Boston Noir

  "I can't come out. No one will understand what happened here."

  "I understand. I know you didn't mean for all this to happen. You didn't get up this mornin' sayin', 'Today I'm going in to plug my boss.'"

  "No." God no. This was supposed to have been the best day of her life. After picking the St. John suit, she had fallen into bed and actually slept for two hours. Waking refreshed, she had decided to forego the planned cab ride and walk to work instead. She usually walked for the exercise, but today she had noticed things. People in soft pants and flip-flops out on the Comm. Ave. Mall with their dogs, yawning and standing by with their baggies until there was a pile to clean up. The flowers in the Public Garden. Even the accordion-playing busker on the Common sounded good to her. She'd seen him there often, sitting on the same low brick wall under a tree, squeezing out sad French ballads, collecting tips from the well-dressed army of posers and wannabes making its weary way to the Financial District for another day in the MUTUAL FUND CAPITAL OF THE WORLD! She had never given him a penny. She didn't believe in rewarding mediocrity. Also, he smelled.

  But today she had admired his work ethic. Today she had slipped a twenty into his collection cup because everything was good and everyone was kind and even living in Boston wasn't so bad because today, after six long years in this second-rate backwater town, she would be named Managing Director. She would cross the magic line, get her ticket punched, and one day soon, get back home to New York where they would surely have to take her seriously now. Best of all, she would never again have to explain to Mother why Bo, James, and Danny had made MD before her. Sure they were two, four, and seven-and-a-half years younger, but they were also young, strapping boys from the finest business schools and the investment industry had no place for smart females--or any females--who didn't answer phones, fetch coffee, or give blowjobs to important clients.

  "Sloan?"

  "What?"

  "Am I talkin' to myself here?" Officer Jimmy is making his point, but with a light touch, and she wishes she had learned how to be that way.

  "You were saying it makes a difference if I hadn't planned on shooting Trevor today."

  "Exactly. That it wasn't premeditated. We can work with that, and we can do some things here so the situation doesn't get worse than it is."

  Uh-oh. Here it comes. She knows what he's about to say because he's said it a hundred times already.

  "The biggest thing is you got to let Beck come out."

  She breathes in deeply, pulling in the fetid and humid air that has filled the office ever since they turned off the air conditioners. As they always seem to, her grinding molars find the scar tissue inside her left cheek and the taste in her mouth changes. She's bleeding.

  "Why is everyone so concerned about Beck? Beck is fine. Beck is more than fine. He got promoted today. Or was it yesterday? He gets to be an MD, and do you know how long it took him? A year. I've been here six years and I've been up for MD the past four. Do you know who the biggest alpha generator around here is?"

  "You?"

  "For the past two years."

  "What's an alpha?"

  "Alpha generation...it's just a way of showing who earns the most for the firm, who the best stock picker is, and it's me. Do you know what they told me last year? 'We can't promote you because you're too volatile. Everyone's afraid of you.' And the year before that? 'We can't promote you because you're too quiet. No one ever knows what you're thinking.'"

  "Take it easy. I'm not trying to upset you. I'm trying to get you to think through this thing logically with me. People will be coming to work in a few hours. You and me, we have to be done and out of here by then."

  She takes a turn too fast and nearly bangs into the corner of Trevor's desk. She uncrosses her arms and takes her fists from her armpits. "Do you have any idea what it's like to be strung along year after year, to get your hopes up and then get told...to have to sit and be told all the things that are wrong with you?"

  "No, I don't know what it's like to be in your position--your work position or the one you're in now. But I do know what it's like to get passed over. I got passed over for this job six times."

  He's saying all the right words. He's saying he understands because that's his job. But she hears it in his tone. You stupid bitch, he's thinking. You had everything--the money, the Back Bay condo, the friggin' horse farm in Millbrook. The shopping trips to London. And you do this? This is what you do? You stupid, spoiled rich little bitch.

  She grabs the earpiece, holds it directly in front of her mouth. "I made two and a half million dollars last year. What did you make?" Hits the button to end the call, and just like that Jimmy Tarbox is out of her head.

  But her head throbs. From the heat, maybe. Or dehydration. She pushes back against it with the heels of her hands against her eyes. She holds her jacket open and fans it, trying to air out. All night she's resisted taking it off--she never takes her jacket off in public--but it has to come off. It's too hard to breathe. What to do about Beck? She goes over and grabs the high back of his chair. It annoys her that he doesn't flinch anymore when she approaches. She turns him to face the wall. He can stare at Trevor's collection of golf photos.

  Instead of gliding off, the jacket's silk lining sticks to the damp insides of her elbows and she has to wrestle with it. Mother would be mortified. She settles it onto the hanger on the back of the door and stands with her arms wrapped around her. Spider-arms they used to call her, all the girls back at Monsignor Xavier Prep. She looks at Trevor's face. What had high school been like for him back in Manchester or Sheffield or wherever he was from? Probably no one ever called him names, but she didn't know. She didn't know much of anything about Trevor.

  Bony Sloany. That was another one. She had hated high school with every fiber in her bony body. Except for the stables. The horses and riding had saved her. These days, all that saves her is Rowan. She closes her eyes and tries to think of him. He can usually calm her down, but right now her head is too jammed.

  When she opens her eyes, there is Beck. She should kill him. Put the gun to the back of his head, pull the trigger, and put him down, all without ever having to look upon his classically handsome face again. She's already killed Trevor. Why not just do it now and let this end?

  Because she hadn't really thought it through with Trevor.

  She'd caught him trying to sneak out of the building without talking to her. Not even sneaking. Just walking out as if she hadn't been sitting in her office all day waiting for his call. As if she hadn't skipped her daily caramel latte to cut down on trips to the bathroom. As if she hadn't spent the long hours of the afternoon rocking back and forth at her desk, staring at the blinking cursor on her Bloomberg screen, and pleading with God not to let it happen again because she could feel it happening again. Falling and falling, waiting to hit the concrete, picking up speed with every second that ticked by with no call from Trevor. So she had prayed, asking God not to let her have anything else taken away.

  And then she'd heard the vacuum cleaner, and the vacuum cleaner only ran on her floor after 7 o'clock in the evening. She'd come out of her office to find the entire floor abandoned except for the summer intern--Hailey? Hallie?--huddled over the printer. She'd moved toward Trevor's office, slowing down as she went, not knowing if she was more afraid to find him there or gone. He was there, all right. Impossible to miss. Blustery blowhard Trevor holding forth. The voice on the other side of the conversation hadn't been as loud, but she had recognized it. Trevor and Beck talking, voices brimming with excitement and manly good cheer. The tone had been clear, but the words were covered by the sound of the approaching vacuum. She'd thought they might be talking golf.

  Her phone is singing again. She reaches for the earpiece and finds nothing but ear. Can't remember taking the thing off. She follows the Bach and finds her cell on the conference table.

  "Hello?"

  "How you doing, kid?"

  "Fine."

  "How's Beck?"

 
"Same."

  "I have to ask you to stop hanging up on me. The bosses are getting sick of this thing. You've got bosses. You know what I'm sayin', right?"

  He's skipping over the fact that her boss is a corpse in a $6,000 Brioni suit and a TAG Heuer watch and that she's the one who made him that way. He's acting as if she could surrender to him and then go home tonight, eat a banana for dinner, maybe walk over to Emack & Bolio's for a scoop of fat-free vanilla yogurt in a cup. Make it last for an hour while she sits and watches the cool kids on Newbury Street smoking and laughing and texting. Then she could come in to work tomorrow, maybe wearing the dark blue Tahari, and show up at the morning meeting as if nothing had happened. Of course, Beck would be the new MD on the growth team, or maybe they would just slot him into Trevor's job as CIO and promote some other strapping young boy from a fine business school to MD. Pick any of them--Justin, Peter, Shamir. She'd still be a senior portfolio manager. She would always be a senior portfolio manager, which was why she'd had no choice but to take the .22 out of her bag and shoot Trevor through the head.

  "I have to ask you this to make sure," Jimmy says. "Don't get upset, but your father keeps calling from New York. Are you sure you don't want to talk to him?"

  She knows why Daddy is calling and she knows why Mother isn't. Mother is lying perfectly still in some dark room with a damp cloth on her forehead and a few dozen milligrams of Percocet coursing through her veins. Daddy would be more worried than upset. Worried about his cash flow. "Doesn't matter what they call you," he always tells her, usually in front of her MD brothers, "as long as the bonuses keep rolling in." Bo, James, and Danny were too smart or too selfish or both to keep investing in his hedge fund, which really meant tithing over some growing percentage of her annual bonus and calling it an investment so that Mother wouldn't be humiliated by another of Daddy's busted ventures. Eventually, Daddy had stopped asking her brothers for money. "They're married," he'd told her. "They have families of their own to feed."

  Sloan's legs feel like dead weights, so heavy. She walks to the couch and crashes down. "I don't want to talk to him, and if you make me, I swear I will hang up and you will never hear from me again."

  "I can't make you do anything, remember? You're in charge. We're doing things your way."

  "Then stop asking. Tell him to stop calling."

  "Consider it done. Is there anyone you want to talk to? Who's this Rowan?"

  She smiles, envisioning Officer Jimmy thumbing quickly through a stack of background information on her that someone has dumped in his lap. "My horse."

  "Your horse?" There is shuffling and mumbling. "Okay, I see it here now. Holy smokes, he's a beauty. Is he at your horse farm?" More shuffling. "Where is this Millbrook anyway?"

  "New York."

  "New York is a big state and I'm sitting here without my Google."

  That's a lie. He's probably sitting there with every possible source of data at his disposal, but she doesn't mind playing along with Officer Jimmy. "It's in the eastern part of the state, close to the Connecticut border."

  "How long's it take you to get out there?"

  "Three and a half hours."

  "You just go 90 west?"

  "To Route 22."

  "Yeah, I have no idea where that is."

  "If you keep going on 22 you get to Poughkeepsie."

  "If you say so. How often do you get out there?"

  "Every weekend."

  "Wow. You must really like the place."

  There isn't a word strong enough to describe how she feels out there. Millbrook is her escape. She makes the drive every Friday after work, rain or shine, happy or sad. She stays through Sunday night and drives straight to work on Monday. There is space out there. There is grass and air that smells nice. In the winter there is clean snow that stretches on forever.

  And Rowan.

  She closes her eyes and conjures him. She smells his barn and feels him moving under her hands as she curries his withers. The grooms always put him on the crossties to clean him, but not Sloan. She scratches all his favorite places and smiles when he curls his neck around to give her a playful nudge every time she finds another with the hard bristles. Then she rides him and feels his calm and coiled anticipation as he gathers himself for a jump, then the explosion, the thrust high into the air and that feeling of flying, just Rowan and her, her face so close that his mane brushes her cheek.

  She pushes at the tears with the back of her hand and gets to her feet. "I'm turning off the lights. It's too hot in here. I'm also putting up one of the blinds, just so you know."

  "Just so you know, I don't control the snipers. I'm not the one in charge of the scene."

  "I don't even have the gun. It's on Trevor's standing desk." She looks around for her earpiece so she can have both hands free, hopes the battery hasn't run down.

  "What the hell is a standing desk?"

  "All the CIOs have them. It's a power thing."

  "What's a CIO?"

  "Chief Investment Officer." She finds the earpiece on the floor near Beck's chair and switches the call over. "But Trevor didn't want one like everyone else, so he...actually, he had his assistant Nicole do all the research and she found this mahogany antique that was used by Charles Dickens. It cost the firm over $100,000 to have it restored and shipped from London."

  "A hundred grand? Jeez, that would have covered both my kids' college tuition."

  The light switch is by the door. This time as she passes Trevor, she reaches down and tips the chair off of him, setting it back on its feet. She flips the lights off and feels instantly better, cooler. She rolls up one of the fancy shades and then, what the hell, does them all. She opens all the windows of the corner office to the nighttime view. It is magnificent, even at 2 o'clock in the morning. She feels as if she's floating out over the harbor, just another of the lights moving across the water. They must be ships, those lights, and she wonders what life would be like living on a moving vessel. Logan has airport lights: red ones, green ones, bright beacons, flashing fast and slow. The runway lights look like jeweled bracelets laid out on a black velvet pillow.

  The glass window feels cool, so she presses her cheek against it, the side without the earpiece. "Will the snipers shoot me?"

  "Why would they shoot you while we're still talkin'? And so long as you're leaving Beck alone? How is Beck? Does he need any water?"

  "Do you care what happens to me?"

  "I've spent all night talkin' to you. What do you think?"

  "I think you care about what happens to Beck."

  "I do. And I care about what happens to you. That's no bullshit. I want you to walk out of there."

  Trevor's body is hard to see in the dark, but she knows it's there. "Why would you care? Why would anyone care? I'm a murderer." She's been trying all night to feel the weight of that word and how to wear it. Mostly she feels how Mother will wear it.

  "Listen, kid, I deal with all kinds in this job. I can tell the wackos and I can tell the ones that just got pushed too far. You get pushed around and pushed around until you can't do it anymore and then something happens. It's just a wrong-place-wrong-time-bad-chain-of-events kind of a deal, and if one thing had gone different yesterday, maybe none of this happens. Am I right?"

  The sky is another sight to behold. The moon lights the clouds from behind, making them seem transparent and solid at the same time as they rush through space.

  "What are the names of the islands, Jimmy?"

  "What islands?"

  "Isn't there something out there called the Harbor Islands?" She's seen them a thousand times from Trevor's office.

  "Sure, but there's somethin' like forty"--fawty--"of 'em out there. You never went to any of them?"

  "I never did. Tell me some of the names."

  "Long Island, Sheep Island...There's a little one called Grape. I went swimming once with my brothers at Spectacle. It used to have great beaches, but then the city used it for dumping all the Big Dig dirt, so I don't know wh
at it's like now. Deer Island is where they have the shit plant."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Sewage plant. One of the Brewsters has the oldest lighthouse ever. Georges Island has a Civil War fort. I went to both of those on school field trips when I was a kid. There's a Sarah's Island. I always remember it because that was my ma's name."

  "Where are you from?"

  "Haverhill."

  "Where are you right now?"

  "I can't tell you that."

  She scans the building at State Street and Congress, the only one tall enough for him to be looking down at her. But it's a huge black mirrored tower that reveals nothing. "Can I see you?"

  "I'll spend all the time in the world with you, but you gotta let Beck come out of there. And you need to come out too. What you have to keep in mind is that you're still young and you deserve to come out of there in one piece. You need to give yourself that chance."

  Another requirement. Another trade-off. Another contingent offer. She slides down the window and sits with her back to the north, looking out over the water. "Was it supposed to rain today, Jimmy?"

  "If it was supposed to, it never did."

  "It just struck me as so odd that he was wearing a raincoat because I hadn't heard anything about rain today and the whole time we were having our meeting he never took it off."

  "Trevor?"

  "I was standing outside his office listening to him talking to Beck. And then Beck came out and I wanted to go in. I assumed it was my turn, that he was just running late with his meetings. I didn't want to look too eager, so I went to my office and packed my things and came back."

  "Make it look all casual, huh? Like you were just leaving and stopped by."

  "I was standing there trying to get up the courage to walk in, then he walked out and nearly ran me over. He wasn't happy to see me, I could tell, but he wouldn't show it. You know what he said? 'Brilliant!' As if it was a stroke of grand good luck that I was standing right there. 'Of course I'm still here, you bastard. You told me yesterday not to leave today without seeing you because you would have good news for me, which is why I spent the entire day locked in my office afraid to go to the bathroom, because I was waiting for you to call me, you pompous, self-centered ass.'"