Third Rail

by Rory Flynn

  “Says he’s wasting his time doing carpentry when he ought to be doing something smarter—and that pays better, of course. Dad’s all about the bottom line.”

  “You two married?”

  Candace looks like she’s caught a whiff of death. “No, of course not. We’re living out at the Old Nagog Tavern. Dex and his friends are fixing it up so we can sell it.”

  “A project, then.” A vague memory of breaking into the abandoned tavern with friends flickers through Harkness’s mind.

  “Right. You could call it that. Or a dump.”

  Harkness tries to get back on track. “So has your father been acting differently?”

  “You mean, like, depressed?”

  “Yes, like that.”

  “Sure. Maybe a little worse than usual. He’s got business problems. Something about meeting with the regulators. I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff.”

  Harkness does. When the regulators show up, it’s never good news. “Does he ever talk about killing himself?”

  Candace stares.

  “Sorry to be so direct.”

  “He doesn’t talk about it.”

  “I see.”

  “He just does it,” she says. “Like, every day for the last ten years. Every steak. Every trip to the cheese store. Every bottle of wine. Every case of wine. Sure, he’s trying to kill himself.” Candace closes her eyes and this time it doesn’t stop the tears.

  She reaches into her purse for a tissue, and her other hand stays on the thigh of her black jeans. Harkness notices that its fingers are stiff and ringless.

  Candace catches him staring, reaches into her sleeve, and tosses something at him. “Catch.”

  Harkness slides back in his chair as Candace’s hand lands in his lap then bounces to the cafeteria floor. He leans down to pick up the smudged pink plastic hand, its fingernails painted black. Sharks drawn in ballpoint circle the wrist and its shiny metal nub.

  “It’s fake, Eddy,” she says. “That hand sucks. I’ve got a better one at home but I left in a hurry.”

  “How’d that happen?”

  “Paper cut.”

  Harkness stares at her.

  “Really bad one.”

  “Back in high school you were . . .”

  “Whole?” she said. “Bi-handed?”

  “Yes.”

  “Happened later, after you left town. An accident.”

  Harkness holds the hand out to her by its stiff fingers. It’s like shaking hands with a mannequin.

  “It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it sometime. But not now. Dealing with one accident is enough.” Candace tucks the metal nub into the sleeve of her leather jacket and gives it a deft twist. She gives Harkness a frozen smile and a queenly wave with her plastic hand.

  “I’m sorry. Really sorry.”

  Candace shrugs. “I’m used to it. Adaptation—the great and terrible quality of us humans. We get used to just about anything.”

  “Still, it must be . . .”

  “Being a one-handed waitress is better than being dead. I tell myself that pretty much every day. And you know what, Eddy? Most of the time it’s true.” Candace leans toward her baby to tuck in the edge of a white blanket.

  “Look, I know you have to get back to the ICU. But I have to ask about this.” Harkness takes an evidence bag from his pocket and drops it on the table between them.

  “Where the fuck did you get that shit?” Candace stares at the amber vial like it’s about to explode.

  “On the floor of your dad’s car along with the Grey Goose bottles.”

  “Shit. Shit. Shit.” She slams her fake hand down on the cafeteria table.

  “What?”

  Candace pauses. “Forget it, Eddy. Just forget it. All I can say is this is news to me. And not good news.”

  The baby cries and Candace lifts her gently from the carrier, unbuttons her blouse to cup her breast, and deftly maneuvers her dark pink nipple into May’s mouth. The feeding calms the baby and seems to do the same for Candace.

  Harkness stares, transfixed by the skein of fine blue veins just beneath the pale skin of her full breast. When he looks up their eyes connect.

  “You can watch if you want,” Candace says softly. “I don’t care. Just don’t arrest me or anything.”

  “I won’t.” Harkness looks across the cafeteria.

  After the baby finishes, Candace buttons her blouse and raises May to her shoulder.

  “When he crashed into the monument, your father thought he was in a plane wreck,” Harkness says. “Is that the other accident you were talking about?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “Family tragedy. I got over it. But he didn’t. That’s the thing. Dad blamed himself because he was the pilot. But it wasn’t his fault. He rented a crappy Cessna. Carbon monoxide leaked into the cabin. We all passed out and the plane crashed. I woke up in a snowy cornfield all cut to pieces. My sister didn’t . . . she didn’t wake up. Her name was May.”

  In Candace’s glimmering dark eyes, Harkness sees the sadness and strength beneath the jokes and shit talk, the leather jacket and pawnshop jewelry.

  Candace bends down to whisper in her daughter’s tiny ear. “No one’s going to ever hurt you, are they, May?”

  They swagger down the long green hallway. The taller one leads the way, his long blond hair swinging in stringy clumps. Harkness figures the other two have to be brothers; they’re the same kind of ugly—grimy and short, with ironic beards that make them look like they just stepped off of a Civil War battlefield. The three dudes stop to peer in the holding rooms, making each other laugh, not even trying to be quiet. One of the hairy brothers takes an empty IV pole and pulls it behind him like a toy. The taller one yanks the pole away and gives his hairy friend a practiced shove like he’s a misbehaving kid he’s tired of herding around.

  Candace looks up from her iPad, thick with stickers like a skateboard. “Here’s Dex,” she says with a palpable lack of enthusiasm. “And his fucktard friends.”

  They walk into the waiting room. Dex’s friends see something amusing on the ceiling-mounted TV and stare at it, transfixed by cartoons. Harkness notices that Dex pauses at the door before he walks through, a moment of threshold anxiety—could be a quirk or a sign that he’s stranger than he looks.

  Dex floats over to Candace and bends down to kiss her on the forehead. He has a soft, almost feminine face but his cheeks are stubbled, and his hair, dyed Cobain yellow, hangs in front of his flecked green eyes, which he keeps locked on the floor, rarely glancing up. He could be an organic farmer or a musician.

  “Hey, Baby May,” he whispers.

  “Dex, she’s sleeping.” Candace shakes her head.

  “Oh.”

  Candace points at Harkness. “This is Eddy. Used to call him Straight Ed, remember him? He went to Nagog High. He was into punk rock. And baseball. Now he’s into law enforcement.”

  Dex’s blue eyes widen. “Eddy . . . ?”

  “Harkness.”

  “Wow,” Dex says. “Harkness.” He gives a small laugh. “Got it.”

  When they shake hands, Harkness sees the frayed cuff of Dex’s white shirt. Back in high school, Harkness wore the same uniform every day—an old white button-down over a vintage Black Flag T-shirt, straight-leg black jeans, and Doc Martens.

  “Do I know you?” Everyone in Nagog looks familiar to Harkness. He’s seen them walking down the street, sitting in town meeting, getting gas at the E-Z Mart, having breakfast at the Colonial Diner.

  Dex looks up, then back down. “Probably not. I finished high school kind of early, but . . .” Dex pauses, looking like he’s turning something over in his mind and trying to figure out if he should say it.

  He points at Harkness’s thick belt. “Hey, I used to have one of those.”

  “A gun?” Candace says. “I don’t think so.”

  “Fires little plastic things,” Dex says. “Round. All different colors.”

  Harkness stops breathing for a moment
, takes a step back, and looks away.

  Dex smiles. “Cop with a plastic gun. Cool.”

  “Quit being weird,” Candace says. “Or just stop talking, so people can’t tell that you’re weird.”

  Dex shrugs. “Whatever. I’m just saying it seems like a good idea to me. Like, here’s a new gun control policy—give all the cops plastic guns!”

  His friends laugh.

  “Were you in Boston on Sunday?” Harkness tries not to shout. “Lower South End?”

  “Sure,” Dex says. “Go there all the time. There’s a couple of pubs there where I can be with me peoples and have us several dozen black ’n’ tans to forget the Troubles.”

  The hairy twins laugh at Dex’s quick shift into an old-style Boston-Irish barfly.

  “What bars?” Harkness stares at Dex as if he’s trying to reduce him to ash.

  “I don’t know,” Dex says. “O’Halloran’s? Franklin’s? Bunch of others.”

  Harkness remembers stopping at both bars on the crawl back to Thalia’s loft. “So were you in Boston?”

  “What, like, in the last couple of days?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe,” Dex says. “Why do you want to know anyway? I just came to see the Big Man, not get the third degree from some local cop I kinda went to high school with.”

  “Dad’s still in the ICU,” Candace says.

  “Then why’re you waiting around here?”

  “Because I have to be here.”

  Dex shrugs. “Been here all day.”

  “They need me here to make decisions.”

  “They could text you if he wakes up or something,” Dex says. “Come back to the farm. Everyone’s hungry.”

  Candace looks at Dex like she just noticed something new wrong with him. “I need to be here, okay? Dad’s probably dying. I asked you to come and help out. Maybe make me feel better instead of worse. Honestly, I wonder if you guys are even human sometimes.”

  “That’s easy, Dex is an enhanced human,” one brother blurts out. “Like all H+ and shit!”

  The other chimes in. “Like fucking Ray Kurzweil or . . . or a squirrel with microchips.”

  May wakes and her cries echo through the waiting room.

  “Shut the fuck up, all of you.” Candace kneels down next to the car seat.

  “Woke the baby, Mouse.” Dex stares hard at the mouthy brother.

  Mouse looks at the floor, his head twitching.

  “Need everyone to start behaving. Especially you.”

  “Don’t be a dick, Dex.”

  Dex’s hand flies toward Mouse and his fingers wrap around his thin neck. His other hand shoots out and he’s got the other brother by the neck. Their faces turn red, eyes widen.

  Dex looks at Harkness and shakes his head. “Kids these days. No fucking manners at all.”

  From Dex’s deadpan stare, Harkness can’t tell if he’s being serious or snide. He knows this, though—Dex is strong and strange.

  He lets the brothers go and gives them a shove toward the door. “Scram. We’re leaving sickbay. Dullsville, USA.” Dex waves his hand in front of him as if he can make the hospital go away with an iPhone swipe.

  The brothers stagger ahead, coughing.

  “Hey, want us to take Baby May back to the farm with us?” Dex asks Candace.

  She shakes her head. “Are you crazy?”

  Dex shrugs. “Suit yourself, Little Mommy.”

  Dex pauses at the waiting room doorway, unable to just barge through with the others. He drops into a gunslinger stance, makes a pistol with his fingers, and fires his silent gun at Harkness. He brings the barrel to his lips and blows. Then he quits the Wild West act and walks out the door with a tired smile, like Harkness is a joke that isn’t very funny, one that everyone has heard already.

  10

  “YOU REMEMBER HOW you used to tell me that this place smelled bad since it used to be an instant photo place?” Patrick spins around from his bank of computers. “Because the chemicals smelled like pee?”

  “Yeah?” Harkness remembers making that story up to calm Patrick down about their smelly office.

  “Not true. I looked up the building records. Used to be a disco called Buddy’s downstairs, and disco people used to come up here and piss. And do drugs, no doubt. Probably blow and poppers.”

  “You had me come into Boston so you could tell me this, Patrick?”

  “Thought you should know it really is old piss, Harky, not chemicals.”

  “Almost managed to forget about your smell thing.” Despite his weirdness, Patrick is the unit’s best forensic data miner, a savant at finding evidence encoded in e-mails, cash transfers, and prescription trends.

  “This place was a drug hotspot, which I think is, you know, kinda ironic and all.”

  “Thanks for that.”

  Patrick turns back to the screens and gets lost in Dataland. Harkness stares at Patrick’s gun belt, hanging on a metal coat rack, sees his gun safely tucked away in its black holster.

  “So what you working on?”

  “Brazilian thing they’re selling in Dorchester,” Patrick says. “Some kind of bodega powder made out of datura that takes you to your happy place, then puts you in a coma. And we’re seeing a lot of this lollipop painkiller thing, fentanyl on a stick. Supposed to be for hospice patients. Except they’re superdeadly and packaged like an innocent little lolly. Cool, huh?”

  Harkness just shakes his head.

  “Remember how simple everything used to be?” Patrick looks off into the distance with a nostalgic smile. “Weed, speed, blow, acid, meth. Maybe some Valium from Mom’s purse. Now there’re more drugs than cable channels.”

  “Think of it as job security,” Harkness says.

  A shiver crosses Patrick’s shining face. “You do have a way of steppin’ in it.”

  “In what?”

  “In subjects you don’t really want to get into.” Patrick turns from his computer screen.

  “And that subject is . . . ?”

  “Our jobs, Harky. Remember a guy named John Fitzgerald?”

  Harkness thinks. “City councilor out of Dorchester?”

  “And?”

  Harkness stares out the window at the gleaming Hancock Tower. “Uncle of Pauley Fitz, Turnpike Toreador,” he says finally.

  “He’s about to make a run for mayor.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Dude’s popular. Good-looking guy. Campaigned in every bar in Dorchester. Got elected to the council by a landslide.”

  “Sure he did. He’s got two-thirds of JFK’s name.”

  “Now he’s making his move.”

  “Corrupt?”

  Patrick rolls his eyes. “Only real question around here is how corrupt. He’s squeaky-clean on the surface. But I hear he likes to hang with the hard guys. His big plan so far is to build a casino downtown by the harbor. That pretty much tells you what he’s all about.”

  “Why do we care about Councilman John Fitzgerald?”

  “Because he wants to kill us, Harky. Squash us dead like bugs.” Patrick watches the closed door of his corner office, once Harkness’s lair. “I’ll be honest, Harky. You shouldn’t even come around here.”

  “Why not?”

  “People are pissed. Check this shit out, Eddy.” Patrick reaches into his desk drawer and spins a thick report across his desk.

  “What’s this?”

  “Information. Useful kind. Managed to get my hands on Fitzgerald’s campaign playbook. As usual, the devil is in the data.” Patrick flips the report open to a fine-print section titled “Strategies for a New Boston, First-Term Goals.” “Check out number eleven.”

  Harknesss reads the last line. “We support a return to a patrol-based, neighborhood-focused solution to address our city’s drug trade, eliminating expensive, resource-intensive special departments such as Narco-Intel.”

  “The guy’s got it in for us,” Patrick says. “Or more accurately—you.”

  “Sounds like
Fitzgerald wants an old-style war on drugs. That’ll work out really well.”

  “You’re not getting it, Harky. This isn’t about whether Fitzgerald cares about stopping drugs. Or whether he even gives a shit about the city. He just wants to be mayor so he can run the whole show and do whatever he wants. Mayor chooses the city council president. Appoints the school committee and zoning board. Even controls the damn library.”

  Harkness nods. “Got it.”

  “Here’s what fucks us up—the mayor appoints the police commissioner, Harky. Remember? The guy wants us out. He’s got a fuck-Commissioner-Lattimore-that-Harvard-Cop-and-all-his-friends plan. Couple of months ago he was just another city councilor in a cheap blue suit. The kind who tends to get caught with bribe money jammed in his tighty-whiteys.”

  “And now?”

  “Now he’s a legit candidate for mayor. Dude’s got a hot-shit campaign director from Los Angeles, Mark Sarris, TV celebrity. Know him?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Had that show on Fox, LA Confrontational? The one where politicians yelled at each other?”

  “Missed it.”

  “You’d recognize him,” Patrick says. “Looks like a pissed-off piglet. But Sarris can spin any story and make it sound good. And it’s working. Fitzgerald’s got big endorsements and piles of money. Running as an independent so he can split the vote. It’s going to be really ugly. The guy is angry—even more angry than most Irish dudes. And he wants a fight.”

  “Then give them one. Get Communications on it. It’s just a personal vendetta.”

  “We’re in enough trouble already, Harky,” Patrick says. “Downtown’s definitely not going to go to the mat for the Internetty drug-fighting data miners. They got their own asses on the line. Fitzgerald wins, everyone’s out—from your old pal Commissioner Lattimore on down.”

  “Look, we had an eighty-five percent conviction rate last year,” Harkness says. “We shut down more pill mills and crooked docs than the DA. And uncovered drugs no one even knew about.”

  “Yeah, but I’m not you, Harky,” Patrick says, voice lowering. “Can’t run this place the way you did. I’m just a fat hacker who ended up in charge of a really cool unit when you got banished to the boonies. When I come to work I feel like I’m getting into a sports car I don’t even know how to start.” Patrick runs his fingers through his hair, scratches his scalp, and sniffs his fingertips.