Prince of Thieves

by Chuck Hogan

  His respectful lie hung in the air as the three of them chewed.

  "I know the four a you were all friends in school, but that's not the kind of boy I let Desmond hang around at night." She looked over at her Dez. "But he's a man now, and he can pick his own friends. He knows right from wrong. Knows enough to stay out of trouble."

  Dez kept his head down, chewing over his plate.

  Doug said, "Everybody we meet, Mrs. Elden, I tell them Dez is the best of us."

  Dez frowned, looking up, pleased. "Come on."

  "College-educated," said Ma, needing no encouragement, "good phone company job. Clean boy. Manners. Such a help to me all these years. And look how handsome. So why isn't he married then? The both of you's."

  Dez pointed at Doug. "You walked right into that one."

  "Your pal there, what's his name." She snapped her fingers dryly. "The Mead Street Magloans. Freckled kids, like a litter of toads."

  "Gloansy," said Dez, sharing a grin with Doug.

  "Alfred Magloan," she said, nodding. "Desmond tells me he has a boy with this girlfriend of his now. I don't know her."

  "Joanie Lawler. From the houses."

  "Okay, the houses, that explains some of it. But ask me and she is damn lucky to be getting anything out of him now, after already giving away the store. My day, we wouldn't have let a pair like you get past twenty-three. We'd've grabbed hold and held on. Those days, girls knew how to." She sat back, done with her meal though she had hardly touched it, lighting up. "I used to think the problem was you very modern men. Now, the more I see, the more I realize it's the women of the species. Too soft."

  * * *

  THE ODOR OF SMOKE clung to everything in the house, including Dez's bedroom upstairs. The comforter on the twin bed, the dumbbells on the floor, his work gear. All his U2 imports, rarities, and bootlegs stacked on top of the bureau. Dez put on The Alarm's Strength, just loud enough to give them some privacy. The Alarm had been on the same socially conscious, Catholic, protest-punk track as U2 and Simple Minds in the eighties, and Dez was doing his part to keep the music alive.

  A bus moaned into Sully Square. All day and night they arrived, the subway cars and the squealing wheels of the commuter rail-- never mind the trucks pounding the highway overhead. But to Dez it was all lullabies. God forbid it should ever stop some night, how would he ever get to sleep without it?

  Doug sat big in the small chair at Dez's computer, his hand clumsy over the mouse, reminding Dez of old men at the library trying to work the microfilm. Dez was showing Doug the speed of his ISDN line, and how to use a search engine called Alta Vista.

  Doug had entered Corvette and was surfing the Web pages it gave him. "All right, now what?"

  "Any of those words that are a different color interest you, click on them."

  The screen jumped to a site named Borla, something about exhaust systems. "Your Ma really likes Jem, huh?"

  "Loves him," said Dez. "You want to know what that's about? Specifically?"

  "I bet I don't."

  "All these years, Jem's been inside my house exactly once, okay? Maybe a year ago now. Not ten minutes total, he's here-- and he takes the biggest fucking smash of his life."

  Doug cracked up laughing. "He did not."

  "Doesn't even flush, just leaves it there. Kid has no respect."

  Doug swiped his face with his hand, trying to control his laughter.

  "Scented candles, my mother lit," said Dez. "They burned for three days straight, trying to exorcise the spirit of that kid. And this is a one-bathroom house!"

  "Hey, don't tell me, I live above him."

  "He should of just lit the bathroom on fire when he was done with it, saved us the trouble."

  "Remind me to flush, if and when."

  "Hey-- you could piss on the curtains and dry-hump the sofa, Ma'd find some redeeming aspect in it."

  "Well, the kid's a maniac. Always has been."

  "Yeah. But getting worse. Every time he hands me a piece before a job, he says, 'I know you won't use this.' "

  Doug nodded. "He says that about you. 'He'll never shoot.' "

  "But if you have to shoot a gun on a job, it's because you've blown it. Right? You screwed it up. The gun is your emergency backup plan."

  "You don't open up your parachute while you're still standing inside the plane."

  "But to Jem-- you don't shoot a gun on the job, you've blown it."

  Doug was onto another page. "Kid's warped."

  "So what are you doing about this wedding?"

  "Don't know. I fucking hate weddings."

  It was to be a double ceremony, Gloansy and Joanie's nuptials as well as the christening of their little freckle, Nicky. Jem was Gloansy's best man, Doug the boy's godfather. Dez was just a groomsman. He was never the type to be first or second in any group-- but Gloansy rating third out of the four of them irked him. Dumb-guy Gloansy, the car booster-- whereas, without Dez, they'd be pulling low-percentage strong-arm heists, risky in-through-the-front-door jobs. Dez wondered if other people spent as much time as he did worrying about his place in the hearts and minds of his friends.

  They had all come up through school together, Jem joining them after being kept back a grade. Good friends right up through middle school, when Dez started drifting away. Or they drifted away from him: part of it was his college-track classes, and part of it was Ma keeping him in nights to study. Doug never became a stranger, but he wasn't exactly a buddy either. Dez followed his career the same as everyone else in Town: hockey star, destined for glory, drafted by the Bruins out of high school-- then bounced out of the AHL under murky circumstances, returning to the Town, and after a few months getting pinched for armed robbery. "High School Hockey Star Arrested," sang the papers. Then back to the Town after his release, drinking and brawling, a wrong-way hood maturing into full-time criminal. Then a second short prison sentence, and back out on the streets again.

  Dez played in a couple of street hockey games with him after his return, with not much more than a Hey, what's doing? between them. Doug's circle had always been a tough group who lived like they played-- rough, loud, and cheap-- and openly mocked working guys like Dez. But the Doug MacRay who had returned from prison was like a soldier home from combat overseas: a changed man, newly sober, more concerned with security and survival than being a punk.

  Hockey was never Dez's game, not like baseball. But one day over on Washington Street, choosing up teams, Doug picked Dez first. Week after that, same thing-- Doug even feeding him some easy assists at the net, shots Doug MacRay could have put in eyes shut, and chatting him up between points. Dez started coming around more regularly, and after one game they had a talk about their fathers, on a long walk down Main Street, which came as a revelation to Dez. As part of the old neighborhood Code of Silence, no one had ever talked to Dez about his father. All he knew was that, one night in January 1980, some three years after losing his Edison job, the man was found shirtless in the snow in the middle of Ferrin Street, shot twice in the chest at close range, once through each nipple.

  No witnesses had ever come forward, and no one was ever charged. Before the casket was closed that final time, twelve-year-old Dez lifted the eyeglasses off his father's sagging face and slipped them into his pocket.

  His mother only spoke of the pain of his passing, and even the priests who helped her raise Dez, keeping him on track to college, discouraged Dez's inquiries. It was Doug who told him that Dez's father had been killed on his way to deliver a "package" to one Fergus Coln: then an ex-professional wrestler doing low-level mob enforcement; now the head of the PCP ring in Town, the notorious Fergie the Florist. Whatever had happened to his father after losing his Edison job, Dez realized that this package he was delivering on Ferrin Street in the middle of a winter night-- it wasn't doughnuts.

  In time, as Dez and Doug's renewed friendship evolved, Doug began to ask questions about Dez's work at the phone company. Pole work and junction boxes; alarm procedures and switching
stations. Doug's motivation was transparent, but rather than being disappointed, Dez was thrilled to bring something of value to their relationship.

  He started on the setup end of things: half-blind advance work like line rerouting, plug-pulling, cable cutting, all the while earning Doug's trust. Doug kicked him a decent percentage, but it wasn't the money that kept Dez coming back. Half always went into St. Frank's collection box anyway, in Ma's name. It was the attention Doug paid him, this neighborhood legend, and the dividends that paid Dez around Town.

  Dez started to think like a criminal, keeping his eyes open at work, feeding Doug new schemes. When Doug needed a fourth pair of hands for a job in Watertown, Dez insisted on jumping in. They wore disguises and carried guns, and Dez threw up when he got home afterward, but then he looked at himself in the mirror over the sink, righting his father's thick, black rims on his face, and it was like a switch had been thrown.

  Most of all, it was the belonging: the intensity of the crew during the Watertown heist, their brotherhood, like rocking in a great band. Friendship was by nature a thing that could never be consummated-- could never rise to an ultimate point of perfection-- but pulling these jobs together, that was when it came closest. That was the high he kept chasing. The rest of the time, he never felt as tight with them as they seemed to be with each other. They called him the Monsignor, a tease on his devotion and his strict upbringing, but also using the elitism of the clergy as another way to set him apart.

  Dez's lot in life was to be the guy behind the guy, and as such, his side friendship with Doug not only continued, but flourished, and for that he was grateful-- it was worth everything-- though at its root, theirs was a partnership founded upon need: Doug needing Dez's phone company knowledge, and Dez needing Doug as a friend. This particular evening was one he had been looking forward to longer than he cared to admit.

  "Elisabeth Shue," said Doug. "What is that, u, e?"

  "I think." Dez started his $275 set of four U2 bobbing-head dolls-- a recent purchase via mail order from Japan-- nodding. "That's who you're bringing to Gloansy's wedding?"

  Doug tapped in her name two-fingeredly, results filling the screen. "Either her or Uma Thurman, I can't decide." Then he sat back, shaking his head. "Some fucking inconsiderate shit, him getting married."

  Dez nodded along with his bobble heads. Screen caps from Cocktail came up, showing Elisabeth Shue topless under a waterfall.

  "That's it," said Doug. "I gotta get me a computer."

  All evening Dez had the sense that Doug had wanted to tell him something. Anything personal, besides the radio static of shit-shooting guy talk, they only discussed when they were alone like this.

  "I gotta get you married now," said Doug. "Mother's orders."

  "Yeah," said Dez. "Well, good luck."

  An outsider watching then might have thought Doug's facial expression a goof on seriousness, his brow knit, his eyes somehow sad. But Dez knew that this was as close as the guy ever came to baring his soul.

  "You ever meet somebody, Dez, and, like-- you knew something was there, beyond the boy-girl, man-woman stuff? Something almost touchable?"

  "Honestly?" said Dez. "I fall in love, like, two or three times a day. I see women all the time on the job, everywhere. Even moms are starting to look good to me now."

  "I could see that. You fitting in with a ready-made family. Single mom, you move right in...."

  "A hot single mom," added Dez, throwing in a little guy talk to keep them centered.

  "You're not still, you know, for Krista though, are you?"

  "Nah," said Dez.

  "'Cause that would be trouble."

  "She's outta my league, I know that."

  "No, no, no. Not what I'm saying. I'm saying you're outta hers."

  Dez didn't understand that; that would not compute. "Know what she calls me? The Pope of the Forgotten Village."

  "And you love it. But she's like a whirlpool, Desmond. Know anything about whirlpools?"

  "Sure."

  "They don't just drown you. They swallow you. They hold you down there in that swirl, going round and round, days at a time, even weeks-- the force of the water sucking away your clothes, your hair, your face."

  "Hey," said Dez, "Jem would never go for it anyway."

  "He would freak. And your ma."

  "Ho, she'd be racing around the house, hiding the silver, stashing the Hummels." Dez grinned at that image, enjoying it maybe a little too much. "Krista never came clean about who's Shyne's father, did she? After admitting it wasn't you?"

  "She never even admitted that, least not to me."

  Dez remembered her at the Tap the other night, coming up to him after Doug had breezed, touching his shoulder like it was made out of mink, requesting that Cranberries song again-- and the dollar bill she had pulled from her jeans, the way she offered it to him clipped between two fingers. My treat, he had told her, then watched the seat of her jeans as she walked back to the bar.

  Doug turned in his chair. "What do you say we hit a movie theater?"

  "All right," said Dez. "What's playing?"

  "No, I mean-- hit a movie theater. What would you say?"

  Dez got it then. "Yeah, whatever. You think?"

  "Let's go see something, take a look around."

  Dez nodded, excited, reaching for his coat. They had a mission.

  * * *

  DOWNSTAIRS, DOUG SAID GOOD-BYE to Ma, who held her cigarette away to receive his kiss on her cheek. "Watch out for my Dezi, now."

  "Always do, Mrs. E."

  And so Dez had to pop in for a kiss too, still tasting the smoke on his lips as he moved to the door. "We're gonna catch a flick."

  "Meet some girls," she called after them. "Preferably Catholic ones."

  Dez patted his pockets as they moved through the low gate onto the sidewalk, ritually checking for his wallet. The night was cloudless and cool. He scanned the street on which he had lived his entire life, a car parked a few houses down catching his eye. Dez continued forward a few steps with Doug before tugging his leather jacket sleeve, turning him around.

  "Look, this is maybe stupid, but... today I was out in Chestnut Hill, this neighborhood set off the parkway, family area, lotsa money? I'm up on a pole checking a reading, and I could see the whole street from up there-- and I notice this red sedan, like a Chevy Cavalier, keeps cruising past. Like it's circling the block or something, every couple of minutes. As I said, it's a family area, kids roaming around. So I keep an eye out. I know he can't see me with the trees up there, my truck's parked around the corner. Then, just as I'm thinking maybe something needs to be done about this, the Cavalier stops coming around. I finish up, climb down, move on."

  "Beautiful story, Desmond."

  Dez pointed to his own sternum, indicating the street behind them. "Couple of houses down. Red Cavalier parked across the street. Or else I'm just paranoid."

  Doug's eyes going dead gave Dez a chill.

  "We can head up this way," said Dez, pointing up at Perkins Street. "Loop around, take the shortcut back to-- "

  Doug was out in the street, striding right out toward the dark Cavalier.

  Dez hesitated, surprised, then went after him, but staying on the near sidewalk.

  When Doug was more than halfway there, the Cavalier's engine gunned to life. Headlights came on and it swung out into the one-way road.

  Doug stopped where he was in the street and the Cavalier had to brake, stopping just a few inches from Doug's knees. It was beaten and dull-looking, its sour headlights throwing Doug's shadow over the street.

  As Doug moved around to the driver's-side window, the car peeled out, Doug thumping the side with his fist before watching it go. Brake lights reddened the intersection with Perkins, the Cavalier veering hard left.

  Doug took off the other way, running fast toward Cambridge Street, and Dez followed, adrenaline surging now. They reached the corner just in time to see the Cavalier empty out one street over and rev past them, speedin
g under the interstate, lifting over the rise before plummeting toward Spice Street, back to the Town.

  "The fuck was that?" said Dez, out of breath.

  Doug stared after the disappeared car.

  "A cop?" said Dez.

  "Cop would have gotten out, badged me. Not hid. Not run."

  "Then what?"

  "Fuck," spat Doug, kicking at the sidewalk.

  A bus hissed past them, turning into Sully Square, gassing them with a lead-colored cloud of exhaust. "But if it's the G, how'd they... wait, through me?"