by Chris Mooney
Coop took a hard right off the Southeast Expressway, following the lead car as it headed down the ramp for Dorchester Ave. Darby braced herself against the sway and then, as she leaned back in her seat watching the flashing lights, the sirens piercing her skin and flooding her veins, she felt like throwing open the door and running.
Coop cocked his head to her. ‘You all right?’
‘I feel like Don Quixote tilting at the windmills.’
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘This is exactly what he wants.’ Darby thought she saw a few snowflakes floating through the air, but she wasn’t sure. ‘He doesn’t want us to sit still and think. He needs to prove to us – and fast – he’s not the real monster.’
‘Briggs,’ Coop said.
Darby shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I think he’s the catalyst to get things rolling. I think our guy has the power to raise the dead.’
‘On what?’
‘That’s what he wants us to find out.’
22
+03.21
Dorchester, in Darby’s opinion, had always gotten a bum rap. Boston’s largest neighbourhood reminded her a lot of Belham, the city where she’d been born and raised: hard-working middle-class families who, at one time, were predominately Irish and lived in small homes and triple-deckers that were crammed next to each other. Mostly everyone parked in the street, and those people who had a front lawn – always the size of a postage stamp, always protected by a chain-link or picket fence to keep away the dogs and kids – took a lot of pride in keeping it neat and clean, and planted shrubs and plants with flowers that bloomed from early spring until late fall.
Pride was the key word. People took pride in their homes and in their neighbourhoods, their town. You knew your neighbours and everyone looked out for each other. A kid – five years old or fifteen, age didn’t matter – could play in the streets or ride their bikes or walk day or night without fear of getting caught in gang crossfire, because gangs and drugs and the homicides that went with them were, more or less, strictly limited to the projects.
Then a crack cocaine epidemic flooded Boston in the early nineties, and everything changed. The neighbourhoods went downhill, as did the schools. People fled, looking for the implied safety of suburbia. Then, before the dawn of the twenty-first century, another terror invaded the city, this one far more powerful than crack cocaine: gentrification. Successful and prosperous gay men had already taken over South Boston and transformed it into a real-estate seller’s wet dream. Properties that once upon a time couldn’t be given away were now selling for millions of dollars. People with big jobs and even bigger bank accounts devoured neighbourhoods of historic homes and helped pave the way for antique stores and upscale dining and a Starbucks on every corner. Real estate prices skyrocketed, taking property taxes with them, and suddenly the middle-classes and Baby Boomers and retirees could no longer afford their homes and were forced to either move out of the city, where real-estate prices were just as high, or go live in the already less desirable areas with people who were already pissed off and angry at life. Dorchester, like Belham, was now divided into two categories: parts that were very, very good, and parts that were very, very bad.
The business district in Jackman Circle, though, had its own special category: hopeless. The stores here catered to the neighbourhood clientele: cheque-cashing and cash for gold; rent-a-furniture stores advertising no money down; discount liquor stores and cheap Chinese food restaurants and dive day-drunk bars advertising chicken wings and dollar-draught beers specials in bright neon signs that glowed behind windows protected by steel-mesh screens. The area was also ground zero for homicides, most of which were gang-related. Standing on the corner where the taxi driver had picked up the gunman, Darby could recall at least nine homicides she had worked on around here back when she worked for BPD.
Why had the gunman chosen this spot to be picked up? Darby felt there was a strong purpose behind the man’s decision.
A social security office, a small building with windows made of bulletproof glass, took up the corner. It had an attached parking lot with six spaces, all of them occupied by high-end luxury cars – BMW, Mercedes, Lexus. The parking lot was sectioned off by two other buildings, both tall and made of brick, the sides marred – or, one could argue, decorated – with a colourful mural of a Spanish woman with gigantic cleavage smoking a blunt, along with messages: ‘Lost Boys’, ‘RIP Lost4Boyz’, and ‘Down with the Sickness’.
Coop emerged from the office’s front door, behind a heavy-set white woman holding a toddler and speaking on a phone. She was south of twenty-one, had bleached hair and long fingernails encrusted with fake diamonds, and wore a leather coat with a collar lined with fur. She shot daggers at Darby then focused her attention on helping her young son into the backseat of a new Mercedes SUV.
‘I wouldn’t tangle with her,’ Coop said. ‘I bet she’s packing.’
‘I bet she’s not the only one,’ Darby added. It was past noon on a workday, and everywhere she looked she saw groups of young men huddled together on the corners, bundled in oversized goose down North Face and FUBU jackets, their half-lidded eyes darting between her and the EOD vehicle and the six bomb-sniffing dogs that were moving along the streets, checking the parked cars and city garbage cans. Lots of hoodies here, and baseball caps worn sideways, their pristine $300 LaBron and Jordon high-tops worn with the laces undone, their baggy, wide-legged jeans sagging well-below the waist to reveal the brand name of the designer stitched prominently on the waistband of their boxer shorts or boxer briefs.
‘Any luck with the office cameras?’ she asked.
Coop nodded. ‘Our guy was standing right about where you are, right here in front of the entrance for the lot at seven thirty this morning. He wore sunglasses and that black cap of his was pulled down over his ears and forehead, and not once did he ever turn his face to the cameras.’
‘Because he knew exactly where they were.’
‘And he didn’t use the jammer this time. We don’t have a good shot of his face, but there wasn’t any interference in the feed.’
‘Which way did he come from?’
Coop pointed across the street, to Drummond Ave., another busy corner. They saw a lot of hostile faces aimed at them. Lots of illegal firearms, too, she suspected.
‘We should have worn vests,’ Coop said, reading her mind. ‘There’s no way our guy lives in this neighbourhood.’
He was right. A white male wouldn’t be welcome here – wouldn’t survive here.
‘He chose this place for a reason,’ Darby said, more to herself than Coop.
‘If we keep standing out here, we may not live long enough to find out what that reason is. I feel like I’ve got a target scope painted on my back. Let’s get back in the car.’
‘Ask patrol to canvas the streets and check all the parked cars,’ Darby said after she shut the door.
‘For what?’
‘A watcher. Our boy may not be working alone, remember? Have them target anyone sitting in a car parked nearby – man or woman, young or old, it doesn’t matter. Tell patrol to pull their licences, have them flag anyone who doesn’t live in or around this neighbourhood.’
‘You think our guy is local?’
‘Has to be, if he’s got a beef with BPD.’
‘Right, but what I meant was, if our guy isn’t from around here, that means he had to come here from somewhere else. Either he drove here and parked, or he took public transportation.’
‘All the MBTA stops have cameras.’
‘Howie’s got agents working with the subway’s transportation people on that.’
‘Where’s the closest station? The Red Line at Fields Corner?’
Coop nodded. ‘It’s about three, maybe four miles from here,’ he said. ‘I don’t see him walking that far – not through this neighbourhood, not in this weather.’
‘Let’s take a drive down Drummond, see what’s there.’
‘What are we looki
ng for?’
‘A bus stop.’
‘Buses still aren’t equipped with any security cameras.’
Coop was right. While the MBTA had security cameras posted on all their T stations, bringing the same level of security to their busses was slow because of – surprise, surprise – lack of government funding.
‘We know our guy made the taxi driver pull right up in front of the BPD so the taxi would be caught on camera,’ Darby said. ‘Now we’ve found where the driver picked him up – right in front of a government office where he knowingly got caught on camera.’
‘There aren’t cameras at the bus stops, either.’
‘I realize that. But our guy knows about the cameras, and in this neighbourhood some store or whatever has got to have a security camera, and he’ll be on one of them, I guarantee it. Our guy wants us to find him – to find out everything about him.’
23
+03.27
Coop hit the lights but not the sirens. ‘I feel like I’m involved in a circle jerk,’ he said, pulling away from the kerb.
‘You speaking from personal experience?’ Darby asked.
‘I’m serious. If this guy is dropping breadcrumbs like you said, all we’re doing is running around and tying up our resources, and for what? What’s the reason?’
‘He’s doubling down on his investment.’
‘His investment?’
‘What he’s put into motion is the culmination of his life’s work – his life’s purpose.’
‘And it’s all centred around Briggs.’
Darby nodded, held on to the door as Coop did a hard U-turn. ‘He knows there’s a good chance that Briggs won’t come into the lobby – that’ll we’ll prevent him or that Briggs will try to worm his way out of it, whatever. So what does he do? He picks a day when he knows Briggs is going to be out of the state to make his stand and to make sure he’s caught on camera so he can lead the FBI on a tour of BPD or government corruption or whatever this is about.’
‘Why not just tell us what it’s about? Why the theatre?’
‘Because saying the truth isn’t as powerful as discovering it.’
Coop turned right on to Drummond. To her left Darby saw what looked like an abandoned department store. It took up a good part of the block, the rows of missing windows reminding her of a mouth full of broken teeth, graffiti everywhere.
Then she looked out the front window and at the far end of the street and standing high in the air was a sign for The Gate of Heaven. Darby recognized the name, remembered reading about it. The Catholic church had recently been sold off by the Boston Archdiocese to help pay for the victims of sexual abuse from paedophile priests who, for decades, had been knowingly shuffled from parish to parish before being uncovered by a group of reporters from the Boston Globe. The ringleader, Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, the Archbishop of Boston at the time, had, according to law enforcement circles, left the city for Italy before state troopers arrived with subpoenas seeking his grand jury testimony. The Pope, aware of Law’s transgressions, appointed Law as Archpriest of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome.
Across the street from the entrance of the church was a bus stop, the small, outside shelter consisting of a Plexiglas roof and three walls covered with stickers and posters and spray-painted messages.
Coop pulled up to the front so they could read the small words printed on the MBTA sign. Darby was looking at a rainbow-coloured backpack sitting underneath the bench. She got out of the car and left the door hanging open.
Squatting on her haunches, she examined the backpack without touching it.
Then she looked over her shoulder and said, ‘The straps are duct-taped to the post.’
‘I’ll call the bomb squad.’
Darby shut the car door. As she made her way across the street, Coop pulled into the church parking lot.
Darby stood in the cold air, next to a sign put up by the Miller Construction Company that advertised a new condo development that would take the place of the church.
Four corners here, and a four-way stop. Behind the bus stop, a small parking lot, this one big enough to hold one, maybe two cars max. It was empty. Across the street from the stop, two stores: a local convenience store called ‘Timmy J’s’ and a hair salon called ‘B Luxe’ that offered blowouts and ten-dollar manicures. Standing here under the grey sky, cold, the snow on its way to bury them, she realized how much she ached for home – for any home.
Darby checked the hair salon first. It didn’t have a security system. The convenience store did. The camera posted behind the front corner also overlooked the bus stop across the street.
The young African American guy working behind the counter asked to see her ID. He was glassy-eyed and wore baggy clothes and had fake diamond earrings the size of dimes in each ear. She could smell beer on his breath.
She didn’t have a shield and told him she was working with the FBI. He wouldn’t allow her into the back room to let her look at the security camera.
Coop’s FBI credentials changed that.
The security system was hooked up to a Dell laptop that sat on a cheap, pressboard desk in the corner of the cramped back office located across from a bathroom and a pay phone that was missing its receiver. The kid gave them the password to unlock the screen. The trashcan was packed with empty Miller High Life cans, and there was a container of mouthwash sitting next to the keyboard. He came back here when it was quiet to pound a beer or two to relieve the boredom of his job.
Their years of working together had exposed them to all kinds of different security systems. This one was easy – a boxed system that could be picked up at the price clubs for two hundred bucks and recorded everything to the computer’s hard drive. He didn’t need her for this.
‘What’s the latest on Briggs? What’s his status?’
‘Howie’s on it,’ Coop replied, focusing on the security software.
The satellite phone was in her jacket pocket. She took it out and began to dial the pre-programmed number for Alan Grove.
He didn’t pick up.
‘You have Briggs’s direct number?’ she asked Coop.
‘Why?’
‘I want to talk to him about the first bomb site, see if he knows anything.’
That broke his concentration. Coop shifted in the chair, clearly uncomfortable.
‘Christ,’ she said. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I don’t have his number. Even if I did, the answer would be no.’
‘We need to talk to him.’
‘We are.’ Coop looked away from the screen, his face serious. Stern. ‘Howie is in touch with Briggs, will be the only one who will be in contact with Briggs from now on. And why is that, you ask? Because the former mayor didn’t take too kindly to you threatening him.’
‘I didn’t threaten him.’
‘You said – and this is a direct quote – that you’ll jam your foot so far up his ass he’ll choke to death. What would you call that? A pickup line?’
‘I don’t have time for his bullshit. And if I find out he’s lying to me, I will –’
‘This isn’t about you, Darby, there is no you in this situation.’
‘Really? I didn’t see anyone else willing to walk into the station.’
‘That was your choice. I’m not arguing with you about this. Let Howie handle Briggs. Now let’s focus on the job.’
The job.
That was the fundamental difference between them. What they were doing right now, all the cases they worked together, the endless days and night spent hunting and searching for evidence and witnesses, the bodies that piled up day after day – this would always be a job to him and nothing more. He did his job well, no question, had always pulled his own weight and went to the mat for her. But when he wasn’t on the job, he transformed himself into a present-day Bacchus who could wash away his anger and frustration and whatever other emotions he always kept in check with shots of Irish whiskey and pretty women, all of them intercha
ngeable objects, each one more than happy to slip between the sheets and be used as nothing more than vessels of sexual gratification. For as long as she’d known him, Coop had surrendered to an unassailable fact of life, one she knew was true but could never accept: that at the end of the day, what they did for a living didn’t make a difference. The dead were still the dead, and the dawn that greeted them each morning would always be fraught with some new horror or terror.
She secretly despised him and admired him for it.
Darby watched Coop fast-forwarding through the colour footage on the thirteen-inch screen. The office door was open, and from the corner of her eye she caught blue and red lights flashing across the grungy white wall and bathroom door. She ducked her head out into the hall and, looking across the top of the display racks to the street, saw the bomb truck along with a pair of BPD cruisers, flashes of blue uniforms moving across the sidewalks. Patrol was working on clearing the area.
She glanced at her watch.
Two hours and twenty-seven minutes.
‘Darby.’
She looked at him from the doorway.
‘I found Big Red,’ Coop said, nodding with his chin to the computer screen.
24
+03.33
On the screen, an MBTA bus pulled up next to the stop across the street. No one was waiting at the stop. The camera didn’t provide any sound, but from inside the store she heard the bell mounted on the front door ring, and then a woman’s voice ordered the kid working the counter to leave the store now.
Darby leaned over Coop’s shoulder. She could smell the hotel soap on his skin and the citrus-scented shampoo in his hair.
Now she watched as the bus doors opened. Only one person got out: a tall white male wearing an overcoat over a suit and tie; black trousers and black Oxford shoes and thin black gloves; sunglasses with dark lenses and a black knit hat that covered his ears and most of his forehead. He was carrying a backpack, the same one she’d seen inside the station.