The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Doug took a careful look around. “Yep, it’s mine.”

  “I especially like what you did with these stars over here.”

  “We get those imported. Hey—ever ordered anything off TV? You know, late night, infomercials?”

  “No. But if I did, it would be a Flowbee.”

  Doug held up the two CDs. “AM Gold. Time-Life stuff, you know, try it for thirty days, we’ll send another every four to six weeks, you can cancel at any time?” The boom box, an old Sanyo missing its cassette drawer, was bikechained to the doorpost of the coop. Doug dropped in the first CD, let it spin.

  “Oh my,” she said. It was the Carpenters.

  “You gotta give it a little time to work on you. This is a big step for me.”

  “What is, coming out of the closet as a Carpenters fan?”

  “Let me correct you right there. Definitely not a Carpenters fan. This is about the total effect of the music, the predisco seventies. I don’t sanction every single track, and some of them are pretty bad. ‘Muskrat Love’ is on here somewhere. What I like is the radio station aspect of it, like receiving a signal timedelayed twenty years.”

  She took the jewel case from him and sat down to look it over. “Wow,” she said, amused. “My mom used to have these songs on all day.”

  “Sure, WHDH, right?” He sat down a respectable three feet away from her, both of them facing the city like it was the ocean.

  “Every morning, getting ready for school.”

  “Jess Cain.”

  “Yes. Wow.” The uniting power of nostalgia. “And Officer Bill in the traffic copter.”

  Doug’s mother had kept the kitchen radio going day and night. It was one of his clearest memories of her. But sharing this fact with Claire would have invited other questions, and his past was a minefield. He had to be careful not to blow himself up here.

  She handed him back the CD case. “You come up here often?”

  “No. Almost never.”

  “This isn’t where you take all your dates?”

  “In fact, I should admit it now, what I said downstairs was sort of a fib. I don’t actually know who manages this building. I just know where the key is.”

  “Oh.” She thought about that, looking out at the city winking back at her.

  “I wanted to get us up above the Town, you know, try to show you something.”

  She settled back into her chair, good for a little mischief. “Okay.”

  Lou Rawls started up with “Lady Love,” and Doug mustered all the bass he had to say, “Oh, yeah…”

  She smiled, stretching out her legs, flexing her ankles like she was lifting them dripping out of a light surf. “So where do you live?”

  “Back of the hill.” He thumbed behind them. “I rent. You own your place?”

  “I got a great rate from my bank. Actually cheaper for me to own. Are you going to live here forever?”

  “You mean, like most Townies? I can admit, until maybe a couple of years ago, I never even considered it a choice.”

  “Okay, you see now—I could not imagine living in my parents’ same town. There’s just no way. So what is it about this place that keeps such a tight hold on people?”

  “Comfort-level thing, probably. Knowing what’s around every corner.”

  “Okay. But even when what’s around that next corner maybe isn’t all that… good?”

  “I’m giving you how it was more than how it is, because honestly, I can’t say for certain how it is right now. I feel sort of apart from it, these past couple of years. But growing up, yeah, it was easy. You were known. You had a role in the Town and you played it.”

  “Like a big family.”

  “And families can be good or bad. Good and bad. Me, my role around Town, I was Mac’s kid. Mac was what they called my father. Everywhere I went, every corner I passed, everybody knew me. There goes Mac’s kid—like father, like son. And you wear that around long enough, it becomes part of you. But now things are getting different. Everybody’s not related to everybody else anymore. New faces on the corner, strangers, people who can’t recite your entire family history, generation by generation. And there’s freedom in that, at least there is for me. What you give up in comfort, in familiarity—for me it’s nice not to be reminded on every block, ‘This is who I am, I’m Mac’s kid.’”

  “But I would think that sort of thing would inspire people to want to get out more. To go on their own, make a clean break.”

  Doug shrugged. “That what you did?”

  “What I tried to do. What I’m still trying to do.”

  “I think suburbs are like that. Launching pads. The Town, it’s more like a factory. We’re local product here, banging it out every day. There’s pollution, but it’s our damn pollution, know what I’m saying?” That didn’t come out as clever as he had hoped. “It’s a box, I’ll give you that. It’s like an island that’s tough to swim off of.”

  She sipped her wine, having poured herself some more without his noticing. The song changed. “‘Wildfire,’” she said, gazing back at the radio. “My God, I used to love this song. The horse?”

  “You see?” he said, getting jazzed again.

  They listened awhile, under the orbiting plane lights. “You mentioned your dad,” she said.

  Shit. Minefields. “Yeah.”

  “Your whole family live here?”

  “No, actually, none of them, not anymore.”

  “They all left and you stayed?”

  “Sort of. My parents, they’re split up.”

  “Oh. But they live close by?”

  “Not really.”

  “‘Not really.’ What does that mean?”

  Boom! His leg below the knee. “My mother, she left my dad and me when I was six.”

  “Oh, sorry. I mean, gosh, sorry I asked.”

  “No, she got out while the getting was good. For her own sanity, I’d say. My father.”

  “You’re not close with him?”

  “Not anymore.” Skirted that one—still hopping along one-leggedly.

  “I hope I’m not asking too many questions.”

  “First date,” said Doug. “What else are you gonna do?”

  “Right, I know. Usually, guys I meet for the first time, they go on and on, packaging and selling themselves. Either that or they try to wear you down with questions, like proving how interested they are. Like, if I’m so involved recounting my own life story, maybe I’ll lose track of how many Stoli and Sprites I’ve had.”

  As the song faded out, there was a spray of bullying laughter from the street below, then the pop and smash of a glass bottle shattering, followed by cursing, laughing, footsteps running away. “Nice,” grumbled Doug.

  Then the Little River Band came on, making it all right.

  “I know this one,” she said. “I’m realizing I’ve been listening to some really depressing music recently.”

  “Yeah? Like how bad?”

  “Like college-radio bad. Like, old Cure. Smashing Pumpkins.”

  “Yikes. The Pumpkins. Sounds serious.”

  She nodded.

  He went easy. “This something you want to talk about?”

  She held up her glass, empty again, twirling it by the stem, examining her lipstick on the rim, the finger smudges. “I don’t know. Kind of nice to get away from it.”

  “Good, then. We’re away.”

  She lowered the glass. “Do you have any questions you want to ask me?”

  “Oh, only about a couple of hundred or so. But like you say, this is a nice vibe right now. I figure there’s time. Least, I hope there is.”

  That was good. Saying that did something to her—even as his mind reminded him, Just one date.

  “Can I ask you another question then?” she said.

  Doug cut her off at the pass. “I had a very misspent youth. When I drink I become a jerk, so I just don’t drink anymore.”

  She smiled gently, almost embarrassedly. “That wasn’t what I was going to as
k.”

  “I haven’t had a drink in two years. I go to meetings regularly, a few each week. I like them. I consider what I have an allergy. Someone’s allergic to nuts or something, people don’t hold that against them. Me, I’m allergic to alcohol. I break out in jerk hives. And this whole thing, it makes for a very bad first impression, but that’s what I have to live with.” He breathed. “Okay. Sorry. What were you gonna ask?”

  “Whew.” She undercut that with a smile. “I was going to ask why you wanted to take out someone you saw crying in a Laundromat?”

  Doug nodded thoughtfully. “This is a good question.”

  “I know it.”

  Police lights crawled along the interstate, bright, pinpoint blues. “I don’t have a good answer for you. I guess, sure, I am curious about that. A pretty girl with problems—that’s not something you see every day.”

  This time he heard the wine trickling almost guiltily into her glass. “Miracles” was starting now, Jefferson Airplane, or maybe Jefferson Starship. He closed his eyes a moment and saw his mother’s old black-and-silver RCA singing from the top of the refrigerator.

  “Honestly,” Claire said after a sip, “how much of this did you plan?”

  “Not a second of it, I swear to God.”

  “Well, it’s perfect. I mean, you can’t even know how. If I could stop time right now, keep that sun from coming up tomorrow morning…”

  “Yeah? What’s the sun got on you?”

  “Tomorrow morning I start back at work.”

  “Start back?” said Doug, mustering innocence.

  The wine slowed her words down a little. “I’ve had sort of an extended vacation.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Not really.” Another sip and she turned to him. “You’ve lived here all your life, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So what do you know about bank robbers?”

  He cleared his throat, letting out a long, silent exhale. “What’s to know?”

  “There’s supposed to be a lot from here. I figured maybe you grew up with some.”

  “I guess—maybe I did, yeah, I guess.”

  “My bank, where I work… a couple of weeks ago, we were robbed.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  “They were hiding, waiting for us inside.”

  Stunning, how immediately shitty he felt. “And what, they tied you up?”

  “Held us at gunpoint. Made us lie down. Took our shoes off.” She looked at him again. “Isn’t that the weirdest? Our shoes. I’m stuck on that, I don’t know why. Belittling, you know? I have all these dreams now where I’m barefoot.” She looked at her shoe boots against the rubber-coated roof. “Anyway.”

  “But you weren’t hurt.”

  “Davis was—my assistant manager. They beat him. A silent alarm went off.”

  He had to keep it up now. “But if it was silent, then… ?”

  “One of them had a radio wire in his ear. A police radio.”

  “Right. They beat this guy up because he set off the alarm.”

  She stared at the city as though the correct answer were out there somewhere. She never answered him. Doug pondered that.

  “Police catch these guys yet?” he said.

  “No.”

  “They’re on them, though.”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t say.”

  “You probably had to go through, what, a whole interrogation?”

  “It wasn’t too bad.”

  He let it go. Best not to push. “And you haven’t been back at work since?”

  She shook her head, frowning, pensive. “They took me with them when they left.”

  Doug couldn’t play along with her here. He couldn’t say anything.

  “They were worried about the alarm.” She followed the jet lights in the sky to the airport off to their left. “Somewhere over there, they let me out. I was blindfolded.”

  It was all there in her voice, everything he never wanted to hear. “Scary?”

  She took a long time to answer, so long that Doug started to wonder if he hadn’t given himself away somehow. “Nothing else happened,” she said.

  She stared at him now, eerily intense. Doug stumbled over his words. “No, I didn’t—”

  “They just let me go. That’s all. Once they knew they weren’t being followed, they just pulled over and let me out.”

  “Sure,” he said, nodding. “Of course.”

  She folded her arms against the creeping cool. “I’ve been in such a funk since. The FBI agent, he told me it would be like being in mourning.”

  Doug said, as evenly as he could, “FBI agent?”

  “But I don’t know. When my grandparents died, I was sad, very sad. But did I truly mourn… ?”

  Doug kept nodding. “And you’re working with them?”

  “The FBI? Just this one agent I talk to. He’s been great.”

  “Yeah? That’s good.” Waiting a patient beat. “What does he ask you, like, ‘What’d they look like? What’d they say?’”

  “No. At first, yes. Not anymore.”

  “Now what, he, like, calls you up, checks in?”

  “I guess.” Her little side glance informed Doug that she had noticed he was asking a lot of questions. “What?”

  “No, I’m just wondering. From his point of view. Maybe he’s thinking, ‘Hey, inside job.’”

  She stared. “Why would he think that?”

  “Only because, this other guy was beat up, you were taken for a ride, let go unhurt.”

  “You’re saying he suspects me?”

  “How would I know? It’s just a thought. You never thought that?”

  She sat perfectly still, like someone hearing a strange noise at night and waiting to hear it again. “You’re freaking me out a little.”

  “You know what? Maybe I should stick to talking about things I know something about.”

  “No,” she decided. “No, it’s impossible.”

  “They’re probably just casting a wide net.”

  But he had thrown a little monkey wrench of uncertainty her way, and that was enough. Her shoulders were bunched now, arms crossed high on her chest.

  “Getting cold?” he said.

  “I am.”

  “I think ‘Muskrat Love’ is coming up next anyway. That’s our cue.”

  She said she was done with the wine, so he poured the rest into the roof gutter, stowing the chairs and switching off the CD player in the middle of “Poetry Man.” The wine formed a bloody stain on the sidewalk as they left the building, walking back down Bunker Hill Street to Monument Square. A handful of skateboarders hanging out around the stairs at the base of the granite obelisk put Doug in the mind of his crew, making him itchy. They came to a five-street junction in the heart of the remade section of Charlestown.

  “Okay,” said Doug, bringing her up short on the brick sidewalk, her door only a hundred yards around the bend.

  She was surprised. “Okay…”

  Ask for her number. It would be rude to do otherwise. Then fade away forever. For her sake as much as yours.

  “So,” she said, waiting.

  He swiped a mustache of sweat off his upper lip. You had your date, your flirtation with danger, you got that out of your system. She was looking up at him, her empty glass catching some of the lamplight, holding it there.

  “Look,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t even be here with you.”

  She reacted like he was making up his own language. “Why do you say that? What do you mean?”

  “I don’t even know.” He shuffled his feet, needing to leave. “I’m all messed up recently, my mind. I’m used to order, clarity, things a certain way. Not this. Not doing things I don’t understand.”

  “But that’s—me too.” A revelation, a bright smile of communion. “I’m exactly the same way right now.”

  “And I need to… I’m trying to be good in my life, you know?”

  “Hey.” She stepped up to him, examining his
face in the light of the gas lamp. She reached for his forehead, and when he did not protest, touched the scar that split his left eyebrow. “I wanted to ask at the restaurant.”

  “Hockey scar. An old injury. You—you like hockey?”

  Her finger came away from his face. “I hate it.”

  Doug nodded fast. “So what are you doing tomorrow night?”

  She said, surprised, “What—tomorrow?”

  “Probably have a busy day, right? Back to work, you’ll be tired. How about the night after?”

  “I don’t…” She looked amazed. “I don’t even know.”

  Doug felt like someone was trying to open up an umbrella in his chest. “Okay, here it is right here. Whatever it takes to see you again, I’ll do. Would you want to see me again?”

  “I…” Looking up at his face. “Sure.”

  “Great. Okay. So we’re both crazy, that’s good. Your turn this time. You pick the place—somewhere outside C-town. I’ll pick you up right here. Give me your last four digits.”

  She did, and he gave her no time to ask for his, forsaking all thoughts of a parting kiss, just trying to tear himself away from her. He was acting drunker now than he ever had before.

  “Good luck,” he said, backing off. “With tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” She held up the glass as though it were a gift. “Good night, Doug.”

  “Wow. Hey, could you say that for me again?”

  “Good night, Doug.”

  “Good night, Claire.” He said it, and there was no lightning striking him dead in the street.

  14

  THE POPE OF THE FORGOTTEN VILLAGE

  DEZ LIVED IN THE NECK.

  As Charlestown was the orphan of Boston, so was the Neck the orphan of Charlestown. Getting there meant heading out past the Schrafft’s tower at the western gate of the Town, banging a one-eighty by the MBTA rail shop in the Flat, ducking under two crumbling highway elevations, then turning past the all-cement salute to urban blight that was the Sullivan Square Station. Tucked behind there was the six-street patch of old railroad houses also known as the Forgotten Village, an outpost teetering on the edge of Charlestown and of Boston itself, the last settlement before the Brazilian food markets of Somerville’s Cobble Hill.