“Drop your weapon or I’ll shoot!” one of the cops’ yells.
Grayson remains kneeling with his hands atop his head. “I don’t have one!”
“Not you,” the other cop says.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Roughly two hours later there still are a score of cops at the scene, and after a time, one came up to Grayson and says he is making a coffee run to Dunkin Donuts and asks Grayson what he wants.
Now Grayson is sitting in an unmarked police car on the edge of the back seat with his feet outside on the ground, and his elbows on his knees. He’s draped a blanket over the top of his head and shoulders like a prize fighter. Stan is dead, and Grayson still didn’t know where Hugh is, but by now he’s figured he has to be in the biker’s flop house.
The scene, with its yellow tape and whirling blue lights and armed men, is a natural for television. For Grayson it’s too close to home. He hopes the blanket wrap is sufficient to hide his identity. Across the street the crack newsmen from the three network stations in Boston are on the sidewalk fussing with their hair.
A senior level cop who walks like a pigeon came over with two coffees and gives one to Grayson. Then the old cop opens the front door of the car and wedges his ass-less behind on the edge of the front seat. He puts his elbows on his knees, mirroring Grayson, and begins talking to him. The cop is as loud as if he were standing across the road with the newshounds. He’s past retirement age, judging by his old Irishman’s white hair, puffed and rounded into drifts, and fat cheeks the color of cranberry juice. He could have made a nice buck playing Santa at Jordan’s, if it wasn’t for the growl that is his voice.
“Thanks for your patience, son,” the senior cop says. “My two officers are very upset. Very upset. You know, their first thought was for your safety. They thought that the asshole was going to shoot you. It’s only on the TV that the police fire warning shots, and tell people reach for the sky and all that sort of thing. We don’t have that luxury. It’s never a good feeling when some maladjusted son of a gun makes you shoot him. It is especially bad when his gee-dee weapon isn’t even loaded. We call it ‘suicide by cop.’ He got what he wanted, whoever he was. He wanted to get his skull ventilated with your tax dollars and that’s just what he got. We found a leather vest with gang insignia in the saddlebag on his bike, so we suspect he’s in a biker gang. Maybe robbing someone is the initiation or something, who the hell knows. But better that this fellow gets killed, rather than an innocent man or one of my men. That’s how I see it. I’m hoping you will agree. How about it?”
“I’m with you one hundred and ten percent,” Grayson says. “That guy seemed like a frigging nut.”
“I’m not a shrink, so I’m reluctant to diagnose,” the old cop says. “But, if he wasn’t a frigging nut, he’ll do until one comes along.”
“And how,” Grayson says.
“When you’re debriefed, make sure you explain that you felt in mortal peril, meaning you were in fear for your life.”
“Damn right,” Grayson says.
A couple of hours later, Grayson walks out of the MDC police station at Carson Beach and got into the front passenger seat of an idling, unmarked Ford. The man at the wheel is in his late thirties, wore a bristle haircut, a white shirt with a badge on the pocket, dungarees and a gun.
“I’m Detective Tom Bernardo. Thanks for your help in there. I understand you told the investigators that the guy had his weapon up and pointed at our men when he was shot.”
Bernardo took off at top speed, heading back to Wollaston Beach.
Grayson says, “That’s right. He was going to shoot. How were they supposed to know the gun wasn’t loaded? If I knew the gun had no bullets in it, I would have punched him right in the chops when he demanded my money, instead of flagging your guys down. That bastard was crazy.”
“Did you hear him say it was the gun used to kill Trooper Hawthorne?” Bernardo says.
“I was pretty shook up, at that point in time. But he was yelling something about somebody named Hawthorne. Is that the state cop who was killed? Oh, jeez, do you think that guy did it?”
“No, the guy who did it is dead, but that might be the gun. We’re going to run a ballistics test on the weapon, but it smells as if it’s recently been fired. We also printed him, see if we can find out who this guy was. He had no I.D. on him at all.”
The unmarked cruiser pulls into the beach lot.
“Which car is yours?” Bernardo asks.
“That one over there. The Chrysler.”
He points to a ten-year old Newport.
“We’ll be in touch. Thanks for your help. We appreciate it,” Bernardo says.
“I’m just grateful to be alive, Detective. I would appreciate it if you could hold off on naming me to the news. That guy has a biker gang and they may come after me for being involved in this.”
“No problem. Go home and kiss your wife and kids, Mr. O’Brien,” the detective says.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Grayson pulls the Chrysler Newport into the lot beside the hangar sized taxicab garage. He locks the car up and goes through the front door of the garage. He trots over to the office in the corner, which is nothing more than an enormous crate with a big window and a single flimsy door.
The latest manifestation in the endless string of new night dispatchers slides a plastic window to the side.
“Need a taxi?” the man asks.
“No, I need to see Johno for a minute,” Grayson says.
“He’s in the shop.”
There is always another new night dispatcher. According to Johno, in his first weekend shift this poor bastard would field a minimum of three hundred phone calls, with maybe half of them coming from the same dozen or so of drunks, each one of them ordering him to send a cab to get them, despite the fact most of them knew not where they were. Some of those who actually did know where they were would have, while waiting, another idea leap into what is left of their brains. They’d forget they called a cab and wander off. Besides, half of the time the drivers wouldn’t go where the night dispatcher told them to go anyway. Within two weeks the new night dispatcher would be threatening to kill himself every time the phone rang. Then, very soon, there would be a new night dispatcher.
“Are you his brother?” the poor bastard in the enormous crate says.
“No,” Grayson says. “We’re cousins.”
“You two look alike,” the sad sack says.
“We heard that a lot when we were kids and hung out together,” Grayson says. He pointed out to the shop. “I know the way.”
In the shop, he hands Johno a wallet with a license in it and the Chrysler keys, and Johno hands Grayson’s wallet and keys back to him.
“How’d things go?” Johno asks.
“Better than I could have hoped.”
“You okay?” Johno says. “You look beat, kid. I know Aunt Mary’s doing lousy. My father went to see her. I’ll try to get over in the next few days.”
“She’d like that. There’s a couple of hundred dollars in the wallet,” Grayson says. “Thanks again. Don’t ever change the address on that license.”
“I’ve moved five times since that East Broadway address in Southie. It comes in handy to have a license with an old address, a bad social security number and a name like John O’Brien. They say these computers they’re all getting will put a stop to phony ID’s and shit, but I doubt it.”
“Hey, how is the scholar thing going? When’re you done at Northeastern?”
“One more semester,” Johno says. “Then, look out world.”
“You got a wife, two kids, and pretty soon a college degree, all by the age of twenty-four, man. You’re like an adult or something.”
Johno says, “Next thing is get a real job, a day job, one that’s clean and indoors, then buy a house. Get some slippers and a recliner and in forty years I’ll be just like Grampa Spike! Only without all the girlfriends on the side. I tell you, man, there’s hope for anyone with
the love of a good woman. Having a family is powerful stuff, if it can even straighten out a fuckwad like me.”
“Johno, one more favor. I need some gas and a gas can. Do you have one I can keep?”
“Yeah. You want a one gallon can? Or a five gallon? What do you need it for?” Johno asks.
“I’m going to burn down a house.”
“You’ll need the five, then,” Johno says, and goes to get it.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Grayson parks the GTO under the low, full branch of an old elm on Walnut St. He took a walk over to the biker squat, and stopped where he could see in and yet be obscured, standing under yet another old tree.
The first floor of the biker house is well lit and the outside walls seemed to throb and bow outward to the beatless racket of Deep Purple. Smoke on the Water was the song to which the average tin eared doper invariably played air guitar. That one song was enough to make Grayson wish he’d lived before the discovery of electricity.
Underneath the amplified noise, a creature is screeching. It sounded like bacon was being stripped from a live pig. The door to the front landing burst open and a human body flew out to the street, and from the trajectory seemed about to turn a cartwheel, but instead crumpled to earth, and skidded. Four men in biker duds came out the same door and strolled over to the prone man. They tattooed him with a few desultory kicks, and then hopped on their bikes, strapped on their helmets and headed off leaving behind echoes and gasoline fumes. Grayson trotted over to the guy and saw he was out cold. Grabbing the guy under his arms, he dragged him, the only sound that of the man’s boot heels scraping the sidewalk. He laid him down under a dying tree and looked at him. He was breathing, and Grayson poked him under the ribs. The guy squirms and winces. Grayson tries to rouse the guy, but can’t.
Leaving him there, Grayson gets low, runs to the house and peers in a window. There are still a few life forms inside but they seem pretty well out of it. One is on the floor snoring, another is face down on the couch, and a third sits in a corner licking his forearm. He’d lick it, look at it, and lick it again. Then he looks around the room, does a long slow blink, gives the arm another lick, blinks again, and follows that with another look around the room, as if he is waiting for someone to bring in a saucer of milk.
The bikers must have learned that Stan is dead, and they are in mourning. It didn’t seem much different than the way his uncles mourned; booze, brawl, then sink into a coma.
Grayson ran back to the car, pulls the .22 from the glove box, lit the engine and drives up to the house. He pulls the gas can and a rag from the trunk. Five gallons of gas, plus a sturdy metal can weighs about fifty pounds. Also, the sloshing around in the unwieldy can makes it very awkward to run with, and it stinks. He stops to catch his breath, and takes the rag out of his pocket and tears it in half. When he gets to the back porch in the back, he sets down the gas can and tries the back door. It is unlocked, of course. Who would be stupid enough to break and enter into a biker gang’s crash pad?
He steps quietly around looking in the rooms at the back of the house, holding the loaded .22 down by his side. He peeks his head into the living room and finds the arm licking guy has joined his pals in dreamland. Grayson makes his way quietly upstairs, to look for his brother while checking for other Dark Lords. He looks in closets, under blanket piles, cots, in the bathtub, and every place large enough to hide a big man. Still moving at a whisper level, he heads down into the basement.
Down there is a wide, old dirt floor cellar. He pulls a shoelace strung from a bare bulb light and is surprised how bright was the light that came from it. There seems to be nothing in the cellar but stacks of old newspapers bundled and lined against the far wall. He goes over to investigate, but that’s all they are, stacks of old newspapers. On the side wall he sees a wide wooden bin. It looked like a horse stall for the back half of a horse, but it was where, in times gone by, coal was stored after it was delivered down a chute put through the cellar window above it. Grayson, filled with fear, is sure he’s going to find his brother on the floor of the coal bin. He goes right to it and looks over the wooden side and straight down. All he sees is the bumpy dirt floor blackened by years of coal dust.
Upstairs and out to the back porch and sloshes a quantity of gas on it. Then he walks all around the house, splashing the foundation and, as the can got lighter, on the old pine shingles above the foundation. He lights the rag with his Zippo and tossed it on the gas on the back porch. The resulting fire was a disappointment; it looks merely merry. He sets the can on the back porch, trots around to the front and goes inside. When he could see the flames out the window, he begins to yell.
“Fire! Fire!”
No one moves. He tries to rouse the arm licker. No dice. He then tries in vain to wake the other two. He runs in place, stomping his feet, thinking the vibrations might reach them, and he yells “Fire” several more times. Nothing.
The fire is getting serious quickly so one by one he drags the inert shitheads outside Not one stirs, even as they bump down the front steps. If they do wake up, Grayson is prepared to pose as a passer-by, valiantly rushing in to rescue the inhabitants of a house on fire.
“You boys know how to get fucked up,” Grayson says.
Across the street, a man is standing on his porch, with his arms folded, watching.
Grayson runs across to the sidewalk, panting, acting the distraught passerby.
“Call the fire department!” Grayson yells.
“No fucking way,” the middle-aged man says. “I wish you had left them to burn after you set the fire.”
The man watches the sparks fly up into the night sky.
“I’ll tell the cops, if they even come, their guys started the fire, then took off.”
Back in the car, Grayson guns it in reverse to an intersection, and turns around. He shoots over to the Pony Room and parks, lights out. In under a minute he hears the fire trucks coming from the station a half mile away, up on Neponset St. When the fire trucks and cops were fully by, he flies across the bridge and back to North Quincy.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Grayson arrives at Hugh’s apartment, fresh from burning down the Dark Lord’s hive.
Grayson doesn’t know what to believe. Stan is, was, a liar, so is Amy/Amanda. Hugh might not have been grabbed by them at all. If that were true, then where is he? Hugh would never run away. He checks around the apartment but sees no sign his brother had been there. In the bedroom, on the dresser, was a picture of Hugh in his football uniform, during his freshman year at Syracuse, standing with the varsity head coach, Ben Schwartzwalder. The picture causes Grayson to wince, the pain is like an abscessed tooth under the pick of a clumsy dentist.
Grayson, at that time a senior in high school, had been throwing passes to some grade school kids out on the street in front of the house. Hugh was home from Syracuse the week prior to the start of spring football and wanted to put a game together with the kids. It would be Hugh against his brother, each of them with three neighborhood kids. Grayson’s team had the ball and his three kids all went out for long passes. Because they were kids, they all wound up clumped together, jumping up and down in the same spot yelling for the ball.
“No, fellas, spread out,” Grayson yelled.
Hugh tried to stay in the middle of the street, ready to go in any direction to make a play on the ball. Grayson faked a pass to the right side and Hugh stepped with it, but instead Grayson lofted the ball in the other direction, way, way too high for any of the kids to catch, but Hugh turned and went after the ball, intent on an interception. Michael Grayson’s football career ended when Hugh’s car was T-boned by a crazy guy trying to kill himself and his wife. Hugh didn’t see the guy coming because he was fiddling with the radio when he should have been paying attention. Grayson was in the passenger seat and as a result was near death for several days and in the hospital for two months. As a junior in high school Grayson was an All-Scholastic quarterback and celebrated for his abi
lity to zip a tight, thirty-yard spiral to a precise spot. The precise spot he aimed for now was about eight feet up on the telephone pole. He let go of the ball and watched Hugh turn and run full tilt toward the pole, looking over his shoulder at the ball. Hugh running full tilt meant that two hundred and twenty pounds of highly trained college athlete was going to cover ten yards in less than two seconds. In the same instant the ball left his hand, Grayson wanted it back.
He screamed a warning, “No!”
Hugh and the football hit the pole at the same time. Like all defensive players, Hugh longed to touch the football, and like all injured players Grayson hated the guys who were still playing. When he heard his brother’s bones cracking on the pole, he was sickened. Hugh made no cry. He was out, sprawled on the asphalt, as still and silent as the dead.
Hugh was right. Grayson did owe him. He is going to square it with him, no matter what it takes.
He slept like a baby in his brother’s bed.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
A little after 9AM he drives up the hill on West Squantum St. and making his way to Donny’s apartment. He has the .22, but it only had five rounds in it so he needed more ammunition, due to the fact he’d never shot a gun. It is very likely he’d need to shoot off a lot of bullets before he hit something.
He pulls up in front of Donny’s place, and shuts off the GTO. Inside the fence Carl Winslow, the cuckolded landlord, is pushing a mower. He is wearing a tee-shirt with BFD printed across the chest. Carl is the older brother of a guy that Paul Grayson had played baseball with in Pony League.
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