Third Rail

by Rory Flynn

  “Tell me,” he says.

  Thalia’s been drinking wine and whiskey, followed by an hour on the futon, Harkness intent on extracting the truth however he can, even if it’s with sexual waterboarding.

  “Tell me,” he whispers again.

  “I . . .”

  “Tell me.” His request turns to a demand.

  “I . . .”

  “Tell me, now.” The demand becomes more urgent.

  Thalia’s breathing faster now, barely able to get enough oxygen. “I want you, Eddy.”

  Harkness presses his eyes closed and lowers himself to cover her flame-lit body.

  Harkness wakes and climbs from Thalia’s futon. He walks to the loft window and watches for his gun to drift by in the hand of a local. Or maybe a glowing Glock 17 will appear like magic in the gutter, waiting for him to come downstairs and claim it. But tonight all he sees are damaged night creatures crawling from the banks of the oily industrial canal that runs toward Albrecht Square—hairless rats, a red-eyed opossum with a row of shiny pink tumors along its spine, and scrawny black cats with leering mouths spiked with long white teeth. They lurch down the sidewalk, stopping to nose through garbage, sniffing the burgeoning decay, then moving on to search out fresh rot.

  13

  CANDACE WATCHES OVER MAY, sleeping in her car seat next to their table. “Where’s your uniform, Eddy?”

  “I’m off duty this morning.”

  “So you’re not always a cop?”

  “I’m always a cop. I just don’t always wear my uniform.”

  Candace’s bracelets jangle as she reaches for her coffee with her good hand.

  “What’s it like working here?”

  Candace looks around the Nagog Bakery. “It’s okay, I guess. If you want to get knocked up. Cindy the Cougar. Princess Sparkle Thong. Nancy Nothing Fancy. Vicky Veneer. They all got pregnant. Something about breathing the yeast or the sugar or whatever. Me? I can’t blame the bakery.”

  “Did Declan work here?”

  “Dex? You kidding? He doesn’t work for anyone but himself. Never has, never will. But I’m all about the team.” She points over at the overstuffed couches in the corner with her plastic hand. “That’s the Mom Pit, where all the moms hang out. Then there’s the Escaladies, skinny chicks who drive those enormous Cadillacs. Or the earth mothers, always breastfeeding and organizing the community. And now I’m part of their team. Go, Team Breeder!”

  Harkness says nothing.

  “Remember that Replacements song ‘Customer’?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s like that around here. Customers always want something they can’t get.”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Harkness thinks of his Glock 17.

  “Well, sometimes it’s me they want,” Candace says. “Once a week or so, some guy comes up and starts talking shit after ordering a latte or something. I’m like their daughter’s age. Gross, right? But I came up with a killer line.”

  “What’s that?”

  Candace leans over the table and turns her pale face slightly to the side. Anyone in the bakery would think they’re about to kiss. “I get close to them, like this. Then I whisper the magic words.”

  Harkness takes a deep breath. “Which are?”

  “You’re old.”

  “Nice.”

  Candace stares at Harkness, her dark brown eyes inscrutable. She looks around the bakery. “Dudes all think they’re special.”

  “Everyone does,” Harkness says. “They think they’re different but they’re not.”

  “Learn that at Harvard, did you?”

  “No. Picked that up later.”

  Candace narrows her eyes. “We’re not having coffee so we could share our world-weary insights, I’m assuming.”

  “No,” Harkness says. “I have some . . . questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “Dex’s friends seemed pretty out there at the hospital. They always like that?”

  “They’re okay. Just too fucking smart and weird. I mean, Dex may be the only guy who dropped out of MIT because it was too easy.”

  “Really?”

  “That and his mother ran out of money. Got screwed on some investment thing.”

  Harkness looks across the bakery.

  “I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for strays,” she says, “but they can seriously mess you up.”

  Harkness thinks of Thalia.

  “Where’d you meet him?”

  “You know, in high school. We co-founded the Club with No Members. We had to shut it down when we joined.”

  Harkness stares.

  “Seemed funny at the time.”

  “People say that a lot.”

  “I mean, Dex isn’t a bad guy. Supersmart. Just not particularly warm and fuzzy. We used to have a lot of fun back in the day—road trips to San Francisco, going to concerts, pulling pranks with his MIT chums—like hacking the state website and posting a bunch of threats from North Korea. What could be more fun than triggering an international incident?”

  “Not much,” Harkness says.

  “But now we have a baby, my dad’s dying, and he won’t help with anything.” Candace stares out the bakery window. “None of them help. They’re supposed to be fixing up the house but they just spend hours on their laptops, jabbering on Skype. It’s getting cold outside and our living room doesn’t even have real windows, just plastic staple-gunned over them. There’s cables and wires and Xbox shit all over and it smells like dude. I’m fucking sick of it.” Candace smacks her plastic hand on the table like a gavel.

  “Then get out.”

  “Not that easy,” she says.

  Harkness remembers how Dex grabbed his friends. “Ever hit you?”

  She shakes her head. “Comes close sometimes, but no. He’s smart enough to know that would mean game over.”

  Harkness pauses before he asks the big question, the one about his gun.

  “Listen, Eddy,” Candace says. “I really don’t want to talk about Dex anymore. I’ve got to get back to the hospital.”

  Harkness stops, realizes it was wrong to think that Candace might tell him anything about her boyfriend. Even if she had something to complain about, why would she tell a cop? “Look, if you ever need help, just give me a call,” he says. “I can be there in minutes. I know every back road in this town, believe me.” Harkness writes his cell number on the back of one of his Nagog Police Department cards and pushes it across the table.

  Candace gathers her courier bag from the floor and checks on May, still asleep. Then she balls up her napkin and throws it on the table next to their empty coffee cups.

  “Someone else can clean up after me for once. I’m sick of being the world’s waitress.”

  They’re almost at the front door of the bakery when Candace stops, puts down the car seat, and reaches into her coat pocket. “Almost forgot to give you this.” She hands Harkness a folded piece of paper. “That thing you asked me to sign. Saying Dad was trying to kill himself when he ran into the monument. His lawyer told me not to sign it. But fuck him. It’s the truth.”

  Harkness looks at the paper. “You’re sure you’re okay signing this?”

  “Yeah. Dad left me a long good-bye note back in his office.”

  “Really?” Harkness thought about his father’s office. No note, no explanation. None needed.

  “Said being dead seemed better than the life he was living. At least that’s how he felt that morning, when he decided to go on his dramatic drive into history. All the booze and drugs probably had something to do with it.”

  Candace bursts into tears and rushes toward Harkness, wrapping her arms around him. He backs away, then wraps his arms around her and feels her shaking. She pushes her tear-covered cheek against his chest and presses her eyes closed.

  They stand in the entrance to the bakery, customers walking around them, Candace’s baby sleeping in the car seat at their feet.

  “It’s going to be okay,” Harkness says. />
  “No,” Candace whispers. “It’s really not going to be okay.”

  ***

  As Harkness walks down Main Street, he considers the quirks of every parking meter he passes. Like people, some are easier to deal with than others. Most simply do their job, taking in quarters and tracking time. But there are always freaks and troublemakers, meters that jam for no reason or that flash error messages just to get attention. And there are victims, meters that get smashed and bent and never work quite right again, even when all the pieces are back in place. As he walks by tilted meter no. 453, nudged by a snowplow last winter, Harkness gives it a consoling pat on its metal head.

  Ahead waits the toppled monument, poking from the town green like a severed finger. Its shattered top is lodged in the ground, surrounded by sugar-colored pieces of marble. On one side of what’s left of the monument stand a couple of Uncle Sams, a pack of patriots in tricornered hats, a curly-haired woman in a red-white-and-blue-spangled one-piece swimsuit, and a couple dozen old men with signs that read REBUILD OUR HERITAGE AND REMEMBER OUR HEROES. On the other side there’s a silent group dressed in black T-shirts and yoga pants, holding a drooping banner that says END ALL WARS—TEAR DOWN THE MONUMENT.

  Deep ruts from Hammond’s last drive mark the grass. No matter which side of the latest controversy wins, the town will grade the ground, sow grass seed, and cover up the damage. Hammond’s incident on the green will fade but never quite disappear, like all small-town tragedies.

  His shift over, Harkness gets in his squad car to drive back to the station. His phone rings just as he’s getting in. Harkness recognizes the number. “Listen, Pauley,” he says. “You got to quit calling me at work.”

  There’s a pause. “Check it out, Harkness.”

  Harkness gets a message with a tiny photo. When he clicks on it, he sees the familiar shape of a dark gun in the foreground, a black-haired man with a bloody hole above his eye slumped in the background.

  Harkness shifts in the driver’s seat, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. That can’t be real, he thinks. That can’t be my gun.

  A Tercel a few cars ahead of the squad car races through a crosswalk and almost clips an elder bent over his walker.

  Harkness reaches up to turn on the flashers and give a quick yelp from the siren. The Tercel slows. The driver looks in the rearview mirror. Then he speeds up. Harkness hits the siren full force for a second and zooms up about six inches behind the Tercel. The driver swerves left into the parking lot of the Unitarian church.

  Harkness calls in the plate number, tells Debbie he’s got a possible DUI. He writes the time at the top of his clipboard and gives the guy a couple of minutes to stew, per protocol.

  He does his cop walk toward the Tercel, spine straight, just a hint of sheriff. At the driver’s window, he rolls his hand and the window lowers. Inside sits a bearded man wearing a tan linen suit, a vision from the mid-1800s.

  You’ve got to be kidding, Harkess thinks. “Driver’s license, please.”

  The guy just straightens his straw hat, wide with a broad black band. A sweet alcohol breeze wafts from him. Then he pulls a twenty-first-century wallet from his coat pocket, rips open the Velcro, and hands over a business card:

  HENRY DAVID THOREAU, WRITER AND SURVEYOR

  Harkness keeps his cop face on. “License, please.”

  Thoreau holds out a smudged Massachusetts license showing a long-haired guy in a gray hoodie.

  “Thomas Lehmann?”

  “That’s me,” he says. “Spelled T-H-O-M, by the way.”

  “You almost hit a pedestrian back there, Mr. Lehmann. Consumed any alcohol today?”

  He gives a twitchy snarl. “Look, I’ve been wearing this suit all day, talking to third graders. I was way thirsty. So what if I had a fucking beer or two after work?”

  Harkness nods. This guy may look like Thoreau but he acts like an asshole.

  “Stay in the car.” Harkness turns to walk back toward the patrol car for the Breathalyzer. The car door creaks open and the gravel crunches.

  Harkness turns just in time to catch the first punch on the side of his head. Then he’s face down on the ground, ears ringing, stunned. He rolls over. Outlined by the gray sky, Thoreau raises a walking stick over his head like an ax.

  Henry David Thoreau is trying to kill me. The thought is so absurd that Harkness almost laughs. But Thoreau’s face blazes furious red and his pinched mouth sputters out “fuck fuck fuck,” spit spraying. He swings the heavy stick down with both hands.

  Harkness rolls to one side and the stick slams in the gravel next to him. If he had his gun, he would draw it now. Instead, Harkness pulls his long leg back and shoves a heavy boot at Thoreau’s crotch. The stick goes flying and Thoreau sprawls in the gravel.

  “Shit.” Thoreau curls up in the gravel, his linen pants bunched and smudged at the knees. He turns to the side to spew beer into the gravel. When he’s done, Harkness reaches down and spins him over onto his back. His boot fits snugly under Thoreau’s neat, Amishy beard.

  Harkness presses down hard. Thoreau’s eyes brighten and his legs flail.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Thoreau’s shaking his head. He’s got something to say. Harkness lets up on his throat a little so he can say it.

  “Didn’t mean to.”

  “Not good enough.” Harkness shakes his head slowly. “You do not hit a police officer. You do not swing a dangerous object at his head. Doesn’t matter who you think you are, you have to follow the rules just like everyone else, otherwise they’re not rules.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Okay, have it your way, Hank.” Harkness reaches down, grabs Thoreau’s shoulders, and throws him hard against the Tercel. He hits the door with a loud gasp and slumps down to the ground.

  Harkness picks up the walking stick and points it at him. “Tell me what the fuck’s wrong with you. Now.”

  “Do all cops talk like that?”

  “I’m not all cops,” Harkness says. “I’m the cop you just tried to kill.” He reaches back and grabs a thick plastic zip tie from his belt and secures Thoreau’s right wrist to the Tercel’s door handle. He draws the end extra tight.

  “Not like this, really,” Thoreau says, gulping for breath. “Can explain.”

  “Start talking.”

  “Hand me my hat?”

  Harkness looks over at Thoreau’s straw hat, upside down on the ground. He thinks of grinding it into the dirt. But the hat’s innocent.

  Or maybe not. Thoreau keeps giving it shifty glances. Harkness picks up the hat and runs his fingers around the inner band until he finds a lump. He plucks out a small amber vial and holds it up to the sky. “So what’s this?”

  Thoreau gives a low groan. “Nothing.”

  “Oh yeah? Looks about half full of something to me. What?”

  Thoreau evades. “Got a doctoral thesis due by the end of the year. And I’m teaching three classes at Tufts. Couldn’t get it done.” He pauses. “Then I started taking this . . . new stuff.”

  “Let me guess. Third Rail.”

  Thoreau nods. “It’s incredible.” He gives Harkness the awestruck look of the drug connoisseur. “Makes Adderall look like Skittles. Sets your mind on fire.”

  Harkness realizes he’s found an early adopter, the kind of drug user who always thinks he’s ahead of the curve, not knowing he’s just the latest canary in an old mine.

  “Couple drops and you’re off to the races,” Thoreau says.

  “Or to the ER.”

  “Yeah, makes you lose it sometimes. Can’t figure it out.”

  “Even smart drugs make people do stupid things.”

  Thoreau shakes his head. “This one was really great for a while.”

  “That’s the problem with drugs. They wear off.” Harkness holds up the vial. “Buy this in town, did you?”

  Thoreau pauses for a moment.

  “Tell me. Now. Or I’ll smack you back into the Transcendental era.”r />
  “Bought it from a twitchy guy, short, really hairy, kind of a dick. Met him at a party.”

  Harkness nods. Dex’s friend Mouse. “Here’s the deal,” he says. “I’m taking you in. You’ll get released when you straighten out. But if you end up doing anything else stupid, I’ll find out, believe me, and I’ll make sure you go to jail. And not just for a night, Hank.”

  “Okay, okay, okay.” Thoreau perks up. “Hey, this isn’t going to be in the blotter, is it?” Everyone in town reads the Nagog Journal police blotter, a long list of the week’s drunk drivers, pot smokers, shoplifters, and wife beaters. It’s like the town stockade.

  “I’ll make sure you’re at the top,” Harkness says. “After all, you’re famous.”

  ***

  Captain Munro puts on his reading glasses and unfolds the piece of paper.

  “Hammond’s daughter actually signed this?”

  “She did.”

  “You sure she’s got power of attorney?”

  “Yes.”

  The captain reads for a moment, then snaps off his reading glasses. “This is excellent, Harkness. You’ve saved the town a pile of money. The town manager will be off my back. The monument crisis can end, thank God.”

  “There’s something else,” Harkness says.

  “Yes?”

  “I . . .” A confession rises up in his thoughts and starts to form into four simple words. I lost my gun.

  “What is it?”

  Harkness stalls, his confession caught like a fish bone. “I think there’s something going on in town, something we need to look into. About drugs.”

  The captain tilts his head slightly. “What kind of drugs?”

  “Third Rail. It’s some kind of smart drug, just starting to get popular. Our monument smasher had some in his car. And so did the guy I brought in for DUI this afternoon.”

  “That’s not good, not at all.” The captain sits down. “Where’s this going on?”

  “Old Nagog Tavern, out on Forest Road.”

  “What’re they doing out there—dealing?”

  “Not sure yet. There may be a lab.”