Sweetheart

by Andrew Coburn

  Ferlito, feeling lightheaded, said, “He was five, I took him to the Stoneham Zoo, that’s north of Boston.”

  “I’m from Wisconsin, originally,” the girl offered almost cheerily.

  “He was nine, I took him to see the Sox play the Tigers, but he probably don’t even remember. I mean, what’s gratitude? You know what gratitude is?”

  The girl said, “I had my picture taken with my father’s prize cow at the state fair.”

  “Shut up,” Ferlito said. “Just shut up.” His head sagged. He was tired. “All of us,” he said, “we’re in a bad way, ain’t we?”

  The girl smiled vacantly. “You got any money?”

  “No money, but I got this,” he said, pawing into his suitcoat pocket and producing a plastic bottle that once held aspirin. He tossed it. “Dexies. He’s going to need ’em.”

  The girl squeezed the bottle. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me.” His hand moved again. “Here,” he said with another toss. “A little coke too. Tell him it’s the last thing I’m going to do for him.”

  “Enough for both of us,” she said with a little laugh.

  “Yeah,” he said, backing away mindlessly, “enough for both.”

  • • •

  Russell Thurston, strolling in the Public Garden, stopped twice to glance casually over his shoulder. Later he spent a minute or so admiring flowers bloated and bright, their stalks heightened, their leaves extended. He listened carefully when somebody walked by whistling an up-tempo tune. The tune was from the early fifties, which gave him an idea of the age of the person. A quick look verified it.

  On Arlington Street he found his way to a public phone, got in touch with the agents who were going by the names of Danley and Dane, and told them to meet him in the bar at the Ritz. At the Ritz he stirred his drink an inordinately long time and never did taste it. The waiter stopped by twice and was unctuous, which pleased him. Danley and Dane arrived just as he was becoming irritated by the wait. Coughing on a peanut, he said, “I’m going to leave, walk toward Beacon, and return to my office. I want you to see if anybody follows me.”

  He took his time. He sauntered. He had strong legs and felt good about himself. On Beacon Street he vainly enjoyed his reflection in a long panel of glass that also pictured the slow float of traffic in the heat. Eventually he picked up his pace, all uphill, but he had no problem with his wind. Handball kept him in shape. At the top of Beacon, he paused with legs apart and stared up at the golden dome of the State House as if he were capable of taking on the governor, the attorney general, and the full membership of the legislature. In his office on the twenty-fourth floor of the Kennedy Building, he waited for Danley and Dane.

  “Nobody,” said Danley, the first to enter the cubicle. Dane soon backed him up.

  “You’re sure, absolutely sure?” Thurston asked, and they both nodded. He shrugged. “Well, I could’ve been wrong.”

  • • •

  Officer Hunkins left his cruiser at the roadside and walked into the woods to take a leak. The woods were hot, sticky, rank, and teeming with mosquitoes. One bit into him. He killed it and wiped the blood from his cheek. Then he opened his trousers and drenched a blueberry bush. When he came out of the woods he saw a car parked behind his cruiser and two men waiting for him.

  “You had us worried,” one of them said. He was white, the other was black. The speaker, Agent Blodgett, showed identification. “We thought you were going to eat your gun.”

  “Why the hell would I do that?” Hunkins said, trembling.

  “Cops have been known to take that route,” Agent Blue said. “Cops with a lot on their minds.”

  Blodgett said, “The report we got on you says you wear a magnum, but that’s a thirty-eight I see.”

  “Maybe he lost the magnum,” Blue said.

  “Maybe somebody took it away from him. What happened to your face, Hunkins? You trip and fall?”

  “What the hell do you guys want?”

  “We want to know what you were doing in Anthony Gardella’s real estate office,” Blodgett said. “That’s out of your league, not to mention your turf.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You want the proof? We got a picture.”

  “I don’t care what you got,” Hunkins said, his anxiety telling on him. His mouth twitched as he tried to show a nervy little smile.

  Blue said, “You can’t play with wise guys in Boston. They’ll eat you up. They already took a bite out of your face.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell us all about it,” Blodgett said, stepping closer. “Otherwise we might have to fish you out of Boston Harbor.”

  “Nobody kills cops.”

  “No?” Blodgett reached into his jacket, came out with a snub-nosed revolver, and shoved the barrel into Hunkins’s belly. “I could close you out right this second. Who’d know? Who’d care? And get this. You’re not a cop to those guys, you’re a yokel. And yokels got no rights. Even black guys got more rights than you. Isn’t that so, Blue?”

  Blue nodded, and Hunkins winced as if too much noise were running into his ears. “Fuck you all,” he said.

  “What did you say?”

  Hunkins staggered back, his lightweight cap falling off. He did not pick it up. “I’m not scared!”

  They watched him leap into his cruiser and speed off, the vehicle skewing to one side of the road and then to the other before it got on course. Blodgett said, “First he loses his piece, now his cap.”

  “I think we did it wrong,” Blue said.

  “What’d we do wrong?”

  Blue picked up the cap. “I think he’s cracking up.”

  • • •

  Christopher Wade helped Mrs. Matchett clear the supper table, his insistence. “I never helped my wife do it,” he explained. “Sometimes I wasn’t even there for supper. So I guess I’m feeling guilt.”

  “You mustn’t feel guilt,” Mrs. Matchett said, her violet eyes jetting up at him. “All of us are too vitally human to be dragged down by it, though some of us let it happen. Don’t you, Chris.”

  He smiled.

  She smiled wider. “The Lord loves those who love themselves.”

  “You’re sweet,” he said, nearly meaning it.

  “I always have been. You can ask Joe.”

  In the kitchen he helped her load the dishwasher. She seemed to have in stock every appliance and device imaginable, from the latest microwave oven to a glittering array of Japanese knives advertised on television and available only through toll-free telephone orders. She ran a hand across one of the knives. “They’re not as nice as they lead you to believe.”

  “Things seldom are.”

  “How long have you been separated from your wife, Chris?”

  “I think from the day we married.”

  “But you have children, you said. You got together for that.”

  “That’s always easy.”

  “Do you miss her, Chris?”

  “Now more than ever, though I’m growing philosophical about it.”

  “Starting right this minute,” Mrs. Matchett said, her voice charmingly low, “you’ll always have Joe and me. I want you to know that.”

  He soon joined the senator in the room where they had talked privately. The senator, back on the brandy, was sitting with his feet up on an ottoman and staring out at the beach, where shadows were lengthening. “It was nice of you to give her a hand,” he said, his voice and mood mellow. “And, please, help yourself to the brandy.”

  Wade poured only a little, diluted it with ice, and sat down with a glance at his watch. “I’d better be leaving soon,” he said, and the senator threw him a distressed look.

  “We were hoping you’d stay the night. In fact, we’ve planned on it. A bed’s already been made up for you.”

  “It wouldn’t look right.”

  “Who’d know?”

  “You can never tell.”

  The senator sank a little deeper int
o his chair and shifted his sandaled feet on the ottoman, crossing them at the ankles. “I’m at a time of my life when things are especially good. I hope they’re good for you too, Chris.”

  “I can’t complain.”

  “We owe it to ourselves to be comfortable. To be healthy of body and happy of heart. That’s what’s important, not power, though God knows I have it. But I’m not interested in it. I’m interested in a glass of brandy, and the way my feet feel when I stretch my toes, and the way I react when my wife whispers in my ear. What interests you, Chris?”

  “I guess those same things, more or less.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, because life’s short, no matter what your age is. You’ve been to high school reunions. You know what the talk is? Who’s gone.”

  “I hope you’re not getting morbid, dear,” Mrs. Matchett chided as she slipped into the room, her frosted hair arranged a little differently, in a manner that made her seem a shade more matronly. She peered at the brandy bottle. “He’s not going to fall asleep on us, is he, Chris?”

  The senator stretched an arm out for his wife’s hand and gave it a small squeeze. “I thought we might entertain Chris with one of Tony’s tapes, though I wouldn’t want him to take it the wrong way. Some people get a little uptight.”

  “I don’t think Chris will,” Mrs. Matchett said confidently, with a brief look at Wade, as if an understanding had passed between them in the kitchen.

  The room went dark as Mrs. Matchett lowered the blinds over the glass panels, shutting out the ocean and the world. From another part of the room she unraveled a wall screen and activated a videocassette. Then she floated toward a chair closer to Wade than to her husband and dropped into it, drawing up her legs and curving them under her. On the screen appeared the images of deep-waisted women and muscular men.

  “Say the word,” said the senator, “and I’ll turn it off.”

  “No,” said Wade. “I’m interested.”

  “Gardella won’t watch his own stuff,” the senator said with a snort. “Thinks it’s disgusting.”

  From the depths of her chair, Mrs. Matchett said, “I think it’s cute.”

  The senator had seen it before and, with reedy laughs, anticipated scenes. “This is good … watch this … she’s terrific.” On the screen a young woman, naked and vivid, parted herself, first in private, then with others. “She’s the best,” the senator whispered with evident excitement, as if caught up in a moving experience, deep-felt, indelible.

  “What they won’t think of next,” Mrs. Matchett murmured after a prolonged silence.

  “Shhh,” the senator said, and his eyes stayed glued to the screen until the tape ran out. Then his head dropped back as if from exertion. Mrs. Matchett rose quietly in the gloom and took the empty brandy glass from his hand and stroked his hair, which did not in the least disturb him.

  “He’s such a dear.”

  Wade also rose and was amazed at how quickly sleep had absorbed the senator.

  “He’s a kind and thoughtful man, Chris. He’s hard-fisted with money, but I’ve never wanted for anything. Neither have the children. We have one at Harvard, you know.”

  Wade leaned against his chair, waiting for the proper moment to leave. She approached him with short steps and stood close, as if she wanted to touch his face.

  “Aren’t you staying?” she asked, and he shook his head. “Maybe that’s for the best,” she said. “We trust you, Chris. Maybe we shouldn’t, but we do. Don’t ever deceive us. Promise?”

  Wade, with a twinge, promised.

  • • •

  A light showed from the house, but somehow he knew she was not inside. Leaving the Camaro on the side of the road, he walked around to the patio, and her voice wafted out of the dark. “Why are you bothering me again, Lieutenant?”

  He made out only an edge of her face and the tip of her fine nose. A cool draft from the ocean bathed him as he inched toward where she was sitting. “I didn’t plan to,” he said.

  “But here you are.”

  “I was visiting the Matchetts.”

  “That must’ve been fun.”

  He let that slide. He could see more of her now, the shine of her fair hair, the length of one arm, like a smooth flow of water. Her hand cupped a cigarette, which he knew was not an ordinary one. “May I sit down?” he asked.

  “For a while. But don’t come near me.”

  He felt for a chair and dropped into one. “How’s your foot?”

  “Fine.”

  “Obviously you didn’t mention everything to your husband.”

  “What should I have told him? That you gave me a little peck on the mouth?”

  “It was more than that to me.”

  She did not finish the joint. She flipped it into the dark, and they sat in silence. The silence grew, mixing with the restlessness of the ocean and threatening to drown them. She said, “Why are you trying to make me? It’s really stupid of you.”

  “Why is it stupid?”

  “Answer that yourself.”

  He felt inside his sports jacket for his Beretta, simply to reassure himself that it was there. “I’ll admit your husband scares me,” he said, “but he should scare you more. No matter how you cut him, there’s a dirty streak.”

  “You see him one way, I see him another.” Through the dark she made a present of her smile, a vacant one. “What I see is an old-world magnifico. Do you know what the word means?”

  “I can guess, but does it apply?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said and went quiet as if from a proliferation of feelings too difficult to deal with.

  He said, “Are you expecting him?”

  “What if I say yes?”

  “I’ll leave.”

  “I’m expecting him.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “But you don’t know that for sure — and do you know why you don’t know for sure? Because you don’t know me.”

  She walked him to his car, headlights from the boulevard sweeping over them, paralyzing their features. They avoided each other’s eyes. She looked at the Camaro. “It doesn’t seem like your kind of car.”

  “Sometimes I don’t feel like my kind of man — whatever the Christ that is.”

  He walked around to the other side of the car and climbed in quickly because of the traffic. Then he rooted for keys as she peered in at him from the passenger side, her face a pool in the square opening of the window. “Do me a favor,” she said quietly.

  “Name it.”

  “Tell Thurston he’s giving me too much to deal with. Tell him he’s an obscene son of a bitch.”

  Wade stared at her as if his ears didn’t belong to him.

  She said, “Goodnight, Sweetheart.”

  20

  THE MAN Victor Scandura approached in the plaza in Copley Square was slick-haired and moon-faced and wore a tropical suit wrinkled from the heat and the concrete ledge he had been sitting on until he stood up to scratch his behind. His name was Deckler, and his car, which bore New York plates, was parked nearby. Scandura said to him, “Got anything yet?”

  “I got four guys on him,” Deckler said. “You know why four? I respect him. He’s smart.”

  “Maybe you should have eight guys. We’re paying enough.” Scandura glanced around. People were sunning themselves near the spray of the fountain: youths with their shirts off, businessmen with their ties loosened, women with their skirts hiked up. Scandura said, “When can we expect results?”

  “Maybe never. Like you were told, no guarantees.”

  “But what’s your feeling?”

  “Thurston’s a funny guy, very private. I knew him when I was a narc. Did him a favor.”

  “Small world,” said Scandura.

  “Smaller than you think.” Deckler grinned. “I was in the army with your boss. Haven’t seen him since. I always thought our paths would cross, but they never did.”

  “Now they have.”

  “Yeah, now they have. You tell him, okay
?”

  Scandura told him a half hour later in the real estate office. Anthony Gardella had the television on and was watching the noon news. He listened to Scandura without removing his eyes from the pretty anchorwoman, though his expression altered subtly, disappointment replacing nostalgia.

  “You never know how people are going to turn out, do you, Victor?”

  “Maybe I did the wrong thing.”

  “No,” said Gardella. “I think the guy will come through for me.”

  • • •

  Russell Thurston, lunching with agents Blodgett and Blue in the cafeteria in the Kennedy Building, laid a clipping on the table, Miami Herald, the day before’s date. “We lost him,” he said in a reproving tone. Blodgett read the clipping first, slowly, and then Blue did, quickly. “We had him, you know that,” Thurston said. “All we had to do was find him.”

  “We didn’t figure him for Florida,” Blodgett said defensively, “not this time of year.”

  “We could’ve squeezed him dry,” Thurston said angrily. “Gardella knew that. He found him first.”

  Blodgett, rereading the clip, said, “Overdose. That’s what they think it was.”

  Blue said, “The girl was only fourteen.”

  Thurston had a dish of garden salad before him, nothing else. He explored it with his fork and said, “We’ve still got Hunkins. Or have we? You two tell me.”

  Blodgett said confidently, “I think he’ll jump into our lap, just a matter of time.”

  “And what do you think?” Thurston asked Blue.

  “He’s going to do something. I don’t know what.”

  “Okay. Put more pressure on him.”

  “Blue thinks he’ll snap,” Blodgett said.

  Blue said, “I think he’s already snapped.”

  • • •

  Deputy Superintendent Scatamacchia left his office in the Area D station in the South End and, with an occasional eye in the rearview, drove several blocks to a dry cleaning shop, where he placed a bet on a horse named Laura’s Boy. “I got a good feeling about this animal,” he told the bookie and left with a smile. On his way into Dorchester he glanced in the mirror and saw a car leap ahead of another. That was when he suspected he was being followed.