Mother.
Say the words. Tell me you love me
Ben yelled, “NO! DON’T!”
A machine pistol barked into the void of static silence.
Ben pulled himself to his feet, tumbling back through the doorway.
The hairless man facedown and bloody, sprawled on the floor.
“Fuck! That was lucky. One of us, should’ve probably checked the back office, ain’t that fucking right?” Christopher said, waving the machine pistol towards the wide-open back-office door.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” Ben hissed, glaring down at the dead mass.
“What’s the matter with you, English? You know that guinea or what?” Christopher asked.
“The boy! I need to find the boy. He was gonna tell me where the fucking boy is.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, English? We gotta go. Now!” Leary said, dropping his fat hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben shook it off. Used the toe of his mirror-shined Oxford to roll the body over. Its eyes flickered open, focusing on the space above Ben’s left shoulder.
“Look at that, the piece of shit is still alive, but not for long,” Leary swung the muzzle of the Thompson towards the dying man’s face and Ben slapped it away. Grimaced. The smooth faced creature choking claret in between Latin prayers.
“Not until he’s told me what I want to know,” Ben kicked the ugly thing hard in the side of the ribs. It groaned and spat blood up across its face.
“Where is the boy? Where’s James Goodman? The boy? Tell me now!” Ben shouted.
The thing swiveled its dark eyes over both Ben and Leary, continuing the muttered, gasping prayers. The words I’ll pray when I’m dying, echoing in Ben’s mind. The words his father had always shouted at Ben’s mother when she asked him to accompany them to mass on Sunday mornings. The anniversary of the man’s death impending. Ben kicked the revolting thing in the ribs again. A sound of dried wood snapping, reminding Ben of Li Yu’s door hanging from the frame – his ragged, broken heart hanging from a noose in his chest.
“We gotta fucking go, lads! Now!” Christopher shouted.
The Mulligans pulled the visors of their cop caps down low. Leaving slow, casually together. Not glancing up at the small crowd of gawkers and onlookers beginning to cluster on the street outside.
Pushed for time, Ben found a bloody gaping hole in the thing’s guts. Shoved the muzzle of his Thompson in deep. The thing screamed soprano. Ben’s ears rang. He grit his teeth so hard he thought they’d shatter like the porcelain and glass scattered across the floor amongst the dead.
“Where’s the fucking boy? Where’s James Goodman? You fuck!”
“…eary. …eary.” It whispered with blood-crusting lips.
Ben and Leary glanced at each other. Ben stared. Leary shrugged.
“I don’t know this fucking guy. Why the fuck’s he saying my own selve’s name for?”
Ben shoved the muzzle in deeper. “Where’s the fucking boy, you wretched cunt?!”
The thing screeched, squealed, gasped, slumped down slack-jawed and died.
Leary pulled at Ben again, “He’s gone. I don’t know what the fuck this is about, but we’ve gotta get gone too, Englishman! Right now!”
Ben shoved Leary away. Bent down, tearing through the dead thing’s slacks.
Coins clattered across the floor.
“There has to be something. Something. Something. Something… Something… Fucking something! Anything!” He snatched at the contents of the deformed fuck’s jacket, shoving everything he grabbed into his own.
Leary grabbed Ben’s arm hard, squeezed, “I’m leaving now with or without you, Englishman.”
The smell of shit and blood unbearable, seeping through the cotton fabric of his mask. Glaring down at the bald thing’s face. It’s legs akimbo. Arms outstretched. There was something terribly unnatural to the body. Heinous. Sinful. A giant white cockroach or ant.
Ben gagged and vomited into his bandana. Ripped it from his face. Tossed it at the corpse. Wiped his face on his jacket sleeve.
“Fuck!”
He followed Leary towards the door. Heart-wracked up. Panting. Dizzy. Ben thought he was having some kind of a heart-attack. They strolled out together. Faux-casual. Ignoring the shouted questions of the people that stood as slack jawed as the dead men within the confines of the café, from a safe distance in the street.
Ben scoped around for the kids. They were gone. He let out a sigh he hadn’t realized he’d been holding within. The Mulligans were almost at the Ford. IOU waiting with the truck started. Revving the engine. The exhaust backfired, sounding like a pistol shot. Everyone froze mid-step. Someone giggled nervously. Christopher swung in the front, tossing the cap on the dash. Leary, Connor and Ben hopped in the back slamming the door behind them.
IOU got the truck started and pulled hard into the street. Ben and Leary tumbled to their knees and cursed. Onlookers squealed. Ben heaved, coughing into his fist. The taste of vomit was still thick in his mouth and on his tongue. He wiped his hands on his leg. Vertigo building to a crescendo then tapering off and diminishing.
Leary still cursing softly underneath his breath. Connor grinning, eyes glazed. Ben fell onto a pine bench, tearing at the bulging contents of his jacket pocket. The boy’s silently screaming face exploded through his skull like a shotgun blast at point blank range.
He took out the blood-soaked billfold, rummaged through it with fingers that shook uncontrollably. Cash thick. Soggy. Nothing else. No cards. No identification. Nothing of any consequence. He tossed the cash to the floor of the truck. Leary and Connor locked eye contact with each other and pulled faces. Ben reached back into his pocket. His fingers brushed against the corner of something. Square. Card. A matchbook. He withdrew it, holding the scarlet matchbook up to a crack of light seeping through the backdoors. ‘THE FAMOUS PARKER HOUSE BAR’. A bar in one of the oldest, classiest hotels in Boston. The Parker House Hotel on School Street. John Wilkes Booth had stayed there eight days before putting a bullet in old Abe’s head. Popular with the Kennedy clan and other Boston lace curtain elites.
He flipped the matchbook open. A couple of the matches were gone. The matchbook was nearly new. THURSDAY, 7. $, scribbled on the inside cover in what looked like kid’s purple crayon. A rendezvous. He’d bet the rich woman Frankie had talked about would be there to pay the bald man off. A lucky break, at last. He squinted at his wristwatch. Ten twenty-two. More than enough time to kill.
“You not wanting that then?” Connor said, toeing the cash strewn on the floor.
“I think I may have what I wanted,” Ben nodded grimly. Turning the matchbook over and over in his clammy fingers.
Leary and Connor nodded, fell to their knees and started to stuff their pockets with the blood splashed cash.
“And, Leary?” Ben said.
“Yeah what, English?”
“It’s an emerald-green Ford Coupe that I want you to use your special skills on.”
“That piece of shit? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“When have you ever known me to have a sense of humor, Leary?”
“He’s got a point there, Fat Man,” Connor said.
“I want it done, tonight,” Ben said.
Leary stared, bug-eyed. Wiped sweat from his eyes and pulled at his beard.
Ben shook off the patrolman’s jacket, pulled on his sport coat delicately from a paper bag on the bench. Banged a fist hard on the side of the vehicle, shouted “I’m getting out here.”
IOU pulled the truck over and Ben nodded at Leary as he pushed open the back doors.
“I want there to be fireworks while we’re on our way to Salt Lake City tomorrow morning, Leary. Get it done.”
Leary tightened his lips but nodded. Went to say something but Ben slammed the backdoors on anything the ex-IRA man was going to say.
Stood at the corner of the junction watching the truck disappear into a side street. Checked his wristwatch. Flagged down a taxicab to take him back to the O
ld South Church in Southie where he’d parked his Caddie earlier that morning. He had one last place to be before The Parker House Bar.
Li Yu.
He was going to see Li Yu.
The bar in the Parker House Hotel was after dinner bustling. Conversations coming in waves. The atmosphere thick with smoke. The chimes of glass on glass. Bursts of laughter. Soft lighting, dark woods, ox-blood leather. Boston’s party crowd and elites rubbing shoulders. Suffocating.
Ben slipped into a seat at the end of the bar. Turned his collar up and told the barkeep eyeballing the still raw scratches across his face to bring him an unopened bottle of bourbon and a clean glass.
“Looks like you went and pissed off yourself a tiger, Mister,” the barman said with a thick Southern drawl, placing the bottle and glass down on top of crisp, white napkins.
“Something like that, yes.” Ben touched the long gashes tenderly. Chewing at his ruptured bottom lip, Li Yu’s screams echoing from somewhere across the crowds of people making him spin around in his seat to glance around the room.
“Oh, yeah?” The barman raised his eyes to the ceiling for some reason, whistled and placed both hands on the bar. He looked like an undertaker with plucked eyebrows. He wore a navy-blue bowtie that was crooked and compelled Ben to finger the collar of his own open shirt uncomfortably. The stink of stale cologne caught at the back of his throat. He leaned back and away on the stool.
“Yes, my wife, she’s rather hotblooded.” He slid out his badge and laid it on the bar. The gold reflected in the barman’s cringing face and black eyes. “Now, brass tacks. Have you perchance ever seen a completely hairless man come in here, no eyebrows, bald, meeting a woman of rich appearance?”
The barman’s eyes bulged for a split second. He peeped over at the door. “I ain’t seen that fella around here for a month or so, I’m guessing. Kinda looks like one of them china dolls. Gives me the heebie jeebies, sure as night is dark. What’s he done?”
Ben ignored the question. Asked his own. “How about the woman?”
“The woman, I can’t say I rightly recollect.”
Ben brought out his billfold and pushed a five spot across the dark, highly shined wood. “How about now? How’s your recollection now?”
The barman licked his lips, reptilian. “Yeah, all right. Sure, I’ve seen the woman a couple of times with the china doll man.”
“She here now?” Ben glanced over his shoulder, taking in the bar. The groups stood chatting, touching each other, laughing. He’d never understood how people could ever be so happy. Confident. Comfortable. He’d never had anything remotely like that. Had been alone his entire life. Even when he wasn’t alone, he was isolated and alone. A roach captured under an overturned glass.
The barman glanced around the crowded room. “Nope, that she ain’t.”
“What does she look like?”
“Well, Sir, on the topic of tigers. She certainly looks like one. Don’t know what the heck she sees in bowling ball head.”
“I want to know about her appearance.”
“Well, lemme see now. She’s a beauty, all right. Tall, slim, blonde, all legs and tits. Real chesty. I’m more a derriere man, myself, though.” He winked. Ben sneered.
“I don’t give a fuck about what you are or aren’t. Keep to the woman. How old is she approximately?”
“Well, now. There ain’t no call for rudeness.”
“Well, there isn’t any call for me jumping over this bar and busting your fucking skull open either, but I’m presently certainly considering it.”
“All right, all right. She’s in her forties, I’m guessing. Early forties. Now if there isn’t anything else, I’ve got other patrons to serve.”
As he reached out for the five spot, Ben grabbed his wrist, twisted it. “You sure she isn’t here now?”
The barman snapped his head around again, face screwed up. “Yeah, I’m sure. She ain’t here. Now lemme go. Ain’t no wonder your woman scratched your face up.” He ripped his arm free and walked down the other end of the bar rubbing at it. Your woman scratched your face up.
Ben drank hard and fast. Trying to smother the jagged glass images of Li Yu from his mind. Her throat underneath his hands. That look of absolute fear in her dark eyes. Tell me you love me, Ben. Say the words to me.
The bottle of whiskey reaching half empty. Attempting to focus on the faces in the room contorting every time he glanced over his shoulder. A kaleidoscope of tight grins, crawling hands, canine teeth and stretched eyes. The bar span. Topsy-turvy. He pulled out the crumpled newspaper page with the boy’s photograph from his chest pocket, spread it out in front of him. Sipping at his glass, wincing at the picture like it was a gangrenous wound. Head in his hands. The fucking woman wasn’t coming. A no-show. He almost fell off the seat. Vomited on the empty stool beside him. His fist to his mouth. Bile seeped down his chin and dripped onto his shirt front. He pulled his .38 and slammed it down on the bar when the barman started over, a concerned, disgusted look all over his insectile face. Disarray and disorder. No symmetry to anything. People’s whispers grew earsplitting. A beating heart of hate. Crazy. Sick. Father. Mother. Weak. Ill. Dishonorable discharge. Sick. Filthy. Sick. Crazy. Buggy.
Sweat or tears fell splashing onto the newspaper. Ink smeared like lipstick, like blood.
“I think you’ve had more than enough, my friend,” the barman, standing in front of him, hands on hips. Eyebrows crooked like a cockroach’s legs. “You’re making quite a scene. Go home and sleep it off.”
“Who the fuck are you? The Beetle Man?” Ben glared at the figure in front of him. Mouth drawn wide, forehead swollen, horned, grotesque in shadow. He snatched up his .38, waving it at the Beetle Man. The whispers of the crowd, papercuts all over his itchy, scratched flesh.
He squeezed the trigger, squinting down the muzzle at the Beetle Man. Stopped. Realizing he was pointing the revolver at his own reflection in the mirror at the back of the bar. He vomited again. The bile burning, seeping through his fingertips. He stumbled from his stool, pushing overgrown ants and cockroaches out of his way. A hive. A nest.
He fell into an elevator. Gagging. Told the operator to take him down to the first floor. The chiming bells. The world a jumbled jigsaw puzzle. Marble floors. Piano music. Li Yu’s throat underneath his hands. Flowers in Grecian urns. Spinning. That look of absolute fear in her eyes. Concierge in red coats. Faces. Bellboys in little hats pushing cages of weeping children. Footsteps tapping lunatic morse code. Tell me you love me, Ben. Say the words to me. The Beetle Man. Joseph P. Kennedy walking arm in arm with a blonde woman through the lobby, and out together through golden doors. Ben staggered after them. Hitting the street. Falling to his knees on the ice-cold concrete. Gone. His hands filthy. Filthy. Filthy. His mother said she had been a filthy girl. Li Yu—a filthy girl. He stumbled to his feet, steadying himself, gripping at a lamppost. Filthy. The hotel a block away. He needed to wash. He brought his diseased, infected wrist to his face, frowning at his wristwatch.
An hour gone by.
An hour missed.
Missing.
The boy smiling from a missing poster.
Ben vomited.
Ben screamed.
London, U.K
Wednesday, February 24th, 1926
William pulled the peak of the flat cap lower over his eyes. Ran a finger over the smooth flesh of his freshly shaved upper lip, feeling naked without the mustache. His other hand buried deep in his overcoat pocket. Brandishing the pearl handle of the revolver. Confident even his own mother wouldn’t recognize her son if she passed him by.
He made his way quickly down Commercial Street towards the Ten Bells Pub. The pale spire of Christ Church penetrating the night sky. A subtle knife in the dark. Hungover. His head rattling like a train over rusty railway lines. He told himself the shakes convulsing his body were only caused by the chilled wind. Just the cold. He just needed to drop off the letter with the pub landlord and be gone. A quick nip of the hair of t
he dog that bit him. Ripped a chunk of flesh from him. Calm his nerves. Smooth himself out. Ease off the tremors. Take a taxi. The overnight train from Kings Cross to Southampton. He could make it. He grinned. He was going to make it out of the shithole East End, out of London, out of England. When everything blew up in the faces of Harewood and all his fairy politician mates, William would be in the First-Class cabin of a White Star Line ship sailing across the Atlantic Ocean to America. He patted at his chest at the thick envelope of secrets concealed in his inner pocket and grinned again. Walking so fast he started to pant, out of breath. He saw a couple of constables come out of The Ten Bells pub at the bottom of the street and start walking down the road towards him. Voices loud, lost in conversation about yesterday’s football match. He ducked into an alley. Taking a piss with his back to them as they passed by. His hand pressed against the icy bricks of the wall. The urine smoky. The alleyway awash in rubbish and tramps.
Buttoning his trousers, he heard a soft giggling. He snapped his head towards the sounds, squinting down the alley at a figure standing there caped in gloom. Her back was to him. Hand on a pushed-out hip. He closed his eyes, rubbed at them, screwing his eyes up against the shadows and bitter cold. A red dress. Dark hair. Not a ghost at all. Flesh and blood. A tramp stirred from piles of soiled newspapers croaking curses at him and William stamped the filth unconscious. He moved down the alley towards the woman. She turned to face him, mouthing words that were meaningless in the dank, inky blue night. Her lips making intricate shapes. Giggling. Two words or a single two syllabled word. He shrugged theatrically. She beckoned to him. Drawing him in. A swarthy looking whore in a red dress. A rose in her hair. Blossomed like a wound against the sable color of the long wavy hair falling down to her shoulders. The February breeze frigid on his face. A beautiful girl smiling at him with lips painted blood red. He kicked old beer crates out of the way, telling himself he had time. He had time for one last hurray. Then he was next to her. His hand on the small of her back. The fabric of her dress as smooth as skin underneath his fingertips. The scent of her perfume bringing tears to his eyes. She threw her head back and laughed into the space above the bricks and mortar. Eyes sparkling like flares over No Man’s Land.
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