by Jack Flynn
‘And I want you and Buddy at the courthouse. Vincente Carpio’s got a court appearance, and there’s a chance Soh and his men will try something there.’
‘We’ll be there. I’ve got all my people on alert,’ Cicero said.
‘This whole city’s on edge,’ Cormack said. ‘It’s the cold. Everyone in this city’s been cooped up inside for more than a month. It’s unnatural, and it’s got people ready to let loose.’
‘They say the cold snap is ending soon. Maybe that’ll bring things back into line.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ Cormack said. ‘But you know what happens when you freeze something solid and then heat it up too fast.’
Cicero nodded. ‘It shatters.’
‘It does,’ Cormack said. ‘Into a thousand pieces.’ He took another sip of his whiskey. ‘Make sure everybody’s ready for anything.’
* * * * *
‘I love you.’
Steam wafted off her lips as she said the words. It was like they had a physical presence, but the steam faded after a moment. She and Buddy were standing on the widow’s walk on the top of Cormack’s house. Leaning against the railing, they could see all the way down to the harbor and out toward the Atlantic.
‘I love you, too,’ Buddy said, looking down at her.
She pulled at his jacket sleeve. ‘I mean it,’ she said. ‘I need you to know.’
He turned to face her. ‘Are you worried about something?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘What about it?’
‘I have a bad feeling. I can’t explain it, but it feels like something is going to go terribly wrong.’ He took her in his arms and she pressed her face into his chest. ‘I don’t want to lose you. For the first time in my life, I feel like I might have a future. I don’t want to raise our baby alone.’
He hugged her tight. ‘You won’t have to. I’ll be fine. I’m sure nothing’s gonna happen tomorrow. I’m going down to the courthouse so I’m there when they bring Vincente Carpio in, but Soh would be insane to try anything with all the cops and marshals around. You’ll see.’
‘If nothing’s gonna happen, then why do you need to be there?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘Cormack wants me and Cicero down there just in case. But if Soh does try something, we probably won’t even be involved. Maybe the cops will win this war for us.’
She pulled her face out of his chest. Over his shoulder she could see an eerie glow along the horizon on the water out to the east – a faint yellow-orange line that looked as though it was just out of their grasp. ‘What is that?’ she asked.
He looked out at the water. ‘Weird,’ he said. ‘Never seen that before.’
‘They say it’s gonna get warmer tomorrow. Maybe that’s some sort of a sign.’
‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘It feels like a lifetime since it wasn’t freezing. It’d be nice to be warm again.’
‘It would be,’ she agree. ‘Promise me one thing?’
‘Anything.’
‘Promise me you’ll be careful?’
He gave a resigned laugh. ‘I’ll be as careful as I can be. That’s all I can promise.’
Sixty-Two
Historical cemeteries blanket Boston. Tourist excursions include stops at the Grannery Burying Ground on Tremont Street in the shadow of the State House, and Central Burying Ground on Boston Common, among others. Those seeking a supernatural thrill can touch the headstones of famous historical figures and patriots like Paul Revere, Samuel Adams, and John Hancock. The corpses of lesser known but still notable figures like Mary Chilton, the first European woman to set foot in New England, and Crispus Attucks, a freeman of African descent who was the first to be killed in the Revolutionary War at the Boston Massacre, lay in repose under the soil throughout the city.
The Bennington Street Burying Ground in East Boston, while on the Historical Registry, is not a place tourists would visit. The most famous remains at the small patch of grass near the deserted strip along the northeastern edge of Logan Airport belong to Red Woodhead, a professional baseball player who died in 1881 at the age of thirty after three and a half seasons of unremarkable play in the long-defunct International Association.
Special Agent George Martin leaned against a gravestone at the far southern corner of the cemetery. He glanced at his watch – an old Seiko that he was tired of looking at, not just because it was a reminder that his contact was late, but because it reminded him of how he had to scrape and scrimp and save just to buy the most basic essentials. He knew people he’d gone to law school with who wore watches that cost more than he made in a year. For a long time, he’d been OK with that. They led empty lives, he told himself, working for bloodless corporations and hedge funds, so they had to console themselves with the trappings of success. He, on the other hand, was doing good work – work that helped protect the American people and put bad guys in jail where they could no longer do anyone any harm.
It was a lie, though, and he could no longer breathe enough enthusiasm into it to get himself to believe it. His second divorce had cost him what little savings he’d been able to amass, and now he was paying alimony and child support to two women who hated his guts. His daughter was looking at colleges, and he didn’t know how he was going to be able to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to pay for her to attend anywhere but a state school. He’d gone to Yale Law School, for Christ’s sake, and now he was on the verge of bankruptcy. He wondered how it had come to this.
He heard the footsteps in the snow even before the figure appeared. Martin was expecting him to come from the north, where the cemetery met Bennington Street, so that he would be able to watch him approach and steel himself against the fear and revulsion at his own betrayal, but the man came from behind him, out of the thin shrubs that bordered the airport.
Martin turned, and his breath caught in his chest, the way it had the first time he beheld Javier Carpio. Martin never thought of himself as small – he was a little under six feet tall, and his once athletic build, while softer than it had been in his youth, made him feel adequate in most circumstances. Looking up at Javier Carpio, though, made him feel Lilliputian. With the airport lights shining from behind him, all Martin could see was a giant black silhouette against the white snow that seemed to have claimed a permanent right to blanket the city. Standing there in the cemetery, surrounded by the rotting remains of men and women who’d passed more than two centuries before, Martin couldn’t help feeling as though he’d entered a Stephen King novel.
‘Does she believe Soh’s information?’ Carpio asked.
‘She does,’ Martin responded.
‘And the plans?’
‘They’ll have all the firepower lined up along Northern Avenue, many of them in plain clothes. They’ll be waiting for the attack there.’
Carpio pulled a satchel from behind his back. ‘There is one more thing you must do,’ he said.
A shiver ran up Martin’s spine, and it wasn’t from the cold breeze blowing through the cemetery. ‘I’ve done what you asked.’
‘And you have been paid.’
‘You still owe me another fifty thousand.’
‘There is one hundred thousand in this bag,’ Carpio said, holding the satchel up.
Martin’s mind raced. There was no way to say no. And the allure of an additional fifty thousand dollars was too great to ignore. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘In the confusion that we create, someone still needs to take my brother’s chains off.’
Martin shook his head. ‘Can’t do it,’ he said. ‘Someone will see me, and what’s the point of the money if I’m in jail?’
‘You will do it,’ Carpio insisted. ‘No one will see you because they will be running for their own lives. And jail is not the fate you should be most concerned about at this moment.’ He threw the bag of money at Martin’s feet. It landed softly in the snow, and Martin stared at it with terror, as though it was filled with snakes rather than cash. He’d feared that it would come to something like
this when he took the first payment, but there was nothing he could do now. He was caught, and he was addicted. He needed the money now, like a junkie needed his fix.
‘Even if he makes it to the boats, there’s no way for you to escape in the harbor,’ Martin said. ‘The cops will have our boats out there in a matter of minutes, and there’s no place to hide on the open water.’
‘Who said the water will be open?’ Carpio responded. And with that, he turned and walked back toward the airport. Martin watched him go and wondered what he meant. After a moment, he gave a labored sigh and picked up the bag. At this point, none of the choices he had were his own anymore.
* * * * *
Kit was at Devens before midnight. She wouldn’t leave now. From this point on, she would be nearby Vincente Carpio wherever he went.
She’d spent some time monitoring him from the control room. He was awake, and he sat as still as ever – just staring ahead, the tattoos covering his skull shining like some rubber mask. She wondered whether it was sweat, but she couldn’t tell from the camera. ‘I’m going down to see him,’ she told the young corrections officer who was in the control room.
‘You’re going where?’ he asked, shocked.
‘I’m going down to see him,’ she repeated.
‘I don’t think that’s allowed,’ the guard responded. ‘We gotta notify his lawyer, and we gotta set up an interview room. You don’t just go down there—’
‘I’m going down there,’ she repeated. ‘If you need to call someone, go ahead. I won’t be long. But I’m in charge of his transfer tomorrow. I’m the Special Agent in charge of the MS-13 task force. I am going down.’ She flashed her badge as though the shield was real and could prevent him from doing anything. Then she stood up and walked to the door. She turned around and shot him a glare, and he reluctantly pressed a button that allowed her into the holding area. She needed him to pass her through two more checkpoints, but she was sure that he would do it. In the hierarchy of law enforcement, she was so far above him that there was little else that he could do.
Carpio’s cell was clean and sparse. It was cement on three sides. There were no bars – just a Plexiglas barrier four inches thick on the front of the cell with an automatic door operated from the control room and holes that allowed for communication, but that were too small to pass anything through. As Kit walked down the corridor toward his cell, she picked up a folding chair that was sitting in front of another cell and brought it with her. She placed it in front of Carpio’s door and sat facing him.
At first his expression barely changed. But slowly, an evil smile crawled across his lips. ‘You cannot stay away,’ he said.
‘I wanted you to know that I am here,’ she said. ‘I won’t allow you out of my sight. I wanted you to know that all hope is lost for you. That was important to me.’
‘Why?’
She frowned. It was a question that she wasn’t expecting. ‘Because you’re evil,’ she responded. It was all she could think to say.
‘But you know what made me evil. Your country made me evil. What put the darkness in your heart that you feel the need to be here?’
He was still smiling at her, and she wanted to wipe the smile off his face. ‘Your people did,’ she said. ‘Your people created me.’
‘How?’ he asked. ‘How did my people create you?’
The full force of what had happened years before swept over her like a wave, and for a moment it felt as though she might drown. She fought to the surface of her grief, though, and kept her face hard so that he would never see the depths of her pain. ‘Your people killed my son,’ she said. Her voice was steady, even as her heart pounded so hard she could barely breathe. ‘Your people killed Ollie, and your people killed my husband Dillon.’
Carpio shrugged. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘We killed many people, just as your people killed many in my country. But how can you be sure?’
‘They caught one of them,’ Kit said. ‘He was just a boy. A student in my husband’s high school class. But your people had recruited him, and convinced him that this was something that he had to do. They couldn’t catch all of you, but they caught him, so we know. That is what made me who I am.’
Carpio’s eyes grew wide, and a look of shock came across his face. He leaned forward and looked at her in earnest, with new interest. ‘Everett,’ he said.
His response confused her, and she thought perhaps she had misheard him. ‘What?’
‘Everett,’ he repeated. ‘Your husband was a teacher in Everett, no?’
It felt like she had had all of her insides ripped out, and she struggled to maintain her composure. ‘How would you know that?’ she demanded.
The look of shock was gone from his face, and now the smile was back, but it was wider – almost gleeful from what she could tell. ‘I was there,’ he said. ‘In charge of bringing that young man into our organization. They sent me here because I was willing to do what it takes. I instructed him on how to kill your husband.’
‘You?’ Kit couldn’t breathe. She thought she might throw up. ‘I don’t believe you!’
‘It was a small house,’ Carpio said. ‘By American standards. In the village where your soldiers massacred my mother and others, it would have been a palace. Your husband fought to save your son, but we could leave no witnesses.’ He shrugged again. ‘We had no choice. And as for the brutality – we need to train our future soldiers. Again, we had no choice.’
Kit’s heart was beating so hard in her ears, it was difficult to hear anything. She was aware that her hand was on her gun. She was looking at the Plexiglas, trying to figure out whether a bullet would penetrate it, but she knew that it had been designed specifically to prevent something like that from happening.
‘Special Agent!’
She barely heard the shouting from down the hall, as she considered firing her weapon anyway, just in case the glass had been poorly fitted.
‘Special Agent!’
She looked down the corridor and saw two guards rushing toward her. She took her hand off her gun and stared at Carpio. The guards had reached her, and there was nothing she could do now. ‘At least they caught the boy who murdered my husband and son,’ she said. ‘That’s one soldier you won’t have in your army,’ she spat. It was weak, but it was all she had.
‘Oh no,’ Carpio said. ‘The young soldier killed your husband. He did a very thorough job, as I instructed.’ The smile grew even wider. ‘But I killed your son,’ he said. Kit tried again to reach for her gun, but the guards grabbed her.
‘You’re going to die!’ Kit screamed. ‘I swear to God, I will make sure that you face justice, and you get what you deserve!’
Sixty-Three
Wednesday 13 February
Boston’s record cold snap surrendered early on Wednesday morning. The polar vortex that had pushed as far south as New York and trapped New Englanders in a deep freeze for more than six weeks retreated to Canada, chased northward by a shift in the jet stream that brought unseasonably warm temperatures from Texas up through the mid-Atlantic. Within three hours, the temperature on Boston Common rose forty degrees, climbing above freezing for the first time since December. By nine o’clock, it was in the forties, and winter-weary residents poked their noses out of their doors and windows with an uneasy mixture of skepticism and relief. It felt as though a siege had been lifted from the city, and, as the reality took hold, the warmth was greeted by Bostonians like a liberating force. The shift was so drastic that stir-crazy children went to school in shorts and sweatshirts, oblivious to the fact that it would still be months before the temperature in the city would cross the fifty-degree mark. It mattered little to them. As far as they were concerned the worst was over. There was a sense of shared survival among the citizenry. They had taken the worst that Old Man Winter could throw at them, and they had endured and overcome. Now was a time to celebrate.
The sudden thaw caused some mild mayhem in the urban infrastructure. Water pipes that had cracked during the
cold snap but had gone undiscovered because the water remained frozen, burst, flooding homes and businesses. Ice dams formed on peaked roofs, trapping two months’ worth of melting snow, causing leaks and several collapses. Giant icicles that had formed on high-rises snapped free, falling forty stories to the sidewalks below, killing two pedestrians and injuring dozens of others. Still, the break in the cold was viewed as heaven-sent by those who escaped the collateral damage from the thaw.
From his office on the sixth floor of the Joseph Moakley Federal Courthouse, Judge F. Barton Baylor could sense the warm front advancing from the south, up through Boston Harbor. The weather had started to change even before he rolled into the garage at five thirty that morning, but now the thaw was spreading in earnest, and it seemed that the waters were waging an open war against the ice floats that had choked the waterways.
Barton was one of the few Bostonians who didn’t welcome the change in the weather. He was eighty-five years old, and hated change. The break brought with it the certainty that the construction and development that was overwhelming the waterfront district would gather speed. The machinery that had lain silent since Christmas would roar to life again, the joints in the backhoes and cranes and earthmovers stiff from the cold, but eager to continue to remake his city in the image of some modern nightmare. And the millennials would come … and come … and come.
He sighed. Perhaps, he thought, it was time for him to climb down from the bench. Many of his judicial colleagues, even many much younger than he, had taken their pensions and retreated to homes in New Hampshire or Arizona or Florida. He’d heard their justifications when they took off their robes for the last time. They were tired. They had given all that they could give, and made what small contribution they could make, but the realization that they could not stem the tide of lawlessness and greed that seemed to advance every year, notwithstanding their best efforts to hold it back, was too much to bear. Baylor understood their feelings. He’d fought those feelings for the better part of three decades. He’d lost his idealism over the job early in his judicial career, and many of those who had departed the judiciary had asked what kept him on the bench. To that question, he had only one answer: