Dark Horse

by Rory Flynn

  “You look like a hungry guy staring at a sizzling steak, Eddy,” Candace says. “What the fuck!”

  “I went out to Nagog to talk Jennet about the Manchester Group,” Harkness says. “She gave me some great information.”

  “And a really super blowjob?”

  Harkness shakes his head. “Nothing happened. Not even a kiss. She ripped her shirt and threatened to make it look like I raped her.”

  “Oh really? Then what?”

  “I didn’t go for it and the shirt went back on.”

  “And the pants never came off? Hers or yours? Tell me the pants never came off.”

  “No, never.”

  “Maybe you just wanted one last fling, you know, before you get married. Is that it, Eddy?”

  “No,” Harkness says. “Nothing happened. What you see there is it—me about ten feet away from Jennet, who pretended to want me. But I did not go for it.”

  Candace’s voice shifts into a more desperate key. “You look so be-fucking-witched, Eddy, like some guy watching the girl next door undress in front of a window.”

  “I was just surprised.”

  “And it’s a good surprise when suddenly there are nice tits, isn’t it? Every man wants random nice tits popping up in his life, right?”

  “Look, I don’t know, Candace. I told you what happened. But I have to ask—when did you quit watching the news?”

  “They voted to oust the wanderers,” Candace says. “That was awesome. Then they showed up at Buckholtz’s house, which was a great idea. That’s about when I dozed off.”

  Harkness pauses. “So you don’t know what happened next?”

  “No.”

  “Sit down.” Harkness points to the couch and Candace sits. He does a quick search and clicks a news clip. “Watch this.”

  “Police in Nagog have identified the dead woman as Jennet Townsend, thirty-one, of Boston, the activist who founded the wanderer movement.” Jennet’s face hovers over the newscaster’s shoulder. “The alleged shooter is town resident Wade Buckholtz, seventy-seven, who is being held on charges of first-degree murder.” A photo of a much-younger Buckholtz appears over the other shoulder.

  Harkness clicks the news clip off and shuts the laptop.

  “Whoa, Eddy. She’s dead? What the fuck happened?”

  “After the wanderers showed up at Buckholtz’s house, he came out on the front steps, really pissed off. He pointed his twelve-gauge and fired both barrels into the crowd. Or, more specifically, into Jennet Townsend. She died instantly.”

  “Shit,” Candace says.

  Harkness looks right in his fiancée’s scared eyes. “Look, Jennet can’t tell you what happened, Candace. So you’re just going to have to believe me.”

  Candace pauses, then starts to cry. “Jesus, Eddy. I had no idea. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  He puts his arms around her. “I’m sorry about the photo, really sorry. But whoever took it and sent it to you just wanted to mess with us. Mostly with me. I’ll have Patrick try to figure out where that photo came from.”

  Candace closes her eyes. “Okay.”

  Harkness knows they won’t be able to trace the sender’s bogus e-mail account. But the message is clear: Don’t fuck with us. Burch may be out of commission, but the Manchester Group has plenty of other cold-hearted fixers onboard.

  “The people we’re up against will do anything to ruin me, Candace. We can’t let them.”

  “It takes more than a picture, Eddy,” she says. “Much more.” She reaches over and kisses him, then pulls away slowly and slaps him again.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Just a reminder.”

  “Of what?”

  “Whatever you need to be reminded of.”

  By the time Harkness finishes writing the letter, it’s almost dawn. Candace and May are asleep in the bedroom, and weak winter sunlight is seeping through the apartment. He checks for paper, tries to send the letter to the printer, realizes that it isn’t wireless, so he has to find the Ethernet cable and plug it into the laptop. The paper jams. After he clears the wad of paper, the machine produces an okay-looking copy, but on the back there’s an article that Candace printed out, then recycled. Harkness finds some clean paper, hits a couple of keys, and pulls the letter from the printer with a sense of triumph.

  At first, the chosen communication channel of the Harbormasters seemed foolish but appropriate for a group that started back in the days of quill pens and powdered wigs. But now it makes sense. Cell phones, e-mail, texts—they all leave a trail. Letters send their message, make their request or threat. Then with the touch of a match, they’re gone forever.

  He looks for a pen in the kitchen, finds only a Sharpie and some crayons. He turns up a stubby pencil from when he and Candace played putt-putt on the Cape last summer, but a golf-pencil signature doesn’t seem right.

  Finally, he comes up with a not-completely-dried-out pen in a coat pocket and scrawls his signature on the bottom.

  It’s hard to write a letter in the digital era. Even harder to send it.

  Harkness looks for an envelope in the closet where they keep the stack of bills. Nothing. They pay most of them online. The other bills just sit around until someone calls and then they pay them over the phone.

  He finds a return envelope from the cable company, but it has an address on it already.

  Harkness pulls on his uniform and heavy winter BPD jacket and slips quietly out of the apartment. He takes the elevator to the sixth floor and walks down the hall to Nate and Shawna’s apartment. He listens at the door, knocks when he hears voices.

  “Hey.” It’s Nate, ursine and sleepy, pale belly poking out from beneath his gray T-shirt. A redlining body mass index is an occupational hazard of being a craft brewer. “What’s up, Eddy?”

  “Sorry to bother you,” Harkness says. “But do you have an envelope?”

  “What?”

  Harkness holds up the letter. “Thing that this goes in,” he says.

  “Oh, that. I’ll check.” Nate leaves the door open and pads back into the apartment. He asks Shawna where the envelopes are. There’s some back-and-forth about whether they actually have any. Jenna’s watching educational cartoons at earsplitting volume. Then Nate’s back, holding a limp, lumpy envelope in his hand.

  “This is all we’ve got.”

  Harkness takes the envelope—gray, with smashed seeds dotting it like an everything bagel.

  “If you plant it, it grows wildflowers,” Nate says. “Supposedly.”

  “Oh.”

  “It’s left over from last year’s solstice-party invitations.”

  Harkness narrows his eyes. “Would you mind explaining why you didn’t invite us?”

  “We did! We did!” Nate backs away from the door.

  Harkness smiles. “Fucking with you, Nate.”

  “Shit, Eddy. You’ve got scary cop down a little too good, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Not a compliment.”

  Harkness walks toward the Harbormasters’ headquarters, boots crunching in the snow. There are only a few cars parked on the Northern Avenue Bridge next to the building, but two beefy guards stand in front of the doors. As Harkness approaches, they stand up a little straighter and suck in their guts.

  “Deliver this, please,” he says, handing the letter to the nearer guard.

  “Will do, boss,” he says.

  They don’t recognize him as the whiskey-stinking bum they beat up. Now he’s just a detective with a message for Katherine Aiello, an old-style letter with news and a request for help—the kind of help that only a Harbormaster can deliver.

  His cell phone rings as he walks toward the Chevy. It’s Patrick.

  “On my way in,” Harkness says.

  “Got something waiting for you.”

  “What?”

  “Your contract-termination notice, Harky. We all got ’em in our mailboxes this morning. We got a couple of weeks to report to HR and find out if we’re
getting reassigned or laid off. Narco-Intel is history.”

  38

  THE SNOWY PATH through Freedom City twists through the neat rows of aluminum huts designed by eco-conscious MIT students to replace the tents and lean-to shacks. A volunteer in a heavy black parka pedals a stationary bicycle on a wooden platform. Dozens of volunteers stand in line, waiting their turn to keep the electric heaters and lights on with People Power, as the sign on the platform puts it. Beyond the huts, a huge communal bonfire sends sparks arcing high above Government Center.

  In the weeks since Harkness’s last visit, Freedom City has grown like a Wild West town. Despite the snow and cold, the people keep coming—nostalgic Occupy activists, students, even some elderly residents of the former West End. They all came to show their support, then stayed because it was more fun than being cooped up in their apartments all winter. The ad hoc protests turned into a nascent town, then the thriving metropolis that Harkness sees stretching out across the plaza. From what he can tell, there must be more than a thousand protesters living in Freedom City, along with reporters from all over the world and a fleet of news trucks here to cover the growing protests against Mayor O’Mara.

  The mayor’s problems accrued like snow, slowly at first, then in a blizzard. The Burch scandal made his administration seem thuggy and weird. The Globe’s spotlight series exploring the links between his administration and the Manchester Group made it look beyond corrupt. And his inept handling of the record January snowfall, the latest natural disaster to hit the city, undercut O’Mara’s reputation as a get-things-done mayor.

  But despite the growing protests, a hard fact remains, one that everyone in Freedom City knows—O’Mara is still mayor. And he doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon.

  Ahead, the shaggy doppel-mayor of Freedom City walks toward Harkness, passing between the rows of huts—smiling at citizens, answering questions, handing out donated coffee. Mouse is wearing a black parka and a blaze-orange motorcycle helmet pulled over his puffy hair. The red third eye painted on the front of helmet makes him hard to miss.

  “Hey, Eddy. Pretty fucking incredible, huh?”

  “Fantastic,” Harkness says.

  Mouse points toward downtown Freedom City. “We’ve got a communications yurt, an infirmary, a library, a central kitchen, and more donations than we know what to do with. Coats, blankets, food, money. People are really generous.”

  “When they want to be,” Harkness says.

  “Well, we’ve hit a nerve.”

  Mouse waves Harkness back up the steps of City Hall. “Hey, watch this,” he says as a clump of guys in parkas and moonboots approach. They’re nudging an angry-looking man ahead of them with long sticks. “I’ll show you how snow justice works.”

  Half walking, half sliding, the group comes to the enormous mountain of snow cleared to build the city.

  “Stick Men! What’s the trouble here?”

  “Caught him taking video,” one says.

  “The city’s identifying us all so it can press charges,” another adds.

  “That’s not true!” the prisoner shouts.

  “Proof?” Mouse says.

  “He was uploading the video to a dark site we know the city’s using to gather evidence on us,” a Stick Man says. “And he’s got a city cell phone.”

  “I see,” Mouse says. “I think a couple of hours in the snow keep should be plenty. Then banish him from the city.”

  The Stick Men nod and approach the giant snow pile. One steps on the ground in front of the mound and a hidden mechanism kicks in. A door slides open slowly, revealing a dark, icy cavern. The Stick Men shove the offender in and the door closes behind him.

  “Impressive,” Harkness says. “Who made the giant igloo?”

  “MIT students with too much time on their hands,” Mouse says.

  “What’s inside?”

  “No heat, no light, nothing,” Mouse says. “Some time in the snow keep generally chills anyone out,” Mouse says.

  “I bet.”

  “Every city has to keep out the troublemakers, even ours. Especially ours. We want to be a model.”

  “Just so you know, that wasn’t exactly justice. At least, not the kind we learned about at the Academy.”

  Mouse shrugs. “What happens in Freedom City stays in Freedom City. We just do what we need to do.”

  “I’m sure the mayor would agree with that approach,” Harkness says.

  “Hey, don’t get picky, man. You’re the one who told me to bring the whole wanderer movement downtown and stick it to the mayor. If you don’t like it, you can run this circus, man. Half of Freedom City can’t eat gluten and the other half can’t figure out what pronoun describes their gender.”

  They walk back up the low grade of the plaza, City Hall squatting ahead of them like a cement tomb built by Aztecs.

  “There he is, keeping an eye on us. Big Bro.” Mouse points to a dark window on the fifth floor. Behind the smoked glass, Harkness can make out a white shirt and dark tie, but he can’t see O’Mara’s face. As he stares at the window, Harkness imagines O’Mara in a Nixonian huddle with his advisers, trying to figure out how to stanch his hemorrhaging popularity and get rid of Freedom City.

  A snowball hits near the mayor’s window. For a dollar donation, anyone who wants to can get an Instagram-ready photo taken while throwing a prepacked snowball at City Hall. The line snakes across the plaza.

  “I can tell you like what you’re seeing.” Mouse leans closer and his voice drops. “So you’ll tear up my warrant?”

  Harkness puts one hand on Mouse’s shoulder as they walk through Freedom City. “It’s all looking good,” he says. “But there’s one thing missing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A third act,” Harkness says.

  39

  THE EVOLVING SNOW sculpture known as Freezing Man faces City Hall across the plaza. Today he’s wearing a tricorner plywood hat, and one arm is outstretched to give the mayor the finger. Along the edge of the plaza, food trucks dispense free meals to the growing crowd living in Freedom City. Broadcast trucks line Cambridge Street, capturing every moment of Rage Weekend, a galvanizing political protest, urban party, winter music festival—and the third and final act of the wanderers.

  Harkness, Esther, and Patrick came up with Rage Weekend during a coffee-fueled brainstorming session pulled together to try to save their department—and get rid of O’Mara by any means necessary. Rage and radical action seemed like the only approach now that their days as detectives are numbered. So they borrowed a concept from the Weathermen. And they held the demonstration on a weekend, making it even more convenient for citizens to join the protests, swelling Freedom City to fill all of Government Center.

  “Did you try the bison chili?” Patrick points to one of the food trucks. “Got to say, it’s awesome.”

  “How can you eat at a time like this?” Esther says.

  “How can you not? Heard of stress eating?”

  “Just because there’s a name for something doesn’t mean you have to do it.” Esther zips up her BPD winter jacket with its fleece collar. Lattimore put Narco-Intel on crowd control, but what they’re really doing is waiting—for an impending snowstorm and for news from the city council meeting at the Old North Church. All the detectives on the plaza this afternoon—Fredette, Gray, DeFrancesco, Hendricks, Poole, Tims—are wondering whether they’ll have jobs on Monday morning. And looking to Harkness to make something happen. Anything.

  They’re worried about more than their jobs. They’re monitoring drugs no one else in the BPD has even heard of—Retna, Swerve, Brainwash, Front Man, White Alice. They’ve been listening in on baggage handlers at the airport laundering drug money, tracking down an illusive Mattapan meth dealer, and gathering intel on an online drug mart run out of a Somerville triple-decker. The thought of these investigations and more suddenly going dark on Monday makes Harkness’s stomach drop.

  Lattimore charges out of the front doors of City H
all, face flushed red, down-jacketed Stooges struggling to keep up with him. “Any word from Reed?”

  Harkness looks at his watch. “The meeting just started.”

  “So does he have the votes or not?”

  “Can’t be sure,” Harkness says. “We’ve pulled in every favor and yanked every string. We’ve done things I can’t even tell you about, sir. In the end, all fourteen of them have to have the guts to vote for a bill of address to throw the mayor out. But they’re the city council.”

  “Like a deck of wildcards.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Get this—the mayor’s about to declare a citywide public emergency,” Lattimore tells them. “Says there might be more than a foot of snow coming, and he has to keep the citizens safe.”

  “Like he cares,” Esther says.

  Patrick shakes his head slowly. “Just another excuse to force people to go home and shelter in place.” The mayor’s invoked his version of martial law twice already—once during Hurricane X, and once during the winter’s unrelenting snowstorms.

  “Enough with Bossy McBoss Boss,” Esther says. “Everyone’s getting tired of being pushed around.”

  Lattimore looks over at the People’s Pulpit, the low wooden platform that faces Freedom City. From MIT professors to singer-songwriters, everyone stands there to address the crowd. “He just ordered me to get up there and tell the crowd to disperse,” he says. “I still have to answer to him, at least until Monday morning, when none of us will be around anymore.”

  Patrick sizes up the crowd. “Probably about ten thousand people here, sir. They’re not just going to leave and take the T home, even if you ask them nice-like. What do we do with the folks who stick around?”

  “We’re supposed to move in and enforce the law. Billy clubs out, Tasers ready to go, busting heads and taking names.” Lattimore holds up a sheet of paper. “His lawyers put together a list of violations.”