by Ray Daniel
“Not alone. You mean with Sal.”
“You engineers are worse than accountants. Yes, the plural you. Youse, y’all, whatever.”
“Is that why you killed Jarrod Cooper? Excessive precision?”
“I didn’t kill Jarrod Cooper.”
“No, you had Cantrell do it for you.”
Silence.
I said, “Yeah, I know Cantrell did it, and I know he was working for you.”
“Cantrell was hoping to work for me,” Anderson said. “I mentioned being concerned about Jarrod’s resolve and apparently Cantrell decided to show initiative. It was a Thomas Becket problem.”
“You mean Josh Beckett.”
“No, not the pitcher. The priest.”
“What priest?”
“Jesus, Tucker. You are an engineer. Didn’t you ever take—forget it. Just be there.”
“Where?”
He told me.
“That’s ridiculous,” I said.
“It’s perfect.” He hung up.
I called Sal, got voicemail, hung up, texted him: Call me. We get Maria today.
I made coffee, remembered the guest sleeping in my bedroom, and broke out the Kitchen-Aid. I assembled raisin muffins and put them in the oven to cook. My phone rang. It was Sal.
“Where the fuck are you?” he asked.
I said, “I’m home. Where are you?”
“I’m at the hospital.”
“Mass General?”
“Of course Mass General. I’m visiting Jael.”
“Well, that’s nice of you.”
“Why the fuck aren’t you here?”
Sal was playing the holier-than-thou game. I said, “They’re not even open yet.”
“Of course they’re open. They’re always open. They’re a fucking hospital.”
“Okay. Okay. I’m having breakfast with—I’m having breakfast. I’m heading over after.”
“The woman took a bullet for you, asshole. The least you can do is be here.”
“Is she awake?”
“No. You should still be here.”
“Look. Fine. I’m a horrible person. That’s not why I called you.”
Caroline peeked out of my bedroom and slipped into the bathroom. I told Sal what David Anderson had told me.
Sal said, “He wants to meet there at noon? What the fuck?”
“Tell me about it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That we’d be there at noon.”
Silence on the line.
“Sal?” I asked. “You there?”
“He’s going to kill us.”
“That’s what Jael said.”
“She’s right.”
“Maybe you could call Hugh. See if he can help.”
“I’ll ask him.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s sitting next to me.”
“Oh.”
“Get your ass down here.” He hung up.
There it was. The high point of my day: ceding the moral high ground to two gangsters.
Seventy
A bouquet of flowers adorned the nightstand next to Jael’s hospital bed. Another sat on the dresser. The flowers had come in with the two visitors: Hugh in a plastic easy chair, and Sal, who stood by the bed looking at an unconscious Jael.
Sal turned, looked me up and down. “Where are your fucking flowers?”
Hugh said, “Jesus, Tucker, you’ve got no class.”
“You mind if I just see how she is?” I said.
“She’s unconscious,” Sal said. “Get your ass downstairs and buy her some fucking flowers.”
“Big ones,” said Hugh.
I turned, went back to the elevators, pushed the button. They were assholes, but they were right. How hard would it have been to stop by the gift shop on the way up? I added a little more guilt to the fear churning in my gut. It made for a putrid smoothie.
Buying flowers in the hospital gift shop would have made me feel even worse than having forgotten them. Google on my phone told me about a flower place across the street from the hospital. I pushed through the revolving doors and back into the street.
The cold wasn’t so bad. We had swapped it for low gray clouds. The frozen ozone smell of snow hung in the air. I brought up my phone’s weather app. Yup. Snow. People scurried through the city, heads bent by the pressure of impending snow. They wanted to get their work done and be home before the storm engulfed us. Boston’s psyche has never recovered from the storm of ’78, a blizzard that trapped hundreds of cars on the 128 beltway, closed schools for weeks, and destroyed homes along the coast.
Bostonians fear nor’easters more than hurricanes. A hurricane blows through, topples trees, kills the electricity, and floods the coast. A nor’easter does all that and also immobilizes the city in snow, trapping people in unheated houses, halting repair crews, stalling emergency vehicles, and making the apocalyptic survivalist who owns a stash of meals-ready-to-eat look like a genius. Another nor’easter was almost upon us.
I pulled my coat tight against the damp cold and ran across Cambridge Street. The flower store had just opened. I pushed through the door, pulling it tight behind me to keep the cold out. A pudgy Asian girl stood behind the counter, pulling a pink sweater tightly around her shoulders.
“Thanks for closing the door,” she said. “Gonna snow.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Any idea how much?”
“The television guy says two feet.”
“So a foot, then.”
She eyed me, clearly uncomfortable with someone who doubted the omniscience of a New England television meteorologist.
“I need flowers,” I said. “For a woman. At the hospital.”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s loyal and good with a gun. She’s dangerous. Kicks ass. She’s saved my life more than once.”
“I meant, what kind of flowers does she like.”
“Oh. I have no idea.”
“Makes it tough to pick flowers, then.”
“It’s the first time I’ve bought her flowers.”
The girl twisted her mouth, giving me the I-don’t-buy-it face. “The next time a girl saves your life, you should buy her flowers.”
Great. Another judgy opinion. I said, “I’ll just look around.”
I circled the small shop. Sprays of baby’s breath, mounds of chrysanthemums, and wads of geraniums failed to impress me. None of these foofy things reminded me of Jael. They were conventional, boring, typical—exactly what Sal would buy.
“Don’t see what you like?” the girl asked.
“I want something unusual.”
“Does she like roses?”
“Roses aren’t unusual.”
“These are,” she said, pointing at a tall, rectangular vase. River rocks adorned the bottom three inches. Water covered them, filling the vase halfway. Twelve orange roses stood in the vase, their stems held in place by the river rocks, their crowns forming a flat flowered surface at the top. The combination of orange flowers, straight stems, and sturdy rocks were exactly right.
“Perfect.”
I carried the vase back across Cambridge Street. A few snowflakes drifted onto the traffic, early scouts for the coming storm. Pedestrians waited for traffic lights, glancing at the flakes as if they were radioactive ash. This was going to be a big storm. Maybe two feet was a good estimate.
In Jael’s room I unwrapped the vase and placed it on the dresser next to Hugh’s spray of carnations.
Sal said, “What the hell is that?”
“What?” I said. “They’re flowers.”
“Those aren’t flowers for a sick person. They look like art or something.”
“They’re pretty,” I said.
“Orange? O
range isn’t pretty.”
“Will you two assholes shut up?” Hugh said. “She’s sleeping.”
Jael shifted in her bed, her eyes still closed. “I am awake.”
We moved to the bed, forming a semicircle around Jael. Her eyes opened, moved from face to face.
I had a dream. And you were there. And you. And you.
“Sorry you couldn’t wake up to better-looking guys,” I said.
Hugh said, “Speak for yourself.”
A smile tugged at Jael’s mouth.
“How are you feeling?” Sal asked.
Jael said, “Drugged.”
“They’ve given you a lot of painkillers,” Hugh said. “You should sleep.”
“What happened after I was shot?”
Sal said, “Bobby blew Cantrell’s head off.”
“Jesus, could you leave out the details?” I said.
“Why don’t you shut up?” said Hugh to me.
“Maria?” Jael asked. “Have you found Maria?”
I didn’t want to tell Jael that Sal and I were planning to walk into a trap. Said nothing instead.
Jael repeated, “Tucker? Is Maria dead?”
“No,” I said. “She’s—”
Sal said, “She’s fine. We’re gonna get her back today.”
Jael said, “You are not meeting with Anderson, then.”
“No,” Sal lied.
“That is good.” Jael’s eyes slipped closed, her lips parted. She slept.
Hugh motioned us outside the room. We closed the door.
“You’re actually going to meet with that bastard?” Hugh said.
Sal said, “We’re going to get Maria back.”
“How?”
Silence.
Hugh turned to me. “Tucker. How are you going to get Maria back?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Where are you meeting Anderson?”
I told him.
“Well,” said Hugh, “at least you’ll be in the right place for a miracle.”
Seventy-One
Snow had accumulated on the Wise Man’s head, as well as on the camel’s hump, the sheep’s rump, and the cow’s back. A manger-like awning protected the Baby Jesus, as well as Joseph and Mary. They presented their child to the assembled. Behind the Christmas crèche, an adult Jesus floated suspended in front of a cross, his arms raised in blessing rather than stretched in agony. An enormous statue of the Madonna loomed over all of them, gazing across East Boston.
Sal, hatless in the falling snow, ignored the crèche and crucifix. He moved to stand directly in front of the Madonna. She towered above us, 35 feet tall (it said so on the road sign). Her bronze face and hands shone. They had been polished clean. Her draped garment was the copper-oxide green of the Statue of Liberty. One bronze hand pointed above, to heaven, while the other gestured beyond her. A gray void dominated the space behind her. On a clear day we would have seen a vista that included houses, wetlands, airports, and the earthly realm of Boston. Today, the falling snow blocked it all.
Sal genuflected, stood, and said to me, “Show some respect.”
I took off my Red Sox knit cap. Snow melted on my ears. “What are we doing here, Sal?”
I had seen David Anderson’s East Boston meeting place from the highway, and Sal had turned off 1A to reach it. We wound our way through snow-clogged streets, ignoring the recalculations of my GPS app until Sal said, “Shut the fucking thing off.”
He slushed our car past the cookie-cutter buildings of a housing project, on into the bowels of the working-class neighborhood. Clouds of swirling snow had obliterated the sun. Gray light diffused over the neighborhood. There were no shadows. Sal crept past triple-
deckers, studded with south-facing DIRECTV dishes, and the odd, small single-family house.
Christmas lights dominated the street. Most houses sported strings of red, green, blue, and yellow lights. These weren’t the tiny white bulbs of Wellesley, tastefully appointed and lovingly draped across a dogwood. These were colorful expressions of the happy season, following the lines of porches, rooflines, and doors. The inflatable Christmas monstrosities that breathed across the suburban landscape didn’t fit in the snug confines of Orient Ave. Instead, hard plastic Santas waved their greetings—holiday lawn gnomes.
It was noon. Most of the Christmas lights were dark, saving electricity for nighttime. But some had been turned on, perhaps in an effort to ward off the nor’easter’s gloom. Sal parked on Orient Ave, in front of the Don Orione nursing home. Got out. I had followed him across the street into the Madonna shrine.
Sal pointed at the Madonna. “She was the one who made the real sacrifice.”
“What?”
He motioned at the low concrete lean-to that framed the courtyard. “In the story.” Fourteen mosaics surrounded us, protected by the low roof.
I said, “The Stations of the Cross.”
“Yeah,” Sal said. “You learned something in Sunday school after all.”
“What do you mean, she made the real sacrifice?”
Sal looked up at the Madonna’s bronze face. “Didn’t you see it back there?”
“What?”
“In the manger scene.”
“I saw the wise men, the animals.”
“She was a mother. She had just given birth to Jesus. She suffered to bring him into the world.”
“You think God let her suffer?”
“He says that she will in the Garden of Eden story, right?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. “You mean the apple?”
“Yes, because of the apple. Eve ate the apple and gave it to Adam, so God told her that she’d suffer in childbirth. Mary must have suffered too.”
I said, “It doesn’t seem right.”
Sal raised his hand in a dismissive wave. “Ah, what can you do?”
We stood in the snow.
I said, “We’re going to be late.”
“She has this kid, raises him,” Sal said. “Probably gave him a fucking bar mitzvah.”
“We should get going. It’s noon.”
“Joseph, God bless him, gives Jesus a skill. Made him a carpenter. And then—” Snow melted on Sal’s face as he looked up at the statue. Those probably weren’t tears.
“Then?”
“And then Jesus decides to let the Pharisees kill him.”
“Wasn’t that the point?”
“The fucking point? You think Mary raised that kid so he could be killed?” Sal grabbed me by the arm, pulled me across the courtyard in front of one of the mosaics. Mary stood in front of Jesus, bent by his cross.
“What do you think she’s saying?” asked Sal.
“What?”
“She’s telling him that he’s the Son of God. He should save himself.”
I was helpless. I had no idea what to say.
Sal said, “She didn’t ask for any of it. She didn’t ask to be the Mother of God. She didn’t ask to have her kid killed. Jesus got what he wanted. God got what he wanted. Hell, I get what I want. Jesus died for my sins. I go to Heaven. You think I don’t appreciate that?”
“I—I guess.”
“But Mary didn’t agree to lose her kid for my sins. Mary would have told me to go to hell. And she’d have been right. Who would even ask her to watch her son die?” Sal still had my arm. He was squeezing it. Starting to shake it.
“Sal, we gotta go,” I said.
Sal released my arm. Patted it. “You mean I gotta go.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m not losing you, little cousin. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“Neither do you. It’s even more reason I should go.”
“What, so he can kill you too?”
“My mother’s dead, Sal.
She’s not going to suffer. I lost Maria. I’ll get her back.”
Mary stood before us, frozen in tile, weeping before her condemned son.
Sal reached into his pocket, pulled out a gun, and handed it to me. “Keep your fucking finger off the trigger.”
I slid my finger out of the trigger guard.
“And put it in your pocket. We don’t want people to see it.”
“Right,” I said.
Sal pulled me close, kissed my forehead. “I love you, little cousin. If Maria’s there, you take her and you run, no matter what. You hear?”
“We’ll see.”
“Fuck no, we will not see. You grab her and take her to Adriana. She’ll take care of her.”
“You’ll take care of her yourself.”
Sal turned, I followed.
Seventy-Two
I walked to the car, started brushing snow. The back window already had an inch of new accumulation. Sal shuffled past me. Kept going. I jogged after him, slipping on slush.
“We’re walking?” I said.
“They won’t be expecting us to walk. Gives us a chance to scope things.”
I brushed snow off my hair, pulled my hat on before more could accumulate. We continued down the street, enveloped in a gray swirl of flakes. Big driving snowflakes landed silently around us, drifting against tires. There’s no quieter bad weather than a snowstorm. Trees rustle in wind, rain splashes, lightning and thunder deliver a booming show. Snow accumulates without a sound, growing like a white mold over every surface.
I peered through the flakes. “If it’s a trap, shouldn’t we have gotten here a couple of hours early?”
“Eh. Early or late. I like late. Makes them nervous. Also, I didn’t want to stand in the fucking cold for two hours. Let them do that.”
“Maria too?”
“If she’s there.”
“You don’t think she’ll be there?”
“You just remember what I said. If she is, you grab her and run.”
Snow stuck to my lashes and started to cover Sal’s bare hair. He swiped at it. We crested a small rise in the road and saw the top of Anderson’s meeting place: “Under the cross in Orient Heights.” The directions had been clear.
Route 1A shoots north out of Boston, past the airport, through Revere, and on up the coast. But first it passes Orient Heights, a hundred-foot hill stuck next to the road. At the tip of Orient Heights, looking out over 1A, Chelsea, Boston, and Revere, is a gigantic cross. Anderson could have meant only one place. The top of that hill, under that cross.