Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  “I do keep my eyes open,” Jimmy says.

  “Got a question for you,” Harkness says. “What do you know about Dark Horse?”

  Jimmy freezes up. “Why you askin’ me, man? ’Cuz I had nothing to do with that nasty shit. Nothing at all. If this is cop business, count me out.”

  “No, nothing like that. Just doing a little research,” Harkness says. “Heard you know everything that goes on around here.”

  “That I do,” he says. “And I got some stories you won’t believe. How much time do you got?”

  Harkness points at the shot glasses and bottles around them. “Could be a while.”

  “Then let’s have us a real conversation.” Jimmy huddles closer. “Off the record, of course.”

  Jimmy delivers a novella’s worth of information and downs most of the free drinks before stumbling off into the night to Jamaica Plain—leaving Harkness, his new best friend, at the bar, churning through all that he’s heard.

  When Harkness stands and walks through crowded bar to the men’s room, he sees a familiar, crumpled figure lying face-down in a corner booth. Frankie Getler is still wearing his orange emergency vest, surrounded by an array of glasses and bottles. As Harkness passes his table, he puts his hand over Getler’s cell phone, deftly palms it, and slips it into his pocket. All without breaking stride.

  Harkness feels the familiar rush. Sometimes opportunities are just too good to pass up, even if it means going well beyond BPD protocol. Frankie Getler earned his hundred-dollar squeal fee, but whatever’s on his SIM card might be worth a lot more.

  In the scrawled, piss-corroded bathroom stall, Harkness cracks open Frankie Getler’s cheap phone in seconds, thankful that it’s not an iPhone. He pops out the card and slips it in his wallet.

  Harkness freezes as a bathroom door opens and someone runs the water, checks out his look in the mirror, and decides it’s working, at least for McCloskey’s. The door slams.

  Harkness leaves the stall and smacks the phone on the edge of the sink to shatter the screen.

  Back in the bar, he drops the smashed phone on the floor near Frankie Getler’s feet.

  Getler stirs and opens his red-rimmed eyes. “Hey, Eddy! What’re you doing here in this dump?”

  “Same thing you are, Frankie. Hanging out one last night before the bar closes.”

  “Right.” Frankie nods, then paws the sticky table in front of him frantically, sending bottles rolling to the floor as he flails for his missing phone. He bends down and finds his smashed cell. “Not again, goddamn it!” He pulls his arm back and throws the phone over the crowd. It ricochets off two walls before skittering under a pinball machine that a couple of guys are trying to steal. Wooden planks from the bar, the booth lights, neon signs bolted to the walls—it’s open season on mementos.

  Harkness walks on, leaving Frankie to sputter in his booth like a short-circuiting wire, and slips through the crowd.

  In the last booth in the corner, face-down on the table, the legendary Thalia Havoc dozes with only bottles and glasses to keep her company.

  Harkness slides into the booth across from her and taps the shoulder of her white leather jacket.

  “Oh, hey, Eddy,” she says, as if she just saw him yesterday. She sits up, runs her fingers through her red hair. “What’re you doing here? Taking a little walk down Memory Lane?”

  “Sort of,” Harkness says. “And you? Last I knew, you were in New York.”

  “Back in town for a while,” she says. “Got some unfinished business.” His slippery ex-girlfriend doesn’t offer any details and Harkness doesn’t ask. “And a sweet holiday gig at the Parker House bar.”

  “Nice.”

  She leans forward. “Miss you, Eddy. Miss you tons, man.” Her eyes fill with tears and she rubs them away. “We had such—”

  Harkness cuts her off. “Not going there, Thalia. You know what my father used to say?”

  “ ‘Give me your money, rich sucker’?” Thalia says.

  “No,” Harkness says. “He used to say that looking back is just a good way to stumble.”

  “I’m not looking back, Eddy,” she says. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think about you all the way in on the train. Just because things ended so fucked up doesn’t mean we’re over.”

  “Actually, that’s exactly what it means,” Harkness says.

  Thalia reaches over and checks out the glasses, finds one with whiskey still in it. “There’s someone else, isn’t there?”

  “Yeah, there is.”

  “Serious?” She throws back the whiskey.

  Harkness nods.

  “What, you’re going to settle down, find a nice little wifey, buy a house, and have a kid? Stay on the straight and narrow?” Thalia bends forward, eyes turning fierce. “Well, that’s just completely fucked up, Eddy. I know you. That’s never going to be enough for you. You aren’t like everyone else.” She waves her hand around at the crowd, more like a mob now. “You’re like all the rest of us. Sick and tired of faking it, of pretending like everything’s okay when it’s not. Late at night after we drank a bottle or two of whiskey, Eddy? The stories that came out of you were little chunks of black ice. That’s the Eddy Harkness I know. And the other thing I know? You’re not done with your demons, Eddy. And they’re definitely not done with you.”

  Thalia slumps in the booth like an unplugged automaton. Her arm makes one last slash across the table, sending bottles and glasses smashing to the floor, the shattering lost in the roaring crowd. Her eyes go out of focus and she lowers her head down to the beer-drenched table.

  Harkness watches Thalia, Still Life with Hot Mess. There’s much more to say to her, of course. About how life moves on, about how a dark cloud can pass. But he doesn’t want to say it and Thalia’s not listening. She’s just breathing, shoulders rising and falling in gentle waves.

  Harkness reaches over and lifts her head gently and puts his scarf underneath, then slips out of the booth, leaving Thalia where he found her.

  22

  IT RAINED WHILE he was in McCloskey’s and the glistening streets smell cold and metallic. Harkness thinks about the other drinking men who stumbled down these same paths in different times, wearing square-buckled shoes, beaver hats, or zoot suits and wide ties—all buffered by beer and whiskey. It’s long after midnight but in office buildings people are sorting mail, watching the Tokyo markets, putting proposals together—and their presence, signaled by the bright squares of lights in the darkened towers, reassures him that all is well in the city at night.

  Alone except for the occasional rat stirred by his boot steps, Harkness walks through the orange neon of Chinatown, past the silent South Station with the scolding eagle over its clock, across the green-black water of the channel, and into the seaport, where the ambitious and sober are already tapping away on their laptops, where Candace and May are sleeping.

  Harkness paws at the wall in the dark, looking for the light switch. The dim apartment makes his head spin. The light snaps on and he sees Candace on the other side of the living room, arms crossed. “Let me give you a hand.” She pulls off her plastic hand and throws it at him.

  The hand hits Harkness on the chest and rattles across the floor.

  “Congrats, Eddy,” she says. “I get mad enough to do that about once a year.”

  “What are you so pissed about?”

  “It’s like two in the morning, Eddy. You said you’d be home by midnight.”

  “Sorry, I was in a bar,” he says. “Doing some research.”

  “Doing some shots, smells like.”

  “That too.”

  “Thought we decided that was all over, Eddy.” Candace stalks toward him and picks up her plastic hand, pops it back on with a quick twist. “Where were you?”

  “McCloskey’s.”

  Candace’s eyes narrow and her shoulders rise. “That dump you used to go to with Thalia? Don’t tell me you’re starting that again.”

  “No way.” Harkness tries to drif
t into the bedroom but Candace blocks his path.

  “Those times are over,” Candace says. “Really over. No more wild nights. No more rogue-cop shit. If that’s the kind of thing you want to keep doing, you need to tell me now. Because I’m starting to actually depend on you.”

  Harkness sits on the edge of the couch. “That’s not it,” he says. “It’s work—I’m way out in front of an investigation, a big one.”

  Candace goes into the kitchen and comes back with a glass of water, hands it to him.

  “What’re you up to, Eddy?”

  “I’m trying to fix a big mistake.”

  “Yours?”

  “No.”

  “Then just let it go. You can’t fix everything, Eddy. That’s not your job.”

  “I know.”

  “You’re doing it again.” Candace picks up a coffee cup and struggles to stop herself from throwing it against the living-room wall. She sets the cup back down on the table. “Well, don’t let me stop you. I mean, you say you like being with me and May, but maybe it’s more important to try to get away with more punk-rock-superhero-cop shit, right?” She waves her hands at the last words like they’re toxic.

  “That’s not what I’m doing, not at all.”

  “All I know is that your day job is dangerous enough without your making it worse,” she says. “Just promise me that this Christmas, there’s still going to be three of us around here—you, me, and May.” Candace wipes her tears on her Replacements T-shirt, which hikes up to reveal a tattoo of a distorted clock on one pale hip with Time’s Running Out in black script beneath it. “Say it—now!”

  “I promise.”

  “Louder.”

  “I promise,” he shouts.

  Escalating screams echo through the apartment.

  “Good job, Eddy. You woke May,” Candace says as she strides down the hallway.

  “You know what?” Harkness yells after her. “You’re cute when you’re unreasonable.”

  Harkness wakes in the middle of the night after the emotional squall has passed, Candace nestled against him, May curled up against her, May’s ragged stuffed bunny held close to her chest.

  He slips out of bed slowly and stands in his BPD T-shirt staring out the window at the thick darkness over Boston, watching the early flights glide toward Logan like slow comets.

  He figures it’s just a morning-after wakeup, when the alcohol in his system runs out and his body, confused, wants more. In his drinking days, Harkness might have obliged with a maintenance swig from the whiskey bottle. But now, he just sorts through the daily jumble of facts, dreams, worries, looking for whatever woke him.

  Jimmy’s smooth voice keeps talking in his mind, a podcast for one, demanding to be heard again and again. The confounding detail surfaces like a forgotten name, and Harkness pulls on his uniform and walks quietly toward the door—shoes in one hand, gun belt in the other.

  Not quietly enough.

  Candace stirs. “Where you going?”

  “Early-morning meeting.”

  “Where?”

  “Hamilton School, out in Waltham.”

  “Is Deaf Kid okay?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

  It’s not even light yet when Harkness pulls into the parking lot by the quiet brick main building of the Hamilton School for the Deaf, as elegant as any prep school.

  At the front desk sits a tired-looking woman who straightens up as Harkness strides forward and raises his badge.

  “Morning, ma’am,” he says. “I’m Detective Harkness, Boston Police Department.”

  She nods, then speaks in the thick, twisted voice of someone struggling with every syllable. “Good morning.”

  “I’m looking for a student living here, young guy from the Lower South End. We enrolled him a couple of months ago. Nickname’s Vince. Last name’s Ashmont.”

  “I think you mean Edward, that’s the name he’s going by now,” she says, slowly.

  The news surprises Harkness. “Well, whatever he’s calling himself, I need to see him.”

  “I need to speak with the director of the school first to do that.” She struggles so long to get this sentence out that Harkness considers signing. But she’s here to talk, to show progress.

  Harkness summons up his most compelling cop voice and signs at the same time. “No time for that. It’s an emergency. I need you to wake him up and bring him here. Now.”

  “Yes. Please wait here.”

  Harkness sits on a bench next to a wall lined with pictures of dozens of smiling kids.

  The front-desk woman returns with her hands on the shoulders of a sleepy-looking Edward wearing gray sweatpants and a white V-neck T-shirt.

  Harkness signs that he’s sorry to wake him up, that this is important.

  Edward shrugs, leans forward, and holds Harkness tightly for a long time.

  Harkness signs that he has something important to ask about, a secret that shouldn’t stay a secret.

  Edward looks interested. He also looks like he might fall asleep.

  Harkness asks Edward the question that’s been circling through his thoughts all night, that he should have asked when he and Patrick found him chained to a radiator in the Hotel Blackstone.

  Who killed your uncle?

  23

  JENNET ANSWERS THE door to the Jacobsons’ garage and smiles at Harkness. “Glad you could make it.”

  “How could I turn down your invitation?” Jennet texted Harkness with a simple but irresistible message. I know things you should.

  Jennet walks into the remodeled garage, now meticulously cleaned and organized. There are two twin beds in the back topped by red Hudson’s Bay blankets, a cheerful night table next to each. And on the other side of the garage, there’s a small kitchen with a hot plate, refrigerator, and microwave.

  “I like what you’ve done to this place,” Harkness says. “Very homey.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But don’t get too used to it.”

  Jennet’s green eyes turn dead as emeralds. “Here to throw me out, Officer Harkness?”

  “No, just here to talk, like you said.”

  “So let’s talk.” Jennet sits on the big teal couch in front of the flat-screen and pats the cushion next to her.

  Harkness brings over a folding chair from the breakfast nook and sits down across from Jennet. “Let me start with something you probably don’t want to hear. We know you’re working with the Manchester Group, Jennet.”

  Harkness waits for her to deny it, but she says nothing. “So what do you have to say about that?”

  Jennet shrugs. “What makes you think that I’d have anything to do with those creeps? I hate them.”

  “Well, first of all, Fayerwether asked for information about towns you could wander to, but it was your man Mouse who picked it up from the library,” Harkness says. “That’s the easy part. Then we found a story about the Community Store scandal.”

  “Did some digging, did you?”

  Harkness remembers Esther’s wide smile as she walked into his office carrying a copy of the Lower South Ender, culled from a tall stack after two days of reading every page. “It said you were getting paid by the Manchester Group to keep homeless people off the street and make the neighborhood look good.”

  “It’s true,” Jennet says with a matter-of-fact shrug. “Can’t deny it. You got me. I took money from shitty rich people to help starving poor people. Haul me into jail.” She holds out her wrists. “Cuff me.”

  Harkness stands and lifts up the chair, moves it farther away. “Nothing to say for yourself?”

  “Plenty,” she says. “Ready to listen for a minute or are you just going to talk all over me?”

  Harkness holds up his hand. “I’m all yours.”

  “Are you familiar with the phrase by any means necessary?”

  “Malcolm X, right?”

  “Yeah,” Jennet says. “We took money from the Manchester Group to feed people in the Lower South E
nd for free because the city wouldn’t fund us. We called it capital rekarmatization. Taking their dirty money and making it clean again.”

  “Hard to argue with that,” Harkness says. “And now?”

  “I needed to get my people out of the Lower South End. By any means necessary. They were stuck in apartments without electricity, without heat. The streets were coated with toxic sludge. So yes, the Manchester Group gave us money to front the wanderer movement. In this case, we shared a common goal—to clear out the Lower South End.”

  “Why would they give you money?”

  “When you pay for the circus, you get to decide when it closes,” Jennet says.

  “Sounds a little too easy.”

  “Here’s some news. Wall Street paid for the Occupy movement. They channeled the money to make it happen and then shut it off to make it stop.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Oh yeah?” Jennet gives a knowing shake of her long hair. “Whoever pays the bill gets to decide what happens. They get to sidestep lasting change. Happens all the time. The CIA fronted the Vietnam protests. Reagan paid for the pro-Sandinista movement in the eighties. The trick is to take their money and not give up, not let them get their way.”

  “Sounds like Conspiracy Theory 101 to me,” Harkness says.

  “Because you have no idea.”

  “Oh really? I think you’re kidding yourself, Jennet. The Manchester Group is clearing out the Lower South End permanently.”

  Jennet shrugs. “Things change. We took the best option we had at the time. Does that surprise you?”

  “A little,” Harkness says. “I mean, it’s like making a deal with the devil, from what I know about the Manchester Group.”

  “We made our choice and we’ll live with it,” Jennet says.

  “Seems more like you made the choice, Jennet. I’m pretty sure no one in the wanderer movement would like to hear that they’re in Nagog thanks to money from the same people who threw them out of their neighborhood. Would they?”