car. He got in and closed his door quietly, and realized that precaution was foolish too. This whole thing was foolish.

  He waited an hour, smoking, listening to Morning Pro Musica, Mozart and Bach, their greatest hits. He observed every person who entered the hotel—no Squire; and who left it—no Amory. For most of that time, he kept at bay a sense of the absurd figure he'd become, but eventually a feeling of claustrophobia closed on him. The car interior began to seem small and airless. He imagined Joan sitting next to him, exuding disdain in her cashmere, her drawn-back blond hair: We don't sell novelties. But Joan had, in fact, encouraged him to think that at the Ritz they would. Why?

  No sooner had the stain of his suspicion spread to touch his wife than Victor Amory appeared, barreling through the revolving door. Dressed in the fedora and the tan raincoat he'd had on his arm yesterday, he held a black carry-on bag in one hand. When the doorman reached for it, Amory veered away, heading up Newbury Street away from the cab stand, which told Doyle he didn't need the car. He got out and began to follow. He maintained the half-block separation they'd started with.

  Often, when he had serious thinking to do, Terry hit the sidewalk, wandering aimlessly, as if hoping to get lost. He could pass shop windows, cut through crowds, and cross busy intersections without altering the self-assured pace before which others gave way, his mind working the whole time. In his brain he was making brilliant moves, square to square, against his friends who were enemies, yielding a pawn to Killian at the BRA, castling Zimmerman, trading Hammond's interest in the Fan Pier for Marty's redundant piece of Park Square, always, always, where to find money, how to keep it, money the queen, money the king, money the everything. The development game in boom times was less Monopoly than gilded chess, but Doyle constantly had boards on every side, a dozen opponents at once, bomb-rigged master's clocks running on every move, and the miracle was, he kept making them. What he never had was time to separate out in his mind the reasons for his instinctive choices, how two or four moves ahead he knew, he knew. He never had time, either, to answer his largest question, why his trade—which after all was a game of building blocks, buying and selling, borrowing and dealing—could feel so dangerous. Now and then a desperate need to think about it took him out of his office, out of the building on Liberty Square, as if the sidewalk itself would answer him if only he trod enough of it.

  But now he was moving automatically, not thinking. Block after block of Newbury Street went by, the chic stores and galleries, the ultimate cafes, bowfront windows shimmering with paintings, vases, sepia lithographs—but it all passed in a blur. The field of his concentration was entirely taken over by the bobbing, distant figure, like a hypnotist's charm, of Victor Amory.

  Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield—how those Yankees had hoped to wake up English if they only named enough streets for Brit manor houses. At Hereford Street Amory turned left. By the time Doyle caught sight of him again, he had crossed Boylston and stopped. He had put his suitcase down on the sidewalk, and stood there shaking his arms, an indication of the weight he was carrying. Doyle stalled in the open alcove of a fire station, then set off again when Amory did.

  At the next corner, at the Cheri movie complex, he turned right onto a side street Doyle reached the corner in time to see, to his amazement, Amory mounting the stairs of the least conspicuous Catholic church in Boston, St Cecelia's. It was a towerless brick of a church, built at the turn of the century for Irish servants of the prim householders of Back Bay. Amory took the stairs warily, as if he knew that, long ago, his kind had gone there only to demand to see the pastor, to dispose of their outrageously pregnant maids. He pushed against the large wooden door and it swung slowly open. He glanced toward the street once, perhaps seeing Doyle, perhaps not Then, without taking off his hat, he disappeared inside the church.

  Doyle was out of moves. He remained outside, dispirited and confused, not realizing that the decision to stop was also a move. He crossed the street and stood in the arched doorway of one of the row houses. He lit a cigarette and watched the church entrance, soon finding himself fatigued. This peculiar thing with Amory, with Bright—with Joan—was less than a day old, yet the distrust it implied seemed now very familiar, and his sudden weariness made him feel that it had been years since he'd had a good night's sleep.

  St Cecelia's, the servants' church. He counted the steps. He traced the outline of the door, the ribs of the sooty window above. To the right of the entrance was the sign announcing Mass and confession times, and below the schedule was the line REV. JAMES ADLER, PASTOR.

  Jimmy Adler! Doyle hadn't thought of him in years, the kid who'd pulled him through the tunnel of the seminary. Jimmy Adler, freckle-faced, forever grinning, always at Terry's door with a word of cheer, affection, gossip, a joke. To Doyle's dismay, when he thought of Adler now it was as a child, a boy, and then he realized it was as his child. Jimmy. Staring at Adler's name in the space before that impossible ecclesiastical word "Pastor" was like looking at a mirage, a fact without past or future.

  But Jimmy Adler had betrayed him, and wasn't it so like Terry Doyle to draw that up from the well of his memory last? Adler's careful notes on Terry's heresy, sitting on the rector's desk, evidence that Doyle had conspired with Protestants, Blight's father, that he had refused to take an oath, that he had lied in confession because he could not think of a sin.

  Jimmy, you bastard. And this is what they give you. Doyle thought of their favorite play, A Man for All Seasons, More's response to his betrayer: To lose one's soul not for the whole world, but for Wales, Rich?

  But for St. Cecelia's, Jim?

  The church door opened. Doyle tossed his cigarette aside, ready to move. Victor Amory came down the stairs quickly, looking neither right nor left, and he headed back the way he'd come. Amory's hands swung nervously at his sides, conveying an urge to escape. Amory's hands were empty. He'd left his suitcase in the church.

  Without realizing it, Doyle had built his previous perception of the man around that piece of luggage, as the day before he had done so around a ridiculous knot of clover on his lapel. Only now, with its disappearance, did the suitcase's importance come to the fore. The suitcase was what he'd followed. Amory would return now to the Ritz, Doyle was sure of it. Instead of following, Doyle watched him round the corner and vanish behind the theater.

  Now what? Enter St. Cecelia's? Confront Jimmy Adler? How have you done it to me again?

  Doyle remained where he was, stymied. Seconds passed, or minutes. Perhaps an hour. The church door opened once more. A man appeared and Terry knew him at once. Not Jimmy Adler but Didi's brother, Jackie Mullen. He took the stairs at a clip, gingerly carrying Amory's suitcase.

  Doyle began to move. Mullen headed up the sidewalk toward Massachusetts Avenue, going fast. Doyle began to run. Half a block up the street, Mullen stopped at a parked automobile, a dark green Plymouth. Vacant. He op
ened the passenger door and tossed the suitcase in, closed the door, then hopped quickly around to the driver's side. Doyle ran faster, pouring it on like a jock doing wind sprints. Mullen got into the car without glancing back, while Doyle scrambled along the sidewalk in the cold shadow of low-class brick houses. His shoes echoed on the pavement. His suit coat flapped up at his elbows.

  Mullen had the engine going and was edging away from the curb when Doyle reached the car, on the passenger's side. He slapped the steel once, then lunged at the door handle. The car was still moving. He opened the door and jumped in, hitting the suitcase.

  Only then did Mullen react. He slammed the brakes, jolting the car to a stop, and reached to his belt for a weapon.

  "It's me, Charlie!" Doyle screamed. "It's me!"

  Mullen leveled a gun at him. "Jesus Christ, what the fuck are you doing?"

  "Jackie, Jackie, come on." Doyle flapped his hands apart.

  Mullen grabbed at the suitcase, which blocked the seat between them. "What the fuck are you doing? Christ, Terry. Jesus Christ!"

  "You too, Jackie!" The adrenaline kept Doyle going. "What are you doing?" He reached for the zipper on the suitcase and pulled it The black leather flap fell open, exposing only a corner, but, because of what he saw, exposing enough. Bills. Banded stacks of money.

  "Fuck!" Mullen slapped his gun against Doyle's head, knocking him back. He closed the zipper, yanked the suitcase free, and threw it into the back seat.

  A radio speaker attached to the dashboard crackled to life: "Seven-one, Haymarket Square." The voice was simultaneously gruff and blasé. "Seven-one, OP relief. Check. Seven-one." The police radio fell silent The message had meant nothing.

  Jackie's lips twisted once more around the same words. "You fuck! What are you doing?"

  "What are you doing, Jackie?" The pain in Doyle's head seemed to focus him.

  "Blowing your fucking head off, that's what." Mullen pushed the barrel of his gun against Doyle's cheek. He seemed insane, his eyes jittering. "Who else is here?" He pushed the steel snout harder. "Where's Squire?"

  Squire? Terry recognized Mullen's fear without understanding it He moved his eyes toward the money, then back to Jackie. "He'll be right along. Want to wait?"

  "No!"

  Mullen looked wildly around. The street appeared to be deserted. He grabbed Doyle's coat and hauled him across his own body, forcing an exchange of seats. "Drive. You drive!"

  Terry got the car into gear and pulled away. Mullen continued pointing the gun at him, but his eyes were on the street now, behind, ahead, everywhere.

  Terry said calmly, "Squire will be following us, Jackie. He and I are together in this. He knows where I am."

  "Oh yeah? Where the fuck are you? Huh? Where?"

  "With you, Jackie." The street ended at Mass. Ave. "Which way?"

  "Turn left. Turn left, goddamnit! Down to Symphony Hall and turn right. Over to the Fenway."

  "Jackie, you've got to—"

  "And shut the fuck up. Do you hear me, shut up!"

  Doyle did.

  Mullen regained control of himself, like a stoical maniac, but he continued looking back, expecting to be followed. He put his gun on the seat, the barrel pointed at Doyle, but he kept his hand on it. At various corners he barked directions, and Doyle obeyed, executing a series of random, sudden turns in the maze of streets around Northeastern University. Once, when the dashboard radio came to life again, Mullen kicked it, then snapped it off. They made two complete circuits of the elliptical Fens parkway. At one point, Mullen ordered Doyle to drive into the parking lot of the Museum of Fine Arts, but when he realized there was a guard booth, he told him to keep going, onto Ruggles Street For an awful moment, Doyle thought Mullen's manic orders would bring them over to Ruggles Square, and the symmetry of that seemed perverse, an ominous climax. The thing was to be able to keep driving, to get Jackie talking. Doyle turned onto Huntington Avenue, heading for the hospitals.

  "Why don't you tell me what's going on, Jackie?"

  "You don't know?"

  "No."

  "I thought Squire knew everything." He kept looking around. "That's the fucking feeling you're giving me. Shit"

  "He knows everything. But I don't."

  "When did you start working with him?"

  "When he brought Amory into my deal."

  " Your deal? I didn't know you were part of that."

  "What'd you think?"

  "McKay. I thought it was McKay's deal."

  "Well, McKay and I are partners."

  "So you know about that?"

  "Yes."

  "Shit," Mullen said, then fell silent.

  Doyle continued driving along Huntington. After a block or two he said, "So it's Squire, Amory, and McKay." He paused, then added, almost absently, "And Tucci's money behind Amory." Doyle slowed the car for a red light, then stopped. "It's all a laundry operation."

  "So what is your part in it?"

  "I brought McKay in."

  "Funny..."

  "Why?"

  "McKay acted like he really did not want you to know. I heard him say that."

  "You know Squire. He likes to keep his players guessing."

  Once more Mullen looked back, to see who was there.

  Doyle said, "What happened, Jackie? You turned against your old buddy? You turned honest? A good cop after all?"

  Mullen faced Doyle with dismay and surprise, and then a dark look came over his face. "I'm not the one who turned, Terry. Squire is." He leaned across the seat, suddenly hopeful. "Did you know this? Squire is working with the feds. He's setting us all up. You too."

  "Not me."

  "Your friend, then. Squire's been wearing a wire from the start."

  "A wire?"

  "For the feds. That's what I'm telling you. He's a walking tape recorder, and the game's up tomorrow."

  "When he tapes Tucci."

  "Yes. They're all meeting."

  Terry indicated with his eyes the suitcase in back. "You just sold him out, isn't that it? If he's wired for meetings with Amory and Tucci—you just told them."

  "Amory, Tucci, and your friend McKay. He's going to be there too." He pressed Doyle's arm. "You should rethink this shit, same as I did."

  The light changed then, and once more Terry began to drive, relieved to do so. Yes. Rethink. Think. Rethink again. Jackie was no longer interested in giving him directions, so where Huntington Avenue intersected the Riverway at an overpass, Doyle turned, heading back to the Fenway, toward Boston.

  In his mind he could not get past the impossibility of Mullen's position. Caught in the act of his mortal betrayal, Jackie was now going to have to kill the man who'd caught him. Me. He has to kill me.

  The road wound along the weed-ridden Muddy River, the border at that point between Boston and Brookline. The curves broke right and left through woods and stretches of overgrown grass. The trees smelled fresh, but there were sweet, rotting odors in the air. The road came to a rise where, for a moment, the view ahead featured the tops of the Hancock and Prudential buildings, the light scaffolds and layered rooflines of Fenway Park Terry felt he saw the city very clearly, but the road dropped and he lost it.

  Mullen lifted his gun. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you."

  "Help me understand how it looks from your side, Jackie. You've been in bed with Squire all these years. He's married to your sister. His kids are like yours. Why'd you turn on him? Why are you doing this? I thought Squire always took care of you."

  "Bullshit, Charlie, bullshit! I'm the one who's taken care of him. I've covered his ass the whole way. Every time they put him on the wanted list, I cooked a deal for him. I set him up with the Bureau in the first place."

  "So he's been feeding the FBI information on Tucci right along?"

  "Not Tucci. His operation, the mid-level guys, shit that hardly counted. Never Tucci himself until now. That's the point This is stupid. This is taking on God, and you don't do that Squire's lost his fucking mind, and my finge
rprints are all over this. I had to protect myself."

  "You mean, in case Tucci scores. You're covered either way, is that it?"

  "I'm in the fucking middle, don't you see that? If the feds succeed, they don't stop with Tucci. For them, the point of this thing is to blow open the network, not just Tucci but what Tucci hides behind, Commonwealth Bank—which is why they'll want McKay. And the State Police. The feds love turning over the rocks of the State Police to see what crawls out."

  "You."

  "You got it. If the feds win, I go to jail with Tucci. If Tucci wins—"

  "He kills you."

  "Unless." Jackie shrugged. This.

  "So you've put money on the mob instead of on Squire."

  "He doesn't give a rat's fart about me. Nothing matters to him but scoring on Tucci. That's all that's ever mattered."

  "I thought he came to terms with that."

  "Never. He has no heart, your brother. None. Not for me. Not for you. Not for Didi. Not for nobody. You should know that best of all." Mullen waved his pistol, the perfect emblem of his superiority. Yet he seemed more uneasy than the stoical Doyle, increasingly crazed. The weapon was in plain view of other motorists, and because of that, Doyle turned down a deserted side street that ran behind Fenway Park. Warehouses rose on one side, the bleachers wall on the other.

  "Where you going?"

  "We don't want to be in traffic, Jackie."

  Mullen's agitation increased. He looked wildly about for signs of an ambush. "You shouldn't be with Squire. Not you, of all people."

  "What do you mean?" Doyle pulled the car over and stopped. In a few weeks the Sox would be in town, and this street would be packed. But now it was completely deserted.

  Mullen put his face in front of Terry's. "Ask your wife," he said.

  "My wife has nothing to do with this," Doyle said coldly.

  "Just ask her what she thinks about your brother." It was Mullen's red-eyed leer, more than the lewd insistence of his words, that set off the charge, exploding inside Doyle. His right hand shot into Mullen's face, slamming his skull back against the rear-view mirror, the mount of which snapped in two, bouncing Mullen's head forward again. Once more Doyle hit him.