Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  Harkness shakes his head. Here goes.

  Calvin grabs the ALA flagpole and pokes at Lee. Lee grabs at the red flag and rips it from the pole then tosses it back to his friends, who throw it on the ground and stomp on it.

  Seeing the ALA flag abused sends Calvin into a frenzy. He charges with the bare flagpole, tipped with a shining gold eagle with two outstretched wings that catch Lee in the shoulder. He gives out a garbled scream.

  “Fuck you, man.” Lee wanders out of the fray to peel off his leather jacket and sees his T-shirt, darkened with blood. Like a bar-fight veteran, Lee pulls off his T-shirt and presses it against his pale shoulder.

  The sight of blood makes Calvin pause, then he sees Lee’s friends regrouping and runs at them with his flagpole.

  Harkness sidles up to Calvin, reaches down to grab one of his thick ankles with both hands, and yanks it, sending the Texan toppling face-first into the dust. A second later Harkness is on Calvin’s back, one knee in his kidneys, bending his right arm behind him.

  Calvin’s a big guy so once he’s down, gravity works in Harkness’s favor. But he continues to struggle. His free arm keeps reaching back.

  “I’m a cop,” Harkness says. “Stay down and quit moving, and we won’t have any trouble.”

  He doesn’t. He’s trying to get something out of his fleece vest’s pocket.

  “Sorry, Tex.” Harkness yanks back harder on Calvin’s arm and he starts screaming like an emasculated calf.

  “Freeze!”

  Harkness looks up to see a skinny kid wearing mirror shades and a Nagog Police uniform holding his service pistol at arm’s length, advancing toward him.

  Harkness reaches into his pocket for his badge.

  “Hands where I can see them!” The kid’s glasses and milky skin make him look like a larva with a gun.

  “I’m a cop,” Harkness shouts.

  “Sure you are.”

  “No, I am,” Harkness says. “Ask Watt.” Watt told Harkness that finding good recruits was getting harder and harder. But really.

  There’s a pause as the Nagog Police Department rookie struggles to figure out what to do, Calvin screams, and Harkness freezes like a deer in the headlights.

  There’s nothing more frightening than a rookie cop with his gun out. This weary insight came from Sergeant Gene Baylor, Harkness’s first supervisor back in the Lower South End. Baylor was a dead-end sergeant with a tractor ass, a drinking problem, and plenty of opinions, most of them wrong. But squatting on top of a whimpering keg-shaped Texan, staring down the shaking barrel of a Glock 17 in the hands of someone who’s contemplating using deadly force for the first time—Harkness has to admit, that asshole Baylor was right.

  Watt strides between them and takes charge. “Officer Troutman, put that gun away pronto. This man is a cop. Eddy—don’t hurt that guy.”

  The fleshy-faced rookie can’t seem to lower his gun. He might twitch off a shot or two by accident.

  “Jesus, Troutman,” Watt says. “Put that fucking gun down before you hurt yourself. This is Eddy Harkness. He’s a cop. Legend around here.”

  The rookie blinks, then stuffs his gun back in its holster.

  Harkness unfreezes when Watt walks over. “What’s up, Eddy?”

  “Need to cuff this guy.” Harkness points down at Calvin.

  “What’d he do?”

  “Assault. I popped his shoulder a little but he should be fine. And frisk him carefully, he’s got something in his pocket.”

  Calvin makes a low growling noise as Watt handcuffs him and calls for backup and an ambulance for Lee.

  “What happened?”

  “Lee and his buds started it all by heckling the ALA people. Then this guy decides to go gladiator and poke Lee with a flagpole. That’s about all.”

  “I’m on it.” Watt takes over.

  Harkness stands and dusts himself off. “Gotta go. I’ll come into the station and file a statement tonight.”

  Watt reaches into Calvin’s pocket, pulls out a folding knife in a leather sheath. “Thanks, Calvin. Now we can haul you in on assault and carrying a concealed weapon.”

  More growling from Calvin.

  A few yards away Lee’s kneeling down, pressing his blood-soaked T-shirt to his shoulder while his friends comfort him with a tall can of Narragansett. As he walks by, Harkness gives Lee’s unstabbed shoulder a gentle squeeze. “Ambulance is on the way. Get that stitched up and you’ll be fine.”

  “Thanks, Eddy,” Lee says. “See you ’round the store.”

  20

  HARKNESS CATCHES UP with Candace and May at the petting zoo set up by a local farm. The black-faced lambs, breath steaming in the cold air, seem to transfix May.

  “Where’ve you been?” Candace shivers. The crisp afternoon light is already fading.

  “Just talking to Lee,” he says. “How’s she doing?”

  “May?” Candace leans down to take the caramel apple and wipe her daughter’s hand, triggering a squall of screams. “I think she likes caramel apples, lambs, and getting her way. Not necessarily in that order.”

  Harkness nods toward Nora and George, walking with their mother between them. “Look out, here comes the family. What’s left of it.”

  “At least your mom’s alive, Eddy. I got no one left.”

  Harkness raises his eyebrows.

  “Except you, except you!” She kicks at him with her burgundy Doc Martens.

  “Careful, don’t get Eddy angry,” George says as they walk closer. “Gets violent sometimes. Didn’t anyone tell you?”

  “Everyone keeps warning me,” Candace says.

  “And?”

  “It just makes me love him even more,” Candace says, pale face locked in a mall-photo smile.

  “Hey, listen, Candy,” George says.

  “It’s Candace.”

  “Sure,” he says. “Can you keep an eye on Mom for a couple of minutes? We need to have a quick Harkness-sibling powwow.”

  “George, she’s already watching May,” Nora says.

  “Just, uh, check out the apple-balloon thing for a minute,” George says. “Mom likes it.”

  The hypnotizing rise and fall of the apple-shaped balloon brings order to their mother’s cross-wired mind. Maybe it’s the loud roar that the burner makes when it gusts hot air into the balloon. Or maybe it’s because the balloon looks like a big absurd apple. Harkness wonders if she remembers the Indian summer afternoons when she used to pull her children out of school and take them apple picking out in Bolton. Then he pushes the past away, stops himself from falling into a nostalgia wormhole.

  “Not a problem,” Candace says. “May likes the balloon too.” She takes their mother’s hand and the three walk off together.

  “You picked a good one, Eddy,” George says. “Just look at that. She’s got the ass of a fourteen-year-old boy.”

  “Shut up, George,” Nora says. “She’s great, Eddy. Maybe you two should get married.”

  Harkness pauses. “I’m thinking about it.”

  “In addition to the previously noted astounding ass,” George says, “she’s not crazy, unlike all your other girlfriends.”

  “Thanks for that, George.”

  “She’s a really good mother,” Nora says. “And you’re both so comfortable together. I mean, not that I know much about compatibility.” Nora dates doctors, her relationships rarely progressing beyond dinner in the hospital cafeteria. “But you seem to get along great.”

  “It would be a marriage of similars.” George counts on his short fingers. “You both like terrible music. You both have fathers who killed themselves,” he says. “You’re missing a finger. She’s missing a hand.”

  “Thanks for your astute observations.”

  “So she’s okay with the fact that you killed that Dex guy?” George says. “Father of her daughter?”

  “We don’t really talk about it much,” Harkness says. “As far as May knows, I’m her father.”

  “Maybe Candace is turned on
by it, Eddy,” George says, revving with perverse enthusiasm.

  “By what?”

  “That you killed her last boyfriend. Ever thought of that?”

  Harkness gives George a soul-searing stare. He’d slap him around, except Nora’s here.

  “So do you have a plan?” Nora says, ignoring George.

  “For what?”

  “For when you’re going to ask her.”

  “Sometime after the holidays,” Harkness says, wondering if it’s true.

  “Good decision,” George says. “Getting engaged at Christmas is tacky.”

  They reach the outer fringe of the fair—the overflowing trashcans, boxes of apples buzzing with yellow jackets, the empty CPR-demonstration station—and turn around.

  “You know, Suzanne and I are thinking of getting married sometime,” George adds.

  Nora rolls her eyes. “Well, when you buy her a ring, we’ll believe it.”

  Harkness smiles, reaches out to squeeze the hand of his reasonable sister.

  “No need to get pissy,” George says. “Actually, I’m too busy for a serious relationship. I’m working sixty-hour weeks trying to save the family name.”

  “Tell it to Anne Frank,” Nora says.

  George sidles up next to Harkness as they walk toward the big red apple balloon of the Nagog Home Team. “Hey, those questions you sent me? Got some answers from my real estate friends, just like you asked me to.”

  Harkness stops on the path. Ahead, they can see Candace, May, and their mother watching the balloon as the heater roars and the apple rises.

  “You go on ahead, Nora,” George says. “Eddy and I need a minute.” She nods and walks toward the balloon.

  “What’d they tell you, George?”

  “That shit in the Lower South End? Classic pay-or-plague move,” George says.

  Harkness resists the temptation to roll his eyes at his brother’s repeating some phrase he’s just learned as if it’s common knowledge. “Mansplain that for me, okay?”

  “My real estate developer friends told me that when you want to clear out a building or a neighborhood, the first thing you do is pay off the tenants. If they’re renting, you get them another apartment somewhere else in the city and pay for their first three months’ rent. If they own the place, you pay ’em way above the assessed value. If you need to, you just hand ’em some jaw-dropping money so they forget how much they like where they live. That’s the pay part. Pretty obvious.”

  “And then?”

  “Then things get ugly,” George says. “You let the trash pile up. Cut the heat way back. Arrange a lot of annoying construction projects involving jackhammers at six in the morning. Shut off the elevators. Anything that makes daily life suck. That’s the plague part. They call it that because it’s like—”

  “Visiting plagues upon them,” Harkness says.

  “Good, Eddy,” George says. “Not bad for a cop.”

  Candace leads their mother over to Nora, triggering a confused look in the older woman. “Who are you?”

  Nora looks her in the eyes. “I’m your daughter, Nora.”

  Their mother laughs. “There’s no Nora at the school.”

  The three siblings exchange glances. Their mother’s fast slide from tack-sharp school principal to confused walker still surprises them.

  “Mom,” George shouts. “Eddy’s thinking about—”

  Harkness grabs his arm and squeezes. Nora just shakes her head at George’s almost pathological inability to keep a secret—so different from his father.

  “Hey! Yeah, Eddy’s thinking about taking this little critter up in that apple-balloon thing,” George says, his smile inane. He reaches down and picks up May, holds her out like a squirming offering.

  May squeals. Kids always like George. With his flubby body and gibbous face, he looks like a cartoon man.

  “That’s nice,” their mother says. “That’s nice.”

  Harkness reaches over and takes Candace’s hand as they walk together, three generations without a lot to say, silenced by the dampening weight of loss. Their parents’ marriage—once a mysterious tangled ball of plans, dinner-table arguments, affairs, trips to Europe, dinners with dozens of friends, cases of Bordeaux, photos in the Globe during gala season—has unspooled into a cautionary tale of dementia for their mother, disgrace and death for their father. Mourning that loss is pointless, Harkness knows. His family’s small tragedy pales by comparison with more vicious losses the world doles out.

  They pass by the empty, ticket-strewn table at the entrance to Harvest Days, now ending as the weak afternoon light fades, the air cools, the booths shut down, and the crowd heads home—young and old, citizens and wanderers.

  21

  MCCLOSKEY’S IS STILL a dump but on the day before it shuts down forever, the packed bar’s thrumming like a Lansdowne Street club on opening night. Harkness slips in and hovers in the crowd for a moment, then takes a seat at the end of the bar, next to Jimmy, a young man in a yellow suit and snap-brim gray hat. Harkness makes it look natural, not like he’s been hanging around outside the bar for hours, waiting for him to show up for last call.

  Harkness orders a Harp and a shot of Jameson.

  Jimmy looks over, squints at Harkness, doesn’t say anything.

  The bartender spins his beer toward him, clicks a shot glass on the scarred wooden bar, and pours a lengthening golden strand in it. Harkness nods in thanks, takes a sip of the whiskey, then the beer.

  “Cop, right?”

  Harkness shrugs. “Yeah. But I’m off duty.”

  “Sure, man.”

  Harkness watches Jimmy in the bar mirror, sees him struggling to figure out what to say, or if he should say anything even.

  “Tried to find your gun, man,” Jimmy whispers. “Remember? The one you lost. Looked everywhere.”

  Harkness acts surprised. “Fubu?”

  “Ain’t called that no more. Changed my look and my outlook. Re-fucking-branded myself. Now I’m Jimmy Jazz. I also go by JJ and J-Jaz. Always evolving. Like the Internet.”

  Harkness smiles. “You look like you’re fifty pounds lighter.”

  “More like a hundred and ten,” Jimmy says. “If you’re countin’. ”

  “Whoa. How’d you do that?”

  “Cut out the carbs. And about half of my stomach.”

  “Worked, looks like.”

  “Sometimes extreme measures are in order.”

  “I’m with you on that.” Harkness takes another sip of his whiskey.

  Jimmy sidles closer. “Hey, didn’t I sell your girlfriend a gun?”

  “Ex-girlfriend.”

  Jimmy nods. “Nasty little Röhm—chrome-plated twenty-five-cal. semi. How’d that work out for her?”

  “Almost got us killed.” Harkness replays a popular clip from the YouTube channel in his mind, the one that shows his girl Thalia Prochazka, aka Thalia Havoc, squatting down in the narrow streets of Chinatown to blast away at a henchman of the legendary Mr. Mach, nightclub owner and drug lord. The thug lost an earlobe. Harkness got his stolen Glock 17 back. It was messy.

  “Well, almost don’t count except for horseshoes and hand grenades,” Jimmy says.

  “My algebra teacher used to say that when we got an answer wrong.”

  “Smart lady,” Jimmy says. “Was she a stone-cold fox?”

  Harkness summons up Mrs. Ikada from Nagog Middle School with her high-necked gingham dresses and thick glasses that magnified her eyes. “Not unless you like anime.”

  “ ’Cuz your girl Thalia was as hot as they get, friend.” Jimmy signals the bartender. “Just thinking about her’s getting me thirsty. BTW, I seen her around the bar tonight.”

  Harkness bristles. “What?”

  “Yeah, she’s here, man. Everyone’s here tonight. Everyone shows when a famous shithole like McCloskey’s closes down.”

  “Definitely not just another night,” Harkness says. “More like a holiday.”

  “So now you’re gonna buy
me a beer, Officer . . .”

  Harkness takes a ten from his stack of change and tosses it closer to the bar. “Harkness.”

  Jimmy rises off his barstool and jabs his hand in the air. “Damn! That was you!”

  Harkness stares at Jimmy, wonders what drug just kicked in.

  “Damn, damn, damn!” Jimmy is jostling everyone around them and pointing at Harkness. “He shoots, he scores!” Jimmy pantomimes Harkness’s toss of Deaf Kid.

  There’s applause and suddenly the bar in front of Harkness is lined with shots of whiskey and tequila and a dozen beers.

  “You’re like a fuckin’ hero around here, man,” Jimmy says. “Saving that deaf kid. Everyone knows Vince.”

  “He doesn’t like that name.”

  “We just called him that on account of his ears getting messed with.”

  “What?”

  “Van Gogh, man.”

  “Oh.” Harkness sees why Deaf Kid prefers to go nameless. “But I thought he was born deaf.”

  Jimmy shakes his head. “Nope. His mama popped his eardrums with an icepick when he was six. Said she didn’t want him hearing all the bad shit going down in the house. That an’ she figured no gang would want a deaf kid.”

  “That’s crazy.” Harkness presses his eyes closed for a moment, stunned that Deaf Kid’s story could get any worse.

  “Yeah, for sure. His mama ended up in MCI-Framingham.” Jimmy shakes his head.

  Silence descends as Harkness and Jimmy consider the dark side of human nature, neither for the first time. “So what’re you doing now?” Harkness asks.

  “I’m into sustainable energy.”

  “Oh yeah?” Harkness turns to give Jimmy the once-over—good suit, gold watch, gleaming Italian shoes.

  “Yeah. Most days I hang around my girlfriend’s nice place in Jamaica Plain, sustaining my energy.”

  Harkness laughs, clinks beer glasses with Jimmy. Then he shifts to a new frequency. “I hear you’re like the mayor of the Lower South End, what’s left of it.”