Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  The commissioner turns around to shout directly at them. “We ought to be getting the city up and running again. Instead, this guy’s got us standing around like the National Guard at Kent State.”

  Deaf Kid looks confused by the commissioner’s anger. Harkness signs that he’ll explain later. It’ll be a crash course in Boston politics.

  When Councilman John Fitzgerald had to drop out of the preliminary election thanks to worse-than-usual corruption charges, Michael O’Mara left the helm of his venture-capital firm and elbowed into the race. Parish-loads of church ladies all over the city voted for O’Mara because his name sounded Catholic. We Love MOM!—his campaign slogan, spread via every medium from bumper sticker to Twitter—made political analysts cringe. But it helped a dark-horse candidate eke out a razor-thin second-place win in the preliminary election and then a surprise upset against front-runner Reed in the general.

  Lattimore supported Reed from the start, saying he was a friend of law enforcement. Now that O’Mara’s mayor, the rumors around Narco-Intel say Lattimore’s a short-timer.

  Lattimore holds out a clipboard. “You used to be a beat cop around here, right, Harkness?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, take a whack at my comments. They need to be more, you know, local and spontaneous. Add some real stuff.” He points to his aides in the jump seat, Central Casting prepsters in blue blazers and white shirts, their striped ties varying slightly. “The Two Stooges spend most of their time playing squash at the Harvard Club.”

  The aides roll their eyes skyward. A file cabinet full of abuse comes with every BPD admin job.

  As the SUV pulls over in a muddy street, protesters circle the car. They’re carrying signs that read We Are Boston and We Matter Too. Harkness spots a short, bearded guy in round sunglasses standing in the background waving a sign. Mouse. Harkness takes a closer look but he’s gone.

  “The smarty-pants in Cambridgeport get a little water in their basements and the mayor’s there. The Lower South End gets pounded, a dozen people die, and the mayor doesn’t even show up, ever. Property over people. That’s the line on O’Mara out on the street. Done with that speech?”

  Harkness hands him the clipboard.

  “Thanks.” Lattimore reaches for his door handle. “Okay, people. Showtime. Everyone dial it up to ten—eleven if you go that high. Stooges, try not to piss anyone off.”

  Lattimore takes a bullhorn from his driver and jumps on the hood of the SUV. The BPD regulars close in to protect him but he waves them away, takes a quick glance at his clipboard, and launches in:

  “I’m Commissioner Lattimore of the Boston Police Department and I’m here to tell you that something’s very wrong in the Lower South End.”

  Lattimore would reject the comparison, but Harkness senses a Kennedy vibe in the air, the good part of the legacy, the tough Irish honesty from before politics devolved into optics and messaging. The crowd falls silent.

  “You’re not being treated fairly and I’m sorry. Storms cause chaos. Be assured, our patrolmen aren’t here to guard property. They’re here to help people. They’re here to help you.”

  Deafening silence from the dubious protesters.

  “We’re setting up a command post right over there in the lobby of the Hotel Blackstone. We’ll escort residents back into their apartments as soon as the building inspector says they’re safe. In the meantime, we’ll be distributing all the aid that we can—water, food, and emergency funds. And we’ll be working in close partnership with the mayor—”

  Scattered boos here. The new mayor isn’t earning any political capital in the Lower South End—but that’s not his constituency.

  “There’s only one Boston, friends. Lots of neighborhoods. But only one city.”

  Lattimore gives Harkness a nod for this line, which gets scattered cheers.

  “We have to stick together during tough times like this. Boston Strong, right? It may not seem fair to you—some parts of the city are fine, yours got hit hardest of all. That’s the way storms work. They’re not fair. No one predicted this hurricane would hit here at all, but we can all help fix its aftermath and rebuild. Fairly and impartially. And I guarantee you, some good will come from this terrible storm.”

  He nods toward Deaf Kid.

  “As proof, take a look at a young man from your neighborhood, born into chaos and poverty. His mother never named him, but his friends call him Vince. Father was killed in a shooting in Dudley Square. His uncle was a dealer who overdosed on heroin. Vince barely escaped the flood.”

  A couple of guys shout, “He shoots, he scores!” Harkness gives a small wave to shut them up.

  “And now the Boston Police Department is going to remove him from the custody of the Department of Youth Offenders—because, after all, what was his crime? He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We’ll be paying for his care at the world-renowned Hamilton School for the Deaf in Waltham out of our educational fund.”

  Lattimore gives Harkness an astonished glance at this new paragraph. Harkness and the rest of the crowd applaud the commissioner’s generosity.

  “Because we believe that any neighborhood is only as thriving as its most vulnerable resident. And as this neighborhood recovers from a terrible storm, we’ll be doing all that we can to help everyone in need. Thank you.”

  The crowd huddles around Harkness and Deaf Kid, who clings to him like a marsupial. Lattimore sidles up behind him and whispers, “So where’s this so-called educational fund?”

  “Thought you might know, sir,” Harkness says.

  “I ought to take it out of Narco-Intel’s operating funds.”

  “Sure,” Harkness says, “if you want to explain another spike in heroin overdoses.”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll bury it in next year’s budget.”

  “The Hamilton School’s expecting him at three this afternoon,” Harkness says.

  “What?”

  “The Globe’s meeting you there. Texted a guy I know. They’re doing a feature. News channels too.”

  “Great publicity,” the Stooges blurt in unison.

  Harkness nods.

  “Best of all,” Lattimore says, warming to the idea, “O’Mara ends up looking like a heartless bastard.”

  7

  THE BLOOD-RED HORSES spread through the city as Patrick presses a key on his laptop in the Narco-Intel conference room. It’s almost midnight and everyone has gone home except Harkness, Patrick, and Esther—the ad hoc Dark Horse task force.

  “What’re we looking at?” Esther drinks black coffee from her chipped blue BPD mug.

  “Known Dark Horse sightings that came in from the network. The darker the horses are, the more confident we are that the ­data’s good. Darkest ones show confirmed overdoses.” Patrick points to the first screen, where there’s only a small cluster in the Lower South End. “See here? Starts showing up in June.” He clicks and the numbers increase and darken, filling the neighborhood. “Really hits the streets in July and August. And then . . .” He clicks again and the scatter pattern of dark red horses dwindles with each click. “Ka-boom. Pretty much disappears after the flood.”

  Esther shrugs. “What’s so weird about that?”

  “What’s so weird about you?”

  “You’re up next, Esther,” Harkness says. “Just let him finish.” He’s already regretting putting Patrick and Esther on special assignment together.

  “Since when have you seen a drug that stays inside a neighborhood like that, girl?” Patrick says. “People may be all buy local and shit, but that’s for microgreens and heirloom squash, not junk. This Dark Horse stuff pounded the Lower South End. Then it’s like game over when the flood hits.”

  “Flood must’ve washed out a big supplier,” she says.

  Patrick shakes his head. “The pros always bounce back.”

  “What does this all mean, people?” Harkness asks.

  “Dark Horse is a neighborhood threat that’s run its course,” Patrick s
ays. “It’s old-style black tar someone dragged in from California, and it’s over. The data don’t lie, boss.”

  “Not so fast.” Esther unplugs Patrick’s laptop and plugs hers in. “Been taking a look at it in the lab.”

  “You mean snorting it up your pointy nose,” Patrick says.

  Harkness raises his hand. “Enough. You’re on the same team. Got it?”

  “Okay, okay.” Patrick rolls his eyes.

  Esther unleashes a virtuosic flurry of keystrokes and pulls up the lab results. “On the left, Dark Horse. On the right, weapons-grade heroin from Afghanistan via Baltimore. It’s the purest known heroin found on the street in the last decade. The gold standard for junk.” Esther looks at Harkness and Patrick. “The difference?”

  “Dark Horse looks kinda brown to me,” Patrick says. “On account of it being black tar.”

  Esther shakes her head. “Black tar would show a lot more acetylated morphine derivatives, mainly six-MAM and three-MAM, when we put it in Gwen.”

  Patrick looks up. “What’s ma’am?”

  “Monoacetylmorphine,” Esther says. “Let me know if you want a fascinating explanation of the Wright-Beckett process and its shortcomings.”

  Patrick squints. “And who the hell’s Gwen?”

  “The centrifuge,” she says. “I named it Gwen. The scanning electron microscope is Jerome. And the—”

  It’s Harkness’s turn to roll his eyes. “Let’s move on. So if it’s not black tar, what is it?”

  “It’s incredibly powerful heroin, about ninety-nine percent pure, putting it up there with Afghan White,” Esther says. “But it’s cut with cheap brown lactose.”

  “What kind of dealer disguises high-grade junk so it looks like crappy junk?” Patrick says. “And sells it for about the same as a jumbo bag of Skittles?”

  “Patrick’s right. Doesn’t make sense,” Harkness says. Usually it’s the other way around. Crystal meth bleached to look like cocaine. Mexican shitweed sprayed with angel dust for kick. Low-grade heroin boosted with fentanyl.

  Esther shakes her head. “All I can tell you guys is what we found in the lab,” she says. “Beyond that, I really don’t know.”

  “Well, you better start finding out.” Patrick says.

  “Correction,” Harkness says. “We better start finding out. All of us. I want both of you to dig into this one—more research, daily updates, collaboration with the DEA. Because if Dark Horse surfaces again, it’s going to find a lot of new customers looking for a cheap thrill.”

  “You talking about students?” Patrick says. “But they’re too young, cool, and smart to die. Just ask ’em.”

  Harkness nods. “Low tolerances, high potency. If Dark Horse hits the campuses this winter, we’re going to end up carrying a lot of dead students out of their dorm rooms.”

  In the freighted silence, Harkness’s cell phone rings. It’s a familiar number. “Got to take this one. Task force meets again tomorrow night, same time.”

  Patrick and Esther drift away, pacing themselves so they don’t reach the office door together.

  “Harkness.”

  “Eddy, it’s me.” It’s the voice of Captain Watt out at Nagog police headquarters. “Got a big problem out here.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Got a pissed-off guy cuffed and screaming in the back of my squad car.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Attempted B and E.”

  “Sounds like you got your man. What’s the problem?”

  “It’s your brother, Eddy. It’s George.”

  8

  HARKNESS DRIVES WEST from Boston at ninety miles an hour, lights flashing, early Swans blaring from the Chevy’s blown-out speakers. He knows the twelve-mile trip all too well. He races through the Concord rotary, swerves onto the Nagog exit after a few minutes, then speeds through the outskirts of his inescapable hometown.

  The windows of the Nagog Five and Ten are dark, the green clock above the Coffee Spot blinks on and off, and the banks at the center of town face each other in a silent stare-down. Except for SUVs instead of horses and paved roads replacing dirt streets, the town looks about the same as it in Colonial times. In 1775, town militiamen forced the British out several weeks before the Battles of Lexington and Concord—making Nagog popular with tourists and misery-inducing for teenagers growing up surrounded by too much history.

  Harkness speeds by the Unitarian Church, its rainbow banner hanging over the peace labyrinth: ALL ARE WELCOME! BRING YOUR BELIEFS. His father used to tell a joke after a few gin and tonics: “How can you tell when Unitarians are mad at you? They burn a question mark on your front lawn.”

  This was before most of the town started demanding that Harkness’s father be burned at the stake. Stealing Yankee money arouses a special kind of anger, since each penny is so carefully pinched.

  It’s after midnight and the stores and handful of restaurants have been closed for hours. No cars line up at the meters on Main Street. There isn’t any overnight parking after September 15. Harkness remembers this and many other details from a penitential year he’d spent with the Nagog Police emptying parking meters and fighting to get back to the BPD.

  Harkness drives over the Nagog River Bridge and winds around Nagog Hill until he sees the familiar driveway. A software entrepreneur transformed the house, adding a stone turret at the end of each of two long wings befitting a prep school, gold-painted cement lions standing guard at the front door, and a Palladian central atrium with a mammoth chandelier in the entryway.

  The enormous copper beech trees he once climbed with George and Nora have been cut, replaced by a line of young maples along an epic driveway. In-ground lighting adds a false importance to the trees, shivering in the cool night air and dropping their yellow leaves like cheap skirts on the grass.

  The house looks like a retirement home for lesser reality-TV stars. Now it’s flashing blue from the Nagog Police cruiser parked in the driveway.

  Harkness slams the door, and Watt ambles down the driveway toward him, giving a small wave.

  “Let me talk to him.” Harkness tries to slip around Watt, who throws out a thick arm to stop him from yanking open the back door of the cruiser, where George is marinating in his misdeeds.

  “Eddy, just hold on a second,” Watt says.

  “He’s my brother.” George slumps and turns away when he sees Harkness.

  “And he’s in a shitload of trouble.”

  “What’d he do?”

  “Broke a back window and climbed in. Tripped the alarm system. Caught him prowling around inside, going through the home office.” Watt leans closer. “I know George has been in a tight spot for a while. But robbing a house?”

  “We used to live here,” Harkness says. Somewhere inside all the gaudy renovations lies the Harkness family’s simple white Colonial with its drafty windows, low ceilings, red-walled study, and an attic that rattled with squirrels at night.

  Watt pages through his notebook. “Well, that might explain it, I guess.”

  “What?”

  “Why George kept arguing that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. That he was, quote, ‘just looking for something that got left behind,’ unquote.”

  Harkness says nothing.

  “You’re just going to talk to him, right?” Watt holds up his hand in the three-fingered Boy Scout salute. “Not kick his ass?”

  Harkness nods.

  “You got a couple of minutes, Eddy,” Watt says. “The homeowner’s on his way. And he’s wicked pissed.”

  George wears black cargo pants, a puffy down vest, and a backward Sox cap that make him look like a Little League umpire. The charcoal he’s rubbed on his tumid face is furrowed with sweat lines.

  “Got to say, all black is working for you, George.” Harkness slips into the back seat next to his brother. “Elegant and super-slimming.”

  George goes into a full-body spasm as he wrestles with his noxious accumulation of anger, frustration, and embarrassment.<
br />
  Harkness just stares at his brother’s latest meltdown.

  Finally, George sputters out a comprehensible sentence. “This whole thing’s your fault.”

  “What?”

  “I needed your help.” He points to the house. “I mean, this isn’t my kind of work.”

  “And because I’m a cop, I’d be good at breaking into our old house?”

  “Right.” George nods. “You’d know how to shut off alarms and shit like that.”

  “Just so you understand, that’s not what cops do,” Harkness says. “In fact, it’s pretty much the opposite of what cops do.”

  “All I’m saying is that Dad hid a couple of million dollars somewhere in our old house. You’re supposed to be good at finding stuff. Why couldn’t you just help me out for once instead of hanging up on me?”

  Harkness presses his fingers against his temples. “George, we’ve been through this over and over. Dad did not hide any money anywhere. He fooled his investors and drained the company. Left everyone holding the bag. Including you. It’s really not that complicated.”

  “What the fuck do you know? You don’t spend all day dealing with the aggrieved parties.” New sweat drips down George’s sloppily charcoaled face, pale jowls peeking through. “Teachers’ unions. Local businesses. They’re all really angry.”

  “They should be,” Harkness says. “Dad ripped them off.”

  “And I’m trying to pay them back!” George shouts. “But the deal we worked out with the regulators is fucking impossible.”

  “That’s your problem, George,” Harkness says. “You’re the one who decided to try to keep the company from going under. And correct me if I’m wrong, but I think you kind of like playing golf with your banker buds and acting like a big shot.”

  Radio squawks from the front of the patrol car fill the silence. Up in the driver’s seat, Watt pretends to be filling out paperwork while he listens in.

  “What happened to brothers helping each other?”

  “George, I’ve bailed you out so many times I can’t even count them.” Harkness stares out at the front lawn, perfect and flat as a putting green. “You can’t tell me you’re actually mad that I wouldn’t break into our old house for you, can you?”