Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  “When you put it that way . . .”

  “There isn’t another way to put it.”

  George leans closer, whispers, “Just get your pal Watt off my back.”

  “I’ll try, George. But really. Cut it out. There’s no money hidden in our house. Or anywhere.”

  George sits still, his mouth working like he’s chewing gristle. Then he gives a slow nod.

  Watt’s radio starts up again on the other side of the Plexiglas divider. “Suspicious persons, forty-two Crescent Street.”

  Watt clicks his radio. “On it.” Then he clicks it again. “Got Eddy here. Say hi.” He holds the microphone toward the divider.

  “Eddy!” The dispatcher shrieks so loudly that the speaker breaks up.

  “Hi, Debbie. Great to hear your voice.” Harkness used to hear it every day, calling in the litany of small-town problems—wandering dogs, shoplifting teenagers, befuddled elders, lost tourists.

  “Stop by and see us,” she shouts. “We miss you.”

  “Miss you too.” Harkness actually does miss Nagog, where a couple of smashed mailboxes constitute a crime wave.

  Watt hops out to open the back door. “Hit the road, pronto, George. Before the homeowner pulls in. Consider tonight a warning.”

  George’s eyes open wide and he starts to climb out. “Really? Thanks.”

  “And George?” Watt focuses his blue eyes on George as he struggles out of the back seat. “If I ever catch you doing something this stupid ever again, I’ll make sure you get charged.”

  George holds up both hands and gives them a half-assed shake.

  Watt slides back behind the wheel of the green squad car and pats the passenger seat. “Up here, Eddy. Just like old times.”

  9

  THROUGH THE SQUAD-CAR window, Harkness sees a parade of streets where he used to skateboard, houses of long-gone friends, and the walking trails where he and George raced their dirt bikes. History, American or personal, soaks every inch of Nagog’s ten square miles.

  “George was king of the high school,” Watt says. “Class president, valedictorian. I always remember him driving your dad’s cool old sports car, maybe it was an Alfa Romeo?”

  “Vintage forest-green Karmann Ghia,” Harkness says. “He wrecked it on the Cape after guzzling six Narragansett tall boys.”

  “I remember he used to have a sausage pizza delivered to the lunchroom every day because he didn’t like the food.” Watt shakes his head. “Who does that?”

  “A guy who’s going to be overweight.”

  “How the mighty have fallen.”

  “Always further to go,” Harkness says.

  “Thanks for that.”

  “Any time.” Harkness points at the side street. “You can take a shortcut here.”

  Watt cuts through Crescent Street, which, true to its name, curves slightly. Nagog’s street names have a Yankee directness or, as outsiders might say, a lack of imagination. Main Street is the main street. Central runs through the center of town. River Street runs next to the Nagog River.

  Watt hits the spotlight and runs the beam along the edge of the road until they get to number 42.

  The homeowner is already in the driveway when they pull up, waving them forward like an air traffic controller.

  “Guy looks concerned,” Harkness says.

  Watt turns and gives Harkness a flat stare. “Everyone’s concerned lately, Eddy—taxes, zoning, leash laws. So much to be worried about.”

  Before their boots hit the gravel, the homeowner’s already talking at them. “Hey, guys. Tom Jacobson, Forty-two Crescent Street. Thanks for coming.” Tom pumps their hands like they’re here for a marketing-team meeting.

  Harkness sizes Tom up. He’s bald, in his late forties, with the steaky stalwartness of an aging suburban dad. Tom’s wearing khakis, a white polo shirt, and a thin green jacket with a lightning-bolt logo over the pocket. Probably a tech guy, but not flashy new tech. More like a product manager at a hardware or software outfit somewhere on Route 128. The stickers plastered on the new silver Prius in the driveway tell their tales. Tom and his wife are hikers (Appalachian Mountain Club) and parents of an MIT student. They love their Tibetan terrier.

  “I’m Captain Watt, Nagog PD. And this is Detective Harkness of the Boston Police Department. Why don’t you just tell us what’s going on.”

  Tom starts talking, the words splorting out in clumps. “They’re in the garage and they won’t leave, Officers. They have no right to just camp out like that. Without permission! And it’s not even camping out when they’re—”

  Watt holds his hand up. “Please slow down, sir.”

  Tom Jacobson, owner of an upgraded Dutch Colonial with a towering sugar maple in the front yard and rows of leafy hostas lining the stone foundation, takes a couple of deep, cleansing breaths. “We came home from dinner in Boston about an hour ago and saw the lights on in the garage. It’s not really a garage anymore. We remodeled it into . . . flex space, kind of. Our kids and their friends used to hang out there. We work out in it—there’s an elliptical machine. And sometimes guests stay there, though we didn’t tell the town that. Do you have to tell the town about that? It could raise our taxes.”

  “No, we don’t have to tell the town about that,” Watt says. “Did you go out to the garage and check it out?”

  “No, that’s why we called you.”

  “You sure it’s not someone you know? Friends of your kids, maybe?” Out here, ten miles west of Boston, home intruders are usually UPS guys or neighbor kids smoking weed.

  Tom shakes his head. “My wife’s a birder.”

  They say nothing, wait for Tom to make sense.

  “She has powerful binoculars,” he says. “We’ve been watching from the back deck. There’s two of them, I think. Maybe more. But no one we recognize.”

  They walk down the driveway to a squat building that still looks like a garage, except its large doors have been replaced with a normal door flanked by a bay window.

  As they get closer, Tom’s shoulders start to shake. “You’ve got to—”

  “Just take a few steps back and give us a chance to talk to them, sir.” Watt knocks loudly.

  A tall, speckle-skinned young woman with long straw-colored hair answers the door. A male version of her stands a few yards back.

  “Yes?” Graceful, easy smile, slow green eyes—the woman looks familiar to Harkness.

  “Nagog Police, ma’am,” Watt says. “Need to see your IDs, please.”

  The woman pulls a wallet out of her jeans and hands Watt a couple of licenses. “I’m Jennet Townsend. That’s my brother, James.”

  James stands with his shaking hands hovering halfway between his belt and shoulders, as if the floor’s shifting beneath his scuffed brown boots.

  “We’re not going to shoot you, James,” Watt says. “We just want to know what you’re doing out here. Because it looks like you live in the city.” Watt holds the licenses out to Harkness.

  Harkness reads the same address on each license, an apartment building on Burgess Street, just north of Albrecht Square. “Downtown,” he says. “Lower South End.”

  Jennet steps forward. “We’re allowed to stay here,” she says, handing Harkness a wrinkled printout topped by a familiar title—Compleat Record of the Laws Pertaining to Nagog. “Nagog town bylaw forty-seven, known as the billeting bylaw, allows”—she points at a section and reads—“ ‘citizens to seek shelter in Nagog outbuildings during times of emergency in the city of Boston.’ ”

  No one says anything.

  “We’re taxpaying citizens of Boston,” Jennet says. “The hurricane flooded our apartment building and the city’s dragging its feet getting the neighborhood cleaned up. So that’s a time of emergency.” She turns to Tom, steaming in the background. “I know what you’re feeling, Mr. Jacobson.” She fixes her green eyes on him and gives a disarming, confident smile. “You’re wondering, Who are these people and what the hell are they doing here? Just so you know
, we both have jobs. My brother’s a carpenter. I’m a dressmaker and seamstress. We don’t do drugs or drink. We just don’t have a place to stay. And it doesn’t look like you’re using this garage.” Jennet waves toward the sheet-shrouded exercise equipment, the tumble of books along the wall, and the clothes piled next to a blue plastic sled. The Townsend siblings are probably the first people to set foot in the garage in months.

  Tom walks over to Watt, trying to read the looping script of the billeting bylaw. “They can’t really do this, can they?”

  “I’ll check with the town manager,” Watt says. “But for now, I think you’ll just have to figure out a way to make things work.”

  “What the hell do you mean, make things work, Officer!” Tom’s heating up to a boil again. “This is our property. People can’t just come along and stay here because they need a place to stay. For free!”

  “No offense, sir,” Harkness says. “But why not?”

  Tom’s eyes widen. “And you are who, again?”

  “Detective Supervisor Harkness, Boston Police,” he says. “I was in the Lower South End when the hurricane hit. It’ll be a while before that neighborhood gets back to normal. Maybe letting these two stay here temporarily wouldn’t be that bad.” Harkness turns to Jennet and James. “You’re going to take good care of this guy’s garage, right?”

  The Townsends nod. “We’d be glad to clean it up for you,” James offers.

  “And as soon as the city lets us back into our place, we’ll leave,” Jennet adds.

  Tom seems almost satisfied by the plan. His furtive glances at Jennet tell Harkness that maybe he wouldn’t mind an attractive young woman within binocular range.

  “So why don’t you just talk to your wife.” Harkness reins in Tom’s libido. “Work out an arrangement. At least until the town manager looks at the regulation and decides what to do.”

  “The regulation’s still in effect,” Jennet says, a little too quickly. “Law’s been on the books since the late 1700s and no one took it off. Revoking it can only happen at town meeting.” She’s definitely done her research. Harkness stops himself from asking if she knows a drug dealer turned historian named Mouse.

  “When’s town meeting this year?” Tom reveals himself as a newish arrival. Anyone who grew up in Nagog knows the answer. It’s a high spot on the town calendar, along with the Harvest Days, Headless Hallows Eve, the lighting of the Christmas tree on the town green, and the Ice Swap. And it’s always on the same day.

  “November first,” Harkness says.

  “Everything okay until then?” Watt asks Tom.

  “I guess so.”

  The Townsend siblings look at each other, eyes connecting as if by Wi-Fi.

  “So they’ll be out of here in a couple of weeks, then?” Tom’s acclimating to the town-sanctioned home invasion happening right here in his backyard. The Townsends aren’t squatters or criminals. They’re just clever city dwellers taking advantage of a friendly colonial town with archaic bylaws. Jennet’s pretty and James looks harmless.

  “Depends,” Harkness says.

  “On what?” Tom squints.

  “On how the people of Nagog vote,” Jennet says.

  Harkness nods. “That’s right.” Jennet has all her facts straight. She and her nervous brother have figured out a legal way to claim an outbuilding as their own.

  But clever only takes you so far in Nagog.

  “I know Jennet Townsend from somewhere,” Harkness says as Watt drives him back to the Nagog police station.

  “Well, she definitely wants to get to know you, like, biblically.” Watt drives with his knee, raises both hands, and holds the tips of his index fingers close. He makes the sputtering sound of electricity.

  “Cut it out.”

  “I saw the sparks fly.”

  “Not from me.”

  “Whatever you say. So, where do you know her from?” Watt puts his hands back on the wheel. “Did you bust her?”

  “No, I’d remember that.”

  “Did you fuck her? I think you’d definitely remember that.” Watt bends forward, so amused with himself he can hardly stand it.

  “Jesus, Watt.” Harkness reaches down to the floor and throws Watt’s lunch bag at him.

  Watt dodges. “Well, you better watch out. Lovely green eyes tell beautiful lies. My grandmother used to say that. Maybe Jennet’s working an angle.”

  “We’ll run her address and license number at Narco-Intel and see what she’s up to.”

  “You memorized her license number?”

  Harkness nods.

  “I can’t even remember my wedding anniversary,” Watt says. “Must be nice to have such a great memory.”

  Images flash through Harkness’s mind like shuffled cards—his father face-down in a pool of his own cooling blood, Little Dorothy dissolving in a bucket of acid, dozens of dead dealers and users sprawled in apartments and alleys.

  “Not really.”

  Long past midnight, Harkness wakes to Candace’s hand running down his chest. In the dim light, he can see that she’s already arranged the pillows and sheets between their bed and the open doorway that leads to May’s room. The sex wall, she calls it.

  Having sex while May’s sleeping fitfully down the hall requires a Special Ops level of stealth. The moment any activity resembling sex begins, adult brains send out a tone that only toddlers can hear, one that signals the possible creation of a rival sibling. At least that’s how Candace explains the phenomenon.

  Whatever the reason, May often broadcasts abattoir screams from the baby monitor after one furtive kiss or stumbles into their bedroom when they’re in mid-act with the bad timing of a community-theater trouper. A crib or a closed door is no match for May, a toddler Houdini committed to a campaign of parental abstinence.

  The first rule is to move slowly, easy since Harkness is only recently healed, at least enough for somnambulant late-night sex. He holds himself back, careful to inch inside Candace, so that they seem to be holding still, just spooned together in chaste half-sleep.

  The second rule is harder to follow. No appreciative sighs. No fast breathing. Nothing. Candace bites her lower lip. Harkness imagines that he’s on a surveillance gig and can’t make a sound. He kisses the back of Candace’s neck, remembers sitting in the Nagog High library watching a younger, paler Candace clomp past him in battered Doc Martens, silver headphones clamped over her dyed black hair.

  The first few minutes pass without May waking.

  Then there’s rustling from down the hall.

  May’s first, quiet “Mama?” goes unanswered. Harkness and Candace stay joined but holding still, hoping she’ll fall back asleep. But it’s followed by cries of escalating urgency, the kind that could wake the neighbors. Or the entire city.

  Candace shakes her head slowly, admitting defeat.

  Behind the wall of pillows, they uncouple, pull on underwear and T-shirts, and rise to walk through the apartment—lit by the gleaming lights of the city—to check on May.

  10

  LONG LINES SNAKE through the greenway—businesspeople, hipsters, and students waiting to buy pulled-pork sandwiches with fried pickles, bowls of pho with fresh basil, and locally harvested oyster poboys. Each bag of food delivered to a smiling customer means just one thing to Harkness: his city is changing. The cheap and sometimes toxic food of Buzzy’s Roast Beef, Durgin-Park, and the Hoodoo Barbeque has given way to pricey, artisanal fare.

  Sitting on a bench next to the food trucks, Harkness worries about the rarefied, eclectic tastes of Bostonians. It used to be that the city’s unpalatable food, like its bad weather and worse driving, was considered character-building. His city is turning soft and ripe for a gutting. Jacked in and smug, sitting in front of their laptops in coffee places, organic salad bars, and herbal-cocktail emporiums, what did these clever young citizens have to complain about anymore? What would make them actually stand up for their beliefs instead of just getting another tattoo or piercing?

&nbs
p; At thirty, Harkness is almost a decade older than most of the others clustered around the food trucks. He already senses the void opening up between still young and not that young anymore. They work for companies he’s never heard of, use new apps, listen to bands he probably wouldn’t like, and hang out in clubs and bars he’s never set foot in. On bad days, Harkness thinks of the city as a brutal machine, hungry for hot new blood to grease its mercantile gears.

  Deaf Kid tugs on his jacket, pulling Harkness back. His colleague on this breezy morning has already eaten a bowl of pork belly on sticky rice from De Pho, the Vietnamese truck, and an order of poutine from O Canada! Harkness signs, asking how much food he can put away.

  The boy shrugs, takes one last pull from his elderflower lemonade, and tosses the plastic cup in the trash.

  They stand. Time to get to work. The deal with the Hamilton School lets Vince miss only half a day. Harkness told the headmaster he was taking him on a field trip. And Vince made it clear that he hated being called Vince, leaving him nameless for now.

  They walk down the greenway to where Harkness has ditched the shit-brown Narco-Intel Chevrolet surveillance car. Inside, Deaf Kid stares at the newspapers and McDonald’s wrappers on the floor with barely disguised disgust. Then Harkness presses a button and a laptop screen rises out of the plastic divider between them. Deaf Kid smiles. A couple of clicks later and he’s watching Comedy Central with the closed-captioning on as Harkness drives down the expressway.

  It’s always good to keep an informant as comfortable as possible.

  Harkness parks the beat-up Chevy on Southampton Street and shows his badge to the cops on duty keeping out looters and disaster tourists. They wave them into the Lower South End. Here, the crisp fall day gives way to a hellscape of stinking debris and abandoned buildings. They’re wearing knee-high rubber boots, and Harkness carries a .22-caliber pistol, suitable for shooting rats, in the back pocket of his jeans.