“So what, Harewood?” Hughes sniffed at his fingertips. Breathed in deeply. Lit another cigarette.
“I am sorry, Hughes, but you’ll have to swing for this one. I’m sympathetic because of our history together. Really I am, but someone has to take the fall and the horse manure rolls downhill, doesn’t it? As from this morning you’re suspended without compensation.” The Superintendent patted down his hair, massaging his pink Adam’s apple and throat.
William stood up and went to the window, watched a horse and cart carrying a group of small children to school, dropped his cigarette out onto the street and closed the window, “Suspended? Without pay? For how fucking long?”
“Two weeks. Thirteen days to be precise,” Harewood said, leaning away from William as he passed by him back to his chair at the front of the desk.
“I see. Well, perhaps I have a better newspaper headline. Read all about it! Read all about it! Police Superintendent’s nightly visits to young rent boys in infamous Berkeley Square house of ill-repute popular with very high-ranking politicians. Now, how’s that for a headline, Superintendent? Reckon it’ll sell more than a few copies; don’t you agree? Tabloids’ll be all over that like, what was it? Ants to sugar? Flies to shit?” William lit another cigarette, coughed and grinned, clasping the butt between his ivory teeth. Glaring down at Harewood.
“You’ve always relished hanging that over my fucking head haven’t you, Hughes?”
“Yes, I have, Superintendent, and I shall continue to do so for as long as I need to. When needs must as they say. Now, onto the more pressing matters at hand, who’s on duty down at the drunk cells?”
“Albertson, I believe. Why do you ask?”
“Have him called him away.”
“Jesus Christ, Hughes. Look, we’ll just attempt to charge the woman for something and have her sectioned in a mental asylum for a few months until it all blows over.” The Superintendent ran his hands over his face and sighed. “There’s no need for any of your heavy-handed tactics this time. Things are really quite bad enough as it is.”
“She’ll not cease her squawking. Women like her never learn and no one wants headlines, do they Superintendent? After all, I’ve my nest egg to worry about and you have your illustrious career and little queers to ravish,” Hughes tapped ash onto a pile of files stacked on the desk and smirked.
Harewood spoke softly to the floor, his pipe burned out and held stiffly in his hand. “No, Hughes. I can’t. I won’t be a party to something like that. Not again.”
“You’re already in the filth and muck with me, my friend. If I go over the top this time, I’m dragging you and your friends with me. I’ve quite the little dossier on you all tucked away with that nest egg of mine. Read all about it! Read all about it!”
Harewood moaned high pitched, stuttered slightly, “bloody hell, Hughes. How long will you need?!”
“I’ll make it quick enough. Quicker than you and your Eton friends were with that unfortunate little nancy I had to dump in the river two winters ago. You really went to town on him, didn’t you all. The body didn’t even look like a human when you called me, begging to clean up your drunken mess,” William said, standing up and flicking ash from his cigarette onto the floor.
“Get the hell out of my office, Hughes! You lunatic fucking degenerate!”
“Let he who is without sin, Superintendent. Read all about it! Read all about it!” he called over his shoulder as he left The Superintendent’s office, closing the door quietly.
Superintendent Harewood picked up the internal telephone on his desk and told the person on the other end to call Albertson off his post. He sighed, rubbing at his throat and staring at the door. After a while he took a pen and scribbled a note. Addressing it Dearest Kate, he slid it into an envelope marked urgent and called out his secretary in an adjoining office to have it included in the day’s outgoing post right away.
William watched Albertson and another officer light up their pipes and then stroll up the stairs to the main hall from a crack in the locker room’s door. Could hear the whore singing snatches of song. The words clumsily tumbling down the sparsely lit corridor and chipped marbled flooring. Some kind of nursery rhyme. Made him feel uneasy. Thirsty. Squeezing his hands into fists, trying to ease the tremors that were running jagged throughout his body. Breath struggled up from his chest and crawled from his lips. As though his first time. So long ago. The only person he might have ever loved. The only person who had hurt him. Lavender perfume. Words of love whispered breathlessly in French. Red wine lips. Music twisting sickeningly from a phonograph. Fucking thirsty. He wiped a fist across his mouth and went to her. Following the tune and lyrics into the drunk cells with the smells of rotten sick, damp and mold. His eyes adjusting to the dim. The woman. His woman. The whore laid on the metal frame of a bunk, braiding her disheveled hair.
On hearing his footfall she turned her face to him and snarled from the dim.
“You?! And what do you bloody well want?”
“I’ve come to apologize to you, Miss,” he bowed his head in a parody of shame and regret.
“Apologize? You can shove your apology where the sun don’t shine, cozzer. I ain’t buying what you’re selling. I’m telling everyone what you did to me and that poor boy. Everyone that has ears to listen and mind to know.”
“Yes, yes, I know, Miss. I acted atrociously. Lost my temper, is all. I’ve come to let you out of these cells and take you to meet some of my superior officers. They wish to hear your account of what really happened. It looks as though I’m in for an awful lot of strife. Now, I’m coming in, Miss. Sit down on the bunk and calm yourself woman.” He unlocked the cell, swung the door creaking open. The cell awash with a whore’s scent.
Betrayer.
Maddening.
He held out a trembling hand to the woman and she glared at it hanging before her with suspicious eyes.
“Yes, you are. You’re gonna be in so much trouble. In this life and the next one,” she spoke, frowning at the palsied palm. Avoiding eye contact.
“The next one? Whatever do you mean, Miss?” William tried to smile.
“The hereafter. Kingdom come. You need to pray and repent.” She placed her small, pale hand in his. Yes, she looked like so pure now, bathed in a beam of ghostly light stabbing its way through a small rectangular barred window at the end of the cell block. An innocence corrupted. Stolen. Ruined. He crushed her palm in his fist. Bones cracked. She screamed out shocked, trying to pull her hand free. He wrapped his other hand around her throat, cutting off her shrieks and squeezed.
“That’s pretty hypocritical advice from a fucking whore, ain’t it?” he spat.
She gasped deep, bucking her hips against him as he pushed a knee hard into her chest. Holding her down to the bunk with his weight. Her eyes so wide. So white. He blinked and, for a moment, was in the small bedroom of an apartment in Paris. A bottle of red wine seeping into disheveled white sheets and his lover in his arms. Her long blonde hair twisting through his fingertips like spun gold. A mahogany crucifix hanging from a nail above the headboard bringing vomit to the back of his throat. Margaux.
The whore gasped, clawing at his face.
“I’ll pray when I’m dying and not a fucking minute sooner,” he winked, grinning into her choked, purpling face. Watching the life in her eyes fade like the flame of a candle burning out while she scratched weakly at his cheek. He closed his eyes.
Back in the room in Paris again. Candlelight flickering over the milky white flesh of his woman. Both of their faces slick with tears. The bottle of red wine spilt and soaking into the white fabric. The crucifix above the bed. Jesus staring into a black abyss. The flesh in his grip so soft and slippery with sweat.
William moaned. Snapping his eyes open wider. Back in the cells. The black of the woman’s irises glazed, and her body long ceased its bucking. He took her small wrist in his fist, checking her pulse. Dropped it back to the bunk. Stroked the long blonde strands of hair from her f
orehead. Ran his fingers over her freckled cheeks remembering again the woman who had damaged him so detrimentally, “I loved you so much, Margaux. So much. You did this to yourself. You have only yourself to blame. Did it all to yourself.”
He ripped the spoiled sheet from the bunk, twisted it into a rope and knotted it about the dead woman’s neck. Dragged her body from the cot and then heaved her body up, leaving it hanging limply from the bars in the cell still smelling fragrantly of her perfume. Just another pathetic suicide while in police custody. No eyebrows would be raised. He tried to whistle as he locked the cell behind him with shaking fingers. Couldn’t breathe. Gulping back something heavy that had settled in his throat. So fucking thirsty. Margaux in candlelight fixed in his mind. He hurried back up the stairs as though the spirit of the woman was crawling the floors after him. Stalking him like so many other hungry ghosts. He ran, bursting out into the disorientating buzz of the street outside the station, ignoring concerned shouts and cutting down the nearest street to have a drink before he died of thirst.
Boston, USA
Tuesday, February 19th, 1946
The next morning, an unenthusiastic, stilted applause greeted Ben as he entered the second-floor duty room of the Boston Police Department precinct building.
Patrolmen stood around in creased, stale blue uniforms, trying to appear tough, and detectives glanced up from their desks smirking. Lewis Jones, a detective from the Homicide Unit, a degenerate gambler and moonlighter for the Italians, waddled over, eating a fried egg sandwich and clapped Ben spitefully on the back. Ben jumped, startled and blanched.
“Long time, no see, Hughes old-boy. You finally decided to show up for once, huh? Wonder why? I swung by that shitty little dive you paddy fucks call a social club yesterday looking for you. You were someplace else, I guess. Ah, that’s gone and reminded me, well done. Looks as though you foiled another attempted robbery yesterday.” Jones held his sandwich clamped in his mouth to clap a few times, then took it back out, waved it at Ben. A piece of egg tumbled to the floor and broke into tiny yellow pieces. Ben stared and readjusted own necktie, straightening it. Loosening it and then tightening it again. A drop of sweat ran down his spine and settled into his waistband.
“How many is that now? Four? Or was it five? Been so many I’m starting to lose fucking count. Another notch on the belt anyhow, right, Huey? Who would’ve thought an average schmo with a wife and four kids would try and rip-off a bar connected to the Southie mob? It’s a fucking mystery if you ask me,” he said, his mouth full. Flakes of yellowed egg and bread caked the corners of his lips in greasy little clumps. Voices in the background whispered incessantly. The words like needles pricking the nape of Ben’s neck. Crazy. Sick. Father. Mother. Weak. Ill. Dishonorable discharge. Sick. Filthy. Sick. Crazy. Buggy.
He shook Jones’ hand from his back as though it were plagued and squinted, twitching, at a swarm of large gravy stains spotted down the fat piece of shit’s necktie, unable to tear his eyes away from them. Jones noticed and grinned. Took the tie in his oily fingertips and wafted it like a bad stink towards Ben’s face. Ben stumbled backwards, his calves hitting the edge of a desk painfully. Files fell and papers flew. Someone cursed. A cold fever breaking out all over his body. He could feel eyes scurrying over him cruelly. Merciless pests sucking his blood. Lice. Ants. The ringing of telephones, eye-watering. The harsh murmurs in the room relentless. Crazy. Sick. Father. Mother. Weak. Ill. Dishonorable discharge. Sick. Filthy. Sick. Crazy. Buggy.
Jones licked yellowed teeth and kept coming. He’d been harassing Ben for over seven months. Always sniffing around. Always there. Bullying. Ben didn’t know why. He reached into his jacket and placed his hand on the cool wooden smoothness of the .38’s handle hanging in the shoulder holster. He didn’t know why. Was he going to finally shoot Jones or shoot himself? Touch wood. Images like bullets ricocheting around his skull. The boy. Eyes. Lips. Buzzing telephones. Stains. Crumbs. Congealed. Corners. Filth. Ants. Cockroaches. Crazy. Sick. Father. Mother. Weak. Ill. Dishonorable discharge. Sick. Filthy. Sick. Crazy. Buggy. Why couldn’t people just leave him the fuck alone? Why did everything have to be so fucking ugly all the time?
“Yesterday upon the stair…” he whispered.
“What you say, Hughes old-boy?” Jones’s grin split deep and wide. Egg and bread stuck between teeth.
“Yesterday upon the stair…” Ben panted the words out, cringing.
“You’re looking a little peaked there, pal. What’re you mumbling? Spit it out,” Jones laughed.
“I saw a man who wasn’t there,” Ben blurted.
“Is that poetry, Hughes? You really are a sensitive boy, aren’t you?” Jones said in a booming, lispy lilt that made laughter break out from all corners of the room. “Hey everybody, get a load of this! Hughes is reciting poetry to me! I told you all he was kind of fruity.”
Cackling laughter roared and cut like shattered glass.
Ben unclipped the holster and held his breath. Reciting the poem in his mind over and over like a mantra. The only thing that could calm him. Save him. His mother had promised.
Crazy. Sick. Father. Mother. Weak. Ill. Dishonorable discharge. Sick. Filthy. Sick. Crazy. Buggy.
Jones clapped him hard on the shoulder again and laughed longer and harder. Ben stepped further away his hand still in his jacket.
“The Commish’ wants to see you in his office, Hero Hughes. In his office. Everybody around here knows you’re the bagman for Sully but maybe the crooked, old drunk’s finally seen sense and you’re gonna get dishonorably discharged from the department the same way you did from the army, pal. Sure, we all take a little taste here and there. Hell, everyone pretty much knows I work for the dagos on occasion, but you Hughes, you ain’t one of us and you’ll never be one of us. You’re a dirty, murdering freak and your time is running out around Boston. I’m gonna get ya. I’m gonna be the one that gets ya, Hughes. It’s gonna be me to put the cuffs on. I want you to know that. I’m not going anywhere. Your fucking two-bit, Irish hoodlum pals over in Southie too, you’ll be sharing a cell in C-Town Pen together.” He spoke it loud, to an audience. Everyone in the room.
The department broke out in an applause again, but this time they meant it. Someone whistled. Someone shouted, “You tell him, Lewie!” Oily faces murmuring to each other. Crazy. Sick. Father. Mother. Weak. Ill. Dishonorable discharge. Sick. Filthy. Sick. Crazy. Mother. Buggy.
Ben’s face blazing, he swallowed something that caught scratching at the back of his throat, shoved his way past Jones towards the stairs leading to the third floor and The Chief’s office. The greasy windowpanes hacked shards of retarded sunlight across wood paneling and nicotine-stained walls. The room began to tilt. Floorboards warped. Heads elongated freakish. Limbs stretched abnormal. A hive. A nest. Insects. He had stumbled into a nightmare. He tripped over, staggered back up to his feet. The cackling laughter pursuing him relentless.
“I’m looking forward to reading your report on what exactly happened over there in Seaport, Hero Hughes Old Boy!” Jones called after him.
Ben slipped again in the hall; his hands pressed to the filthy, cold marble. A face reflected in the marble—a ghost. An office girl with make-up smothered acne, clutching files to her flat chest, wide-eyed him pitifully. Bile crawling at the back of his teeth. He lurch-ran to the restrooms, kicked open the door and vomited into a sink. His empty stomach burned. He snatched out the soap from his jacket pocket, ripped the paper packaging from it. Scrubbing his palms and fingers raw. Splashed icy water from the faucet over his face and slouching over the sink stared at his trembling reflection in the cracked mirror, promising himself he’d find the child, get out of Boston. Beat the shit out of that fucking animal Jones sooner or later. He pulled out his flask, took a long hit. Eyes stinging. His fingertips running over the grooves of the inscription. His guts rolled. Dry heaving, he slipped it shakily back inside his jacket. Holding his hands under the ice-cold water and counted to seven seven times. Eye fucking hi
s reflection and breathing deep. Reciting the fucking poem because he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do. It was all he had.
The office was brightly lit, but smelled decrepit, rotten and musty. A morgue stench without the chemical aftertaste.
Police Chief Sullivan was seated behind his large oak desk with his feet up, lighting up a thick cigar and chuckling horse with a tall, well dressed, slim man. Ben recognized the piece of shit as soon as he turned around and fixed those mocking icy blue eyes behind round-framed spectacles on him. Seen him in the Dailies enough. A man from a family very well known in Boston. American royalty. A dynasty of wealthy barons and investors. Joseph P. Kennedy. America’s blessed. He’d been a big wheel on Wall Street. A big wheel everywhere that mattered. People said he was one of the richest men in the country. Gotten the majority of his wealth through dishonest investments, insider trading on the stock market and bootlegging with gangster partners. Incredibly well-heeled. Incredibly well connected. A golfing buddy of ex-president Roosevelt. The elites were the only criminals that ever got away scot-free. Ben had heard whispers on the streets of Southie of big-time rip-offs. Invite only parties with armed guards—sex orgies for the rich and famous. Investments in skin flicks starring drugged up casting couch Hollywood starlet wannabes. Joe was corrupt as they come. A cunt with a sickly smug face. Ben clenched his teeth to veil his disgust.
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