The City Below

by James Carroll

  Doyle took a last swallow of Coke and wiped his lips with his napkin. He said, "Bright, I told you I didn't like our new partner."

  "And I told you I didn't want to discuss it."

  "I followed him from the Ritz this morning. He gave a suitcase full of cash to Jackie Mullen in exchange for information that Squire is working for the feds. Squire has set up Amory as a way to get at Tucci, and I have a sick feeling he's got you in the middle."

  McKay looked up at the old sign. "God, they did a great job with this place, didn't they?"

  "You've bought into a money-laundering scheme, and the FBI is going to blow it open. You have to talk to me about it."

  McKay's expression was very hard. "You? Talk to you? Mr. Disapproval?"

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "You know what it means."

  "Bright, my attitudes are irrelevant. Maybe you want to make the case for putting drug money to constructive uses in the inner city, since the drugs that generate it are destroying its children. Robin Hood in the age of angel dust? There's a rationale, right? But do you know what' None of that matters, not now, my friend. The FBI is about to blow Tucci out of the water, and you with him."

  "Well." Bright's voice was dead.

  "You've met with Squire?"

  "Yes."

  "He's the puppeteer behind Amory. He brings in the money, what you've used to get the loans."

  "Yes. Good old Squire."

  "Shit!" Doyle looked sharply away.

  "That's what has you so pissed, that Squire—?"

  "That Squire has you on tape, Bright Mullen told me that Squire has worn a wire to every meeting he's had with you and Amory, and was planning to wear it to a meeting with Tucci tomorrow. An FBI wire, Bright Now do you get it? You've been stupid."

  "Wired? He was wired?"

  "Yes. He knew how much you wanted the Ruggles deal, all that blue smoke you puffed into the newspapers. You were an easy mark for him. He got you, Bright."

  McKay leaned back on his stool, his head against the brick wall. "Oh my God."

  Doyle realized that guitar music had been playing, drifting out from speakers high up on the wall. He said, "Jackie told me Squire controls the tapes. The government may not have you yet."

  "Why?"

  "Probably because it keeps Squire in charge. Also, maybe it lets him limit his own exposure. Apparently he's been holding out until they nail Tucci, which now that Amory knows, won't happen."

  "You've put this all together?"

  "I should have been a prosecutor. Or a defense attorney. I want to be yours, Bright."

  McKay stared at him in silence for a time before saying, "Your brother touched something in me that you've always hated."

  Doyle nodded. "Your impatience. Your contempt for process. To get what you want, you'll do anything. But you're no John DeLorean. What you want isn't a fucking sports car. It's a new start for the neighborhood you were a priest's kid in. St. Cyp's. I know what that is to you. Squire could get to you because you want so desperately to give the Southwest Corridor back to the people it was stolen from, and that takes money."

  "Which Amory gave us."

  "Yes."

  "Which you hated."

  "Yes."

  "This ain't Robin Hood," Bright said. "And it ain't the New Frontier either. It's been Boston's version of the Irish Sweepstakes. I bought a ticket. I took a chance. And I can see it coming already, how fucking sorry I'm going to be that I ever got in bed with your brother. But only because I'm caught Do you understand that? If the deal could work—"

  "You'd do it again."

  "Which is why you hate me."

  "Bright, you're not even in the ballpark. I don't hate you. You're my best friend. I love you." They were loaded words, he'd never said them to a man before, and it made no difference, really, that Doyle had succeeded in spinning the words out as if he and McKay were athletes or cops: Love ya, baby.

  McKay looked away, his expression hard as ever. Still with his head against the wall, he flipped his eye patch up to his forehead, like half a pair of sunglasses, to rub his aching face. He said coldly, through his hands, "What you don't know about love would fill a five-inch floppy disk."

  "That's true."

  The guitar music, a chipper flamenco piece, cut through the steady rumble of the vast room's echoing conversations. Doyle said, "You think of me as your own personal puritan. You're like Joan in the way I burden you. I know that, okay? But, like I said, none of that shit is relevant now. I only have one thing on my mind at this point Who moves in for the kill first? The FBI? Frank Tucci? Squire? Or you?"

  "Me?"

  "To protect yourself, Bright To save your black ass."

  "How can I?" When he looked at Doyle now, it was with an air of absolute vulnerability.

  Doyle felt as if he were seeing him naked. "By listening to me."

  ***

  Patten, of the IRS Criminal Investigation Division, looked up from his notepad. "Mr. McKay, had you done business with the, ah." —he checked the reference—"Sullivan Square Savings Bank before?"

  "No, sir. Not me personally. Although, before the Schrafft's plant closed, Commonwealth Bank had dealings with it, as you might expect."

  "And had you done business with this Mr. Amory before?"

  "No, sir."

  "But you entered into transactions involving, ultimately, millions of dollars, and you recommended a loan arrangement."

  Patten was overweight and perspiring, despite the air conditioning. McKay feigned the superior air that well-paid lawyers and bankers adopt with IRS functionaries. A British banker at that. "Mr. Patten, you know that banking, despite all regulation and government oversight, is a unique industry which, at the end of the day, is based on trust—the depositor's trust in his institution, of course, but also, every properly certified institution's trust in every other, in the banking network itself. Banks sometimes call themselves trusts, and with good reason. That's what's been abused here."

  "But when you're dealing with these kinds of cash deposits"—again Patten checked his notes—"in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, it took you a period of many weeks to develop a suspicion."

  Roseanne Day raised her pencil toward the IRS man, bringing the room's focus to her narrow black face, her lips the color of clay, her fine brown eyes, their steadiness fixed like glass. Her voice was irreducible: "Not 'deposits,' Mr. Patten. 'Transfers.' Accounts held by Commonwealth Bank received those monies by electronic transfer."

  "But you knew from the start they were cash deposits at Sullivan Square."

  "Yes," Van Buren said. "And we assumed Sullivan Square was in compliance with reporting provisions." Van Buren craned toward McKay. "You had reasons for assuming that You knew people there. You told me—"

  Terry sensed Van Buren's readiness to cut Bright loose, a move in that direction, and he jumped in. "That's why I'm here, gentlemen. I'm not only the principal developer in the Ruggles Center project that drew Mr. Amory's interest, but I am also the person who vouched for the Sullivan Square Savings Bank in the first place."

  "You had done business with them?"

  "No." Terry stopped, uncertainty clouding his face.

  At that moment McKay concluded that Doyle could not do it, and to his own surprise, he did not blame him.

  But Terry drew on reserves McKay did not know he had. He said, "My brother has an interest in it."

  Patten flipped through a folder while Joyce and Farrell kept their eyes lowered. Patten withdrew a single page, a grainy photocopy of a charter document "Your brother is—?"

  "Nicholas Doyle."

  "There is no Nicholas Doyle listed here."

  Sensing that the IRS man was not playing on the same field with the other two, Terry shifted toward Farrell. "My brother is a flower importer and wholesaler with wide-ranging business interests. He may have reasons I don't know of for staying behind the scenes, but he represented himself to me as an owner of Sullivan Square. He knew I was look
ing for major investment in Ruggles Center, and he introduced me to Mr. Amory. All of this has happened so fast—the suspicions surfacing only today—that I haven't had a chance to talk to him, but perhaps he can shed some light on all this."

  Farrell looked across at Patten. "We'll follow that up," he said quietly, firmly, but to himself he said, Shit. Squire Doyle's name was on the docket now, and Patten's presence meant it had to be dealt with.

  Farrell glanced at Terry: What the shit, Mac? Your own brother?

  "So we had reasonable grounds..." Otis opened his hands, a show of helpless innocence.

  "And Amory," Van Buren put in, looking across at Farrell. "Have you questioned him?'

  "Mr. Amory seems to have left Boston," Colin Joyce said coldly, nailing Van Buren. "After closing his accounts with this bank late this morning. You, Mr. Van Buren, authorized a final wire transfer to the Kurfurst Royale in Basel in the amount of one million, two hundred and seven thousand, four hundred twelve dollars."

  Van Buren glanced sheepishly at Otis, but it was McKay who responded. "If Mr. Van Buren had failed to do so, Mr. Joyce, he'd have been guilty of an outrageous and illegal malfeasance, as you know."

  Terry Doyle, having sown his brother's name in the fertile soil of all that suspicion, let his gaze go to the view again. Through the black steel frame of the window, incoming airplanes lined up at intervals, as if to harvest the sun's late rays. Each fuselage glinted spectacularly in turn. Under the indolent sky, departing planes made their escape, leaping off the earth.

  "How does it work, Dad?" Max had asked him not long before, having realized that flying was something to be afraid of.

  "Just because we can't see the air," Terry had found himself answering, "doesn't mean it isn't solid. The airplane is supported by the mass of the air. All it has to do is keep going."

  He thought of that answer now, how it applied to him. Just keep going or you fall.

  Max. The boy knew nothing of the loneliness Doyle associated with his own childhood, and from which, in truth, he'd never shaken free. His own absent father. The current of his grandfather's affection flowing always over Nick Sleeping in that room with his brother, listening to him breathe, wondering how, with someone so important so near, he could feel so alone. He'd never shaken free, yet what was this with Bright, even now, if not the bringing to some fruition of their kinship? Doyle often thought of that September morning two and a half decades before, when the figure of that tall, black BC kid by the Kennedy banner had made him feel he'd come home. Bright, who had served his aces after all.

  Patten and Joyce capped their pens while Farrell spread his business cards around the table, in case anyone should have questions or further information. The FBI was coordinating the investigation, not the IRS.

  "One more thing, Mr. Farrell, if you'll permit me." Brooks Otis leaned forward over his clasped hands, his gold cuff links showing. "This needn't be public, I assume."

  "If it comes to indictments, Mr. Otis, of course it's public." The FBI man let his disdain show in the downward curve of his mouth. Farrell knew very well the game Otis was playing, and he was tired of it.

  Doyle knew it too, but he recognized that the agent's attitude was toothless compared to that of Otis, who had no need to manifest his contempt. Otis was as superbly bred and educated as he was tailored, and men like him had learned above all to veil the certain knowledge of their superiority.

  "But there is no question of Commonwealth Bank—"

  "There is a question of everything at this point, I'd say, Mr. Otis." Farrell allowed what he'd been trained to keep buried to surface for a moment, and he frankly savored the bank chairman's washed-out, frightened expression before adding, "Of course, for the present, publicity serves no one's purposes."

  Colin Joyce said, "And it's up to the U.S. attorney to determine what is presented to the grand jury."

  "Grand jury!" Otis blurted. "You can't take this—"

  Farrell stood, cutting the discussion off.

  No one approached Otis as papers were gathered and chairs replaced. Farrell, in shaking Logan's hand, said, "You're fielding calls on this?"

  Logan glanced at Otis, who nodded curtly toward Roseanne Day. "With her."

  When Terry shook Farrell's hand, he sensed that beneath his cocky manner, Farrell had as much to keep covered, at least, as the bank did. Terry held Farrell's hand and his eye, giving him a chance to mention Squire. And he didn't.

  After the group dispersed, Terry took an elevator down to the two-story-high lobby, which was furnished with oriental rugs and groupings of imitation antique furniture in which no one was ever expected to sit. He crossed into the branch office of the bank, withdrew fifty dollars from the ATM, then went to the opposite end of the lobby where the downtown branch of the Harvard Coop was located. He bought two cassette tapes, John Williams Plays Bach and Scarlatti, for Joan, and Michael Jackson's Thriller for Max. Then he returned to the lobby, boarded an elevator, and pressed thirty.

  In Bright's office, once they had the door closed, the two men clasped each other by the arms, like a halfback and his blocker in the end zone. Bright had taken his coat off, and his shirt was stained with perspiration.

  "Jesus Christ, Bright, you did it! I think you pulled it off!"

  But Bright moved away, looking chastened. "Not everything. Van Buren just told me, with Otis at his elbow, to forget Ruggles Center. No loans from Commonwealth. They're cutting us off."

  "Shit."

  "I saw it coming."

  "Screw them, Bright Weil get it somewhere else. With Ted Kennedy on board—"

  But McKay cut him off. "Same old fucking story. Back to zero for the wasteland around St. Cyp's. I hate that bastard Van Buren. He knew what we were doing as well as I did. Could you believe what he tried to pull on me?"

  "Every man for himself, especially micks and coons. Boston is still Boston."

  "You're Boston. You saved my ass."

  "Not just me. How about Billie Holiday, your Lady Day lawyer. Where'd she come from?"

  "A new Boston, Terry. See, it's true. But I got to tell you, when Logan first walked in with her, and it became clear that she was the quarterback, even I said to myself, Whoa! Where's Perry Mason? Get me James St Clair." Bright laughed. "Serves me right for backing Shirley Chisholm." He moved to his desk He took two cigarettes from a pack, Vantage now, not Gauloises. They lit up. Bright leaned on the edge of his desk "The irony is, every point of law she made backed up what Squire had told me."

  Terry looked up, then made a sudden, frantic motion with his hand, sweeping the air, mouthing the word "Bug!"

  "Oh, bullshit, don't get paranoid on me."

  Terry turned away. The weight of his intuition, now that he'd admitted it, only grew heavier, but he said easily, "Talk about paranoid." He looked out the window. "I was waiting for one of the airplanes coming in and out of Logan to crash. Those airplanes, man, hanging in nothing, defying the laws of gravity."

  "Which is what you just did."

  "When I—"

  "In relation to—" Now Bright too looked at the ceiling, and he was only half joking when he then mouthed the word "Squire."

  "I know," Terry said.

  "A long time coming. You put his name on a list he has apparently succeeded in staying off."

  "But you noticed how the FBI guy led away from it. Nobody followed up, they asked me nothing, not his address, not the name of his business, nothing."

  "So maybe they know."

  "It means what Jackie said was true. He's working for them somehow, or they think he is."

  "I think they're confused, Terry. They don't expect shit like this at Commonwealth Bank, for one thing."

  "Notwithstanding all its Latin-American branches?" Terry ticked his fingers. "Commonwealth Bogota, Commonwealth Caracas. Panama City. What they don't expect Commonwealth Bank-Boston to do is report itself."

  "Well, what you just did," McKay said, the nonchalant tone gone now, "whatever it meant to them, it means
a lot to me."

  The two men looked at each other for an ungainly moment This time there was no question of a direct statement, however.

  "But we're not finished," Terry said finally. "Or have you forgotten?" He joined Bright at his desk, picked up a pencil, and scrawled on a yellow pad the words "No violation in absence of evidence establishing intention!" And then he drew a circle around the word "evidence."

  "I know," Bright said quietly, then whispered, "I think I said some things I wouldn't want on tape. Not now."

  "He still has it, if we can believe Jackie. And I think we have to. So I'm going home to get it."

  "You still call that home?"

  "Did I?"

  "Just now."

  "Christ."

  "I'm going with you."

  Terry shook his head. "It's still no man's land over there for you. Why don't you buy a drink for Billie Holiday?"

  "Shit, you know how women like that intimidate me. Are you still trying to get me married?"

  "First, I got to keep you out of..." The last word he said inaudibly: "Jail."

  McKay picked up the silence, and now when he spoke, it was in an even fainter whisper. "I'm going with you."

  "Okay." Doyle put his mouth by McKay's ear, as if this would be the gravest secret of all. "We can't go into Charlestown until after dark anyway, when they can't see you."

  19

  THE WEEKLY HOLY HOUR at St. Mary's, with the rosary, the novena, and the exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, was one of the few things Didi Doyle did only for herself. She loved the church at night, the way the stained-glass window beside her pew was opaque because of the darkness outside, the blue candles flickering at the feet of Mary on one side of the sanctuary, and the tray of red ones on the other, at Joseph's sandaled feet She continued kneeling while others around her left the church, banging the door in the back. She felt the blast of the damp wind intruding from the rainy April night, and a familiar shudder curled through her, regret that the service was over.

  She buried her face in her hands, absorbed in the old habit of preparing to go home again by hurling herself against the rock of her disappointment, which knew of her existence no more than her rapacious children did, or her stone-hearted husband. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she said. She still stamped their initials on every page of the prayers she uttered. She looked up and saw the monsignor, unvested now, removing the sacred vessels from the altar. And she realized it was time to go.