Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  Jennet’s green eyes narrow and she takes in a deep slow breath. “Well, I’m pretty sure that none of your friends would like to hear that you raped me.” Jennet leans closer, staring at Harkness with some version of anger. She puts one hand on the top of her light flannel shirt and gives it a sudden pull, popping the buttons, ripping the fabric and revealing her delicate black bra.

  “Whoa. Stop it.”

  “Mrs. Jacobson has her binoculars trained on the garage door right now, Eddy.” Jennet says. “She saw you come in with her own beady, jealous eyes, and she’ll see me run out screaming with my shirt ripped. No matter what the truth is, it’ll look bad for you,” she says. “It’s not like you’re a stranger to controversy, is it, Harvard Cop?”

  “What do you really want?”

  “An even trade—my information for yours. And total honesty.”

  “This from someone about to fake an assault and blame me for it?”

  Jennet smiles, pulls her shirt around her. “I didn’t do it, did I?”

  “Not yet,” Harkness says.

  Jennet stands up and walks over to the twin beds, shedding the ripped shirt like a husk and reaching behind to unhook her bra. She falls back on the bed, her breasts set in seductive motion. “C’mon, let’s have some fun for a while. Gets lonely out here.”

  Harkness sees speckled shoulders, gentle collarbones, small breasts with generous areolae. He sees a needy young woman on a red blanket. He sees the calculated smile of a political operator who would do anything to get her way.

  If Jennet were a man, Harkness would hate her.

  “I think I’ll take you up on your first offer. Information and honesty.”

  Jennet springs out of bed, opens a closet, and pulls on a white button-down shirt. “Have it your way, Eddy,” she says. “Just know I would have been fine if you’d just fucked my brains out.”

  Harkness says nothing, desire evolving like a virus, looking for a way to put his body next to hers as quickly as possible. “And what would that have resolved, exactly?”

  “Nothing.” Jennet pulls the white shirt around her, leaving it unbuttoned. “But it would have been more fun.”

  “No argument there.”

  “Now that we’ve got that figured out, let’s get started.” Jennet sits back down on the couch, smiling. “You show me yours first.”

  After Harkness runs through the evidence he has linking Dark Horse to the Manchester Group, Jennet sits quietly, then stands and stalks through the empty room. “That sounds right,” she says. “All roads lead to the Manchester Group. Dark Horse is their idea and their fault. They’ll do anything to turn the Lower South End into luxury condos. But you’re missing one crucial angle.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The mayor,” she says. “He’s Neil Burch’s creation—that guy has his hand jammed up inside O’Mara’s head like a puppeteer. And he’s Fayerwether’s chum from way back. They’re the two you need to watch. Burch on the street, Fayerwether everywhere else.”

  “Why?”

  “The mayor may not have directly been involved with Dark Horse,” she says. “In fact, I can guarantee that he wasn’t. The guy’s not stupid. Deniability is his middle name. But he puts these shitty guys in positions of power and lets them do what they want. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that they do terrible things. Dark Horse is just the beginning, Eddy. The more you dig, the more dirt you’ll find.”

  She sits back down on the couch. “Just don’t let them off the hook. They rely on people being too scared to go up against them.”

  Harkness nods. “Your turn to ask the questions.”

  “I want to know about Nagog,” Jennet says. “Who runs the town, who do we need to suck up to, who hates us. Because we hear they’re already scheduling another town meeting for January,” Jennet says. “We need to be able to stay here until we can go back to the Lower South End.”

  “From what you’re saying, you won’t ever be able to go back.”

  “We can if you can fix it, Eddy. Derail their big plan.”

  “Nothing would make me happier.”

  “It’s probably impossible,” Jennet says. “Just so you know.”

  “I definitely know.”

  “Just do what you can. By any means necessary, right?” Jennet leans over, reaches out, and gives Harkness’s hand a squeeze. She notices his missing finger and touches its annealed end gently, as if she can rub the damage away.

  Harkness slides his hand back. “Let’s talk about Nagog,” he says.

  Jennet reaches for her notebook and flips to a new page. “Okay, Professor Harkness, begin your lecture.” She pauses. “Or do you have another lesson planned for this afternoon?”

  Harkness stares into her lovely green eyes, the kind that tell beautiful lies. “No,” he says. “I think a brief lecture on the power structure of my hometown might help you. But one thing first.”

  Jennet brightens. “What?”

  “Button your shirt, please.”

  24

  THE SUITE OF City Hall offices looks more like a startup lab, with a row of white workbenches and earnest young guys in black T-shirts working at them, some wearing protective glasses like true science nerds. Harkness watches them from the Barcelona chairs in the waiting room—their fast hands, intense focus.

  Burch leaves his corner office and rushes toward him, beaming out a manic smile from beneath his shining dome. He’s shorter than Harkness remembers and more geeky than scary. “Eddy! Eddy Harkness! Harvard Cop! He shoots, he scores!” He’s shouting like a fanboy. “So good to see you again.”

  Harkness smiles as they shake hands, looks Burch in the jittery eyes. “Good to see you.” A lie. Harkness has learned to steer clear of loose cannons like Burch. He’s exuding the smell of late-night booze, a sweet stink no amount of toothpaste can cover up. Rumor has it that Burch is a wild man in the bars after-hours.

  “Thanks for jumping in during the quote-unquote book riot,” Burch says, “catching that idiot book tosser.” Though his title is chief technology officer, Neil Burch serves a less visible role as the mayor’s enforcer. He waves Harkness into his large, cement-walled City Hall office with windows looking out on the cobblestoned expanse of Government Center.

  “Just doing my job.”

  Burch settles into his brushed-aluminum-and-black-mesh chair and puts his hands on his aqua-glass desk. “Well, you showed how it’s done. Beyond the call of duty. Grace under pressure. All that stuff.”

  Harkness takes a seat on the other side of the desk, notices that it’s set a little lower than Burch’s chair, a bush-league power play.

  “I know my meeting invitation said we needed to talk about the mayor’s opioid task force,” Burch says. “But first I want to show you something really cool we’re working on.” Burch rises, twitchy excitement making it impossible for him to stay seated. “I think you’ll really like it.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, so draw your Glock and point it at me.”

  Harkness shakes his head, wonders if this whole meeting is a setup. “I don’t need to tell you the dozen reasons I can’t do that, Mr. Burch.”

  “Neil, please.”

  “I can’t just draw my weapon, Neil. Especially here in City Hall. It violates more regulations than I can count.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” Burch says. “But check this out.” He reaches into the drawer and hands Harkness a SIG Sauer.

  “Nice.” Harkness checks it out—newish, looks like a P226 MK25, except it’s tan-colored. He hands the gun back.

  “Just like the Navy SEALs use,” Burch says. “Except this one’s the desert model. You know, for our enemies in the Middle East.”

  Burch ejects the magazine, turns it to make sure that it’s empty, checks the chamber, then pulls back the slide and points the gun at the floor. He pulls the trigger with a loud click. “Now you try.” He hands the gun to Harkness.

  “I really don’t want to.”

  “I promise, you
won’t get fired,” Burch says. “Nothing bad’s going to happen. In fact, nothing at all’s going to happen.” Burch reaches over and flips a toggle switch next to his phone, then shouts, “FEMP on!”

  Harkness stares, wonders what’s up. So far, Burch seems more like an overcaffeinated professor than a canny political operator.

  “Okay, so try to pull the slide back now.”

  Harkness holds up the pistol, points it carefully at a leather chair in the corner that might blunt a 9 mm round. But when he tries to pull back the slide, it won’t move.

  “Can’t do it,” he says.

  Burch throws the switch again. “FEMP off,” he shouts. “Try again.”

  Harkness pulls the slide back. It moves smoothly now, like it’s supposed to.

  Burch puts up his hand, palm forward. “Hold on,” he says to Harkness, then he shouts at the ceiling, “FEMP on!” He nods at Harkness.

  Harkness tries to pull the trigger but it won’t move.

  Another shout at the ceiling from Burch, then Harkness tries again, hears the click of the trigger.

  Harkness places the gun carefully on Burch’s desk.

  “Cool, huh?”

  “So what’s that all about?”

  “Focused electromagnetic pulse, or FEMP,” Burch says. “Freezes up moving parts. Metal and otherwise. It’s like super glue for guns. Right now, we’ve got it working in closely confined areas, like about half of my office here.” He waves his hand toward the lab. “But soon we’ll be able to expand it to larger fields, like a city block. Imagine that—bad guys with guns they can’t use.”

  Harkness nods. “That would be pretty great.”

  “We can knock out their cell phones too.” Burch turns quiet, then looks at Harkness with unalloyed suspicion. “Just so you know, maybe the technology isn’t called FEMP at all. Maybe it’s something else we can’t even tell you about. But it really works.”

  “Color me impressed,” Harkness says, and he is—impressed that one of the buttoned-down mayor’s advisers is such a maniac.

  “No offense, Harkness. But the old-school police work the BPD’s doing is hit-or-miss at best. Cops wander around looking for trouble—on the streets and online. When they stumble across it, they respond. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

  Harkness nods. Burch hasn’t said anything that he disagrees with so far.

  “Technology lets us move from man-to-man to zone defense. It boosts efficiency. And it turns cops from blunt objects barging around the city into smart, proactive peace machines.”

  “Sounds good,” Harkness says.

  “I thought you’d see it that way,” Burch says. “I had you pegged for a forward thinker. Pragmatic and visionary. The kind of guy the mayor really likes on his team. Not like the lard-assed, Dunkin’ Donuts–swilling BPD of old, right?”

  Harkness lets the slight slide because he’s here to charm Burch, not defend himself or the BPD. He’s in Burch’s world, like an old-school fox in a high-tech hen house.

  “Microdrones, digital surveillance, emerging technologies,” Burch recites. “It’s an exciting time in law enforcement. Every cop has to ask himself, Do I want to be part of the violent past or the peaceful future?”

  “The future,” Harkness says. “Definitely the future.”

  Burch gives a broad smile and reaches out to shake his hand. “Excellent. Then let me tell you a little secret, Harkness. And it stays in this room. If you tell anyone, I’ll have to kill you.”

  Harkness stares.

  “Kidding!” Burch smiles so hard his lips almost disappear. Ha-ha-ha. “The mayor’s working on a major shakeup of the BPD. In a few months, Lattimore will be out. We’ll be replacing him with Lieutenant Landers from A-One, know him?”

  “Definitely.” Putting on an enthusiastic expression is a challenge, but Harkness does it. “Good man. Saw him just the other day.”

  “You okay with the change? I mean, I know you and Lattimore are close.”

  “We’re close because I report to him,” Harkness says. “If someone else is in the role, I’ll be close to him. My job’s not about allegiance or friendship. It’s about duty and the law, Neil.” Harkness recites this careful lie without a trace of outrage.

  “Excellent,” Burch says. “But this part’s harder. We’ll be folding Narco-Intel into the Narcotics division. Makes sense to keep like with like.”

  “So how’s that going to work?” Harkness asks, knowing it won’t be pretty.

  “Everyone in your department will be reassessed and reassigned,” Burch says.

  Harkness knows what reassigned means—fired or put on desk duty.

  Burch smiles. “Except you, of course.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  “You’ll be part of the new Narcotics team. Narco 2.0, we’re calling it.”

  “I like the sound of that,” Harkness says.

  “In January, we want to announce a narcotics task force that can morph into the new department next year. We’d like your help creating it. Can we count on you?”

  A more volatile detective would use this chance to turn the tables on Burch, to ask him why someone in the mayor’s office has been prowling around the digital margins of Narco-Intel trying to access records about Dark Horse. He would slam his hand on Burch’s fancy glass desk and tell him to fuck himself for breaking up his department and for using such an obvious ploy to keep him quiet.

  But Harkness has to play the long game, and play it well.

  “Absolutely,” he says. “I’d be proud to be part of it.”

  Harkness reaches into his lowest desk drawer and pulls out the unopened bottle of Jameson that Lattimore gave him. He sets it on the desk in front of him and stares at it, contemplating the consequences of backsliding into a cop cliché.

  Patrick barges in. “Hey, Harky . . .”

  Harkness turns toward him.

  “What’s wrong, boss?”

  “I just saw the future of law enforcement.”

  “And?”

  “We’re not in it.”

  Silence settles over the office. In the background, they can hear the news channels, the blipping of scanners, detectives shouting.

  “You gonna open that, boss?”

  “No.” Harkness pulls out a desk drawer and puts the bottle away, for now.

  “Good call. Did you see this?” Patrick holds out the Business section of the Globe, folded to an inside page. “Fayerwether made an announcement today. Picked the lead developer in the Lower South End.” He runs his finger down the columns of text. “Called the mayor’s landgrab ‘a creative public-private partnership for revitalizing the Lower South End.’ And guess who that partner is.”

  Harkness finds the key on his key ring and opens the upper evidence locker. He reaches deep into the locker and runs his fingers along the back wall. There’s nothing there, nothing at all.

  He steps back and checks to make sure he’s looking in the last locker on the left. The other lockers are full of yellow bags, each labeled and bundled for further processing at the main lab. But the top locker is never used—too high, too small.

  Just as Harkness begins to run through the possibilities, Esther walks into Evidence. “You know, for a guy who’s really great at finding things, you’re not very good at hiding them.” She unlocks a lower drawer and reaches to the back to pull out a familiar ring box.

  “How’d you know that was mine?”

  “Patrick told me.”

  “Why’d you move it?”

  “This drawer’s safer,” she says. “I have the only key. Didn’t want your engagement ring hauled downtown by accident. You’d have to explain why you hid it in the same lockers with a bunch of heroin, bloody hoodies, and guns. Not very romantic, IMHO.”

  Harkness nods, opens the box, and sees that it still holds his family’s ring.

  “You going to actually use that ring or just carry it around?”

  Harkness says nothing, then shakes his head. “I’ve had i
t here for three months,” he says. At first he told himself he was just waiting for the right time to come along. Then he realized he was stalling. Then he stalled again and again.

  “You’ll figure it out, boss,” Esther says. “If it makes you feel any better, I’d marry you right now if you asked me.”

  “Really, Esther?”

  “Sure!” She bobs with enthusiasm. “Lots of people just get married. More fun than being alone. Tax advantages. You get a bunch of presents from your relatives.”

  “Sounds great.” Even though Esther’s in her late twenties, Harkness wonders if the part of her brain that deals with consequences still isn’t working yet.

  “Meant to tell you, I’m dating Glenn now—your friend at the library.”

  “Smart guy. And now a lucky guy too.”

  “Thanks. We hit it off. Maybe we’ll get married in a couple of months. Who knows?”

  “Anything can happen,” Harkness says. “It’s a crazy world.”

  “Here’s the way I think about it,” Esther says. “All those big decisions people used to get all hung up over? Where to live? Choosing a career? Now people just don’t worry about it as much. Maybe you just need to go with it. Trust your instincts.”

  “Thanks, Esther.”

  “I had an advice column in my high-school newspaper,” she says. “It was called Ask Esther. If you need help with anything else, just ask me.” Esther drifts out of the evidence room.

  Harkness looks at the evidence lockers. Each one holds a story—about a bust, a victim, a deal gone awry. Seeing so many unhappy endings makes it hard to believe in beginnings, Harkness thinks, then decides this line of thinking is total crap, something a jaded detective might mutter on a second-tier cop series.

  When he considered the real problem—during stolen moments at work or up late in their apartment—he found himself going back to Thalia’s drinks-fueled diatribe. She’s right. He’s not done with his demons. No one is. Everyone has an empty room inside, one that demons try to break into and colonize. His defenses are strong, but so are the demons. One window shatters and they’re back inside.

  He puts the ring box in his pocket and takes it with him—not to a new hiding place this time, but home.