by Rory Flynn
The river takes what it’s given.
After a few minutes in the kayak, Harkness sees the back of the familiar white saltbox with its plastic-covered windows gliding into view—once the Old Nagog Tavern, now Freedom Farm.
From this angle, Harkness can see a deck jutting out toward the river. It’s crowded with bulging black trash bags, stacks of newspapers, and bicycles tossed in a jumbled heap.
Setting his paddle down carefully, Harkness reaches into the inside pocket of his leather jacket for the metal case. He cracks it open, takes out the digital wiretap, and points it at the cables running along the eaves of the house. In a few moments, dozens of computer screens flicker into view, stacked up like a game of solitaire.
Harkness jumps from screen to screen, looking for any shred of evidence that might link Dex to the death of Captain Munro. In the story that he tells himself, Captain Munro came to the house to tell Dex and his friends to get out. Unable to stop himself, Dex or one of his crew attacked the captain, knocked him out, then threw him off the back porch into the river to float down to the town mill.
But there’s a second explanation. Maybe the captain just came to the house to get his “rent,” only to be told that another cop had already collected it. The captain accused Dex of lying and threatened him. Amped up on Third Rail, Dex and his friends shoved the captain into the river and held him under the tea-colored water.
In this version, Harkness plays a role in his father’s death, a possibility that he can’t even consider.
Either way, it seems likely that Dex and his friends killed the captain. With Sergeant Dabilis running the show and Detective Ramble investigating, truth and justice will be hard to find. All Harkness wants now is revenge.
Ten minutes of going from screen to screen tells Harkness that Headless at Freedom Farm is going to be more than a backyard keg party. The comments stream:
JACCUSE: Who’s comin?
DX1: Everyone.
JACCUSE: Costumes?
DX1: Course.
JACCUSE: Liquid inspiration?
DX1: Buckets of it.
Harkness reads on, the chatter reminding him of high school guys trying to lure girls to a party in the woods. Mouse turns confident online, more like a handsome frat boy than a pocket-sized drug dealer. Dex claims that Headless at Freedom Farm will be a night that will change everyone’s life forever.
Dex’s friends spill out of the house. It takes powerful detection software to spot the digital wiretap, but Freedom Farm has it now. They’re staring up at the cluster of cable boxes and satellite dishes on the roof. Harkness puts the wiretap down. Before he can put his paddle in the water, he senses someone staring. Dex stands on the deck behind the house, lit by moonlight. He’s wearing jeans and a rumpled white shirt. He’s too far away to see Harkness in his black sweatshirt, but he can tell someone’s out there. Dex starts throwing plastic chairs from the deck out into the river.
Harkness takes a full stroke along one side of the kayak, and then the other. At the sound of churning water, Dex jumps off the deck into the weeds and disappears. Harkness is already slipping down the river, each stroke moving him further from the house. Being spotted doing surveillance is bad enough; that tonight’s visit is illegal makes it even worse. Harkness doesn’t want to explain what he’s doing on the river with an expensive wiretap and no warrant.
Harkness turns to take a last look behind him. Dex is dragging a canoe down to the riverbank like a crazed fisherman. The moonlight flashes from the canoe’s aluminum sides as he tosses it into the river and jumps in. Harkness smiles. Despite Dex’s chemical enthusiasm, Harkness is already far ahead, and in a sleek kayak instead of a clunky canoe. He digs in to put even more distance between them.
The kayak sails by empty swimming docks and glimmers of headlights from the river road. Ahead, luminous moonlight falls on white church spires and the clock tower of the town mill. Harkness turns when he hears water splashing and heavy breathing. Dex paddles so hard that every stroke raises a whirlpool. He’s barely sitting in the stern seat. He curves forward like a pale, skinny claw or an ambitious letter C reaching out his paddle on one side, then the other. He’s moving down the river at motorboat speed, coming close enough to recognize Harkness.
When all seems lost, ye must keep your head about you.
Harkness veers to the left to take the kayak down the narrow branch of the river that leads into town instead of the wider channel that leads back to the boathouse. He knows this stretch of river from when he and George used to float down the old millrace on hot summer days, gliding through the ancient wooden tunnel that runs under the town to the mill. They pushed their faces up into the rot-scented air at the top of the millrace, shouting the whole way to keep away the fear, then emerged screaming in the sunlight on the other side of town.
A cluster of lights at the edge of town comes closer but Dex is right behind him, breathing as hard and loud as a marathon runner.
High water from fall rain leaves only a sliver of air between the river and the top of the millrace, just enough room so Harkness can slip under. But the water’s too high for Dex and his canoe. Harkness takes a final stroke, then leans back as far as he can.
He enters the dark tunnel flat on his back, face up and still, eyes locked open. All Harkness hears is his rasping breathing as he floats under the town in the dark. He reaches up to grab the ceiling and urge the kayak through the black tunnel, but something cold and slimy writhes beneath his fingers. He pulls his hand back and the kayak ricochets off one wall, then another. He can’t tell where he is. The kayak should have come out on the other side of Main Street already. But he’s still staring at the rotting underside of his hometown.
A spider web brushes his face, and Harkness claws at the stale air above him. He’s floated down a hidden channel. Or there’s chicken wire blocking the far end of the millrace. He stops himself from rolling the kayak into the cold river and swimming back upstream. He takes a deep breath and waits.
When he opens his eyes, the kayak has emerged from the millrace and floats under the Main Street Bridge, where Dex stands, holding a cinderblock over his head.
Their eyes connect. Dex’s gaze narrows. He gives a dismissive shake of his head, like a clever boy losing interest in a simple game. “This is for my mother,” he shouts down, then hurls the cinderblock.
Harkness dodges to the right and the cinderblock smashes the kayak, clipping off the last couple of feet of the bow. The kayak lurches and slips underwater with the digital wiretap and his other gear, dumping Harkness into the cold river. He’s dragged downstream, swept under, sucking in mouthfuls of sour water.
Opening his eyes in the murky river, current holding him down like a vengeful hand, Harkness knows what the captain felt in his last moments. From underwater, the streetlights look like distant stars and Harkness fights his way toward them, rising and clawing for anything to hold on to. He catches hold of a rusted metal ladder bolted into the waterway’s rock walls and pulls himself up, sputtering and coughing.
He climbs up to the street. Dex is gone. Parents walk their children through town, trying out their costumes before Halloween. They don’t pay any attention to a sodden cop in SWAT team gear bent over on the sidewalk, spitting out water. They just walk on.
Anything can happen in Nagog on Headless Hallows Eve.
***
They’re counting out twenties on the wide, dusty floorboards of the loft long after midnight. While Harkness was floating on the river, then under it, Thalia was shouting into her cell phone like a telemarketer trying every angle. In the end, Mach took their offer. If they bring him twenty thousand dollars in cash tomorrow at noon, along with all of Jeet’s photos, he’ll give Harkness his gun back. To Harkness, it sounds like a good deal. They count the money, bundle it up, and put it in Harkness’s red gym bag, emptied of baseballs.
“Don’t even think of shorting Mach,” Thalia says. “He’ll chase you down if he finds twenty bucks missing.”
“Well, now I don’t. He sounded ever scarier than usual.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Harkness snaps a rubber band around a stack of cash and throws it in the bag. “It’s simple. He has my gun and we’re getting it back.”
“So what happens then?”
“What do you mean?”
“You moving back into your old apartment?” Thalia looks up with smeary eyes. The smell of breath mints gives her away—she’s been drinking at McCloskey’s down in the square.
“No.”
“Good. I don’t want to think you were just staying here . . . you know, to look for your gun.”
“You know me better than that.” Harkness wonders why Thalia’s drinking again. But he knows the answer. A meeting with Mach is enough to send anyone backsliding.
“Maybe.”
“Things are going to get a lot better soon, promise.”
“I hate promises,” she says.
“Let’s just get through our field trip to Chinatown tomorrow and take it from there.”
Thalia says nothing. When she’s painting, Thalia doesn’t hear her phone ringing or Harkness talking to her. Now she’s working with the same focus and attention. Her red hair dangles in graceful strands as she counts the cash, stacks it, and slips rubber bands from her narrow wrist to hold it together.
What holds them together remains unstated and unexplored tonight. It might be love or desperation. They wouldn’t be the first to confuse the two.
He needs Thalia tomorrow in Chinatown. That Mach still has a soft spot for her gives them some protection, but it’s not clear how much. For all Harkness knows, his slippery girlfriend’s cut a side deal.
“I’m worried you’re gonna get killed, Eddy,” Thalia blurts out. “I had a completely real dream about it last night. All this blood . . .” She holds up her hand and turns her eyes toward the dusty floorboards.
“That’s not going to happen,” Harkness says.
Harkness sits at the kitchen table with his laptop in front of him. It’s late, the ill-defined hours between night and day when most of the city sleeps. He clicks on the inexplicable photo and studies it like a crime scene, then picks up his cell phone.
“What, Eddy.” George’s voice is low and tired.
“Thought you might want to head down to Chinatown,” Harkness says. “You know, go to some dive bar for some drinks and a bowl of phô.”
“Some what?”
“Vietnamese noodles.”
“Are you drunk, Eddy?”
“No. Haven’t had a drop. I’m back to Straight Ed again.”
“Then why are you calling me in the middle of the night to ask me about some kind of noodles I never heard of?”
“Oh, you’ve heard of them,” Eddy says. “I’m looking at a picture of you right now, sitting in a phô place with some friends. Zero Room, heard of it? Located at Zero Beach Street in Chinatown. There’s a bowl right in front of you. And a bunch of criminals all around you.”
The phone goes quiet except for George’s slow breathing.
“Shit, Eddy. Where’d you get that?”
“Guy I know.”
“Get rid of it, bro. Please.”
“Tell me what you were doing there.”
“Take a look at that photo. I think you’ll see a guy with gray hair and glasses sitting somewhere near me.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s District Court Judge Jack Callahan,” George says. “I went to that shitty bar right before our bankruptcy hearing to slip that asshole five thousand bucks cash.”
“Why?”
“He told me I had to. Said otherwise he’d hold us to sixty cents on the dollar. Or worse, shut down the company.”
“So you were on a family mercy mission?”
“I’m not proud of paying him off, Eddy. Not at all.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“Everyone does something that they shouldn’t,” George says. “That night was my mistake. Tell me that you’re getting rid of the picture. You’re my brother, Eddy.”
Harkness stops himself from correcting George. After the captain’s confession, they’re half-brothers, but that distinction hardly matters now. He deletes the photo. “It’s gone, George.”
“Thanks.”
“But from here on in, you’re on the straight and narrow, right?”
“No worries. I’m not following in Dad’s footsteps, Eddy.”
“Neither am I.” Harkness clicks the phone off and stares across the loft at the red gym bag stuffed with cash.
26
THE OLD HANCOCK BUILDING rises off to the left, a stalwart gray office building upstaged by its taller, flashier brother, the mirrored Hancock Tower, more Miami than Boston. Harkness remembers the rhyme about the lights at the top.
“Steady blue, clear view,” he says. “Flashing blue, clouds due. Steady red, rain ahead. Flashing red, snow instead.”
“What?” Thalia rouses in the passenger seat of the battered tan Chevy Malibu that Harkness requisitioned from Narco-Intel.
“The weather, according to the Old Hancock Building.”
“Oh.” Thalia stares out at the Boston skyline like she’s never noticed it before.
“When the Sox finally won the Series, both lights flashed for the first time. Flashing blue and red, when the Curse of the Bambino is dead!”
“Well, that won’t be happening any time soon, will it?” Thalia puts her hand on Harkness’s shoulder. “I mean, what lights go on when the Sox have the worst season ever?”
“I think all the lights stay off,” Harkness says. “All I know is the light is red now, so it’s going to rain. The Hancock never lies.”
A storm’s on its way, the first nor’easter of the fall, the one weathermen love to announce, sending the city running to the supermarkets and liquor stores to hoard.
Harkness pulls the Chevy past the fancy end of Newbury Street, where tourists are buying dresses that cost more than most mortgage payments. Harkness is on his way to buy his own gun back from a human trafficker with stacks of cash he took from a drug dealer. He smiles at the irony, but only for a moment.
They wind through what used to be the Combat Zone, past the site of the Liberty Tree, now a plaque on the side of the Department of Motor Vehicles. They pass crooked streets Harkness walked as a boy, then as a young punk, and finally as a cop. Each corner is laden with memories, but he’s not delving into history this morning. He’s looking forward.
Thalia’s phone rings. “It’s Marnie,” she says.
“Let your freaky little friend know we’re about to get my gun back,” Harkness says. “In case she wants to steal it again.”
Thalia clicks open her phone. “Call you back later,” she says, then closes her phone.
“Arranging for a little Redbird to celebrate if we survive?”
“Don’t start.”
“Marnie’s got problems, Thalia. Big ones. You sure you want her around?”
“What about your fat brother? He’s mean and jealous. You sure you want him around?”
“Good point,” Harkness says. “But he’s my brother. So caring about him isn’t optional.”
“Everything’s optional.”
They drive into Chinatown in silence, past community housing, tiny stores, sidewalks crowded with grim-faced women carrying bulging plastic bags, stocking up before the storm.
“Been reading about the mayoral race,” Thalia says.
“Didn’t know you followed politics.”
“Only when it might mean something to us.”
“To us?”
“Yeah, like you and me.”
Harkness doesn’t take the bait. “Look, all we have to think about now is paying Mach, getting my gun, and not getting killed.”
Thalia shrugs. “Thought you might want to know that Fitzgerald’s way ahead in the polls.”<
br />
“His campaign manager could get a dead dog elected.”
“Now that his friend’s on the way up, Mach’s going to be even more cocky. We got to be really careful, Eddy.”
“We’re being careful.”
“Not enough.” Thalia reaches into her purse and pulls out a silver handgun, chrome peeling from its stubby, scratched barrel. “Thought this might help.”
“Where the hell did you get that?” Harkness looks back and forth between the street and Thalia’s gun. It looks like a Saturday night special with its barrel cut even shorter with a hacksaw.
“Bought it from Woo-Derek.”
“Your man in the orange jacket? Neighborhood choirboy and arms dealer?”
“Yeah, him.”
“Why?”
“You’re smart and all, Eddy,” she says, “but guys like Mach don’t just make a deal and shake on it, then do what they said they’d do, like fucking Boy Scouts. They want to nail you for good.”
“So what exactly do you think you’re going to do with that thing?”
“Shoot anyone who tries to hurt you.”
“Thanks, I guess,” Harkness says. “Do you even know how to handle a gun?”
“Sure.”
“You a good shot?”
Thalia shakes her head. “Terrible.”
Harrison Avenue is packed with the lunch crowd. Harkness turns on Beach Street and drives past the medicinal herb stores and bakery windows stacked with mooncakes. The crowds thin the further they go. Harkness pulls over when he sees the unlit neon-red 0 hovering above Mr. Mach’s Zero Room at the end of a deserted block. They’re conspicuous even in the generic Chevy, his favorite undercover car.