The Patriots Club

by Christopher Reich

  “No problem. We’ll just add the charges to your city tax bill.” Franciscus eyed Bolden over the rims of his bifocals. “That, sir, was a joke. A pleasantry. You may now smile.”

  Bolden forced a smile. “Happy?”

  Franciscus set down his pen and folded his hands on the table. “Actually, Mr. Bolden, I’m anxious to learn more about you.”

  “What about me?”

  “Just a few personal details.”

  “I went over this already. What do you want me to add?”

  “Look, Mr. Bolden, I’m here to help. We don’t have to be best friends, but I think it’s a good idea for me to know a little about you.”

  Bolden was too tired to argue. “I’m a banker. I work at Harrington Weiss. Born in Iowa. Grew up in Illinois. Went to college at Princeton. Business school at Wharton. Came to the city after I finished. No, I don’t know anyone who dislikes me. And, no, I don’t believe Miss Dance has any enemies, either.” He drew himself closer to the desk. “Look, I told all of this to Detective McDonough. I’ve never seen any of these men before.”

  “But they knew all about you. Even where you were eating lunch.”

  And that he’d worked twenty-five hours a week at Butler Dining Hall.

  Bolden nodded. He knew he would have to get his head around all that later. Right now he just wanted to go home.

  Franciscus looked down at his notes again. “And this guy ‘Guilfoyle,’ he was sure you knew about something called Crown, and someone named Bobby Stillman?”

  Again, Bolden nodded. “I don’t have a clue who, or what, they were referring to.”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” said Franciscus. “I am curious about one thing. Just where’d you learn to hit a man like that? You knocked out three of his teeth. Part of me’s wondering who assaulted who. I don’t know who I should be feeling sorry for.”

  “Don’t know. Just something I picked up.”

  “No, you didn’t. That’s not something you just pick up. It’s something you’re taught. Something you practice. Tell me, where does a bright, well-educated kid like yourself learn to take down two pros?”

  Bolden looked at the stack of papers Detective Franciscus had brought in with him. By now he imagined that they’d run his prints through the system, too. It was the law that the court seals a minor’s files when he turned eighteen. “Don’t your papers tell you?”

  “That what you’re so worried about?” Franciscus closed the folder. “Nothing in here ’bout you. Anything you want to tell me . . . anything you think might help . . . you got my word it’ll stay between me and you.” When Bolden didn’t answer, he said, “Let’s start with that artwork on your shoulder. I couldn’t help but notice it when you changed shirts. Who are ‘the Reivers’? Oh, and I especially liked the second part: ‘Never Rat on Friends.’ ”

  Bolden fought the instinct to look down at his shoulder. The Reivers were family. The Reivers were friends who looked out for one another. The Reivers were all he had had when things had gotten tough. “Just some old friends,” he said.

  “Friends who need a few lessons in using a tattooing needle. Where’d you get it? Prison? Reform school? That why you worried if you checked out? Don’t worry, I’m not going to say a thing to your employer.”

  Bolden dropped his eyes. He felt himself draw back, the old distrust of police—of authority, in general—take over.

  “It’s not a crime to have belonged to a gang, Mr. Bolden,” said Franciscus. “It might help me with my work.”

  “It wasn’t a gang,” Bolden explained. “Just some guys I used to run with. That was over fifteen years ago. It’s got nothing to do with what happened tonight.”

  “And what about the gangs you work with in this neck of the woods?”

  “The gang-intervention program? It’s run out of the Boys Club. I just help organize some of the events. Raise money. That kind of thing. We held a chess match last weekend. One of the kids beat me in the second round. I didn’t make any enemies there, either.”

  “So you don’t believe that there’s a connection between your work at the Boys Club and what happened tonight?”

  “No.”

  Franciscus removed his bifocals and laid them on the table. “And that’s your last word?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Franciscus laughed tiredly. The truth, his eyes said, was a very tricky thing. “I’m going to level with you, Mr. Bolden. I’m not entirely sure you’re the innocent you make yourself out to be. I think there’s a lot more going on here than you’re letting on.” Franciscus moved his chair closer and threw his hands on the table, so that he and Bolden were face-to-face, two opponents ready to arm wrestle. “I’m going to let you in on a secret. These guys who took you for a ride, made you walk the plank . . . I’ve met men like them before. There are more and more of them these days. I call it a shadow mobilization. All kinds of special agencies cropping up. These guys come creeping through our offices every now and again, getting a pat on the back from the chief, promises of cooperation, that kind of stuff. Makes you a little scared after a while. I’ve been on the force thirty-odd years. I know a thing or two about bureaucracy, and I’m asking myself just who in Jehovah’s name is supposed to be looking after all these guys? It’s my experience that guys who’ve had their prints zapped from the systems, their pasts erased, are one of two things: spooks or contractors. Now, if they’re spooks, it’s okay. All part of the game. After all, if I can look ’em up from the Three-Four, you can be sure that someone in Iran or France or India can look ’em up, too. But that dirtbag you took apart is not affiliated with the Central Intelligence Agency, the NSA, the DIA, or any of those Joes. I can tell. My guess is that the goons who came after you tonight are, or once have been, civilian contractors.”

  Civilian contractors. It was a term that had been all over the news lately. “Like who? Kellogg Brown and Root? Halliburton? They’re builders, right? Oil work, construction, cafeterias, dry cleaning, that kind of stuff.”

  “I’d look more on the more active side of things. Security work. Bodyguards. Military trainers. You know the big players? Tidewater. Executive Resources. Milner Group. There are about twenty thousand of them over in the Middle East right now, providing security to our marines. Beefy guys in sunglasses and Kevlar vests. Weapons out the wazoo.” Franciscus shook his head. “Civilians looking after the military? Go figure that one out. Makes you wonder which side of the donkey his ass is.” Finally, he shrugged. “My question is, why are guys like this coming after you?”

  Bolden hadn’t stopped asking himself the same thing since he’d been thrown into the back of the limo downtown. He decided he didn’t like Franciscus’s tone much. He was like the rest of the cops he’d known. One hand stuck out to help you up, the other to throw the cuffs on your wrists. “But you’re going to hold him?”

  “That we are. Once his mouth’s cleaned up, we’ll ship him downtown to One PP, give him a B-number, take a picture of him that he can give to his mother. Like I said, illegal possession of a firearm in New York State draws a mandatory one-year sentence. Throw in the cell phone, he’ll get to know the Department of Corrections better than he’d like.” Franciscus looked at him a moment longer. “You aren’t afraid these men are going to come after you?”

  “I can look after myself.”

  “Sure? We’re here to help.”

  “Yeah,” said Bolden, with more certainty than he felt. “They know they got the wrong guy. I don’t think they’ll be coming after me anymore.”

  Franciscus pushed back his chair and stood. “If there’s nothing else you’d like to add to your statement, you’re free to go. One of the officers downstairs will give you a lift home. Anything else comes to mind, give me a call. Here.”

  Bolden took the business card and slipped it into his pocket. He wasn’t sure whether to say thanks or screw you. All he knew was that he was happy to leave the police station.

  “And Mr. Bolden,” said Fra
nciscus, so quietly that he almost didn’t catch it. “Be careful. I don’t know what game you’re mixed up in. But it ain’t patty-cake.”

  9

  It was still night when Thomas Bolden left the Thirty-fourth Precinct. At six A.M., the sky was somber and dark, daylight not due for another hour. Seated in the front seat of a police cruiser, he rolled down the window. An icy gust lashed his cheeks, bracing him. The temperature had dropped since he’d been inside the station. The air had a bite to it. Scattered snowflakes drifted past. The long-promised storm was on its way.

  They traveled down Columbus Avenue, then cut through the park at Ninety-fifth Street. Bolden stretched, then pulled his jacket tight around himself. His body was sore, his muscles groaning from the beating he’d taken. But his mind was alert, resilient, tracing a path back through the events of the night: the interrogation at the police station, the fight on 145th Street, Guilfoyle’s questioning, the ride with Wolf and Irish, all of it beginning with the attack itself. Somewhere a million years ago, he’d been standing on a podium inside a packed ballroom, accepting the most meaningful honor of his life. Closing his eyes, he could feel the audience’s applause—not hear it, but feel it. Three hundred pairs of hands. A tidal wave of appreciation.

  Nothing happens without a reason, he was thinking.

  Six years he’d worked for the Boys Club. In that time, he’d spent countless evenings and Saturdays at the facility. He’d raised over a million dollars in contributions. He’d started a successful gang-intervention program. It wasn’t in any way arrogant to say that he deserved to be named Man of the Year.

  It was a rule of his that nothing happened of its own accord. That things happened that were meant to happen. It had nothing to do with fate or predestination or karma, and everything to do with cause and effect. A real-world application of Newton’s Third Law. There was no action without a reaction.

  Conversely, there could be no reaction without an action.

  If he was in trouble now, it was because he’d done something to deserve it.

  And yet, he could think of nothing he’d done that might have brought him to the attention of Guilfoyle and the organization he worked for. Civilian contractors, Detective Franciscus had said, the more active side of things.

  Several of Bolden’s clients were active in the defense industry, but they were hardly the type to send out armed crushers to do their bidding. They were large multinational investment firms peopled by the superstars of the financial world. Corporations whose boards of directors boasted former heads of state, Nobel laureates, and corporate chieftains of companies like IBM, GE, Procter & Gamble—companies that functioned as states within a state. In six years, he’d never known their conduct to be less than strenuously scrupulous. To the best of his knowledge, none owned any companies that could be labeled contractors.

  Come on. Think.

  Bolden sighed. They had the wrong man. That was all there was to it.

  He sat up. He was no longer so tired. “Wired” was more like it. His eye wandered to the bank of hardware installed beneath the car’s dashboard. Some kind of computer equipped with a keyboard, a color touch screen, and a two-way radio that looked powerful enough to pick up the Reykjavík PD.

  “Pretty nifty,” he said to his driver, a Sergeant Sharplin. “What do you got in here?”

  “It’s a Triton Five-Fifty. She’s a sweet piece of work. A mobile data terminal’s the heart of the system. It connects me to whatever law-enforcement database I need. I can plug in a name, a vehicle-identification number, and see if my man’s got a warrant outstanding or if a vehicle is stolen.”

  “Just local databases or does it go national?”

  “We’re tapped in at the federal level, too. Just think of it as an Internet terminal. We got access to TECS, that’s the Treasury Department, DEA, even the National Crime Information Center. If you’ve got the right clearance, you can even tap into the FBI.”

  “All from this car?” It was a far cry from the last time he’d ridden in a cop car. But then his view had been from the backseat.

  “You betcha.”

  Bolden wondered what he’d get if he punched in Guilfoyle’s name. There was no point. Guilfoyle. Wolf. Irish. All of them were aliases.

  Bolden yawned and looked back out his window.

  Nothing happens without a reason.

  He wasn’t just thinking about his present circumstance, but about the past.

  It was ten o’clock and the bell for second period had already rung, but Tommy Bolden, fifteen, a tenth grader at Oliver Wendell Holmes High, was nowhere near school. Sitting at a table in Burger King, he took a bite of his double-cheese extra onions and chased it down with a gulp of Coke. It was Thursday, and he was serving the second day of a three-day suspension.

  One by one, he counted the cigarette burns decorating the tabletop. The knuckles of his right hand were covered with scabs, his lower lip swollen from where he’d gotten hit. Next time, he’d go for the knees earlier, he decided. It was stupid to trade punches with a guy who outweighed you by fifty pounds.

  “Dude, you’re sitting on our bench. Move it!”

  This time it had been a bench. Last time it was a locker. Everyone had their turf, and the new kid had to learn a lesson. Screw ’em all, he thought. He would sit where he wanted. He would use the locker assigned to him. If they wanted to fight about it, that was their problem. The thought of Kuziak, lying there on the ground with his jelly belly and his jarhead’s crew cut, wimpering about his busted knee, made Bolden even angrier. Served the Polack right. Yet, it was Bolden who had been suspended because he wouldn’t walk away from a fight.

  He slammed his fist on the table, and when the manager came over, he stared at him until he went away.

  A kid could learn to count going through all the schools he’d attended. River Trails. Aurora Elementary. Jackson Middle School. Frazier Heights. Birmingham. Eighteen schools between second and ninth grade.

  Prior to second grade, he’d been homeschooled by his mother. Every morning he’d sit at the kitchen table and do his reading, writing, and arithmetic, his mother coming in every half hour to check on him. It was just the two of them, and he liked it that way. Liked the attention. Being the man of the house. He also liked how she tickled his feet when they lay together on the couch watching TV. He didn’t want to share her with anyone.

  They moved constantly, not from county to county, which is what happened when you were in foster care, but from state to state. California, Arkansas, Missouri, New York. Often, they’d leave in a rush, packing quickly and driving off in the middle of the night. Once they didn’t even have time to gather up his toys, not even his Green Beret GI Joe.

  The thought of his mother left him unsettled. It was her energy he remembered most. She was always on the move, constantly in motion. He wasn’t even sure what she looked like anymore, other than that she had long auburn hair and pale skin that was soft to the touch. He’d lost all his pictures of her, along with his clothes, his comic books, and his hockey cards, during a messy escape from one of his foster dads. Mike, the auto mechanic, who liked to wrestle a little too intensely for a ten-year-old’s taste. He couldn’t remember the color of her eyes, or how she smiled, or even the sound of her laugh. The years had left her hardly more than a blur, a shadow dashing out of arm’s reach.

  Scarfing the rest of his burger, Bolden left his wrapper and what remained of his drink on the table and went outside. He was finished with school. Finished with foster care, too, for that matter. He’d had enough of the quarreling and the fights. He was sick of 250-pound men who got hard-ons when they played tackle football.

  Tiny Phil Grabowski was waiting at the corner. “Hey, Tommy!” he called.

  Bolden gave him a high five, then wrapped his arm around his neck and brought his head to his chest. “Noogie, dude. Noogie,” he said, razzing his hair.

  “Cut it out, man,” said Philly, fighting his way loose. “You’re embarrassing me.”

&n
bsp; Phil Grabowski was a sad kid, way short and skinny, and always in some kind of funk. He didn’t look old enough to have such a terrible case of acne, but the guy’s face was one big zit. His personality wasn’t much to write home about either. Mostly, he pouted about his parents getting divorced, or talked about what he was going to eat when he got his braces off. Still, he was here—and not in school, where he was supposed to be—and that made Phil Grabowski his friend.

  “We really gonna do it?” Philly asked. “I mean, you’re not serious, are you? It’s too hairy, even for you.”

  “How else you plan on earning a hundred bucks? Concert’s Friday. I, for one, am not missing the Stones.” Bolden started playing the air guitar, singing “Brown Sugar.” He was dressed in Levi’s and a Rolling Stones T-shirt, the one with the pair of flaming lips that was the logo for the ’74 North American tour. His jeans were pressed. The shirt was old and fit snugly, but it was clean. Bolden did his own laundry, made his own meals, and generally looked after himself. His newest foster mom had said from the start she “wasn’t there to be no one’s slave.”

  No, thought Bolden, she was just there to collect her four hundred dollars a month from the state for giving Tommy a cot to sleep on in the same room as six other kids. White trash. Soon she’d be nothing more than a figure in his rearview mirror. Her and everybody else in the Land of Lincoln. He didn’t need the money to go see the Stones. He needed it to get the hell out of Dodge. He was leaving Chicago, once and for all.

  Nodding his head, he led the way up Brookhurst. The sky was overcast, threatening rain. A chill wind blew a crumpled pack of cigarettes down the sidewalk. Bolden scooped it up to check if there was anything inside. “Dud,” he said, and chucked the pack over his shoulder.