The Town: A Novel

by Chuck Hogan

  Which was stupid, stupid. Frank G. stared at Doug, then reached for his yellow windbreaker, starting to stand.

  “Frank,” said Doug. “Frank, look, man, I was kidding. That didn’t come out the way it sounded.”

  “See you in church.” Frank G. was checking his pockets for keys. “Maybe.”

  Frank was walking past him. Doug had fucked up. “I’m going to see my old man tomorrow,” he blurted.

  Frank G. weighed his keys in his hand as though they were Doug himself, a fish he might throw back. All Frank knew about Mac was that he was in jail. “How long’s it been?”

  “Good long time. He asked me to come in, see him about something.”

  “Uh-huh. And how’s it gonna go?”

  “Power of positive thinking, right?”

  “A lot of it’s up to you.”

  “Then it’s gonna go splendid. And he’ll go back into his cell, and I’m good for another year or so. That’s how it’s gonna go.”

  Frank G. nodded and started for the door. “See you ’round.”

  * * *

  THE NAME MCI CEDAR JUNCTION sounded like one of those corporate-brand stadiums, with naming rights purchased by a long distance phone company or a logging concern. MCI stood for Massachusetts Correctional Institution. When Doug’s father started his tour there, the place was called MCI Walpole, after its host town, but at some point during the mid-1980s, Walpole’s residents realized that sharing their name with the state’s toughest prison—it was also home to the DDU, the Departmental Disciplinary Unit, known as The Pit—placed a slight drag on property values and sued successfully to have it renamed after a long-abandoned railroad station.

  The complex was originally constructed in the 1950s to replace the old Charlestown Prison. Entering it brought all sorts of associations flooding into Doug’s mind, first and foremost his stay at MCI Norfolk, a prison still named after its host town just a couple of miles away. Norfolk was medium security, Level 4, with 80 percent of its inmates serving time for violent crimes. Cedar Junction was Level 6.

  He paced in the waiting room ahead of his scheduled meet, the only male in a group of six visitors. The combined smell of their perfumes reminded him of the Haymarket on a hot, late Saturday, produce fallen between the carts, spoiling and trampled underfoot. Three black women sat heavily, depressedly, with blood-threaded eyes and bruised stares. The two white women looked hard, worn down to the core. Blue denim, sweatshirts, and bralessness were on the Prohibited Clothing List. Evidently stretch pants and cleavage-canoeing knit tops were not.

  Wall postings warned against physical contact, and a brand-new sign on the door, UNDERPANTS MUST BE WORN, made Doug’s arms itch.

  Only one person visited Doug while he was in stir, and that had been Krista, every third weekend. How grateful he had been—though he never admitted it—for those brief conversations, at least at first. But once he started getting into AA inside and taking the program seriously—how she had changed in his eyes.

  They were called inside and Doug sat alone in his partition, getting his head together. It was almost worth the visit just for the leaving, being able to walk back out of the prison again, getting into his car, driving away. Stopping at a gas station for a soda on the way home: simple freedom, an impossible dream within these walls.

  Visiting Mac was like a dentist appointment and license renewal at the RMV all wrapped up in one. A trial. Something to dread, something to endure. Though in truth Doug had a good setup here, and he knew it. He controlled the contact, having Mac brought to him like a damaged library book pulled from general circulation.

  Mac’s shadow fell over him, and there was always that little kick when Doug saw the old crook again, always a ripple in his fabric of the hero he once knew, the strong man who used to call him Little Partner. Not the selfish me machine who had gone down sixteen years ago and lived mainly as a voice in Doug’s head ever since.

  Mac sat in his chair with a smart smile, a rooster sucking all his strength into his chest. But things were settling in him, Doug noticed: the middle getting thicker, the neck loosening up, his face sinking deeper into his skull. The casinodice eyes that dared you to trust them, telling you straight out, Play with me long enough and you’ll lose. The smile that was always more for him than for you. And his big Irish gourd, the shiny scalp oranged with freckles, now scored with pink treatment scars.

  Mac straddled the chair, his proud, strawberry arm hair lighter now, nearly invisible. He always acted as though they were meeting on equal terms—as though their relationship had some balance—and Doug felt as sorry for him as he did for any trapped thing, having been there himself. Seeing Mac once a year was like flipping through a scrapbook, watching hair go, the features fading, blemishes rising. The resemblance between father and son, always remarkable, haunted Doug now more than ever. Looking into that partition was like looking into a mirror twenty years deep. The traces of his mother that Doug used to find in himself—that he once took great pains to seek out—were long disappeared.

  “Look at you.” This was what Mac always said.

  “Dad,” said Doug, that word he got to use for about twenty minutes each year. “How’s it going?”

  “How ya been?”

  Doug nodded. “Good. You?”

  Mac shrugged. “Still here.”

  “Looks that way. Been getting the money?”

  “Money’s good. Makes things easier. Though it ain’t that bad in here neither. You know how we got things arranged.”

  The hive of Cedar Junction was home to a colony of Townies who, with the assistance of a few friendly guards, got most of what they needed. There were good and bad assignments in the prison industries program, like laundry or making license plates, whatever they did for their seventy-three cents an hour.

  Doug nodded to him, pointed to his own head. “That it?”

  Mac touched it like it was hot. “The skin cancer, yeah. They just keep burning off bits of it. Gets me into the infirmary now and then, which is good. Passes the time.”

  “Where you getting all this sun?”

  “This is pre-1980 damage. Shoulda worn my scally cap more, I guess. It’s not the bad cancer, now. This is just freckles on a mutiny. I’m still as strong as the stink in Chelsea.” He inhaled like he could smell it now. “So, Jem talked to you?”

  “Jem told me this, yeah.”

  “Never get lonely with him around. In here all the time. Funny kid when he gets going. Excitable like his dad. What you gotta do with a Coughlin is, you gotta keep that carrot hanging out in front of his beady eyes. ’Cause the stick in back, it don’t register.”

  “Got it,” said Doug.

  Mac pretended to work on some food in his teeth, studying Doug, his only child. Whatever he saw, he kept his observations to himself.

  “I should have come to see you more,” Doug said, having to say something.

  “Well, it’s a long trip, coming out here to the country.”

  “Been doing things, you know. This and that. Time goes by.”

  “Hey. You’re talking to a clock here.” Still looking at Doug, one year older. “I didn’t blow it with you, Duggy. What I hear, you’re doing awright.”

  Doug shrugged. “Day to day.”

  “Older I get, the more I think about the years I missed. Fuckin’ shame.”

  “Yeah.” Doug tugged at the shelf, wondering how much longer.

  “I think I know why you’re pissed at me all the time.”

  Doug sat up a little. “Yeah? Am I?”

  Mac crossed his arms over his blue scrub shirt, his chest now sagged back into his midsection. “Me losing your mother’s house.”

  Doug rubbed the back of his head. “Nah. I don’t care about that no more.”

  “Those legal bills, Duggy. Fuck. I had a shot at staying out—some nervous witnesses, a few changed stories—but you know no court-assigned PD could do it. You claim indigence, you might as well drive yourself to prison the day the trial starts.�
�

  “It’s just that—you never had anything solid put away. With all you took. It’s like you never imagined a rainy day.”

  Mac absorbed this criticism along with whatever else he was drawing off Doug. “I heard some knucklehead crew took a hostage in that Kenmore Square thing.”

  Doug said, “Yeah. I read that too.”

  “Bonehead play. Hostages bring a lot of heat. Better to take the pinch, should it come. Less of a bill to pay, and you earn your stripes, you come out stronger.”

  Doug looked at the patches taken out of Mac’s head, thinking, Are you coming out stronger? “Well,” Doug said, vigilant for guards within listening range, “like I said, I read about it.”

  “Seemed like a good haul, though.”

  “I suppose it might have been.”

  “And how’s about old Boozo and his crew?”

  “Gone away forever. Boozo’s on a shelf in some federal pen in Kentucky or somewheres. Not like here. No connections. No home away from home.”

  “His kid, what’s his name?”

  “Jackie.”

  “There’s a fuckup. Not like my boy.”

  “Jackie’s gone too, and he’s not missed.”

  “RICO, huh? That racketeering stuff?”

  “RICO was twenty years ago. G’s got a bigger stick now, a much heavier stick. Called the Hobbs Act. Anything interstate, interfering with any commerce like that. They don’t need to prove conspiracy now.”

  “Getting tough out there.”

  “I guess. But when was it easy, right?”

  Mac smiled. He was trying to read Doug’s face like words might appear. “Jem says he’s worried about you.”

  Doug was beginning to understand the eyeballing. “Is he.”

  “Says you’re doing some things, acting some ways… he’s concerned.”

  “Uh-huh. Was it his idea for us to meet again, or yours?”

  “Both.”

  Doug crossed his arms, unused to getting played by Jem. “So here I am then. Presenting myself for inspection to show you everything’s fine, thanks for asking. Next topic?”

  “He’s worried about you not having your eye on the ball.”

  “I’m gonna tell you something. Him looking after me? That’s like you looking after me, okay? You wanna push it, that’s what you’re gonna hear. You mentioned something, I think, about a hostage, earlier? Who do you think was solely responsible for that little fiasco?”

  “You still keeping dry?”

  “Fuckin’… next topic. How was your Christmas?”

  Mac scratched the back of his neck, looking lazily at the guards on either end, then leaning closer to the glass. “Sixteen months.”

  Doug nodded, waiting for more. “And? What? Sixteen months, what?”

  “Sixteen more months for me, here. I’m getting out.”

  “Out? Out of what?” Doug was sitting up now. “What do you mean, out?”

  “Out, Little Partner.” Mac nodding, smiling. “Gonna be you and me again.”

  All feeling flushed from Doug’s face. “What are you talking about?”

  Big, satisfied shrug. “Been in the works for a while. Parole board’s under pressure to free up room for all the young shoot-firsts coming up. Either that or build a new prison, you know? Old outta-step bank robber, never even seen an ATM—what’s he gonna do, right?” Big grin. “Hey, I didn’t even tell Jem. Didn’t want to jinx it. Would of kept you updated, I’d seen you more.”

  He was getting out. Mac was getting out.

  “The neighborhood, Dad—it’s all gone. The Town. There’s nothing left.”

  “You trying to talk me into staying? We’ll get it back.”

  “Get back what? There’s nothing… it’s all changed, understand? It’s gone.”

  “You’ve been doing good, I can see that. Some bumps in the road, but okay. Now we’re gonna take things to the next level.”

  Doug’s chair was no good for him anymore. He needed to stand, to move, but the room rules kept him low and squirming—panicking like the old man was walking out right now.

  “I’m gonna get back your mother’s house, Duggy.”

  Doug shook his head, hot. “You don’t even know, Dad. You couldn’t even begin to afford it.”

  Mac smiled his smile. “I’ll get it back.”

  “What you think, you’re gonna walk in, have one of your famous sit-downs? Like you’re still the king thief? Nobody’s afraid of you there, Dad. Nobody even knows you anymore. A few old guys, sitting outside the Foodmaster—they might shake your hand. They might doff the cap. It’s not like it was. The code is gone. The old ways, all of it. Gone.”

  “Ain’t gonna be just like it was, Duggy,” said Mac, the old ka-ching returning to his eyes, popping up like dollar-sign tabs on an old-fashioned cash register. “Gonna be better. Let the G bring their big sticks. You two, you and Jem, working under me… ?”

  Doug stared. Mac was getting out.

  DOUG DROVE HARD INTO the night, turning out the ZR-1 along the 95-to-93 interstate circuit, doing ninety-mile-an-hour doughnuts around the city. Sometimes he imagined he had taken all the bad energy of his youth and harnessed it in that 405-horse, all-aluminum V-8. He watched the lights in his rearview mirror, thinking about the G following him, or even Jem, when in reality it was the ghost of his father. The old crook had been chasing him all along.

  Mac and all the old-school armored-car guys and stickup men—they were the neighborhood Evel Knievels. Daredevils who went after cans instead of strapping rocket packs to their backs. Winding up short of the mark was just another part of the job—a prison hitch their equivalent of a hospital stay. That was what was coming Doug’s way: Mac’s jailbird disease. The years being burned off him like cancer. Doug’s father was hard time incarnate.

  Sixteen months. For Doug, it might as well have been sixteen days.

  * * *

  HE RETURNED TO THE city in the Caprice, parking it illegally in the alley behind Peterborough. Streetlights and the glow of the city were just enough to help him find his way to Claire Keesey’s garden, hop her fence, open her unlocked wooden chest.

  With a short-handled spade he dug into the overturned soil. Four feet deep seemed good enough for short-term storage.

  The walk back from the trunk of the Caprice with the few hundred thou packed in auto parts boxes inside thick plastic sheeting—that was the only really chancy part. The Fens was home to a lot of unsavories on warm nights, and his digging had made noise. But the traffic on Boylston Street provided adequate cover, masking the thump of the heavy boxes at the bottom of the hole. He looked at his small fortune a moment before covering it over with dirt and felt like he should be saying a prayer. He couldn’t see the one-to-one between visiting his father and moving his stash from Nana Seavey’s garage to Claire Keesey’s garden, but where money was concerned, Doug listened to his instincts. Things were changing. That was all he knew for sure.

  Call her.

  He longed to. This, here—the treasure he was stashing in her garden—seemed like a commitment. He patted his pockets for coins, even thinking what he might say into a pay phone, inviting her to the wedding tomorrow. Showing up with her on his arm. It was pleasing to think about as he drove away. Almost like he could go through with it.

  23

  RECEPTION

  DOUG SAT HUNCHED OVER his soda water lime, his bow tie undone, watching Gloansy and Joanie, groom and bride, work the far end of the VFW hall together. The new Mrs. Joanie Magloan was squeezing and smooching everyone in sight, a Bud Light in her hand, while Gloansy got his palm pumped by every wisecracking husband and father in the place, laughing too empty, too hard. Meanwhile, little Nicky Magloan was over at his grandma’s table, his freckled face and nonstop hands coated with wedding-slash-baptism cake frosting.

  The Monsignor yanked out a chair next to Doug and dropped into it. “Well,” he said, “the music sucks.”

  “Desmond,” welcomed Doug, rousing out of his pissy mo
od.

  Monkey-suited Dez looked bleary behind his trademark rims. Jem had been treating the rest of the wedding party to rounds of Car Bombs: a half-pint of Guinness with a shot of Baileys and Jameson dropped in.

  The girl Dez had brought with him, Denise or Patrice or something, a thinfaced but flabby-armed 411 operator, rose from her seat across the dance floor and started toward the bathroom. Doug said, “You left her alone over there.”

  “Because she won’t mix! She doesn’t know anybody, and this group—how can you introduce outsiders? And fucking Jem—thinks he’s funny, working ‘bat wings’ into the conversation, like she doesn’t already know she has heavy arms. Asshole.” Dez wrapped himself in the flaps of his tuxedo jacket like a cold boy inside a black blanket. “It’s my own fault for trying to bring someone. I see you came stag.”

  Doug shrugged and sat back. He tried to imagine himself there with Claire—huddled together at the rear of the room, happily making fun of other people.

  “Smarter than I am anyway,” said Dez. “She’s miserable, I’m miserable. I already called her a cab.”

  Doug said, “Here comes the happy couple.”

  “Yeah, how about that dress?”

  “Nice. If you like mosquito netting.”

  “I was talking about the neckline, the lack thereof.”

  Joanie was the type of girl who never missed a chance to show off the twins. “She’s sturdy,” Doug said, “and this is her big day.”

  She bustled over and Doug stood for a kiss, going cheek to cheek against her red-veined rosacea and getting a generous chest press for his trouble. One or two beers in, Joanie was always good for a ten-dollar hello. He received a chin squeeze on top of that, as thanks for being Nicky’s godfather.

  “Joanie, I don’t know,” said Doug, nodding over at the cake-smeared kid. “I’m not sure that baptism took. Little freckle’s still got the devil in him.”

  She pretended to smack him, then put Dez on the receiving end of another friendly tit rub. “Great dress,” he said, fixing his glasses as though they were steamed. “Lots of fluff on there.”