Boston Noir

  She seemed to think about that for a moment, and nodded. Then she moved closer and gingerly put one foot into the boat, as I held her hand. Her hand felt good. "Up forward," I said. "Take the seat up forward."

  My client clambered in and I followed. I undid the stern line and gently pushed us off, then primed the engine by using a squeeze tube from the small fuel tank. A flick of the switch and a couple of tugs with the rope starter, and the small Mercury engine burbled into life. We made our way out of the docks and toward the waters of the harbor, motoring into the coming darkness, my right hand on the throttle of the engine.

  After about five minutes she turned and said, "Where are the life jackets?"

  "You figuring on falling in?"

  She had a brittle laugh. "No, not at all. I'd just like to know, that's all."

  I motioned with my free hand. "Up forward. And nothing to worry about, Mandy. I boated out here before I went to grade school and haven't fallen in yet."

  She turned into herself, the purse on her lap, and I looked over at the still waters of the harbor. It was early evening, the water very flat, the smell of the salt air pretty good after spending hours and hours on Scollay Square. Off to the left, the north, were the lights of the airport, and out on the waters I could see the low shapes of the islands. Over to the right was the harbor itself, and the lights of the moored freighters.

  One of the islands was now off to starboard and Mandy asked, "What island is that?"

  "Thompson," I said.

  "I see buildings there. A fort?"

  I laughed. "Hardly. That's the home of the Boston Farm and Trades School."

  "The what school?"

  "Farm and Trades. A fancy name for a school for boys who get into trouble. Like a reform school. One last chance before you get sent off to juvenile hall or an adult prison."

  She turned, and in the fading light I could make out her pretty smile. "Sounds like you know that place firsthand."

  "Could have, if I hadn't been lucky."

  Soon we passed Thompson and up ahead was a low-slung island with no lights. The wind shifted, carrying with it a sour smell.

  "What in God's name is that?" Mandy asked.

  "Spectacle Island. That's where the city dumps its trash. Lots of garbage up there, and probably the bodies of a few gangsters. Good place to lose something."

  "You know your islands."

  "Sure," I said. "They all have a story. All have legends. Indians, privateers, ghosts, pirates, buried treasure...everything and anything."

  Now we passed a lighthouse, and I said, "Long Island," but Mandy didn't seem to care. There was another, smaller island ahead. "That's Gallops. You ready?" I asked.

  "Yes," she replied, her voice strained. "Quite ready."

  I ran the skiff aground on a bit of sandy beach and waded in the water, dragging a bowline up, tying it off some scrub brush. There was a dock just down the way, with a path leading up to the island, and by now it was pretty dark. From my gym bag I took out a flashlight and cupped the beam with my hand, making sure only a bit of light escaped.

  "I want to make this quick, okay?"

  She nodded.

  "I asked around," I said. "I know where the barracks are. Do you happen to know where his bunk was located?"

  "Next to a window overlooking the east, in the far corner. He always complained that the morning sun would hit his eyes and wake him up before reveille."

  "All right," I said. "Let's go."

  From the path near the dock, it was pretty easy going, much to my surprise. The place was deserted and there were no lights, but my own flashlight did a good job of illuminating the way. We headed along a crushed stone path; halfway there, something small and furry burst out of the brush, scaring the crap out of me and making Mandy cry out. She grabbed my free hand and wouldn't let it go--I didn't complain. It felt good, and she kept her hand in mine all the way up to the barracks.

  A lot of the windows were smashed, and the door leading inside was hanging free from its hinges. We moved up the wide steps and gingerly stepped in. I flashed the light around. The roof had leaked and there were puddles of water on the floor. We went to the left, where there was a great open room stretching out into the distance. I slashed the light around again. Rusting frames for bunks were piled high in the corner, and there was an odd, musty smell to the place. Lots of old memories came roaring back, being in a building like this, taking in those old scents, of the soap and gun oil...and the smell of the men, of course.

  I squeezed Mandy's hand and she squeezed back. Here we had all come, from all across the country, to train and to learn and to get ready to fight...and no matter what crap the RKO movies showed you, we were all scared shitless. It was a terrible time and place to come together, to know that so many of you would never return...torn up, blown up, shattered, burned, crushed, drowned. So many ways to die...and now to come back to what was called peace and prosperity and hustle and bustle and try to keep ahead. What a time.

  "Let's go," I whispered, not sure why I was whispering. "I want to get out of here before someone spots our light."

  "Yes," she whispered back, and it was like we were in church or something. I led my client down the way, our footsteps echoing off the wood, and I kept the light low, until we came to the far corner, the place where the windows looked out to the east, where a certain man rested in his bunk, the sun hitting his face every morning.

  "Here," she whispered. "Shine the light over here."

  She knelt down in the corner of the room, her fingers prying at a section of baseboard, and even though I half expected it, I was still surprised. The board came loose and Mandy cried out a bit; I lowered the flashlight and illuminated a small cavity.

  "Hold on," I said, "you don't know what--"

  But she didn't listen to me. She reached her right arm down and rummaged around, murmuring, "Oh, Roger. Oh, my Roger."

  Then she pulled her hand back, holding a box for Bass shoes, the damp cardboard held together with gray tape. She clasped the box against her chest and leaned over, silently weeping, I thought, her body shaking and trembling.

  I gave her a minute or two, and then touched her shoulder. "Mandy, come on, we have to get out of here. And now."

  And she got off her knees, wiped at her eyes, and with one hand held the cardboard box and her small leather purse against her chest.

  Her other hand took mine, and wouldn't let go until we got back to the boat.

  In the boat I pushed off and fired up the engine, and we started away from Gallops Island. The wind had come up some, nothing too serious, but there was a chop to the water that hadn't been there before. With the box in her lap, she turned and smiled, then leaned in toward me. I returned the favor and kissed her, and then kissed her again, and then our mouths opened and her hand squeezed my leg. "Oh, Billy...I didn't think it would work...I really didn't...Look, when we get back, we need to celebrate, okay?"

  I liked her taste and her smell. "Sure. Celebrate. That sounds good."

  But I kept looking at the water and kicked up the throttle some more.

  It didn't seem to take too long, and as we motored back to the docks of the Shamrock Fish & Tackle, Mandy turned to me and started talking, about her life in Seattle, about her Roger, and about how she was ready to start a new life now that she had this box. I tried to ignore her chatter as we moved toward the dock, and when I looked up at the small parking lot, I noticed there was an extra vehicle there.

  A Packard, parked underneath a street lamp.

  As we drew close to the docks, doors to the Packard opened up and two men with hats and topcoats, their hands in their coats, stepped out.

  Mandy was still chattering.

  I worked the throttle, slipped the engine into neutral, and then reversed. The engine made a clunk-whine noise as I backed out of the narrow channel leading into the docks, and Mandy was jostled. "What the--"

  "Hold on," I snapped, backing away even further. I shifted into neutral again, then f
orward, and finally sped away. Turning back, I saw the two guys return to the Packard and head out onto L Street. I immediately grabbed my flashlight and switched the engine off. We began drifting in the darkness.

  Mandy gaped and asked, "Billy...what the hell is going on?"

  "You tell me," I countered.

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Mandy...what's in the box?"

  "I told you," she said, her voice rising. "Souvenirs! Letters! Photos! Stuff that means so much to me..."

  "And the guys in the Packard? Who are they? Friends of Roger who want to giggle over old photos of him in the army?"

  "I don't know what you mean about--"

  I pointed the flashlight in her face, flicked it on, startling her. I reached forward, snatched the damp box from her hands, sat back down. The boat rocked, a bit of spray hitting my arm.

  "Hey!" she cried out, but now the box was in my lap.

  I lowered the flashlight, seeing her face pursed and tight. "Let's go over a few things," I said. "You come into my office with a great tale, a great sob story. And you tell me you get hooked up with me because you just happened to run into one of the sleaziest in-the-bag cops on the Boston force, a guy who can afford a pricey vacation home on a New Hampshire lake on a cop's salary. And right after you leave my office, a sweet girl, far, far away from home, you climb into somebody's Packard. And now there's a Packard waiting for you at dockside. Hell of a coincidence, eh? Not to mention the closer we got to shore, the more you blathered at me, like you were trying to distract me."

  She kept quiet, her hands now about her purse, firmly in her lap.

  "Anything to say?" My client kept quiet. I held up the box. "What's in here, Mandy?"

  Nothing.

  "Mandy?"

  I set the box back in my lap, tore away at the tape and damp cardboard, and the top lifted off easy enough. There was damp brown paper in the box, and the sound of smaller boxes moving against each other. I turned the big box over a bit, shone the light in. Little yellow cardboard boxes, about the size of small toothpaste containers, all bundled together. There were scores of them. I shuddered, took a deep breath. I knew what they were.

  "Morphine," I said, looking her hard in the eye. "Morphine syrettes. Your guy...if there was a guy there, he wasn't training as a radioman. He was training as a medic. And he was stealing this morphine to sell later, once the war was over. Am I right? Who the hell are you, anyway?"

  My client said, "What difference does it make? Look, I had a job to do, to get that stuff off that island, easiest way possible, no fuss, no muss, and we did it. Okay? Get me to shore, you'll get...a finder's fee, a percentage."

  I shook the box, heard the smaller boxes rattle. "Worth a lot of money, isn't it?"

  She smiled. "You have no idea."

  "But it was stolen. During wartime."

  "So what?" Her voice now revealed a sharpness I hadn't heard before. "Guys went to war, some got killed, some figured out a way to score, to make some bucks...and the guys I'm with, they figured it was time to look out for themselves, to set something up for later. So there you go. Nice deal all around. Don't you want part of it, Billy? Huh?"

  I shook the box again, fought to keep my voice even. "Ever hear of Bastogne?"

  "Maybe, who knows, who cares."

  "I know, and I care. That's where my brother was, in December 1944. Belgian town, surrounded by the Krauts. He took a chunk of shrapnel to the stomach. He was dying. Maybe he could have lived if he wasn't in so much pain...but the medics, they were low on morphine. They could only use morphine on guys they thought might live. So my brother...no morphine...he died in agony. Hours it took for him to die, because the medics were short on morphine."

  Mandy said, "A great story, Billy. A very touching story. Look, you want a tissue or something?"

  And moving quickly, she opened up her purse and took out a small, nickel-plated semiautomatic pistol.

  "Sorry, Billy, but this is how it's going to be. You're going to give me back my box, you're going to take me back to the dock, and if you're a good boy, I'll make sure only a leg or an arm gets broken. How's that for a deal?"

  I thought for a moment, now staring at a face I didn't recognize, and said, "I've heard better."

  And I tossed the box and the morphine syrettes into the dark waters.

  She screamed and shouted something, and I was moving quick, which was good, because she got off a shot that pounded over my head as I ducked and grabbed something at the bottom of the boat, tugging it free, then dropped overboard. The shock of the cold water almost made me open my mouth, but I was more or less used to it. I came up coughing, splashing, and my flashlight was still on the boat, still lit up, which made it easy for me to see what happened next.

  The skiff was rocking and filling with water as Mandy moved to the rear, trying to get the engine started, I think, but with her added weight at the stern, it quickly swamped and flipped over, dumping her in. She screamed. She screamed again. "Billy! Please! I can't swim! Please!"

  I raised my hand, holding the drain plug to the rear of the skiff, and let it go.

  She floundered some more. Splashing. Yelling. Coughing. It would be easy enough to get over there, calm her down, put her in the approved life-saving mode, my arm about her, to pull her safely to shore. So easy to do, for I could have easily found her in the darkness by following the splashes and yells.

  The yells. I had heard later, from someone in my brother's platoon, how much he had yelled toward the end.

  I moved some, was able to gauge where she was, out there in the darkness.

  And then I turned and swam in the other direction.

  THE REWARD

  BY STEWART O'NAN

  Brookline

  Sometimes Boupha honestly found them. She thought it was a gift. Her father said she wasn't so special--anybody could. He should know because it was his game; he'd been running it since he'd been driving a cab. After a while you developed an eye, like a hunter.

  "American people don't see anything," he said. "People like us, we have to."

  He'd taught her well, as he never tired of reminding her. Late August, when the college kids moved in, she watched the park. Winter she cruised the potholed lots behind the apartments on Jersey. In spring the long flats of Beacon beyond Kenmore were littered with the dead--worth just as much, and less trouble, besides the smell. In her trunk she kept garbage bags and rubber gloves, an aerosol can of Oust.

  Each season brought a new crop, that was the genius of it. Her father was the one who'd realized the possibilities. Now that he could no longer drive, Boupha used his badge, working twelve-hour shifts to pay his hospital bills. After all his talk about keeping her eyes open, he'd been going fifty on Storrow Drive in the rain when he rear-ended a stopped tow truck. His head bent the steering wheel. The wheel could be fixed but not her father. The doctors had saved his life so he could lie in a special bed and watch TV. "Boupha!" he called when he needed anything. "Boupha!" Their apartment wasn't large enough to escape his voice. He'd had a sly sense of humor before the accident, a con man's easy charm. Now her smallest mistake sent him into a rage. She hated leaving him alone because sometimes, for no reason, he screamed. The upstairs neighbors had complained.

  On his best days, he obsessed over money and cigarettes. He didn't care about food or temple anymore. His friend Pranh no longer visited.

  "How much you make today?" he asked when she came home, already reaching for his Newports. Every dollar, every pack was an offering to him.

  Like driving, so much of the game was being in the right place. That night she wasn't even looking. She'd dropped a silent fare at Beth Israel and stopped at the Store 24 on Beacon when the shepherd limped out of an alley directly into her path, as if it didn't see her.

  Even with the shadows she could tell it was an older male, rheumy-eyed and white around the snout. Its haunches were matted black and it was hobbling so badly that she thought it had been hit. One of her father's c
ardinal rules was that a hurt animal wasn't worth the trouble. She'd once found a cat on Park Drive with its back legs smashed, writhing and spitting. It had no collar, so it was worthless, but Boupha couldn't leave it in the street. As she tried to slide it to the curb on a pizza box, it snarled and clawed her arm, opening three beading lines she now wore as scars. "I tell you," her father had said, "but you're too smart, you don't want to listen."

  Normally strays shied away, distrustful of people, but the shepherd just waddled along ahead of her. Its back was slick with blood; it shone under the streetlights. She was almost beside her car. Thinking of the cat lashing out, she stopped.

  The dog stopped and looked back as if they were going for a walk and she needed to catch up. Its tag glinted.

  She had treats in the glove compartment, a leash with a muzzle. She could quote her father back to him: older dogs were worth more. The owners had more invested in them.

  But the blood. The blood was a problem.

  The dog turned to watch her open the passenger door, cocking his head.

  "Hey. I've got something for you. Here you go."

  She tossed him a treat. He waddled over and nosed it, keeping his eyes on her the whole time. Finally he took the biscuit, crunching it with his head lowered.

  "Good boy, yes."

  The second one she dropped halfway between them. This time he didn't hesitate.

  "That's a good dog," she said, and squatted down to show she was no threat. With the leash behind her back, she set a treat on the sidewalk right in front of her.

  As he came closer, he hunched lower and lower until he lay down and rolled on his side, panting, his tongue flopping out of his mouth.

  "It's all right, you're okay," she said, and hooked the leash to the ring on his collar.