Third Rail

by Rory Flynn

  “Harkness! Catch.” Another batch of stars whizzes by, and Harkness reaches up instinctively with his fielding hand. Searing pain drops him to his knees on the muddy path. A pale finger lies in the mud in front of him. Blood drips from the red-tipped stump where his index finger used to be.

  When Harkness closes his hand, the blood pumping from the crimson stump of his severed finger slows, but only a little. He presses his left hand deep in the pocket of his jacket. He clicks his radio on with his right hand, requests backup and EMTs, tells them he’s injured. But no one responds.

  Harkness’s head lowers toward the ground. The field darkens. His blood-slick hand throbs. His chest burns. Warm blood drains out his sleeve like rainwater. He bends down to take a couple of deep breaths, then stands, swaying in the rain.

  Mouse is gone, disappeared into the mist.

  Harkness walks toward the party, gritting his teeth against the pain, eyes locked on the bonfire. On a low stage, high schoolers sing “We Are the Champions” and dive into the mud. They don’t notice a policeman staggering past, leaving a thin line of blood behind him.

  There aren’t any ghosts at Headless at Freedom Farm, just idols. The white tent is crowded with Zuckerbergs in gray hoodies, unshaven Franzens in tortoiseshell glasses, and bandana-wrapped David Foster Wallaces carrying well-thumbed copies of Infinite Jest. At the back, Thoreau leans on his walking stick, talking to Louisa May Alcott. On the other side of the tent, Harkness sees a couple of raven-haired Sontags, a star-spangled Wonder Woman, a Wurtzel dispensing candy Prozac from a bucket, and a mono-browed Frida Kahlo with a moon-faced Diego Rivera straining on a leash.

  Harkness recognizes faces in the costumed crowd. Teachers, entrepreneurs, the intelligentsia of Cambridge, Boston, and further afield, they’re all talking, their blurted words and frantic gestures giving away the real reason they’re standing under a wedding tent in a rain-soaked field on Halloween night—free drugs.

  An emo kid wearing silver boxer shorts and a hat with Mercury wings runs past carrying a trashcan of burning leaves, sparks trailing behind him like a human comet. He throws the can in the dark river and stares at the sizzling, steaming water as if he’s accomplished something brave and important.

  Dex steps out from beneath the tent. “Hey! Look who’s here! Who invited you?” he crows into a bullhorn.

  “Party’s over.”

  Dex laughs. “No way, just getting started.”

  “Now, Dex. I’m shutting it down.”

  Dex shakes his head, wet strands of yellow hair plastered to his face. He takes a few steps forward. “Get out of here, fake cop,” he says, bullhorn distorting his voice. “Been planning this for months.”

  “Small-town drug dealer,” Harkness says. “That how you want your daughter to think of you?”

  “Shut up about my daughter,” he says.

  “She’s not going to be your daughter much longer.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “The state doesn’t like to see kids stuck in a dark hole in the wall.”

  Dex takes this news in.

  Three men step out from the tent and stand behind him. They’re wearing suits, not costumes. For a moment, Harkness thinks pain is making him hallucinate, but Mach’s goons are real. Of course they’re here, protecting their boss’s interests.

  The less addled superheroes drift away from the tent to their cars. The high schoolers jump off the stage and head toward the woods. But the hardcore fans circle around to see what Dex is up to now. They’re entrepreneurs, digerati, grad students, winners of prizes and grants. They’re airplanes flying far above the mundane world of waitress jobs and parking meters. But on Third Rail, they’re just drug hungry and looking for a new thrill.

  Dex throws the bullhorn to the side and holds out his right hand. One of Mach’s thugs reaches beneath his jacket and slaps a gun into his palm. Lit by the flickering light of the glowing bonfire, Dex’s friends cheer and circle around to watch his latest audacious distraction.

  For a moment Harkness thinks he’s back on the Brookline Avenue Bridge, surrounded by jeering Sox fans.

  “Put that down, Dex,” he says. “Now.” Harkness turns to the side and radios for backup. No one answers.

  Harkness wipes his eyes with the back of his blood-washed wrist and stares through the rain at Dex walking toward him, white shirt plastered to his skin, rain-tangled yellow hair dangling in his face, gun in hand. He’s smiling off in the distance, Third Rail already rewriting this scene to transform him into a superhero.

  Harkness clenches his ruined left hand and shoves it deep in the pocket of his leather jacket. He’s lightheaded and his legs shake like he’s been running for hours.

  “Put the gun down now,” Harkness says, “and this is all over.”

  Dex walks closer. He’s armed and dangerous. And he’s not obeying clear instructions shouted by an officer. Deadly force is allowable.

  Harkness draws his Glock and feels its familiar weight in his hand. “Stop,” he shouts.

  “What are you going to do, shoot me with your plastic gun, fake cop?”

  “Last warning.” Harkness raises his Glock, clicks off the safety, and aims.

  “Fuck you.” Dex lifts his gun.

  Harkness fires, and the explosion echoes across the yard. A red rip opens in the thigh of Dex’s jeans and he drops to the ground. He kneels and stares at the wound as if he can think it away.

  Called in by Watt, State Police helicopters spin on the horizon.

  “Stay. Right. There.” Harkness wants the incident to end now with the State Police hauling Dex in. But Dex struggles to rise from the mud, turned tenacious by Third Rail.

  Dex walks toward him, teeth clenched, leg dragging.

  Harkness’s Glock is steady in his right hand while his left drains a steady stream of blood.

  “Get out of here, now. All of you,” Harkness shouts at the last clumps of bystanders. They run out from under the tent and into the heavy rain, slipping in the mud as they race to their cars.

  Dex walks closer, waving his gun.

  Just stop, Harkness thinks.

  Harkness aims, inhales, and holds his breath. He pulls the trigger. The shot hits high on the shoulder and knocks Dex on his back in the mud.

  Dex stares up at the roiling gray sky, rain beating on his face. His eyes widen with surprise and confusion, blood soaking his white shirt. He rises and staggers toward Harkness, Third Rail telling him to keep going.

  As he trudges toward Harkness, Dex raises his gun and fires a shot that burns past Harkness and into the woods.

  Enough. Harkness fires and hits Dex above the right eye. A thick wind of scalp, blood, bone, and clots of brain sprays behind him. Dex gives a contorted smile, his face an abandoned storefront. Then he falls back on the muddy ground.

  Some people are too smart for their own damn good.

  ***

  Except for the ticking of freezing rain on the field, all is silent as Dex lies motionless in the mud and Harkness stands, gun in hand. He clicks his useless radio. “Man down, Forest Road. Request ambulance.”

  The last partygoers rush to their cars, their rain-soaked costumes flapping in the wind.

  Dex stares, his wide-open eyes unmoving, at the black sky and the lights beaming down from the helicopters. Mach’s thugs approach beneath three black umbrellas, as if Dex’s funeral is already under way and they’ve come to pay their respects. One reaches down to pluck his gun from Dex’s hand. Then they hurry across the dark field toward the barn, passing Harkness as if he’s just as dead.

  Harkness’s stomach lurches and he drops on his knees into the mud.

  Thalia warned him that Mach was working an angle. Ever the businessman, Mach saw a new opportunity in Third Rail, so different from other drugs. And much more lucrative.

  Mach’s thugs cross the field like a trio of clever crows flying toward a shiny silver nest.

  Mach gave Harkness back his gun so he would clear away a business
obstacle—Dex. As Harkness lowers his head, the Glock’s barrel presses on his forehead like the warm finger of a perverse priest. With one pull of the trigger, he could join his fathers, one clever, the other tempted.

  When he finally looks up, Harkness watches Mach’s thugs joking and pushing each other, on the way to a new payoff. They’ll bring Third Rail to the city, finding new markets and users. Mach has the vision, organization, and charisma to turn Third Rail from an invisible menace to a name brand among the smart and daring. And soon he’ll have hundreds of full vials, and binders of Dex’s hard-won chemical secrets will tell him how to make more.

  Harkness stands and wavers, almost falling back in the mud. He turns toward the barn and waits until the thugs clump onto the threshold.

  One of the thugs pulls his leg back to kick the door in. Harkness raises his Glock and fires in the air to get their attention. When they turn, he takes his ruined left hand from his jacket pocket and raises a bloodied middle finger. Even from across the field, it’s clear that they’re confused, wondering why a half-dead cop would dare to piss them off. In unison, they reach inside their jackets for their guns.

  Harkness levels his gun and swings it toward the back of the barn. He sends one shot across the field, then another. Nothing happens. The thugs are pointing their guns now. He pulls the trigger and the third shot hits metal. The barn explodes in a fireball that lights up the field and sends planks and bodies flying like cardboard.

  When he left the gas whistling from the ruined burners, Harkness figured the world would be better off without the secrets of Third Rail.

  Even better without Mach’s thugs.

  ***

  A State Police officer scoops up Harkness’s severed finger and puts it in a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. An EMT wraps his bleeding hand with white bandages, tightens a tourniquet around his wrist. Watt runs toward Harkness and says something he can’t hear over the helicopters and the ringing in his ears. He puts his arm around Harkness and helps him toward the helicopter.

  “You’re gonna be fine,” Watt shouts.

  Harkness nods, exhausted. His shoulder aches and he pushes aside his jacket to reveal his blood-slick shirt. A throwing star juts below his collarbone like a silver latch. Harkness stops and tries to pull it out, but it’s stuck. The warm metal turns slippery with blood pulsing from the deep rip in his chest.

  One of the EMTs runs toward him. His face whitens when he sees Harkness’s jacket open, his good hand struggling to pull out the star. He shakes his head in an urgent no.

  Harkness tastes salty blood, then nothing.

  30

  FINNED AND FIRM with muscle, Harkness swims through the murk like a primordial night creature forever on the move.

  On the riverbank Thalia Havoc waits with her box of brushes and bag of dope, carnival-haired Marnie sprawled in the mud next to her like a Technicolor catfish. The Sweathog and Ted Williams play catch on the banks.

  He passes through Nagog, where clever Red Harkness sits at a desk stuffed with money spilling out of every drawer. Robert Hammond perches at the top of the town monument. Harkness’s mother and sister trudge up a mountain, topped by a wooden podium where Henry David Thoreau speaks to the crowd, wielding his walking stick like a mighty sword.

  Harkness swims past a cornfield where Little Dorothy tap-dances, smoking wreckage strewn around her. Nine redcoats carry their severed heads, yellow teeth chattering. Glock 17s fall like hard rain. But Harkness can’t stop to catch them. He has to keep swimming.

  ***

  Harkness opens his eyes for a moment. Patrick’s slumped in an orange plastic chair, a vase of red flowers on the table next to him. He’s encircled by a personal galaxy of newspapers, coffee cups, and food wrappers.

  Patrick rouses and rushes toward him. “He’s awake, he’s awake!”

  Harkness closes his eyes again and dives back into the murk.

  ***

  Chest wound. Perforated heart casing. Punctured lung. Trauma. Massive blood loss. Partial digit reattachment. Nosocomial infection.

  ***

  Harkness wakes in a blazingly white room.

  Candace sits in the orange chair where Patrick was sitting just a minute ago. There are new flowers in a vase on the table next to her.

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “What, Eddy?” She rises slowly, as if she might scare him away.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re awake.” She stands and walks toward him, the chains on her engineer boots rattling. “Sorry for what?”

  “For shooting Dex,” he says, then wonders whether Dex’s party was just part of his nightmare. “I shot him, didn’t I?”

  Candace nods slowly. “Yeah, you did, Eddy.”

  “Is he dead?”

  She nods, presses her eyes closed.

  “I’m sorry, Candace.”

  She cries, tears streaming down her face. “It’s his own stupid fault,” she says. “Got in way too deep.” She touches his hand, the one that isn’t encased in bandages. “You didn’t shoot Dex. You saved May.”

  “That’s one way to think about it.”

  “That’s the only way I think about it.”

  Harkness stares at the city lights outside the window.

  “Can’t carry around guilt, Eddy,” Candace says. “Dad taught me that.”

  “Where am I?”

  “Mass General. Been here for about a week. In and out of it. Mostly out.”

  Before Candace can say more, the room dims and he’s swimming again.

  ***

  When Harkness opens his eyes, Commissioner Lattimore paces around the room, past new flowers and Mylar balloons. He’s wearing a black suit and white shirt, carrying a newspaper folded under his arm. His frenetic energy multiplies in the small hospital room. Harkness just stares and wonders if he’ll ever be able to move that fast again.

  “Harkness! You’re awake!” Commissioner Lattimore leans down. “Did you know that good news has a positive effect on recovery outcomes?”

  “No, sir,” Harkness says, his unused voice cracking.

  “It’s true. There’s good data on it. Been reading about it online. So I was going to wait to tell you after you get out of here. But seems better to tell you now.” Commissioner Lattimore leans closer. “We want you back, Harkness. To lead Narco-Intel again. Are you in?”

  “Of course,” Harkness says. “I’d be proud to.”

  The commissioner waves the newspaper in front of him. “I’ve been trying to get you back for months,” he says. “But this pissed-off chump was making noises about becoming mayor and throwing us all out. Got the whole BPD distracted, playing defense, trying to save our jobs. Not a problem now. Check out this morning’s Herald. Definitely game over.”

  Harkness stares at the cover, trying to decipher the photos. The first shows the ashen face of City Councilor John Fitzgerald, backlit like a deer by the flash, one hand trying to shield his face as he walks out the front door of his campaign headquarters. Below is one of Jeet’s photos, showing Mach and Fitzgerald with Whitey Bulger and their other hard-guy friends.

  The headline—FITZEY ENDS MAYOR RUN AFTER MOB TIES REVEALED.

  “Nice photo, huh?”

  “Yes,” Harkness says, thinking of Jeet. “It’s a great photo. A classic.”

  ***

  He writes a book in his head, Twice, imagining every line and even envisioning the indigo cover with two clouds printed on it, one white, one black. The book is about birth and death, love and hate, rise and fall, freeze and melt, war and peace. During his long swim Harkness has plenty of time to plot it all out.

  He lost his gun and found it. He loved Thalia and let her go. His two fathers died. Two Doyle brothers held Pauley Fitz over the Pike. Mouse and his brother served Dex. A missing hand, a severed finger.

  Harkness opens his eyes. “Twice,” he says.

  Candace looks up from her magazine and tosses it aside. She picks up her cell phone. “Told your sister I’d call if
you woke up.”

  Harkness waves her toward him and she puts the phone down.

  “It all happens twice,” he says.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Been thinking about it. Got to remember.”

  “See that big bag?” Candace points to a puffy clear plastic bag hovering above Harkness.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “That’s saline solution. Keeps you hydrated until you can go out for a beer with me.”

  “Okay.”

  “But that one next to it, the smaller one?”

  “Yeah?”

  “That’s called meta-morphadroxadrine,” Candace says, tongue wrapping around every syllable. “The nurses told me about it. It’s like super-duper synthetic morphine from Merck! So just know this, Straight Ed. You’re ridiculously high right now. Ironical, yes?”

  Harkness laughs and feels a burst of pain in his chest.

  Candace shakes her head. “Do not laugh. Sorry. Laughing comes next week, if you’re better. And if you are, I’ll let you hold my hand.”

  “The real one or the plastic one?”

  “My real one.”

  Harkness looks into her eyes. “What’s going on?”

  “That throwing-star thing grazed your heart lining. They had to restart you. By the way, they tried really hard to reattach your finger but it didn’t work.”

  “Nine fingers,” he says. “Nine headless redcoats.”

  “Enough with the coincidences and numbers,” Candace says. “After listening to Dex go on and on, I can tell you this—things only seem connected because we connect them. Or because we’re high.”

  “Oh.”

  “So don’t quit your day job to become an Internet cult leader.”

  “I like my day job.”

  “Yeah, I hear you’re back in Boston,” she says. “Your friend Watt’s been around here a lot. Flirting with me shamelessly, though I completely iced him, by the way. But he told me a lot of stories about you. Didn’t know you were such a rock star.”

  “Me neither.”

  She walks back to her chair. “Here’s the proof.” She holds up the Globe. “It’s from last week. Watt saved it for you.” The grainy cover photo, taken from a State Police helicopter, shows the dilapidated white house by the river, the bonfire’s blackened circle, and the sagging white party tent. Fire hoses stretch across the rain-gutted field to the shell of the burnt-out barn.