Boston Noir

  "Train?"

  "Tommy Gun!"

  "What's happened to you?"

  "That's what we called you behind your back."

  "You don't have to live like this."

  "Your eye?"

  "I fell."

  Lionel flops onto the couch. "I've been expecting you."

  "You have?"

  "For years." He drinks.

  "We need to talk."

  Lionel pats the sofa cushion. "Come sit with me."

  "I'm fine here."

  "I won't bite." He smiles. "I insist."

  Father Tom moves to the sofa. "Did you write me a letter?"

  "I never mailed it." Lionel touches Father Tom's arm. "I forgive you, Father. But I can't forget. That's the difference between me and God."

  "I think you may have misunderstood my actions, Train."

  "Of course you do. Otherwise, how could you live with yourself?"

  "You don't want to do this to me."

  "Do you remember my father's funeral? You drove me home from the cemetery."

  "Kevin was a good man."

  "He was an asshole." Lionel sniffles and sips the vodka. His eyes water, and he knows he could cry, but there'll be time for that later. "You bought me an ice-cream cone, pistachio with jimmies, and drove slowly. You said, 'I know for a young boy like you, Train, this is an awful loss.' By then you were patting my leg. You left your hand on my thigh..."

  Father Tom unbuttons his coat and takes off his cap, pats down his thin, flyaway hair. He feels his forehead. He remembers those mornings in church when Jesus would come to him with His heart burning like a furnace, and the heat would blanket Tom, and he would sweat and lift his eyes to heaven, and Jesus would thrust a golden dart through his heart.

  "...and then your hand was in your pants, and your face was all squinched up, and all I could do was stare out the window and hope it would end, and the ice cream melted and ran down my arm until it was all gone."

  "That did not happen, and I don't know why you want to think it did. I was offering you comfort and solace. I knew what it felt like to hunger for human touch. My father never held me, Train. Ever. My mother never did after Gerard died."

  "Should I play my little violin?"

  "I took your father's place."

  "I'd wake up and you'd be in my bed."

  "On your bed. Watching you sleep, like fathers have always watched their sons and imagined brilliant futures for them."

  "That's fucked up."

  "You were an affectionate boy. You brought out the tenderness in people. In me. And yes, I felt needed; I felt connected to another person for the first time since Gerard died."

  "Did you wonder how I felt?"

  "If it was a problem for you, you should have told me. I would have respected that. I had an understanding with myself. I thought I had your permission."

  "If nothing sexual ever happened, why do I remember that it did?"

  "Could you be making it up, Train?"

  And then there's a knock, and Mr. Markey opens the door and steps into the room. He stamps his feet, tosses a fifth of brandy to Lionel and a newspaper to Father Tom. "You're famous, Father."

  The man behind Mr. Markey takes off his glasses and his balaclava. He wipes his glasses with a hanky and puts them back on.

  Mr. Markey says, "I believe you've already met my friend, Mr. Hanratty."

  "Twice," Father Tom replies.

  Mr. Markey says, "You'll excuse us, gents," and Lionel gets up and follows Mr. Hanratty down the hall to the kitchen.

  "He's a reporter," Father Tom says.

  Mr. Markey smiles. "Terrance doesn't write for the Globe; he delivers it."

  Father Tom points to his face. "He did this to me."

  "He can be a little feisty. I try to keep him on a short leash." Mr. Markey shrugs. "So tell me, Father, does our Lionel still make your heart beat faster?"

  Father Tom stands and steps toward the door. "I'm not going to sit here and listen to this."

  Mr. Markey grabs Father Tom's arm at the wrist and twists it until the palm is behind his back and the elbow is locked. "I've read somewhere that pain elevates our thoughts," Mr. Markey says, and he tugs at the arm until Father Tom feels like it'll snap at the wrist and shatter at the shoulder. "Of course, I'm not a theologian."

  Father Tom is bent at the waist and in tears. "Please, you're hurting me."

  "Keeps our mind off amusements."

  "You're insane."

  "Have you ever slept on a bed of crushed glass, Father?"

  "Please, dear God!"

  "Worn a crown of nettle?" Mr. Markey lifts the arm slowly. "These are not rhetorical questions, Father. Answer me."

  "No, I haven't."

  Mr. Markey releases Father Tom and shoves him back onto the sofa. "What excruciating bliss when the pain ends. You feel grateful to me right now, don't you?"

  Father Tom can't move his arm.

  "Thank me."

  "Thank you?"

  Mr. Markey leans over him. "Thank me!"

  "Thank you."

  "You're welcome." Mr. Markey tousles Father Tom's hair, pats his head. "Pain releases endorphins. You feel a little high. I believe you have practiced certain endorphin-releasing austerities yourself, have you not?"

  "I'm not a masochist, if that's what you mean."

  "The time you slammed your hand in the car door?"

  "An accident."

  "That's not what you told your therapist. Why on earth would you have wanted to punish yourself like that?" Mr. Markey walks to the window and admires the storm. "You don't get to see but one or two nor'easters like this in a lifetime."

  Father Tom wonders if he could make it out the door before Mr. Markey catches him. And then what?

  "I'm sure you struggled, Father, fought the good fight. You always wanted to do the right thing, but those little cock teasers wouldn't let you. Always with their sweet little asses and their angelic smiles." He leans forward and whispers: "You liked bending their heads back and kissing their exposed throats, didn't you? Absolutely divine, isn't it?"

  "You filthy--"

  "An ecstatic moment and yet so difficult to put into words." Mr. Markey takes off his gloves and pulls up the sleeves of his car coat. "Nothing up my sleeve." And then he reaches behind Father Tom's ear and holds up a folded piece of loose-leaf paper. "What have we here?" He unfolds it. "My associate, Mr. Hanratty, discovered this in your dresser beneath your unmentionables while we were speaking earlier. It seems to be a list of boys' names. Should I read them?"

  "Boys from the parish, boys I've worked with."

  "But not all the boys you've worked with. What's special about these boys?"

  "Everyone has his favorites."

  Mr. Hanratty returns and hands a manila folder to Mr. Markey, who holds it up for Father Tom to see. "You can guess what this is, I'm sure."

  "Class photos," Father Tom says.

  "Of boys."

  "Perfectly innocent," Father Tom says.

  "They help you get off, I'll bet."

  Father Tom feels the throbbing pain in his closed eye. "Look," he says, "it was a constant battle. I was always thinking about this...this abomination and trying not to think about it. I had no time for friendship or music or dreams or joy or charity or anything else that makes life worth living. If I had relaxed for a moment, I knew I might lose control. But I did not!"

  "You are a victim of yourself. Is that what you're saying? You're the victim?"

  Father Tom notices that the Pope's painted eyes seem to shimmer in their sockets and spin like pinwheels and Mr. Markey's voice sounds tinny and far away, and then Lionel's a boy again, and he and Lionel are kneeling by the kid's bed saying their prayers, and then he tickles Lionel until he begs him to stop, and Father Tom stops and says, What a great relief when the pleasure ends. And he drapes his arm around Lionel's shoulders and kisses his blond head, like a father saying goodnight to his beloved son, and then, he can't help it, he tickles Lionel again
until the boy yells, Help! And then Father Tom feels his head snap and realizes he's been slapped.

  "Thanks, you needed that," Mr. Hanratty says.

  "Why were you screaming for help, Father?" Mr. Markey puts the watch cap on Father Tom's head. "Let's go for a walk."

  Mr. Markey closes the door behind them. He stands on the porch with Father Tom while Mr. Hanratty shovels a path through the waist-high drift to the middle of the windswept street where the snow is only shin-and ankle-deep.

  "Where's Lionel?" Father Tom asks.

  "Sleeping it off."

  Father Tom pulls the cap down over his ears. The ringing in the left is worse. "What's the best I can hope for?"

  "That we've been wrong all along, and there's no afterlife."

  "That's absurd."

  "That way you won't know you're dead. And in hell."

  "You have no right to judge me."

  "Who would want to live forever anyway? We'd be so bored we'd kill ourselves."

  Mr. Markey leads Father Tom to the street. Mr. Hanratty spears his shovel into the snow. All Father Tom can see out of his squinted eyes are the slanting sheets of blowing flakes, the snowy hummocks of buried cars, and the indistinct facades of houses. He hears what might be the distant drone of heavy machinery or the blood coursing through his head. Mr. Markey and Mr. Hanratty stand to either side of him and lock their arms in his. Heads bowed into the wind, they begin their trudge down I Street.

  "Where are you taking me?"

  Mr. Markey says, "We thought you might need help."

  "I have hope." Hope is the last emotion to leave us, Father Tom thinks. He sees the lyre player on her rock and speculates that you don't hope for something, do you? You just hope. To wait is to hope. Hope is a rebuke to the cold and starless sky. Iam, it says. I will be. Father Tom sees movement to his right and makes out a bundled and hooded figure sweeping snow from a porch.

  Mr. Markey leans his face to Father Tom's ear and says, "Not hope! Help!" The figure on the porch stops, regards the three lumbering gentlemen, turns, and goes into the house. And then Mr. Markey adds, "Sometimes a message must be sent," but what Father Tom hears is "Sometimes a messy, musky scent," and he wonders why this man is speaking in riddles. Mr. Markey tells Mr. Hanratty how we all have our burden to carry, and he points to Father Tom and says, "And this is the cross-eyed bear." Why would they call him that? Father Tom wonders.

  When they reach Gleason's Market, Father Tom knows the rectory is around the block, and he's relieved to see that they're taking him back. They had him rattled earlier with that talk of no afterlife and all. But what else could they do, really? Soon he'll be sipping Mrs. Walsh's potato and barley soup after a hot bath, and then he'll go to his room and read and look out on this magnificent storm. Maybe he'll read right through his Graham Greene novels like he did the winter he was laid up with the broken leg. He sees a light on in the rectory kitchen, or at least he thinks he does. With all this bone-white snow in the air, it's not like you can actually look at anything. You look through the white. It's like peering at the world through linen. But then the light goes off, or was never on, and he thinks of the tricks your eyes can pull on you, like when you stare at the sky and the clouds seem to race up and away from you. No, the light is still on. He turns to Mr. Markey and says, "Everything's all right then?"

  "Copacetic, Father." Mr. Markey looks at Father Tom's florid and swollen face, at his tiny blue eye, fixed in baggy lids like a turquoise bead on a leather pouch. A ragged little thin-lipped cyclops.

  They walk past the rectory and follow a path that Mr. O'Toole has evidently plowed between the garage and the school. Father Tom looks up at the fourth-grade classroom and sees his nine-year-old self in the window by the pencil sharpener, nose pressed against the glass, looking down at him. When he peers out the window, Tom sees a battered old drunk being helped home by two friends, and he would like to know whose grandfather this is, but Sister calls him back to his seat for the spelling bee. Father Tom thinks now that he remembers that stormy morning when this ungainly procession passed below the window as he watched, but the old man could not have been him. A person can't be in two places at the same time. And then Monsignor McDermott is standing in the window. Father Tom would like to wave hello, but the men have his arms. The monsignor blows his nose and wipes it and then tucks his hanky up the sleeve of his cassock. Father Tom struggles to free the arm, and his escorts release him. He waves, but to an empty window. He considers screaming but doubts his voice would carry in the muffled stillness of the snow. And if it did? He lifts his arms, and the gentlemen lock theirs in his and walk.

  "That's better," Mr. Markey says.

  When they head up an alley and away from the rectory, Father Tom asks Mr. Markey, "Who do you think you are?"

  "Nobody."

  "You're somebody."

  "Am I?"

  "And I think I know you."

  Father Tom is warm under this snowy blanket and would like to take off his jacket. He feels the icy snow whipping at his face and sees a pearl-handled straight razor lying on a bloom of crimson snow by his groin. He's on his back. His legs are buried beneath the drift. How long has he lain here? He gurgles, coughs, tastes blood in his mouth. He'd been dreaming of falling through a starless purple sky away from the vision of Christ when he realized he was tumbling toward the infernal abyss, and he screamed himself awake, thank God. His left arm is bent at the elbow and points to heaven. He tells the arm to move, but nothing happens. He might as well be telling someone else's arm to move. He remembers long ago lying helplessly in Lionel's bed with the dozing boy and trying to will him to turn, to rest his head on his, Father Tom's, chest and his slender arm on Father's waist. And later when Lionel whimpered and opened his teary eyes, Father Tom held him and said, "You've had a bad dream, Train, that's all. Don't cry, baby, don't cry. Don't cry."

  But if he did not, in fact, scream himself awake moments ago, and if this is, indeed, hell, this frozen drift of blood and guilt, then Father Tom is happy to know that at least they don't take your memories away, which makes sense, because without a past you don't exist, and there can be no hell for you. He knows that his memories of love and affection will comfort and sustain him for eternity. And then he sees Mr. Markey and Mr. Hanratty standing over him. But when Mr. Hanratty pulls back his balaclava, Father Tom sees that it's Gerard, and he's with Jesus and not with Mr. Markey, and Jesus has His arm draped over Gerard's shoulders. Jesus waves at Father Tom and says, "So long, small fry!" They shake their heads and turn away.

  "Stop, please!" Father Tom says, or thinks he says. And then he watches them somehow as they walk back in the direction of St. Cormac's, watches Jesus whisper into Gerard's ear, and the two of them turn again to glance back at him, but all they see is a black smudge in a white world that looks otherwise unsullied.

  PART III

  VEILS OF DECEIT

  THE ORIENTAL HAIR POETS

  BY DON LEE

  Cambridge

  This was her, he figured. The poet. That was the first thing Marcella Ahn had said on the phone, that she was a poet. She was, in fact, the uber-image of a poet, straight black hair hanging to her lower back, midnight-blue velvet pants, lace-up black boots, flouncy white Victorian blouse cinched by a thick leather belt. She was pretty in a severe way, too much makeup, lots of foundation and powder, deep claret lipstick, early thirties, maybe. Not his type. She stumbled through Cafe Pamplona's small door and, spotting Toua, clomped to his table.

  "Am I late? Sorry. I'm not quite awake. It's a little early in the day for me." It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

  She ordered a double espresso and gathered her hair, the ruffled cuffs of her blouse dropping away, followed by the jangling cascade of two dozen silver bracelets on each wrist. With exquisitely lacquered fingers, silver rings on nearly every digit, she raked her hair over her shoulder and laid it over her left breast.

  "Don't you have an office? It feels a little exposed in here for this type of conv
ersation."

  Actually, this was precisely why Toua Xiong liked the cafe. The Pamplona was a tiny basement place off Harvard Square, made to feel even smaller with its low ceiling, and you could hear every tick of conversation from across the room. Perfect for initial meetings with clients. It forced them to lean toward him, huddle, whisper. It didn't lend itself to histrionics or hysterics. It inhibited weeping. Toua didn't like weeping.

  Besides, he no longer had an office. After Ana, his girlfriend, had kicked him out of their apartment, he'd been sleeping in his office, but he'd gotten behind on the rent and had been kicked out of there too. These days he was sacking out on his former AA sponsor's couch.

  "You used to be a cop, Mr. Xiong?" she asked, pronouncing it Zee-ong.

  "Yeah," he said, "until two years ago."

  "You still have friends on the force?"

  "A few."

  "Why'd you quit?"

  "Complicated," Toua said. "Shee-ong. It's Too-a Shee-ong."

  "Chinese?"

  "Hmong."

  "I'm Korean myself."

  "What is it I can do for you, Ms. Ahn?"

  She straightened up in her chair. "I have a tenant," she said in a clear, unrestrained voice, not at all inhibited. "She's renting one of my houses in Cambridgeport, and she's on a campaign to destroy me."

  Toua nodded, accustomed to hyperbole from clients. "What's she doing?"

  "She's trying to drive me insane. I asked her to move out. I gave her thirty days' notice. But she's refused."

  "You have a lease?"

  "She's a tenant at will."

  "Shouldn't be too difficult to evict her, then."

  "You know how hard it is to evict someone in Cambridge? Talk about progressive laws."

  "It sounds like you need a lawyer, not a PI."

  "You don't understand. Recently, she started sending me anonymous gifts. Like candy and flowers, then things like stuffed animals and scarves and hairbrushes and, you know, barrettes--almost like she has a crush on me. Then it got even creepier. She sent me lingerie."