Boston Noir [редактор Деннис Лихэйн]

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 über-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 Café 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 conversation.”

Actually, this was precisely why Toua Xiong liked the café. 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.”

“How do you know it was her? Maybe you have a secret admirer.”

“Please. I have a lot of admirers, but she’s not one of them. I know it was her.”

“Well, the problem is, none of that’s against the law, or even considered threatening.”

“Exactly! You see how conniving she is? She’s diabolical!”

“Uh-huh.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Why do you think she’s doing these things?”

“I don’t know. I’ve been nothing but charitable toward her.”

“Although there was that minor thing of asking her to move out.”

“Look, something really strange has been happening. I got a high-meter-read warning from the Water Department. The bill last month was $2,500. You know what that amounts to? She’s been using almost ten thousand gallons of water a day.” She dug into her purse and produced the statement.

“This is grounds for eviction,” Toua said, looking at it. “Excessive water use.”

“That’s what I thought. But it’s not that simple. It could be contested as a faulty meter or leak or something, even though I’ve had all that checked out. She categorically denies anything’s amiss. You see what I mean? She’s trying to play with my mind. What I need is evidence. I need proof of what she’s doing in there.”

Ten thousand gallons a day. Toua couldn’t imagine. The woman had to be running open every faucet, shower, and spigot in the house 24/7, punching on the dish and clothes washers over and over, flushing the toilets ad nauseum. Or maybe experimenting with some indoor hydroponic farming, growing ganja.

“I guess I could do a little surveillance,” he said, giving the water bill back to Marcella Ahn.

“Round the clock?”

Toua laughed. “I have other cases. I have a life,” he said, though neither was true.

“I own another house on the same lot, a studio. The tenant just left. You could move in there for the duration.”

“You realize what this might cost?” he asked, trying to decide how much he could squeeze out of Marcella Ahn.

“That’s not an issue for me,” she said. “I want to know everything. I want to know every little thing she’s been doing or is planning to do, what she’s saying about the situation and me to other people, what’s going on in her life, a full profile. The more I know, the more I can protect myself. Your ad said something about computer forensics?” Business had gotten so bad, Toua had been reduced to stuffing promotional fliers into mailboxes, targeting the wealthy demographic along Brattle Street, where people could afford to act on their suspicions, infidelity being the most common. “Can you hack into her e-mail?”

“I won’t do anything illegal,” he told her.

“You won’t, or can’t?”

“Anything I get trespassing would be inadmissible in court.”

“Would it be trespassing if I gave you a key?”

“That’s a gray area.”

“As are so many things in this world, Mr. Shee-ong. I don’t care what it takes. Do whatever you have to do. I want this woman out of my life.”

Marcella Ahn, it turned out, was something of a slumlady. The house in Cambridgeport was a mess, a two-bedroom cape with rotting clapboards, rusted-out chain link, the yard over-flowing with weeds and detritus. The second house was a converted detached garage in back, equally decrepit. Toua spent two days cleaning it, bringing an inflatable bed and some furnishings from his storage unit to try to make it habitable.

The studio did, however, provide a good vantage point for surveillance. The driveway and side door were directly in front of him, and a couple of large windows at the back of the main house gave Toua a view into the kitchen through to the living room. He set up his video camera and watched the tenant.

Caroline Yip was an Asian waif, five-two, barely a hundred pounds. Like Marcella Ahn, she had spectacular butt-length hair, but it was wavy, seldom brushed, by the looks of it. She had none of Marcella Ahn’s artifices, wearing ragtag, thread-bare clothes-flip-flops, holes in her T-shirts and jeans-and no makeup whatsoever. She was athletic, jogging every morning, doing yoga in the afternoons, and using a clunky old bike for transportation; her movements were quick, decisive, careless. She chucked things about, her mail, the newspaper, dishes, flatware, never giving anything a second glance. Her internal engine was jittery, in constant need of locomotion and replenishment. Despite her tiny size, she ate like a hog, slurping up bowls of cereal and crunching down on toast with peanut butter throughout the day, fixing mammoth sandwiches for lunch, and stir-frying whole heads of bok choy with chicken, served on mounds of rice, for dinner.

During one of those first nights, after Caroline Yip had left on her bicycle, Toua entered the house. From what he had observed, he was not expecting tidiness, but he was still taken aback by the interior’s condition. The woman was an immense slob. Her only furnishings were a couch and a coffee table (obviously street finds), a boom box, a futon, and a few ugly lamps, the floors littered with clothes, CDs, shoes, books, papers, and magazines. There was a thick layer of grease on the stove and countertops, dust and hair and curdled food on every other surface, and the bathroom was clogged with sixty-two bottles of shampoo and conditioner, some half-filled, most of them empty. No photos or posters adorned the walls, no decorations anywhere, and there were no extra place settings for guests. She didn’t need companionship, it appeared, didn’t need mementos of her family or her past, reminders of her origins or her identity. She was a transient. Her house was a functional dump. Her attention resided elsewhere.

By poking through her bills, pay stubs, calendar, and checkbook, Toua gleaned several more things: Caroline Yip had no money and lousy credit; she taught classes at three different colleges as a poorly paid adjunct instructor; she supported herself mainly by waitressing at Chez Henri four nights a week; she had no appointments whatsoever, not with a lover or friend or family member or even a dentist, in the foreseeable future.

He downloaded her e-mail and website usernames and passwords and configured her wireless modem so he could access her laptop covertly, but there wasn’t much activity there, nothing unusual. Nor did her cell phone calls, which he was able to pick up on his radio scanner, merit much interest over the next few days, nothing more personal than scheduling shifts at work. She was a loner. She didn’t have a life. Just like him.

She was also, like Toua, an insomniac. On consecutive nights, he saw her bedroom light snapping on for a while, going out, turning on, which explained the dark circles under her eyes and the strange ritual she practiced in the mornings, meditating on the living room floor, beginning the sessions by trying to relax her face, stretching and contorting it, mouth yowling open, eyes bulging-a horrific sight. What kept her up at night? What was worrying Caroline Yip, preoccupying her?

She would end up supplying the answers herself. He supposed, given their proximity, that it was inevitable they would run into each other. The morning of his fifth day, as he was walking down the driveway, she surprised him by coming out the side door, laundry basket in hand. He thought she’d left on her jog already.

“Oh, hey,” she said. “You’re my new neighbor, aren’t you?”

They introduced themselves, shaking hands.

“Where’d you live before this?” she asked.

“ Agassiz,” he said. “You know, near Dali.”

“I love that restaurant.”

“How about you? How long you been here?”

“Oh, four years or so.”

Up close, she was more appealing than he’d anticipated. As opposed to Marcella Ahn, she was exactly his type, natural, unpretentious, a little shy, forgetful but not at all ditzy, not unlike his ex-girlfriend. Toua had to remind himself that Caroline Yip was the subject of his investigation, and that she was, in all probability, unstable, if not out-and-out dangerous.

“Hey, I gotta go,” she said, “but if you’re not doing anything later, we can have a drink in the garden.” They both looked over at the “garden,” broken concrete slabs and crab-grass where a battered wire table and two cracked plastic chairs were perched, and they shared a smirk. “I make a mean gin and tonic.”

“I don’t drink,” he told her.

“Iced tea, then.”

It was a bit unorthodox, but Toua accepted the invitation. He thought it’d give him an opportunity to probe, so he met her outside at 6, Caroline Yip bringing out two tall glasses of iced tea, Toua a plate of cheese and crackers.

They made small talk, mostly chatting about the neighborhood, the laundromat, nearby stores, takeout places-soul food from the Coast Café on River Street, steak tips from the Village Grill on Magazine. Then, as casually as he could, Toua asked, “What’s the owner of this property like?”

“What do you mean?”

“She a decent landlord? She fix things when they break?”

“She’s a cunt.”

“Okay,” he said. He had thought he’d have to work a little harder to uncover her feelings. He had agreed to give Marcella Ahn daily e-mail updates, but thus far he’d had nothing to report. Caroline Yip wasn’t doing anything untoward in the house, and her water usage, according to the meter, which he dutifully checked every day, was normal. He had begun to think this was all a figment of Marcella Ahn’s imagination, that the gifts had been from a fan (did poets have fans?), that the meter had been malfunctioning or there’d indeed been a leak. But now, startled by the vehemence with which Caroline Yip said “cunt,” he reconsidered. “Why do you say that?”

“Let’s talk about something else. Want a refill?”

She took their glasses and went into the kitchen. She returned with a gin and tonic for herself.

“When’d you quit drinking?” she asked, handing him his iced tea.

“The first time?” Toua said. “After college.”

“There must be a story there.”

“Long story. I’ll tell it to you some other time, maybe.”

“I’m interested.”

“It’s not very interesting.”

“Come on. Start at the beginning. Where’d you grow up?”

She kept pressing, and finally he told her the story, not bothering to disguise it. When he was three, his family had fled Laos to the Ban Vinai refugee camp in Thailand, where they spent three years before being shipped off to White Bear, Minnesota. He worked hard in school and was accepted to M.I.T., but once there he felt overwhelmed, afraid he couldn’t cut it, and he started drinking. In his sophomore year, he flunked out. He enlisted in the army and served as an MP in Kuwait during the first Gulf War, then returned to the States and joined the Cambridge Police, going to night school at Suffolk for years and finally getting his degree. Eventually he made detective, staying sober until two years ago, after which he quit the force.

“What happened?” she asked.

“It wasn’t one thing. It was everything. I burned out.” He was working on a new task force. A gang called MOD, Methods of Destruction, made up of Hmong teenagers, had moved into Area 4, and Toua was given the assignment because everyone assumed he spoke Hmong. Drive-bys, home invasions, extortion, drugs, firearms, prostitution-MOD was into it all, even sending notices to cops that they’d been “green-lighted” for execution. Toua received one, emblazoned with MOD’s slogan, Cant Stop, Wont Stop. But the real menace was to victims picked at random. A couple coming out of a restaurant was robbed and macheted to death. A college coed was kidnapped and gang-raped for days. A family was tied up and tortured with pliers and a car battery, their baby scalded with boiling water. Senseless. Toua didn’t want to see it anymore.

“Jesus. Are these guys still around?”

“Some. I heard most of them have moved on.”

“I had no idea. I’ve always thought Cambridge was so safe. What have you been doing since?”

“Not a lot,” Toua said. He had revealed too much. He didn’t know why. Perhaps because he hadn’t talked to anyone in quite a while. “What about you? What do you do?”

“I’m a poet,” she told him.

He was an idiot. A lazy idiot. He had taken the client’s word for granted, when a simple Google search would have revealed the truth.

“You lied to me,” Toua said to Marcella Ahn at her house.

“Lying is a relative term,” she replied, once again decked out as an Edwardian whore: a corset and bodice, miniskirt and high heels, full makeup, hair glistening. “I might have omitted a few things. Maybe it was a test, to see how competent you are.”

“She has every reason to hate you.”

“Oh? Is that what she told you? I’m the one at fault for her being such a failure?”

For several years, the two women had been the best of friends-inseparable, really. But then their first books came out at the same time, Marcella Ahn’s from a major New York publisher, Caroline Yip’s from a small, albeit respected press. Both had very similar jacket photos, the two women looking solemn and precious, hair flowing in full regalia. An unfortunate coincidence. Critics couldn’t resist reviewing them together, mocking the pair as “The Oriental Hair Poets,” “The Braids of the East,” and “The New Asian Poetresses.”

But Marcella Ahn came away from these barbs relatively unscathed. Her book, Speak to Desire, was taken seriously, compared to Marianne Moore and Emily Dickinson. Her poetry was highly erudite, usually beginning with mundane observations about birds or plant life, then slipping into long, abstract meditations on entropy and inertia, the Bible, evolution, and death, punctuated by the briefest mention of personal deprivations-anorexia, depression, abandonment. Or so the critics said. Toua couldn’t make heads or tails of the poems he found online.

In contrast, Caroline Yip’s book, Chicks of Chinese Descent, was skewered. She wrote in a slangy, contemporary voice, full of topical pop culture allusions. She wrote about masturbation and Marilyn Monroe, about tampons and moo goo gai pan, about alien babies and chickens possessed by the devil. She was roundly dispatched as a mediocre talent.

Worse, in Caroline Yip’s eyes, was what happened afterward. She accused Marcella of trying to thwart her at every turn. Teaching jobs, coveted magazine publications, awards, residencies, fellowships-everything Caroline applied for, Marcella seemed to get. Caroline told people it didn’t hurt that Marcella was a shameless schmoozer, flirting and networking with anyone who might be of use. Yet the fact was, Marcella was rich. Her father was a shipping tycoon, and she had a trust fund in the millions. She didn’t need any of these pitifully small sinecures which would have meant a livelihood to Caroline, and she came to believe that the only reason Marcella was pursuing them at all was to taunt her.

“You see now why she’s doing these things?” Marcella Ahn said. “I’ve let her stay in that house practically rent-free, and how does she repay me? By smearing me. Spreading anonymous rumors on Internet forums! Implying I slept with award judges! Posting bad reviews of my book! So enough was enough. I stopped speaking to her and asked her to move out. Was that unreasonable of me? After all I’ve done for her? I lent her money. I kept encouraging her. I helped her find a publisher for her book. What did I get in return? A hateful squatter who’s trying to mindfuck me, who’s intent on the destruction of my reputation and sanity!”

This was, Toua thought to himself, silly. He glanced around Marcella Ahn’s plush, immaculate house. Mahogany floor, custom wood furniture. Didn’t these women have anything better to do than engage in petty games? And what did this say about him? He’d given up his shield only to go from trailing husbands to skip-tracing debtors and serving subpoenas to accommodating the paranoid whims of two crackpot poets.

“I think I should quit,” he said.

“Quit?” Marcella Ahn snapped. “You can’t quit. Not now. I think she’s preparing to do something. I think she’s planning to harm me.”

“She’s not doing anything. You’ve gotten my reports.”

“Maybe she suspects. Maybe she’s stopped because she thinks she’s being watched.”

“I seriously doubt it.”

“Why won’t you believe me?” Marcella Ahn asked. “Why?” And then she began to weep.

“Is it too late?”

“No, I was awake.”

“You sound tired.”

“Long day. I drove down to see Mom.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Better, I guess. Still kind of frail.”

“What else you been up to?”

“The usual. Work. You?”

“Nothing too exciting.”

“You know you can’t keep calling like this.”

“Is he there?”

“Not the point.”

“Is he?”

“No.”

“How is Pritchett?”

“Stop.”

“Ana, I still love you.”

“I know.”

“You know? That’s it? You know?”

“I don’t want to keep doing this. It’s painful.”

“Let me see: you cheat on me, with Pritchett of all people, you kick me out, and you’re the one in pain.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Say…say there’s a chance.”

“There’s not. Not right now, there’s not.”

“But maybe things will change?”

“Don’t do this to yourself.”

“This is all I have, Ana. This is all I have.”

He watched her. He monitored her e-mail. He listened to her calls. He logged the numbers from the water meter every day. He talked to her, once more sat in the garden with her.

He had let Marcella Ahn persuade him to stay on, particularly after, as an additional incentive, she had offered him more money. Yet increasingly he felt it was a pointless exercise. He was convinced more than ever that Caroline Yip was oblivious to any of the transgressions of which she was being accused, oblivious to the fact that Toua was working for Marcella Ahn or even knew of their past. He was bored. At the end of the week, he would quit for good. By then he’d have the security deposit for an apartment.

Thursday night, Caroline Yip knocked on his door. “I’m going to the Cantab. Wanna come?”

The Cantab Lounge was a dive bar in Central Square, known for its music and cheap drinks. The last time he fell off the wagon, Toua had been a regular there. He’d bar-hop down Mass. Ave., beginning with the Cellar, then moving on to the Plough & Stars and the People’s Republik, ending the night at the Cantab, each place seedier than the last.

It was early still at the Cantab, the first set yet to begin, and they decided to first go across the street to Picante for a bite. They ordered chicken tostadas with a steak quesadilla to share, and they sat at a table beside the front window after loading up on salsa.

“How’re your poems going?” he asked.

“Así así.”

“What?”

“So-so,” she said. “Find a job yet?”

“Not yet.”

“I imagine it’d be easy for you to do something in security. What about private investigator work?”

Was she being coy? “I’ll look into it.”

“I have a question for you,” Caroline said. She wiped guacamole from the corner of her mouth. “What is it that you fear the most?”

“Like phobias?”

“No, about yourself. About your life. How you’ll end up.”

It was an awful question, one that immediately dropped him into a funk. And although he didn’t realize he had been ruminating on it, he knew the answer right away. “Dead man walking,” he said.

“What? As in being led down death row?” She laughed nervously. “Feeling homicidal these days?”

He shook his head. He told her about the look he’d seen in some perps, the MOD gangbangers in particular, the vacancy in their eyes, a complete lacuna, devoid of any hope or humanity. “I’m afraid I might become like that. Dead. Soulless.”

“The fact that it worries you insures you won’t.”

“I don’t know.”

Caroline took a big bite of the quesadilla, chewed, swallowed. “I fear that all the sacrifices I’ve made for my poetry will have been for nothing, that really I have no talent, that someday I’ll realize this but won’t be able to admit it, because to do so would invalidate my life, so instead I’ll become resentful of anyone who’s had the slightest bit of success, lash out at them with stupid, spiteful acts of malice, rail against an unfair system and world and fate that’s denied me my rightful place of honor and glory. I’ll become a cold, bitter person. I’ll never find peace, or love, or purpose. I’ll die alone.”

He nodded. “I’m glad you brought this up. I’m feeling really good now. Very cheerful.”

Caroline giggled. “Let’s go listen to some music.”

The Cantab was in full swing now, and Toua and Caroline squeezed through the crowd to the bar. “Yo, Toua-Boua, long time no see,” boomed Large Marge, one of the bartenders. “What’s your pleasure?”

He got a rum and Coke for Caroline, a plain Coke for himself. Miraculously, they found a couple of chairs against the far wall, and they listened to the R &B band on the stage. The place hadn’t changed a bit, the green walls, the faux-Tiffany lamps with the Michelob Light logos, the net of Christmas lights on the ceiling, the usual barflies and post-hippy gray-beards in the audience.

Sitting there, it did occur to Toua that Caroline had implicated herself, expressing exactly the vindictive mindset that Marcella Ahn had described. What did it matter, though? What did it matter? It was all so trivial.

When he went to the bar for another round, he ordered two rum and Cokes. It tasted like crap-Jameson, neat, with a chaser of Guinness had been his poison of choice-but since Caroline was drinking it, she wouldn’t be able to smell the alcohol on his breath.

After several more rum and Cokes, Caroline hauled him onto the dance floor, and they swayed and bumped against each other, jostled by the sweating couples around them.

Caroline hooked her arms around his neck. “I like you,” she shouted.

“I like you too,” he said, and they kissed.

It was so good to feel something, he thought. To feel anything.

They woke up together the next morning on Caroline’s futon. “Was this a mistake?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“You weren’t supposed to say that.”

She made him breakfast-cereal, scrambled eggs, coffee, toast with peanut butter. “Do you ever think of leaving Cambridge?”

“To go where?” he asked.

“ California. I went through a little town south of San Francisco once, Rosarita Bay. It’s a sleepy little place, very quiet. It’s not very pretty or anything, but for some reason it draws me. I love the idea of making a fresh start there, no one knowing who I am.”

“Sounds nice.” His head was pounding; he could have used a drink.

“Not tempted to join me someday?” she said hesitantly. He must have appeared alarmed, because she laughed and got a little defensive. “That was impulsive. Stupid. Never mind.”

“Not stupid. Just sudden.”

“Too sudden?”

He looked at Caroline. He did not know this woman. He was not in love with her, and she was not in love with him. But they might grow to love each other. It was possible. It seemed like the first opening of possibility in his life in a very long time, a fissure. “Maybe not.”

She had to go to Chez Henri soon. She was pulling a double shift, covering for another waitress. “We’ll talk more tomorrow?”

“We’ll talk more tomorrow,” he told her.

He was awoken before dawn. He had gone to bed early and fell dead asleep-the first good night’s sleep he’d had in months, hangover-induced, no doubt. On the other end of the phone was Pritchett. “Want to come down here?”

“Here” was Marcella Ahn’s house. When Toua drove up to it, a fire truck, an ambulance, two black-and-whites, and an unmarked police car were parked out front.

“What’s going on?” he asked Pritchett, his former partner.

The inside of the house had been trashed, furniture overturned and broken, upholstery shredded, wine bottles smashed onto the floors and splattered on the rugs, paintings tattered, clothes scissored into strips, mirrors shattered. Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop was spray-painted on one wall, Cunt on the front door.

“Anything taken?” Toua asked.

“Strange, not much,” Pritchett said, “just a laptop and some notebooks and fountain pens. We found them down the street in a dumpster. Notice anything else out of whack?”

“Yeah.”

Marcella Ahn was in the ambulance, a blanket over her shoulders, shaking and crying. She had been out of town for a reading, returning to find her house in ruins. “Do you believe me now?” she said to Toua. “Do you believe me now? It’s her. I’m sure of it.”

“What’s this all about?” Pritchett asked him.

He had been a fool. He had trusted her, had let himself get lulled into careless affection for her.

Based on Toua’s statement and case reports, they arrested Caroline Yip, and, knowing that with no record she’d make bail, they issued a restraining order against her.

It had been a decent ruse, and it might have worked, everyone believing the MOD were on another search-and-rampage mission but had been spooked by something-a noise, a neighbor-into leaving before they could gut the house of its possessions, except for one small but critical error. Can’t Stop. Won’t Stop, besides being unusually well-punctuated with apostrophes and a period, had been sprayed with blue paint. The MOD were Bloods-red bandanna. Blue was the color of the Crips, their rivals.

In the end, the charges against Caroline were dropped. She had no alibi for the hours after the restaurant closed at 10:30, but there was little evidence to prosecute her, no prints, no eyewitnesses of a woman with long hair on a bicycle, nothing incriminating found in her house like a spray-paint can or soiled clothes.

Nonetheless, Caroline Yip chose to leave town. Toua saw her as she was packing up a U-Haul van to drive to California.

“She used you, you know.”

“I think if anyone did, you used me,” Toua said.

“You have a funny way of interpreting things. Don’t you get it? She faked it. She set me up. Set you up. Hasn’t that occurred to you? Marcella invented this insidious plot to frame me and run me out of town.”

“Why would she do that?”

“Who knows. What makes one person want to destroy another? Huh? She has everything, yet it’s not enough.”

“There’s no point in pretending anymore.”

“She’s a vulture. She has some sick bond to me. She needs to humiliate me. She needs my misery. She can’t function without it.”

“You need help.”

She slammed the doors to the van shut. “I feel sorry for you,” Caroline said. “You missed it. It could have been something real, and you missed it.”

He watched her maneuver the van down the driveway and onto the street, then headed inside the studio to pack his own possessions. He had things to do. First on the list, he needed a bed for his new apartment.

Could Marcella Ahn have been that smart and calculating? He hadn’t looked at the water bill very closely. She could have doctored it. She could have known all along that he’d been on the MOD task force. She could have wrecked her own home, orchestrating everything to this outcome.

He picked up his duffel bag. He didn’t want to believe it. Believing it would mean that Caroline was right, he’d missed his chance to emerge from the deadness he felt. It was easier to believe, all things considered, that he’d been betrayed by her. She was a devious person, a liar, conniving and malicious, rent with envy, hopelessly bitter. It was comforting to think so. He could live with that kind of evil. It had a passion and direction he could understand, even a touch of poetry.

THE COLLAR
BY ITABARI NJERI

Roxbury

Hey. You better snap the fuck out if it,” Nina told him, popping her fingers in a circle around his head. “She’s not your friend. She’s the en-na-mee,” Nina half sang. Didn’t think she had to emphasize the obvious to a thirty-two-year-old ex-Marine on his way to a doctorate from M.I.T. But the more she heard, the more she wondered about the terms of discharge and criteria for admission.

Isaac faced an assault charge that was aggravated, Nina discovered, by stupidity: violation of a restraining order.

“You don’t know to cross the street if you see her?”

“She was boarding the same bus.”

“What’s your point?” That’s all they had at Dudley Station, transfer point to anywhere in Boston -buses. “Take another one.”

And his stab at “resolving things”-on the crowded #1 to Cambridge -happened after the arraignment.

At the arraignment, his best friend showed up with both sets of grandparents, a trio of uncles, and a chorus of cousins.

“I didn’t know she had that many relatives in America,” the ex-corporal droned, still shocked and awed.

Nina tilted her close-cropped curls and smiled, picturing it. “You think she flew some in from Johannesburg?”

“And she was wearing her collar.” Isaac said it in a slow monotone matching the zombie gaze that was pissing Nina off. “I’ve known that girl three years and I ain’t never seen her wear her collar.”

The divinity school grad had a tongue-twisting South African name. Isaac called her Sindi for short. Nina Sojo liked Collar, and couldn’t help smiling a little when she thought of her. Collar wanted blood.

They were sitting at Nina’s dining table. A used Queen Anne repro someone had painted high-gloss white. The chairs too. Isaac drew his finger down the side of an ice-filled glass of lemonade. He examined the trail.

“Do you want me to help you find a lawyer or not?”

He winced, but kept looking at the glass.

Nina pulled back, slow and haughty. Frowning deepened the groove between her brows. It was the only line in her bare moon face. She never wore makeup offstage.

The Boston Yellow Pages was sitting there on the table. She’d been looking up lawyers. Now she stared through him, picked up the directory, and gave him her half-bare back. The crisp white top was sleeveless and gathered in a tie under her holstered breasts. The naked skin from there to her hips was the color of dark honey. The jeans gripped just below her waist. Everything looked tight. But unhike those tits, lay Nina flat, and the twins danced the slide. Shock at her body’s betrayal lent Nina Isaac’s zombie stare. She’d had to smack herself one morning while looking in the mirror. It is what it is, she finally told herself. The change had happened between cities and lovers. Vancouver and Boston. The economist and the chemical engineer. The engineer hadn’t minded: Isaac made clear the pussy was good. “Hot and wet. Just the way I like it.” But post-forty pussy stayed in the house. You didn’t date it. You could take it to Starbucks, but not to see Monster’s Ball. “You kidding?” Isaac had shook his head at the accusation. “Oh. Okay. I tell you what: let’s flip the script and do the movie. Cause it’s not like you really hittin’ that other thang too good. Know what I’m sayin’?” She had counted on the lockdown to make him want it. When he did: “Uh-uh. You don’t know how to treat me.” That was February. It was June now. Pussy was still on strike.

She pushed the phone book onto a loaded shelf, then rummaged the refrigerator to make a doggie bag for Isaac’s cousin Devon.

Two sets of tall bookcases standing back-to-back divided the kitchen area from the rest of the bright, loftlike unit. She’d moved in two days after 9/11. The space was a quality reno off Moreland in one of Roxbury’s historic districts. Unpacked boxes draped with white sheets were still ghostly roommates after nine months. The stacked cartons formed an undulating cityscape and dividing line. On one side: her Yamaha Clavinova and shelved music collection. On the other: a computer workstation near the dining table that doubled as a desk, two halogen torch lamps, and Isaac on her futon. Staring at the ceiling lights and fake-wood trusses. Or just in that direction.

Isaac asked her something she pretended not to hear.

About now, she was feeling the Newark brother who’d put those bookshelves together. Always helpful, fun over a beer, and a professional cook who had dinner waiting when she came home. And the dick was good. Just too much insecurity attached. He never finished high school. Dropped out to raise two younger brothers who did. She thought all that admirable and said so. But Chef was always comparing himself to someone like Isaac. Dr. M.I.T., the chef called him.

What came after was always the best part of sex with Isaac. Wet clinches in a hot shower. Long, Marine-hard body. Infinitesimal dick. Isaac was a cuddler. The curves of their bodies met in wet suction and held. Tight. In her mouth, his tongue was well-schooled. Between her thighs, his fingers were too. When she was light-headed in the steam, Isaac Sayif’s tenderness could feel like love.

His hand touched her shoulder.

“Did you say you knew a judge?” he repeated.

Nina had been away from Boston for decades. But she’d known a lot of law students when she was going to Berklee. Some built major practices in the city. Some occasionally stayed in touch. Unfortunately, none were criminal attorneys.

“Maybe he could recommend someone.” Isaac put his other hand on her shoulder and leaned into her back.

“Maybe she could,” Nina responded. “But what are you going to do for money?”

He said nothing and let go of her shoulders.

“Hand me that foil, please.” Nina gestured toward the refrigerator top with a paring knife. She wrapped a couple of homemade shortcakes in foil, then put a quart of strawberries she’d bought at the farmer’s market that morning in a plastic bag. Two loin lamb chops left from the night’s dinner went in too. Isaac had told her he liked lamb and she’d bought six on sale months ago. She offered him the bag. “For Devon.”

Isaac ignored it and searched her face.

Nina didn’t want to see a brother, who’d risen by straps attached to the thinnest air, get screwed. Realizing he was dazed, due in court seventy-two hours from now, and relying on the system’s counsel to keep his record clean and career on track, had put her in Rescue Mama mode. But she’d just heard two hours of stupid and took off the cape.

She put her good food back in the refrigerator.

The kitchen space was cramped. Standing-room only. Nina was a few inches shy of Isaac’s five-ten. She crossed her arms and her elbow brushed his shirt front. “This woman’s after your neck. Why?” Fill in the blanks, she told him. “How you better than Triple-A? You don’t even own a car?”

“She knew I had Devon ’s ride.”

“That’s not his car.”

“It’s his car whenever he wants it,” Isaac told her. Every syllable dripped smug, making Nina pause.

Sindi had called him around 3 in the morning back in March.

“She was stranded out in Newton,” Isaac said.

“That time of night? How come?”

He said she’d been coming back from Wellesley.

“The college?”

He nodded. “The transmission gave out.”

“And Marine to the rescue?”

“I get there and she picks a fight.”

“About?”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, that’s what I say.”

“I’m telling you. It was about nuth-in,” he insisted. “She’s all up in my face and I push her away. She starts swinging at me. I grab her wrists and push her back. The shit is crazy so I leave her there.”

“That’s it?”

“She tells the cops I assaulted her.”

“You put your hands on her. That’s all it takes.”

He froze for a few seconds, then mumbled, “Am I that kind of man?”

Nina tried to read him. “This chick apparently sets you up and you’re seriously pondering the nature of your soul?”

“She likes that,” Isaac said, the drugged gaze fading.

“Likes what?”

“Being slapped around.”

Nina let that hang a moment.

“She wanted me to smack her around in bed.”

“Did you?”

“That is so against my spirit,” he said, slowly.

Nina considered his words, his tone. Then: “What about the polygamy thing? Girlfriend down with that?” When they first met, Isaac had told Nina that he planned to move to South Africa to teach and live with multiple wives. Nina had laughed it off and said, “You must want some serious voodoo on your ass.”

He shrugged now.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Kind of,” he said.

“As long as she’s Wife Number One and you beat the crap out her daily? Nig-grow, please.” She started putting together another container of strawberries for later. She felt her sweet tooth calling.

Isaac moved toward the front door to put on his shoes.

Nina walked and talked. Fruit in one hand, paring knife in the other. “Is anything I know about you true?”

He bent to tie his shoelace. Nina hovered.

“What are you talking about?” He was holding up the wall with his shoulder and looked exhausted from the effort.

“Maybe you’re that brother from another planet,” cause she didn’t know any brothers from the ’hood who talked to the police without a lawyer.

They had called him, he repeated. They’d asked if he wanted to clear things up. “I felt it could easily be resolved. This woman is my best friend. We’re used to talking a dozen times a day.”

“You broke up and still talked a dozen times a day?”

“Yeah.”

“But she was cool with you not fucking her anymore, and you believed that?”

Nina started remembering threads of their early conversations last fall. Calling himself a free agent. Admitting, only when Nina pressed, that he did see one sister more than anyone else…

…and that Isaac had been in her car when an old boyfriend called to apologize for ancient misdeeds. It was one of those twelve-step-make-amends things. Isaac had said he thought that was nice. She’d agreed. “Especially since I stabbed him.”

“She’s my best friend,” Isaac repeated.

Nina batted the air and a bit of forgotten strawberry flew. She needed to wash the smashed fruit off her hand. “Say goodnight, Gracie,” she muttered, walking back to the kitchen.

“What?”

“Way before your time.”

“Thanks for dinner,” he called out from the doorway.

She ignored the lame farewell and wiped the fruit off the floor. The downstairs door slammed shut.

The night was cool and windy. Nina raised the slats of a shutter and watched Isaac disappear in the dark. It was a ten-minute walk to Dudley Station, past some very sketchy territory. Nina had escaped Boston in the ’80s, the years when crack was king and a Roxbury zip code meant perpetual violence. Before the plague, she’d traveled Interstate 90 from Albany to attend Berklee, and had lived at a series of Roxbury addresses with no problem. She loved the familiar swagger and grace amidst despair. Some of those blocks had crashed and resurrected. Some meant constant crossfire still. Her new address was safe in the daytime, but a game try at night without klieg-light battalions. Nina wouldn’t hazard a night stroll. But a Marine might make it.

It was past 11:00. Too late to take that second pill. The mood elevator needed to drop a few floors. Nina made a three-bag cup of Sleepytime tea and spiked it with thirty drops of valerian root. Better than Xanax and safer. She stuck a straw in the thermos mug she kept in the crib-the other stayed in the car-and popped a white noise CD in the boom box. Waves crashed. Seagulls cried. She logged on and sent an e-mail to Darcelle, the judge. Nina gave her the short of it, then wrote:

Don’t know the “truth” of the situation, but his life story is admirable. Foster kid from the ’hood, East St. Lou

She stopped typing, grabbed a large pink Post-it, and scribbled a note to herself: Legal name? Isaac Elimu Sayif? She circled it, then wrote, AKA? She started typing again.

Works at Popeyes for years, looks in the mirror, decides to wipe off the grease, joins the Marines, goes to community college, St. Louis U, then chemical engineering at M.I.T. He’s all but dissertation. Plans to teach at U of Cape Town this fall. Would hate to see him derailed by B.S.

Look forward to hearing from you and seeing you soon.

Nina

Nina had received a Welcome back message from Darcelle last month. An invitation too: the judge’s annual Fourth of July Louis Armstrong Birthday Bash. Nina had been happy to get it but surprised. She certainly hadn’t announced her return to Boston. She’d worked the East Coast as a jazz singer and the world as a backup singer all through the ’80s. But touring wore her out. Lost too many friends to drugs. And she’d deliberately been under the radar for a decade. Teaching mostly. Private piano lessons. Music theory and history courses at assorted colleges. She’d just finished teaching a jazz history course at Roxbury Community College. But she got the biggest rush teaching music to disabled kids in the public schools. That had brought her back to Berklee. She was studying music therapy.

She wiggled deep into the feather body pillow on the futon and settled on her side, hands in prayer position between her drawn knees. “ East St. Louis,” she said out loud. What part of East St. Louis don’t know not to talk to a cop? A seagull cried. “That’s what I’m talking about,” she told the bird. “Ain’t he never seen Law & Order?” The woman who adopted him used to be crazy with the electric cord on his ass, Isaac had told her. “She bang your head up too, baby? That the problem?”

Her phone rang before the alarm clock. She ignored both and slept past 10:00. Her body required eight or nine hours of sleep and took it. That’s one reason she’d stopped touring. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, gargled with hydrogen peroxide, then popped her morning elevator. She took her ritual cup of hot lemonade with honey to the computer and found a message from the judge. Darcelle was out of town but gave Nina the name of a female attorney in Roxbury. Nina forwarded it to Isaac, then tried his cell. She ignored his voice mail and tried the house.

“Hey, Miss Nina,” Devon answered before the second ring.

“Now that’s how I know you love me. You screened me in. What you been up to?”

“Working, working, working.”

“One would have been enough. More makes me suspicious. How’s the grades?”

“I’m passing.”

He was a grown hard-back man now-or thought he was. She had to tread lightly. Concern without badgering. She asked about his plans for the summer.

“I’m going to work the rest of the year and go back full-time next spring.”

She feared he would never make it back. “Not many students live rent-free. Do you really need to work full-time?”

“The rent’s free, but that’s not exactly money in my pocket.”

Nina always thought his living arrangement curious. He and Isaac were quasi-superintendents. Handled trash, shoveled snow, showed units to prospective tenants in their building and other properties Mrs. Sheridan, the landlady, owned.

“What’s the gig?” she asked.

Property management, he said. He was still showing Mrs. Sheridan’s units. Painting them too. And he was getting his real estate license. “It’s crazy out here, the money from flipping houses. Mrs. Sheridan’s been cleaning up.”

That’s her main thing now? Nina wondered. Houses? Nina knew her as the wig lady. She owned one of the biggest wig and beauty supply stores in Roxbury and another on Central Avenue in Cambridge.

Of course, Devon didn’t need a license to flip houses. But she told him it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have one in addition to his degree.

“Exactly.”

“Listen, I’m trying to catch up with Isaac.”

“He was gone when I got up.”

Nina didn’t want to assume what Devon knew about Isaac’s legal difficulties so she didn’t mention the attorney. “When are you coming by so we can really catch up?”

Sunday’s were usually good, he told her, though not today.

“Next Sunday work for you?” she asked. “Around 6?”

He said he’d be there.

Nina Sojo had first seen Devon Mack in a second-grade St. Louis classroom. She was the sub. He began the day beating on the kid beside him-any kid beside him. And the boy roamed. She tried to manage him by keeping him on task with challenging puzzles, painting, and storybooks. But there were twenty-three other kids with matching proclivities. Before noon, he had kicked the trash can at Nina’s bent back. She’d spun around, dropped the loaded can on the boy’s head, and made the terror clean the mess that rained down over him. “And don’t you ever in your life even think of kicking me, or anything at me, again.” Later, she took him aside and said that when little boys are so ready to fight it usually means they are unhappy about something. “Are you unhappy about something?” By 3:15 he was slumped in her arms, his eyes overrun ponds. Will you come back tomorrow? Are you ever coming back? Why can’t you come back? The questions of too many sad children she’d meet year after year.

Nina had discovered his birthday was the following week and showed up that day with a cake, coloring books, and a box of Crayolas in a big red bag. The principal arranged for Nina to drive Devon home.

“Where you taking me?” the boy demanded, cringing in the backseat of her car.

“Your house. They know we’re coming.”

Four blocks later, Nina encountered a pregnant teenager and an older woman waiting with smiles. And Devon ’s hard jaw relaxed.

Nina sent the boy a card every birthday for three years. Then stopped for four. Nothing matched the way she felt those years. Then, early in ’98, Devon ’s sister-the pregnant girl-sent Nina an e-mail. Her AOL address had been printed on the business card Nina planted in the big red bag. Tania Mack said her health wasn’t too good and asked, Could you check on my baby brother time to time? He still lived with their aunt, but the aunt’s new husband wouldn’t mind seeing Devon gone. Tania died of leukemia shortly after that and Devon went to stay with Isaac. They were already living in the Roxbury sweet spot when Nina arrived.

She called their Fort Hill place sweet because of the area’s history and the quality of the renovated housing. The Hill had been known for its tie-dye-and-dashiki brigades when she was at Berklee. The dissidents and artists remained, renovated and spurred investment from people like Mrs. Sheridan. Isaac and Devon ’s unit had elegant crown moldings, granite counters, a spa tub…in exchange for shoveling snow. And use of Sheridan ’s company vehicle: a 2001 black Durango. Nina wanted their gig.

Before taking Devon in, Isaac had been rooming with another student in a nice-looking space around the corner from Dorchester ’s “Hell Zone.” Murder round the clock. After sundown, thugs ran the streets while owners of homes worth a half-million cowered in their parlors.

Tania and her baby-daddy had had an understanding. He’d made the hookup that put Devon and Isaac in the sweet spot. “He’s friends with Mrs. Sheridan. Both of them are Korean,” Isaac eventually explained, one long weekend months ago.

“Korean immigrants, you mean?”

“Uh-uh. Korean American.” The man had big money and a big family, Isaac went on, holding Nina close. They were cuddlers big-time, for about four weeks.

“You know him?” Nina had asked.

“I know he had a thing for Tania.”

Tania couldn’t have been more than sixteen when Nina met her. She’d asked about Tania’s baby and learned it had been put up for adoption. All of it arranged before the child was born.

These days, Nina was still suspicious of the living arrangement. She didn’t tell Isaac, but she had met the landlady.

Mrs. Sheridan tagged her late husband’s name to her real estate enterprise and Paradise to her beauty supply business.

Nina had been to the Paradise location in Roxbury. It was a long space, with three aisles. She’d barely been inside a minute when a stocky Latino guy coming one way fingered the crotch of a voluptuous Jamaican sister walking opposite him down the middle aisle. The woman wore black leggings and a smile. She tried to swivel around him while he held on a few more seconds. Evidently, the maneuver helped an itch get scratched. They both worked there. He custom-blended hair for weaves and braids. The woman cut and styled wigs. She had a busy operation. Two in chairs, four waiting. Her partner, built like a sprinter, cut hair like one too. Fast. Nina liked the way she was layering the cut on one customer’s wig. They called the sprinter Rocket, Nina would learn later. And it had nothing to do with speed.

Juliette Choo Sheridan, the owner, clearly spent some time in the mirror. It reflected pinkish-red hair swept into a short, spiky ponytail. Blunt cut bangs that stopped short of her carefully placed false lashes-just a few spidery ones on the upper lids. And pouty pink lips. Between all that and the red boots with stiletto heels was a tight black dress to tone things down. Nina had eyed the plunging V-neck for signs of wrinkles. But Mrs. Sheridan didn’t have enough tits for cleavage. Nina figured she was forty-three.

“You should try this,” Mrs. Sheridan had suggested, pointing to a golden-hued version of the short dark wig Nina held.

Nina had smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“Ohhhh, you too conservative,” Mrs. Sheridan scolded, scanning Nina’s bare face. “You pretty lady. Don’t be afraid to jazz it up.”

Nina was standing in Bruno Magli pumps and wearing an Italian blue tweed suit worth several grand. The suit’s short skirt proved one reason Tina Turner had hired her.

When Nina responded, “I’ll bear that in mind,” the temperature in that zip code dropped ten degrees.

Nina fell asleep after talking to Devon. It couldn’t have been a deep sleep; her armpits woke her up. Or maybe it was deep and she was just one frowsy bitch. She hadn’t showered and the stink enveloped her.

Suitably deodorized, she put on a T-shirt and yoga pants. Ate some yogurt and a banana. And turned on Betty Carter.

Nina checked her e-mail while Betty sang “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.”

Isaac had sent a thank-you message. He and the lawyer connected. I’m seeing her Monday. I’ll let you know what happens.

He did. The lawyer wanted cash up front, he explained in his next e-mail. He was a student. She said I was a little boy.

On Tuesday, Isaac’s case was continued. Nina considered this her cue to wish him Godspeed. Heading over to the Newton courthouse had entered her mind. Get a peek at the Collar. Check out the public record. Read the complaint. But she was saved from herself when a Berklee prof and his wife invited her to Martha’s Vineyard for a week. She rearranged her schedule and left Thursday.

From the ferry ride over to her last breakfast at The Grind, Nina continually ran into characters from her life’s first act. Most significantly Barry. Her stabbing victim.

They stared.

He did a playful bob-and-weave. “Do I dare come closer?” he asked.

Why not? It was only a superficial wound. He had easily disarmed her.

He had been a player. Did time for a mob-related shooting in the ’60s. Fresh out of Norfolk State Prison, he had cruised Boston with Nina in a spanking new ’78 Corvette one week, a ’77 Peugeot the next. Both cars compliments of the unofficial wives Nina knew nothing about. Barry was a decent bass guitarist and, these days, a vocational counselor.

It was late morning in Martha’s Vineyard. They sat outside an Edgartown café. He remembered how she drank tea instead of coffee.

“You crossed my mind the other day,” Nina told him.

“Why? Caught a foul smell or something?”

“I needed the name of a decent criminal attorney.”

“I don’t know any in Boston worth a dime,” Barry charged.

She told him why she had been tempted to call and gave the case CliffsNotes.

Barry’s lightning assessment: “This dude sounds like a jive turkey to me.” Then he told her-two types of guys volunteer to talk to cops: the ones who really are stupid, and the ones who think that they’re smarter than everyone else.

Isaac got a new lawyer. Juliette Choo Sheridan paid. The Collar asked for several more continuances. Too many and a case can get dismissed. But these gave Isaac more time to fuck up.

Late September, he and Devon came home to their Fort Hill sweet spot and couldn’t get in: locks changed. Later that night, while crashing with friends: Durango reclaimed. Juliette Choo Sheridan owned the property and knew where the tapes had been buried.

The money shot: Isaac yanking the leash on a bitch blowing his cock. Devon ’s plugging her ass. The leash was black leather and thin; the collar rhinestone-studded and delicate. Nina cataloged the scene as S &M Lite, but still unbecoming a former Marine and M.I.T. scholar-especially one facing an assault charge and looking for a university gig. The action around Isaac was more damning. Rocket from Paradise -her tits were like missiles-was one of two women being gang-raped. For insurance, the video was all over the Internet before Juliette Choo Sheridan sent copies of it to the prosecutor and the Collar’s home address. She and Sindi, former rivals, had become comrades.

Isaac took Mrs. Sheridan’s money, fucked to her satisfaction, but refused to move into her Newton contemporary mansion-which Sindi had frequently cased. And Sheridan joining an African harem had never been an option.

Early in December, Isaac’s attorney-he was back to the Roxbury sister-got a plea agreement. There was evidence of guilt but no hard proof. He could apply for a job and truthfully say he’d never been convicted of a crime.

By January, Devon was back in St. Louis and Isaac Elimu Sayif, a.k.a. Calvin Isaac Nethersole, a.k.a. Lite Dick Nethersole (most popular on the Internet), had unwanted websites sprouting like fungi after rain. The sexploits of Lite Dick streamed against the hazy image of his curriculum vitae and generated 87,000 hits on the worldwide web every day, 609,000 each week, 2,436,000 each month…

Isaac remains all but dissertation six years later.

TURN SPEED
BY RUSS ABORN

North Quincy

At the close of his twenty-third birthday, Michael Mosely sat behind the wheel of a 1968 Chevy Bel Air, looked around the empty bank parking lot, lifted a pint of vodka, and took a good slug. He screwed the top on and put it under the passenger seat. He sat up straight, shook his head like a dog drying off, pulled the shift lever on the column toward him, dropped it into drive, and eased the nose of the car out onto Broadway. Amped and fuzzy at the same time, he cranked the window down to let in the clammy night. The windshield wipers squeaked into action, smearing greasy mist into greasy streaks. He looked to the left, and cut the wheel hard right, making the power steering squeal and moan. He toed the gas. The right rear tire dropped off the curbstone, thumping into the gutter with a hollow, rubbery sound.

He inched along beside the high curb, rolled by the bank, and braked to a quiet stop in front of the steak house. Using his left hand, he pinched the fleshy web on his right hand. The pain yanked him back to his body and sharpened his mind.

A swirl of darkness exploded through the glass front doors of the steak house, and three men wearing Red Sox caps atop blurry faces rushed at the car. Two of the men held handguns, while the man in the middle clutched a satchel like it was Ann Margaret.

TJ, carrying the bag, yanked the front passenger door open and jumped in. Paul pulled the back door open and dove in headfirst, followed by Larry, large and loud. He slammed the door closed and yelled.

“Go!”

The air in the car boiled with kinetic energy, but the scenery outside didn’t change.

“Nope,” Michael said. “Not until you say please.”

The large man tried to articulate some sort of threat, but only produced a lowing noise.

The thin guy sitting shotgun looked sad but sounded giddy. “Oh no. That’s not funny, man.”

“Time, little brother,” the guy directly behind Michael said. He put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “Gotta go. Not too fast. Slick road.” Michael looked at his brother Paul in the rearview mirror, then stomped on the gas, pinning them all to their seats. The five-year-old green sedan, as anonymous as a telephone pole, zipped down Broadway toward Sullivan Square.

“Okay, ladies,” Paul said, “get down so we can take off the stockings.”

In shotgun, TJ pulled off the stocking mask as he slid out of his seat and into the foot well like liquid mercury.

“TJ,” Michael said, “be a good fella and hand me my jug while you’re down there.”

“No, you can wait, Mikey,” Paul answered from the floor in the back.

“Just need to loosen the straps a little,” Michael said.

“Fuck! Stop fuckin’ talkin’!” Larry was the size of a newborn killer whale, and now wedged in between the seats, he sounded near hysteria. “You’re s’posed to be alone if anyone fuckin’ sees you, you stupid fuckin’ fuck. Just drive the fuckin’ car, you fuck. Fuck the fuckin’ booze.”

“Aunt Betty’d slap your face,” Michael said, “if she knew how her little Larry swore-”

“Shut up about my mother!” Larry barked.

“Easy, boys. Mikey, anyone behind us?”

Michael checked the rearview. “Just the dark.”

At the Sullivan Square traffic circle Michael spun the car around the far edge, with the tires slipping, and then whipped up the crumbling street that ran along the short section of elevated road. A quarter-mile up, the car turned right at Middlesex Avenue and then broke off a fast right into the employee parking lot at the First National Stores grocery warehouse, where there must have been three hundred cars parked in the open dirt lot.

Michael slipped the Chevy Bel Air down to the row of cars against the chain-link fence and stopped at a dark ’65 Ford Falcon. The three passengers got out. Paul keyed open the trunk of the Falcon, and they tossed in their guns, hats, stockings, and the money bag. TJ pulled off his sweatshirt, dropped it in the Falcon’s trunk, and pulled out two license plates and a screwdriver. He moved to the front of the Chevy Bel Air, ducked out of sight, and popped up again before Michael had time to find his Zippo, chunk it open, and fire up his Winston. TJ paused at Michael’s window on his way to the back of the Chevy with the second license plate.

“That’s it for me,” TJ said. He was wearing an Esso gas station T-shirt with the name Thomas over the pocket. “You suck to work with. I’m not going back to jail.” Thomas Jefferson Moran walked to the back of the Chevy.

Paul knocked on the passenger window, and Michael leaned over and rolled it down.

“What’s TJ saying?” Paul asked. He leaned in the passenger side as he pulled off his warm-up pants. Underneath a bulky turtleneck sweater he wore a white shirt and a red silk tie.

“Nothing, post-game jitters. You’re all dolled up.”

“Late date.” Paul turned back and closed the trunk of the Falcon. He threw the trunk key over the fence, out into the growth of bulrushes in the marsh.

Larry got into the front passenger seat of the Chevy. He had worn a Patriots jersey during the robbery, now he had on a Led Zeppelin T-shirt.

“Rock on, man!” Michael said. He held his hand up for a high five.

Larry sneered. “One of these days, Michael.”

Paul and TJ got back in the Chevy and Michael dropped each of the three at their own cars, which they had driven to the lot earlier that night.

Michael parked the Chevy, fished the vodka out, and took a drink. He got a rag from his back pocket, soaked it with vodka, and wiped down all the surfaces in the car that anyone might have touched. Then he tossed the Chevy key over the fence. He drank the last of the vodka, dropped back, and tried to spiral the bottle over, hoping to reach the oily creek, but it fell short and smashed into something solid, silencing the marsh.

He walked up two rows to his car, a black GTO. He put his key in the door, and felt the top end of his throat stretch itself wide. He turned his head and threw up beside the car. Wiping his mouth with the rag, he muttered, “Fuckin’ egg salad.”

He placed his feet carefully around the puddle, opened the door, and dropped backwards onto the driver’s seat, pulling his feet in.

When he was done shaking, he woke the Goat and drove it to North Quincy.

The Sagamore Grill was the name on the liquor license, but it was commonly known as The Sag, partly because there was no actual grill. The only grill any of the patrons ever saw was the cross-worked iron bars at the Quincy police station.

On Saturday morning, Michael sidled up and placed his order with Bud, the day bartender. “Hi, neighbor, I’ll have a ’Gansett, please.”

Larry and TJ came in together, stopped at the far end, and ordered. Bud lifted the hose from behind the bar and squirted soda into a couple of glasses. They crossed the room to sit at a red square Formica table, way at the back. Michael took his beer and followed.

“Look at this guy,” Larry said to TJ. “Beer for breakfast. My aunt’s dying of cancer and her son’s getting gassed every time I see him.”

“When you’re not here, I drink milk,” Michael said. “I see you, I lose the will to live.”

The front door opened and Paul came in followed by the sun, and by the time the door chopped off the outside light, he was cutting a path through the tables. Michael watched him move; fast, without hurrying; covering a lot of ground with deceptive speed. Paul sat down at the small table.

“Hey,” Michael said. “I forgot to ask, how was your date last Saturday?”

“Good. Nice girl, but not the one. The search continues,” Paul replied.

“Girl from work?” Larry asked.

“In a way. I met her when I took a customer to lunch. She was our waitress.”

Paul was a sales rep for Triple-T Trucking, a union carrier that operated in the New England and the metro New York-New Jersey area.

“Which customer?” Michael asked. He was a driver for Triple-T, jockeying trailers around, making local deliveries and pickups.

“The traffic manager from Schrafft’s Candy, he suggested this place, which, I found out too late, doesn’t take credit cards. I didn’t want to look like a chump, so when the check came, I pretended to go to the restroom, flagged down the waitress, said I didn’t have enough cash on me. I was short a buck for the bill and had no money for a tip. I told her if she lent me a dollar and waited for the tip, it would be a good one. I went back the next day, gave her a fifty, and asked her out for Saturday. She said she was working; I said after. I’d be in the area.”

Michael watched Larry and TJ do the quick nod, polite but impatient, waiting for Paul to get to the good part: their share of the robbery. Michael took a drink from his beer, brought the bottle down, and rapped the bottom against the tabletop a few times.

“Get it?” Michael said. Larry and TJ stopped nodding and looked over at him.

“Cash only,” Michael said. “No cards? That was our restaurant last Saturday night.”

Larry’s jaw fell like the trapdoor on a gallows. TJ shook his head.

“And you went back to pick up the girl?” Larry asked.

“Shhh. Turn it down,” Paul said. He leaned back against the booth in his bright white starched shirt. No matter how grimy the environment, somehow Paul remained spotless.

“Did you know?” TJ asked Michael.

“I just figured it out,” Michael said. “Anyway, how did we do?”

Paul shrugged. “Better than we’d do tonight, now that they’re going to start taking credit cards. That’s what they get for trying to shortchange the IRS.” He flashed a phony smile, followed by a real one; he was charmed by his own insincerity.

“My brother, the patriot,” Michael said.

“You get eighteen hundred each,” Paul said.

“You get twenty-four,” TJ said.

“That’s the deal. Twenty-five percent more,” Paul said.

“That’s thirty-three, isn’t it?” Michael asked.

“Okay,” Paul said. “Then you get seventy-five percent of what I get, which is twenty-five percent less. Whatever makes you feel better. Either way, it’s like five weeks take-home driving a truck.”

“What do we do next, boss?” Larry asked.

“Keep in mind,” TJ interrupted, “I’m gone. Mahla wants to move to Florida. She don’t like the snow.”

“What snow? It’s June,” Michael said.

“Fuck off, man. It gonna stay June?”

The front door opened and they watched a figure lurch into the shadows before TJ spoke again.

“No, I hear you,” Paul said to TJ. “Especially with the toy guns. But this new thing has no need for weapons, real or otherwise, which I knew you’d like. We’re going to liberate a truckload of cigarettes.” Paul smiled like a dust bowl Bible salesman, going face to face to share his look of joy and wonder.

“Cigarettes? From where?” Michael asked.

“One of the car loaders, Blue Ribbon Distributors.”

“What’s a car loader?” Larry asked.

“A warehouse with a railroad siding. It transfers freight between rail cars and trucks.”

“Can’t be from Triple-T. We don’t haul smokes, or booze either,” Michael said.

“We do now. My new boss, Guy Salezzi, is the nephew-in-law of Mr. T.T. Tortello, so I guess he can change the policy. They’re going to start using us on cigarette loads to the BPM warehouse in East Bridgewater next week. I’ve called on Tony Bentini in the Blue Ribbon traffic office for fourteen months and never got a sniff of the work. Why? Because company policy is we won’t take cigarettes, and he won’t give me any other loads unless we take them too. Nobody wants the smokes. But Salezzi went to Fordham with Bentini. So now we’re getting business because they’re pals. They’re going to give us one load, see if BPM is okay with us. If so, we’ll get more.”

Larry smiled at his older cousin. “You got some balls, man. You want to knuckle a load the first week?”

“We better act while we can, right? What if we lose the account?”

Michael said, “I guess we’re going to ignore the fact-”

“The rumor,” Paul cut in.

“-that Mr. T.T. Tortello is a member of the Gambino family.”

“Tortello started that rumor so no one would steal from him,” Paul said. “This is good for forty grand. Split evenly. We each put ten in our poke.” Paul leaned toward TJ. “Think: forty thousand bucks. A few like that and we quit. Become homeowners, family men, good citizens.”

“God bless America,” Michael said.

“I spent six months at the farm,” TJ said. “Watching corn and punkins come up out of the ground. I’m not going back. How long you think you can steal from your company before they start investigating and whatnot?”

“They’ll look at the Teamsters,” Paul said. “I’m management.”

They stared at Michael the Teamster. He snapped open his Zippo, touched the Winston to the flame, and inhaled. Then he smiled around the cigarette and clapped the lighter closed.

“Is Michael going to get this load?” TJ asked.

“No, they pick up at 3 p.m.,” Paul replied. “He starts at 6 a.m. He’s on OT at 3. They’d give the pickup to a straight time guy. We have fifty drivers that start at 8.”

“Good chance I’ll deliver it, though,” Michael said. “There’s only two of us at 6.”

Paul nodded. “BPM wants all loads backed in and ready to unload when their crew starts at 7 a.m. Which means the driver will come from the 6 start.” He looked at his brother. “If Rosie gives you the P &G or the Jordan Marsh load, you call the apartment, let the phone ring once, and hang up. If you get the right load, don’t call. Even Rosie might notice if you did. If you don’t get this one, we’ll have to hope you get the next, assuming there is a next.”

“And listen, Michael,” Larry warned, “lay off the booze! Someone might smell you.”

Paul turned to Michael and raised his eyebrows but didn’t look directly at him. “He makes a good point, Mikey. Work has to come first. By the way, go see Ma today, will you? Eat something, take a nap, and go see her.”

Michael pulled the GTO up behind the old man’s Rambler, across the street from the house, a small brown bungalow with a screened porch. A strip of sidewalk and a patch of grass separated the house from the street. If an eighteen-year-old kid who stood six feet tall tripped in the gutter and fell forward, his head would bounce off the bottom cement step. The morning after the night that Michael proved that, his father had thrown him out.

Paul leaned against the kitchen sink holding a glass of water, while their father sat in his chair at the same spot at the same table they’d had since Michael was a small boy.

“Here he is, Dad,” Paul said. “I’ll go slay the fatted calf.”

“Michael. How’ve you been?” His father stood and offered his hand.

“Hey, Dad.” They shook. “You say that like you haven’t seen me in years. I was here, what, two weeks ago?”

“Yeah? Seems longer.”

“How’s Ma?”

“Go up and see. She’s awake, we just put her in the chair.”

Upstairs in the front bedroom, their mother was propped up in her wheelchair looking out at the street. While on chemo for breast cancer, she had a stroke, or a shock, as his aunts called it. Her left hand had curled into a claw, and her whole left arm was as rigid as the left side of her face was slack.

“Hi, Ma.” He kissed her forehead and put his chin on the top of her head. His eyes stung, and he squeezed the bridge of his nose until it hurt enough to stop the tears. He kissed her cheek and sat at the foot of the bed, hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, as they both peered out the window.

“Michael?” Her voice sounded like she’d swallowed shards of glass, and the way she said his name broke his heart. “When will it stop?”

Michael stared down at his feet. “Pretty soon, Ma.”

It was a warm day and the windows were up as life passed by on the street below. Kids on Sting-Ray bikes with towels draped around their necks hollered at each other on their way to Wollaston Beach; young mothers pushed strollers carrying big-headed toddlers; cars rolled by, windows down, volume up, sharing the thump with one and all, like it or not.

It was hard for Ma to speak, but his three sisters were here every day, and their kids visited several times a week, so she had more family news than he did. The result was Michael stretched out sideways on the bed with his hands folded on his stomach, talking to her about his softball team, which was just fine. What he said didn’t matter, she just needed the comfort of his voice.

He heard the steps squeak and a few seconds later his father came into the bedroom. He sat in an armchair and they talked about Yaz and the Red Sox. If Michael wanted to avoid the AA jive he had to stay on his toes. When the conversation began to slow, he moved rapidly to other safe topics, like politics, war, and religion. Yet the old man could spot the smallest opening and race through it, turning an innocent remark about the weather into a tale of winos in winter. Many were the trolls pulled from under a bridge and into a meeting by a hazy memory of free donuts-but not all who were called by the pastry were chosen by the higher power to live clean, dry lives, and those who were gave thanks to the program, the program, the program.

His mother was snoring softly in her chair. She’d sleep on and off until late evening. Most nights she’d lie awake in the dark, listening to Larry Glick on the radio.

“She’s been asking me if I think you’re going to stop soon,” his father said.

“Yeah, I’ll stop by again soon.” Michael looked at his watch and stood up. “Now I gotta scoot. I’ll be back in the next few days, okay?”

“Yeah,” his foiled father said, a note of resignation in his voice. “Okay.”

Paul was still downstairs and he walked out with his brother.

“Did you ever deliver to Pat’s Vending down in Providence?” Paul asked.

Michael looked up to his mother’s window as they walked across the street to his car. “A number of times. New candy and tonic machines, mostly.”

“They own a ton of cigarette machines too, in bars and strip joints. The owner’s son is going to take the Blue Ribbon load. He’ll get top dollar in the machines.”

“This won’t do your new boss Salezzi any good, will it?”

“Probably not.” Paul smiled and shrugged. “It’s a tough game.”

At 6 a.m. on Wednesday, Rosie the dispatcher handed Michael the BPM delivery papers. “You get our first load from this shipper, Mosely. Try not to screw it up.”

Michael walked out of the terminal into the truck yard and climbed up into his tractor, a spotless red U-model Mack. He turned the key to the on position and pushed in the black rubber nipple on the dash, kicking the diesel to life. At the top of the long sideview mirror he saw dull gray smoke roll out of the stack. He fed the noisy beast some fuel, and the smoke, now thinned by heat, shot out of the pipe. He pushed in the clutch, wiggled the stick into second, and, with the heel of his hand, whacked the pentagonal red button on the dash. With a sharp whoosh, the tractor brake was off and so was he, over to the trailer pad, searching for the right trailer, number 5432. There were five rows of trailers, about a hundred in all, but the high-value load would be in the first row. He found it, turned the truck away from it, and stopped fast, skidding the eight tires on the rear axles. He looked at the three mirrors while he wiggled the stick into reverse, took a bead on the trailer, and rushed the tractor backwards at the box. He stopped when the fifth wheel was about an inch from the bottom of the trailer. He pulled out the red pentagon to lock the air brake, slipped the vehicle into neutral, opened the door, and swung himself out.

Standing on the grate at the back of the tractor, between the tractor and trailer, he unhooked the hoses for the trailer brakes and the light cord that hung on the back of the Mack, then coupled them with the connections on the trailer, swung back into the cab, popped it in reverse, and rammed the fifth wheel under the trailer. The box lifted as the Mack wedged underneath, the kingpin locked, and Michael put the stick in first gear, left the trailer brake on, and tried to pull back out from beneath the box. He rocked the coupled unit violently, trying to break the grip. The last thing he wanted was to make a turn out on the road and see the trailer uncouple and go zipping off alone. The trailer felt light, but he was used to pulling loads out of P &G; a full load of soap could weigh forty-two thousand pounds.

He switched on the lights and flashers and got out to do a series of visual checks, along with bopping the tires with a mallet, checking for flats. At the back of the trailer, he checked the security seal on the doors. To open the doors, the skinny metal strip had to be cut. It was stamped with a unique number that had already been called in to BPM security. The guard at BPM was supposed to come out to verify the seal number, but he wouldn’t have to today.

Michael walked toward the front of the box and rolled up the landing gear. He climbed into the Mack, slammed the stick into second, and punched the brake buttons. The brakes released with a great hiss, then he popped the clutch and the tractor roared and jumped ahead, slamming the driver’s door closed with a metallic bang, as the trailer slid out of its hole. He was in fourth gear by the time he swept around the corner of the building. At the far end of the yard the security gate was closed. He aimed at it, building speed and pulling on the air horn cord, and the gate seemed to jump before it rolled aside.

Thirty minutes later, Michael was stopped at a red light on Route 106. A hand reached in the open passenger window, pulled up the lock button, and TJ climbed in.

“There’s no seat here.” TJ crouched, like someone would be right along to bolt a seat to the floor underneath him.

“Close the door and sit on the floor. Get down, will ya!”

“People are supposed to see me so you can say you were hijacked.”

Michael had no answer to that, so he just glared straight ahead. The light turned green, the truck lurched, and the matter was resolved by TJ falling on his ass.

At Route 18, they headed south.

TJ stretched to see the sideview mirror. “Is Larry still behind us in the van?”

“Silly bastard is so close I can’t even see him,” Michael said. “It’s like he’s skid-hopping me.”

“Boy, you’re a real grouch. Is it because you’re hungover? Or not drinking?”

At the Middleboro Rotary they picked up Route 44 west and had the road almost to themselves.

“That the sign?” Michael took his foot off the accelerator.

“That’s it,” TJ affirmed. “Weir Brothers Saw Mill.”

Michael checked his mirrors, braked, then geared down the transmission and pressed the fuel pedal, swinging into the turn.

“Man, you took that fast. It’s a miracle you didn’t tip this over.”

“We were going too fast to slow down. You go into a turn on the brake and you wreck.”

They bumped along a wide asphalt road until it became a single-lane cement dust strip. At the end, in the middle of an enormous hangar wall, was a rusted corrugated sliding door, twenty feet high, forty feet wide.

“We’re supposed to drive right in.”

“I vote we open the door first,” Michael said. He rolled the truck up near the door and stopped.

“Paul said we should drive right in.”

“He may have assumed that between us we’d figure out what to do if the door was closed. I think we should try to open it first. I can always crash the truck through it, you know, if nothing else works.”

Thomas Jefferson Moran jumped out like a parachutist, landed, and walked toward the door, turning a 360 as he went, glancing in all directions. He grabbed the handle on the metal door with his right hand, leaned all the way to the left, using his weight to slide the door open. He almost fell when the door rolled easily. He turned and gave his accomplice the finger.

Michael put on his headlights to see a wide cement floor inside the hangar. He played the clutch out, and the truck crept inside, TJ walking along beside it. Michael hit the high beams and about a hundred yards off, at the back of the hangar, he could make out piles of unfinished picnic tables. He swung the steering wheel left and right, using the tractor like a giant flashlight, looking for the empty rental trailer that was supposed to have been left inside. Back in the van, Larry had lengths of metal rollers they were going to use to convey the freight from the Triple-T trailer to the rental box. But all Michael saw in front of him was the inside of a cavernous, abandoned saw mill.

Larry pulled the van inside the building, up near the front of the trailer. He stopped and was getting out when Michael jumped down from the tractor.

“Where’s the empty trailer?” Larry asked. “They were supposed to leave it by last night at the latest. What’s the story?”

“How would I know?” Michael answered.

“Should we just leave this trailer here?” TJ said. “Should we unload it?”

“I don’t know,” Michael snapped. He walked back to the trailer doors, took out a jackknife, and sawed at the seal until it broke. He opened the doors carefully in case the load had shifted. There was always a chance something could fall out and land on your head. But not today; the trailer looked almost empty, other than some cartons he could see in the nose. “Aw, shit.” Michael climbed in the trailer and walked up to the nose. When he returned, he went to the back end of the trailer and looked up at the number stenciled in black at the top inside corner. “Forty-five seventy?” he said.

He jumped down, grabbed the trailer door, pushed it closed, and stared at the four-digit number affixed to the door: 5432. He pulled at the corner of the number on the outside of the trailer door, peeled the decal off, and revealed a different number underneath: 4570.

“He put phony numbers on.”

“Who?” TJ asked. “How?”

“How’s easy. There’re cartons full of number decals in the repair shop.” Michael looked at his watch. “Let’s go. Quick.” He gestured to Larry. “Give me the van keys.”

Michael drove the van, Larry rode shotgun, and TJ sat on the floor between the seats.

“What was up in the front?” Larry asked.

“Eight pallets of Cocoa Puffs.”

Michael pulled the van into one of the spaces in the drivers’ parking lot at Triple-T Trucking.

“You gotta say something, man,” Larry mumbled. “What are we doing here?”

Michael looked at his watch. “Good. Five of 8.”

“So,” TJ said, “are we surrendering or what? You got a plan?”

Michael pointed toward the terminal building, a monstrosity the length of three football fields that had dock doors numbered 60 through 140 on the side facing them.

“See the ramp? And all those red Macks parked in rows? At 8, it’s going to look like a jail break. About fifty guys are going to come down that ramp, jump in those tractors, and start driving around, all over the yard. Some will hook up to trailers backed into the dock doors, the rest are headed to the trailer pad in the back to hook up out there. I’m going to go in the repair shop and get a dupe key from the cabinet. Jimmy, the Waltham driver, is on vacation this week and nobody will use his tractor. He eats his lunch in it and throws the bags on the floor. It smells like a restaurant dumpster.”

“Why? What are you doing?” Larry asked. “Why don’t we call Paul?”

“On what? You and him got shoe phones?”

“On a pay phone,” Larry said.

“Okay. Where is he? Where do I call?”

“I don’t get what we’re doing,” TJ said.

“These guys don’t screw around. If we want to keep breathing, we need those cigarettes.”

“What cigarettes? That’s my answer,” TJ said. “We don’t have none. Never did.”

“Which guys? Who we’re stealing from? Or selling to?” Larry asked.

“Both, probably,” Michael speculated.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” TJ said. “My grandmother was right. First time I got pinched, she said, ‘Thomas, be careful. Life’s going to be tricky for you because you’re a complete fuckin’ idiot.’ I said, ‘Me? No way.’ She had me pegged.”

“Why do you think the load is here?” Larry asked.

“What’s a better place to hide a forty-five-foot Triple-T trailer?” Michael said. “They’re on 4570. Not the real one, but one here with that number on it. Look, you want to, go home, I’ll keep you guys out of it.”

“Screw you,” Larry said. “We stick together.”

Larry looked at TJ, who closed his eyes and nodded. “It’s what we do.”

The receiving department for Pat’s Vending was around the back on a side street. Although cars were parked on both sides of the road, there were No Parking signs posted near the receiving doors so Michael had plenty of room to draw the trailer up along the curb. He pulled out the plunger on the dash and the engine shuddered and died. He turned the key off and jumped out.

The dock doors on the building were pulled down and a sign read, No Deliveries After 11 a.m.

At the top of the cement steps there was an employee entrance door. Michael pressed a black button inside a brass ring and a shrill bell sounded. He backed down a couple of steps just before the door flew open. There stood a tall, young man. Michael had delivered here many times, and this receiver, Victor, always acted as if he’d never seen him before. Victor sported his usual Sha Na Na get-up: starched white T-shirt, new jeans, and an elaborate hairdo.

“What?”

“I’ve got a delivery.”

“Can you read?” Victor jerked a thumb in the direction of the roll-up door and the No Deliveries sign.

“I sure can. Let me help you out.” Michael squinted at the sign and moved his lips. “It says, No Smoking. Okay now, Bowzer, you do me a favor. Go tell Junior I have his delivery.”

Victor shifted his weight to his left foot, reached up to grab the doorjamb with his left hand, and stretched his right out to grab the other jamb. Michael closed the distance between them and, using both hands, grabbed Victor high on his arms and pressed his thumbs into the nerves on the inside of Victor’s biceps. Michael pushed him inside the darkened warehouse while Victor emitted a series of high-pitched yips.

“You gonna boot me in the kisser?” Michael said. He grabbed the front of Victor’s T-shirt with two hands and twisted it hard to the right, and the man toppled to the side, almost to the floor. Michael held onto him, then lifted him back up and released his shirt. He pretended to smooth out Victor’s tee and dust him off.

“Now, Victor,” Michael smiled and patted him on the cheek, “go get Junior, or so help me God I’ll muss up your swirly hairdo.”

He shoved Victor backwards, just as another man came out into the warehouse from the office. This man had a confused and unhappy look on his face. “Hey, what’s going on? Who is this guy?”

“I’m Michael Mosely and you’re Junior. I have a delivery for you.”

“Oh no. No. You didn’t bring them here.” He ran to the exit door and looked out. “Is that them? Tell me you didn’t. Mr. T. is on his way here. We’re all dead.”

“Give me our money. I’ll drop the trailer. You can give it back to Mr. T.,” Michael said.

“No!” Junior raised his hands in the surrender pose. “No. I’ll give you the hundred I promised your brother, I have the cash, but you gotta screw, with the truck.”

“Okay. Get the money.”

“No, get out of here and come back later.”

“And what, you’ll give me a check?” Michael said.

Junior walked over to a tall, gray metal desk against the wall, opened a drawer, and pulled a pistol out. He pointed it at Michael. “Get going. Move.”

Michael walked down the steps, over to the tractor, with Junior right behind him. Michael opened the door to the tractor and turned. “Where do you want it?”

“Take off, or I’ll shoot you where you stand,” Junior said.

“Don’t be hasty. I’ll get the trailer out of here after I get the money. My pals in the van across the street there have guns pointed right back at you.”

Junior kept his weapon on Michael and pivoted around in a half-circle. The back door of the van was open. TJ and Larry were inside on the floor with pistols aimed at Junior.

At that moment, a bright yellow Lincoln Continental came around the corner and rolled to a stop right beside Junior and Michael. The rear window on the driver’s side slid down to display a very old man who looked as if he had been poured into the folds of the leather seat. He had an inert, baggy face, and the thin, wispy hair of a newborn.

“Junior, is that my driver you’re menacing with a firearm?”

The Lincoln driver’s tinted window stayed closed. The engine burbled, and Michael imagined a couple of slicked-down gorillas in the front seat pointing their guns at Larry and TJ.

“We’re just kidding around, Mr. Tortello,” Junior said. He bent down and looked in the backseat. “I didn’t know until late last night these cigarettes were yours. I called Pop to ask him what I should do.”

“Your father called me from Atlanta, Junior. He’s green-lighted you, if I feel I’ve been insulted. You weren’t trying to insult me by stealing from me, were you?”

“Goodness no, Mr. T.” He put his hand on his collarbone and raised his eyes skyward. “I would never.”

“Is that my load of cigarettes?”

“Yes sir, it is,” Junior said.

“How much money do you have inside?” Mr. T. asked.

“I don’t know exactly. Maybe two hundred thousand.”

“How much were you going to pay this fella?”

“A hundred. But honestly, Mr. T., I had no idea-”

“A salesman from my company offers you a hot truck and you didn’t ask yourself if it could be mine?” Mr. T. shook his head. “Sadly, Junior, I believe you. Do you know why? Because it’s a well-known fact you’re an imbecile. Your poor father is in prison because you’re an imbecile, but why should I do his dirty work? He can kill you himself when he gets out. Go in and get my money, Junior.”

“Absolutely. How much should I get?”

“All of it. Take whatever cash your employees have on them too. You can reimburse them later.”

“You bet, Mr. T.” Junior ran over, vaulted up the cement stairs, and passed by Victor, who was holding the door open.

Mr. T. looked at the driver in the front seat of his car. “Help me get out.”

The driver’s door opened and a skinny, older blond woman in a chauffeur suit hopped out and opened the back door. She helped Mr. T. peel himself off the seat and pulled him to his feet, then edged him toward her and closed the car door with her knee. She leaned him against the car like a board and fixed his tie. His trousers were pulled up so high that his belt practically bisected his shirt pocket. It didn’t look like he was wearing a pair of pants, as much as it looked like they were devouring him. The blonde stood at his elbow.

“You’re Mosely’s brother? Your father worked for us too. The three of you were there when we bought the Boston operation from Blaney,” Mr. T. said.

“Yeah, until your terminal manager fired him for poor production. A sixty-two-year-old guy.”

“Well, that stinks. But in our defense, he’s a drunk, right?” Mr. T. asked.

“He used to be. He’s in AA now, so he’s an alcoholic.”

“Well, your brother never said this was about revenge.”

“It is for me,” Michael replied.

“I cannot respect suicidal stupidity for purposes of money,” Mr. T. said. “But I can for revenge, especially on behalf of a father. Very much so. Tonya, tell Chuck and Brucie to pull the other Mosely out of the trunk.”

Michael felt like he’d been bitten by an electric eel.

“Relax. He’s fine,” Mr. T. said. “He said he didn’t know where the load was so he’s been manhandled a little. He’ll need to be delumped before he goes looking for a new job.”

Two very large men got out on the passenger side of the Lincoln, front and rear. Over the roof of the car, Michael saw Larry and TJ get their toy weapons up, as if ready to squirt water at the two goons. Tonya keyed the trunk open and a bloody Paul, bound and gagged, was lifted out. He was conscious and he looked extremely pissed off.

The men set Paul on his feet and one produced a switchblade to cut the rope around his legs and wrists. The other guy peeled the tape off his face. Even the sound of it hurt, but Paul was silent.

“See, Paul,” Mr. T. said, “this is why I have a rule. No cigarettes or liquor. They are just too tempting a target for shenanigans.”

Paul said nothing, and Larry and TJ came over to help him back to the van. Paul got in, and the other two turned to keep an eye on Chuck and Brucie.

“In case you’re wondering,” Mr. T. said, “you’re fired too.”

“Okay, but now I really need that hundred thousand. Then I’ll go quietly.”

“Why would I pay you? We’re going to deliver the cigarettes this afternoon,” Mr. T. said.

“No, you’re not. You’d have called the cops. Instead you switched the numbers so I got the wrong box. You’re stealing it too. Your plan was to keep the smokes, file a claim with the insurance company. They’ll pay Blue Ribbon for the missing butts.”

“You’re a shrewd one. When Raymond called last night, I thought this was a chance to make lemonade from lemons. Brucie was going to take the real cigarette trailer out of the yard after the 8 o’clock driver rush was over. But he couldn’t find it, so we figured out where Paul was making a sales call and picked him up. But he didn’t know anything, so he said. Now Brucie will take this truck down to Jersey. We’ll sell the cigarettes there. Cigarettes are way too tempting. But I promised myself I’d just have one.”

“Famous last words,” Michael said.

“And I’m entitled to collect a fine from Junior. Sounds like it will be about two hundred thousand.”

“May I suggest a way to make an additional fifty grand?” Michael asked.

“Please do.”

“Keep the tractor and trailer down in Jersey, put new numbers on them, and file a claim for lost equipment.”

“You are a smart kid. You’ll go far, if someone doesn’t kill you first.”

“I know it won’t be you,” Michael said.

“How do you know that?”

“You need me to talk to the insurance company so you can get your claim paid. You don’t want to have to pay Blue Ribbon out of your pocket. If I’m found dead right after talking to the FBI and the insurance men, that won’t be good.”

“I like the cut of your jib, mister.”

“Aw shucks,” Michael said. “I’m just helping you have a productive day.”

“It is a good idea to stay busy at my age,” Mr. T. said.

“Yeah? I figured a guy your age would rather be home praying for a peaceful death.”

Mr. T. barked two sharp sounds to indicate mirth. “Ha! Ha! I like that.”

“So don’t I,” Michael said.

“That sounds like a Boston thing.” Mr. T. turned and looked at his three people. “Wait in the car.” He gestured for Michael to come closer. “I feel bad about your father. I’m glad he’s off the booze. I’ll give you fifty thousand when Junior gets back. Give some to your pop.”

When they got back to North Quincy, Larry dropped the brothers at their parents’ house. Paul was going to clean up and they were going to borrow the old man’s car to get back to the Triple-T parking lot to pick up Michael’s GTO.

Michael started up the front stairs with the bag of money for his father under his left arm.

“Hey,” Paul said, “my back is sore. Give me a hand going up the stairs.”

Michael went back down, and Paul draped his arm over his shoulders. After a moment’s thought, Michael handed Paul the bag of cash, reached up and took his brother’s left hand in his, then slipped his right arm around Paul’s waist and helped him up the stairs.

Their father came out of the house and held open the screen door. “What happened?” he asked.

The brothers made it up to the porch and the door clapped shut behind them.

“It got a little rough,” Paul said, “but I got you some money from Tortello.” Paul handed the bag to his father and smiled at his brother. “Mikey helped too.”