The Hard Bounce

Chapter Thirteen

By the time I tracked down Underdog, the sky had gone purple, Kenmore Square filling up with Sox fans heading to a night game, the Fenway lights giving an eerie glow in the night sky behind The Cellar. Audrey said I had just missed him and he might have gone to Wolf’s Grill. I called Wolf’s, but nobody picked up. I took a cab over to Wolf’s. No Underdog. I realized I hadn’t eaten since Ollie’s. I ordered some ribs and asked the waitress if she’d seen Dog. She said he was headed to The Cellar or The Model. I called The Model. He wasn’t there, but they had a good idea where he might be. This went on for the better part of two hours. Eight calls to various bars and two call backs later, I finally reached him back at The Cellar.

“Hey, Boo. How’s it going?”

“I gotta talk to you, Dog. It looks like you might be needed on this thing after all.” I’d barely touched the ribs. Maybe the pile of sauce-slathered, meaty bones was hitting my psyche too close to home after what I’d seen.

“Oh. Okay.” He didn’t sound eager to help. He’d weighed it all against his fear of Danny the Bull and come up short. “Where are you?”

“I’m at Wolf’s”

“That’s weird. I was just there.”

“Listen, Dog. I gotta talk to you ASAP.”

“Well, I can just wait for you here.”

“No. I don’t want to talk about it there. You got a place?”

“You mean away from prying ears?”

“Ears, eyes, tongues, and anything else you can think of.”

“Let me think…” A soft, grating sound came out of the phone as Underdog scratched his stubble in thought. “Hows about you meet me at the pier right by the aquarium? You know which one I’m talking about?”

“That’ll work.”

“An hour okay?

“See you in an hour.” I hung up.

I chain-smoked during the wait. The hunger still roared in my stomach, and my recent sleeplessness was catching up to me. My eyelids felt like someone had glued a pair of bricks to them. A misty breeze blew off the harbor and moistened every surface around me. When I’d first arrived, I’d sat on the concrete ledge of the pier and gotten rewarded with a soggy ass.

So I paced and I smoked. Once in a while I mixed it up and smoked, then paced. Except for the soft red glow of the cherry, it was nearly pitch dark by the aquarium, the light swallowed by the fog. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. I remembered a dolphin statue somewhere, but I couldn’t see it. One of my most vivid memories of my mother was of her waddling around the sculpture, chasing me and quacking penguin noises while I laughed and ran from her.

Part of me was glad I didn’t see the statue. The memory was beginning to fill me with shame for who that kid became.

A voice snapped me back from my childhood. “Boo? Where are you?” Dog’s voice carried well on the misty air, and I could see his silhouette on the border of the well-lit world.

“At the pier,” I called back. “Right where you said to meet you.”

“Shit, it’s dark.” He was hugging himself, shivering against a cold that wasn’t there. I kept the observation to myself.

Underdog gave the area a quick look over. “So… what’s up?”

I took one last drag on the dying cigarette and ground it out under my shoe. The tip sizzled on the damp ground. Bright cinders danced a ballet in the breeze. “We’re close to ending this.”

“That’s great.” Then he realized there wasn’t an ounce of great in my statement. “Isn’t it?”

“She’s dead. Snake killed her. Me and Junior saw it on a video.”

“Wh-what?”

“It’s a snuff video. Snake’s moved up from kiddie porn into blood-freak theater.”

“That stuff’s mostly urban legend, Boo. Most of that shit is faked. Buncha twisted fucks looking for a quick buck in the loony market.”

I shook my head at him. “Most is not all. I saw it, Dog. Shit wasn’t faked.”

Underdog looked away toward the Harbor. “Bastard… that fucking bastard,” he said softly.

“We’re getting close to him.” I lit another cigarette. I was still pacing, but I’d slowed it down to a conversational speed.

“When you do, call me. Do you still have the video? I’ll have Vice on his ass like-” Then, quietly, “Shit. It’s Homicide now, isn’t it?”

I shook my head again. “He’s gone. We find him, nobody else does. Not Vice. Not Homicide. Nobody.”

Before he could respond, a yellow flashlight beam caught me right in the eyes, blinding me. I held up my hand to cut the glare, but flash burn still coated my vision. Peering through my fingers, I could see a pair of silhouettes slowly walking toward us. The saunter spelled cops, even at fifty paces.

“Whatcha doing out here, boys? Aquarium’s closed.” The arrogance of authority rang in the voice.

My eyes adjusted, and I could make out the pair. Two young cops. Younger than me.

“We’re just talking, officers,” Underdog said.

“You sure?” the other one said. He was smaller than the first and that much cockier. “Because it looks like you two are up to something, lurking around in the dark here.”

As they got closer, I could see the taller one was blond, a wispy cop moustache over a thin mouth. The shorter one had a dark buzz cut and power-lifter muscles under a generous layer of fat. Both wore matching sneers.

“There a law against conversation?” I asked.

“On closed property there is.”

“Hey,” the shorter one said. “Maybe the crackhead was just about to suck off big boy’s dick, here. Maybe we interrupted a date?”

“That right?” the other asked. “You two faggots about to exchange a little kneel and bob?”

“Actually, we were waiting for your dad to show up,” I said.

“You fucking-” The little one was reaching for his club when Underdog jammed his own badge halfway up his nose.

“I know you’re an idiot, but I assume you can read.” Brendan Miller had made a sudden appearance-one that probably saved me a long sentence at Cedar Junction.

The taller one’s face blanched as he looked at the ID. “Oh. Oh! We’re sorry, Detective. We didn’t…” He couldn’t seem to find a satisfactory way to finish his sentence.

The muscle midget scowled and gave the card a once-over, like he was expecting a fake. Even in the dark, I saw his color turn three shades of green before he swallowed hard. “Yeah. We were just… We didn’t…”

“You didn’t what?” There was a real edge in Dog’s voice. “You didn’t know you were interrupting a ranking officer’s conversation?”

“No sir, we didn’t.” The taller one had completely lost his swagger. The smaller one still looked fit to bust, but was keeping himself under control. I debated patting him on the top of the head, but as far as the totem pole of power went, I was still at the bottom of the present quartet.

Underdog poked the tall one in the chest with his loaded finger. “So, in the event that I was not a detective, you two assholes saw fit to verbally abuse and possibly assault a pair of citizens.”

“There have been trespasses by graffiti vandals.” The short one’s voice had started to whine.

“Shut your mouth, Pee-Wee,” Underdog said. “Obviously you didn’t see us tagging the wharf, so you and your excuses can kiss my hairy ass.” Underdog was only a few inches taller, but the dig worked. The midget deflated, punctured by Dog’s tone. “What district are you idiots out of? A-1?”

“Yes sir,” they said simultaneously.

“Larson’s your captain, then?”

The two exchanged a quick, nervous glance. “Yes sir,” in unison again.

“All right. Unless you two want a disciplinary phone call made to Captain Larson in the morning, you’re going to head back to your car and fuck off.”

“Yes sir,” in unison one more time, heads hung like a pair of beaten puppies. They turned to go.

“And put on your goddamn hats. You officers are out of uniform.”

They flinched at the last comment and walked off. In the distance, I saw them both put their hats on the second they climbed into their cruiser.

“Damn, Dog. That was tight.”

“And you-” He spun on me, the same loaded finger trained right in my face this time. “Did you just tell me that you and Junior are going to kill off this Snake character when you find him?”

“You didn’t see that DVD, Dog. He cut her fucking throat. You didn’t watch that little girl die. I did. So did Junior.”

“You know what, Boo? You know I’m a loser.” He jammed his finger hard into his own bony chest. “I know I’m a fucking loser. But I am still an officer of the goddamn law. And you just confessed to me intent to murder. Murder, Boo!”

“You want to see it? I’ll fucking show it to you. Watch the video. You decide whether this cocksucker deserves to die or not.”

“I don’t want to watch it,” he said. “And it’s not up to you or me to decide. Get this guy. Turn him in. You’ve got evidence.”

“No way. No way am I trusting this guy to the system.”

“Bullshit, Boo! Bullshit! More often than not, it does work.”

“But sometimes it doesn’t.”

Dog sighed and turned away from me. “If the law is so ass-backward in your estimation, if we’re such fuck-ups on my side of the fence, what do you want from me?”

“If push comes to shove? I want your alibi.”

Underdog huffed a short, sharp laugh, but he still didn’t look at me. “Why? Because my alibi just might hold a little weight because I’m a cop?”

“Well, yeah.”

Dog turned his head slightly to me, but he was still unable or unwilling to look at me. “You are some piece of work, Boo Malone. Really. A piece of work.” With that, he walked off.

I’d gambled on Underdog. On his support. I was a fool to do so. But it still didn’t change a thing.

As I walked back toward Haymarket and the Green T line, a movement caught my attention out the corner of my eye.

Deep in shadow, stood The Boy.

He looked up, one small hand touching the dolphin sculpture.