"How much you into the Florist for?"
The crash of the guy's face. From lighthearted generosity to dead-eyed fear. He looked around, said quietly, "You're not supposed to have any contact with me."
"Don't vary your routine next Monday morning," Doug told him. "Not one iota."
The guy glanced at the grounds crew, the empty stands behind him. "I was not to be approached."
"The cops're going to approach you. They'll be approaching everyone, after. You ready to sit for a lie detector?"
The guy stared at Doug: a proud man in a panic, in deep debt to the Florist, nothing left to bargain with except his life. He turned and walked off underneath the stands, and Doug saw, as clear as the seams on a Wakefield knuckler, that the Florist would off this guy as soon as the job was done.
* * *
ROOM 224 WAS IN the rear center of the block-deep, two-story Howard Johnson Hotel. With no direct sun and no cheerful amenities-- just a humming TV, a mismatched chair and table, a stiff, yarny rug, a phone-booth shower, and a creaky double bed-- the second-floor room was a suicide's dream. Doug drew open the stiff, ratty curtain on a patchwork window with one pane tinted rose-- and looked out across Van Ness Street to the southern exterior brick wall of Fenway Park.
Fenway resembled a factory on that side, a long block of red brick and steel with small square windows made of glass as opaque as blocks of ice. Six old bay doors were widely spaced along the length of the wall, each painted green, all unlabeled except the one directly across the street from Doug's window, the last before the canvas-lined fence of the players' parking lot. Beneath a candle lamp with a red warning bulb, small, stenciled white letters on the green door read AMBULANCE.
Doug changed out of Dez's shirt and went right back outside again, crossing Boylston Street against the traffic, the hotel equidistant between the ballpark and the Fenway Gardens.
He walked slowly to her gate. The vitality of the summer flowers stood in stark contrast to the cut stems that littered the Florist's cooler tomb. Weeds were beginning to sprout in the neglected flower beds. Doug looked at the impatiens planted near his buried stash, ragged and thirsty and threatened by encroaching spearmint, wondering when she would return.
* * *
DOUG SPENT THE EVENING in the suicide room, watching the park's comings and goings before game time. The red bulb lit up two hours before the first pitch, the door rising and the ambulance backing carefully inside. Every bay door lifted in the eighth inning, the crowd soon flooding out onto Van Ness after a satisfying win, slow to disperse. The ambulance pulled away around the same time as the last of the players drove off in their Blazers and Infinitis, the red lamp going dark. The light towers above the park faded out a half hour later, and then it was just the homeless trawling for cans, pushing their shopping carts to nowhere.
* * *
THAT NIGHT HE DREAMED he was crushed beneath the rear wheels of an armored truck, twelve tons cutting him in half. But it was not Frank G. removing his fireman's helmet to take Doug's hand-- it was the bank sleuth, Frawley, his federal eyes smiling.
* * *
A HORN BLAST FROM a passing truck woke him that morning-- lying across the made bed, still wearing yesterday's clothes. He checked the clock, got up to take a piss, then pulled a chair to the window and waited.
At 9:17 the red lamp went bright. The ambulance door opened as a silver Provident Armored can with twin rear doors pulled up, turning toward Doug before stopping and backing into the narrow bay. Doug saw the two guards in the cab, and knew that, given the size of the haul, a third had to be riding the jump seat inside the locked cargo hold. He noticed one other critical detail, getting a clear look down at their faces, shoulders, and chests from his second-floor window: neither guard wore ear wires. No need, he reasoned, given that the exchange took place behind locked doors.
The can backed inside and the bay door closed. The red light above the closed door remained on.
A second car, a black Suburban, pulled up onto the curb on Van Ness, stopping just to the right of the closed door and idling there. Doug watched the driver, apparently the only occupant, speaking into a handheld radio.
A tail car. This complicated things.
At 9:31 the ambulance door lifted again and the can rolled out, turning toward Yawkey and pulling away. As the bay door started to close, the black Suburban eased off the curb, following the truck, and Doug curled farther back from the window as it passed. The red lamp over the closed bay door went dark just as the lamp inside Doug's criminal mind clicked on, suddenly illuminating the job before him.
46
Thirst
D
OUG TOOK THE ORANGE line out to the Community College stop and walked up the hill toward Pearl. The dilapidated house leaning on the slant looked a hundred years older since he'd last seen it. His Caprice and Jem's blue Flamer were parked in front.
He slipped inside through the unrepaired front door. Above all else he wanted to avoid seeing Krista. Up in his apartment, he went around filling his father's old army sack with clothes. The only black shoes he owned were the pinching pair he had bought for his date with Claire, so he threw them in. When he realized he would never again return to the house, he made another quick, final pass. A convict's personal possessions-- few in number, weighted with significance-- took on a totemic quality, and Doug had, over time, winnowed his meaningful totems down to exactly one. From the bottom drawer of his bureau, he pulled out his original draft letter, typed on Boston Bruins letterhead stationery and pressed in a clear plastic sleeve, slipping it into the bag.
On his way back out, Doug paused on the steps below the second-floor landing. Jem's door lock and frame remained busted. Doug walked back up, set his laundry bag down in the hall, and rapped a knuckle on Jem's door.
"It's open," he heard, and stepped inside. He started toward the game room, but Jem's voice-- "Down here"-- turned him around, brought him into the bright front parlor.
Jem wore a pit-stained, V-neck undershirt and black-and-gold, smiley-face boxers as he worked on the triple-decker dollhouse. He was interior-decorating it now, having pasted in old wallpaper swatches and tiny curtains, furnishing it in miniature, even sitting a thin wooden Krista doll at the bottom-floor dining room table. Except for the empty third floor, the dollhouse was room-for-room an exact replica, inside and out.
Jem had just finished his stereo and speakers-- meticulous, down to the brand names, equalizer bars, tiny knobs-- and was at work on his entertainment-center TV. "Heard you walking around up there," he said without turning.
"Yeah," said Doug. "Clothes."
A bottle of Budweiser stood open on the table, soaking another ring into the ruined oak. "Where you been?"
"Working this thing," said Doug, pulling his eyes away from the Bud. "It's coming together."
"Good to hear. You walking the can guards home at night?"
"No," said Doug. "I don't do that anymore."
Jem put the tiny TV down to dry. "Tools are set," he said, making a gun of his thumb and forefinger. "Got our armor. No masks needed with the uniforms."
"Gloansy get Joanie to clean those yet?"
In the summer of 1993, Gloansy had worked as a driver on the set of one of the all-time worst motion pictures ever made, a Boston bomb-squad movie called
Blown Away
. The klepto had come through big time on that production, nabbing four cop uniforms out of a dressing room trailer, complete with badges, belts, and hats. Everything but the shoes. The costumes were so authentic that the theft was reported in the papers the next day, and Gloansy was questioned along with the rest of the film crew. He stashed the uniforms in his mother-in-law's attic, where they had been cooling until that week.
"I got yours here," said Jem. "He had his bride do a little tailoring on them, so make sure your pants don't have three legs. And he still needs to know what we want for a work car."
"Tell him I got that covered. Built into the gig."
Jem nodded without questioning it. They were quiet then, each pondering their uneasy truce. "Heard you're thinking about leaving."
"Maybe. Yeah."
Jem nodded. "Only asking 'cause I need to know whether I should put you in on the third floor here or not. Shyne, you know-- I don't want her wondering who that guy's supposed to be up there, if there's no Uncle Duggy living upstairs anymore."
Jem had even included the roof wires he used to steal his cable. "I'm done," Doug told him. "And if this job falls the way it should, it's your time to step away too. A walk-off home run."
Jem considered this, eyeing his house. "Yeah, maybe you're right."
"Things do change, man. Nothing wrong with that."
"No, sure."
"We had a fucking amazing run. By any standard."
"Yo, we
set
the standard."
"The Florist, if you keep going back to him-- kid, the guy's a pimp like that. He'll keep turning you out till you get bounced for good."
Jem scowled, and Doug saw that Jem was just shining him on.
"Other thing I have to say to you is, the weight of this take, all the variables involved-- you should pack a parachute. We all should. In case things don't go smooth."
"Nah," Jem said. "It's gonna go great."
"It is. But in
case
."
Jem shook his head. "I don't see me running. If I have to stay away a little while, let things cool down, whatever-- yeah, fine. But I don't see it."
Doug turned to the windows, chilled by Jem's faith in an unchanging future. He'd build the entire Town in miniature if he could, and sit in this same room, playing the pieces forever.
"Still out there?" said Jem.
Doug looked down to the gray van with twin antennas and tinted windows parked a few houses down the slope. "Still there."
"Dumb fucks," snorted Jem, reaching for his beer and taking a hard swig. "It's gonna go awesome, man. Fucking awesome."
* * *
THE AREA SURROUNDING A Major League ballpark is a minefield for a recovering alcoholic. Doug's own hotel had a baseball-themed lounge out front, and he sat there now, alone at a small table by the darkened windows, two hours before game time, watching fellow ticket-holders tanking up. On the wall near him hung an unlit Bud Man sign, the red-masked "super-beer-o" of the 1970s. When the waitress came by, Doug said, "Bud draft," and it was like flexing his muscles at the beach.
Let's see how strong I am.
Frank G. always said,
Never walk into a tavern or a liquor store, especially alone.
But sometimes fate had to be tempted. Sometimes you had to walk right back up to the edge of that cliff, just to remind yourself what it had felt like lying at the bottom.
The beer arrived in a short glass, set upon a cocktail napkin like a supplicant on a prayer mat. Doug looked down at the thin brew, held a little powwow with it, then rejected it as unworthy. A vow was only as strong as its greatest temptation, and this was not enough. He threw three crumpled dollar bills at the table and emerged sinless into the all-knowing, all-seeing light of day.
He crossed the street again to the gardens. He walked to her gate and saw that she had still not been back. A few fallen leaves lay around her beds now, like dead thoughts in an idle mind. Something small-mouthed and busy had been chewing on her herbs.
After leaving Jem that morning, he had humped his laundry sack over the hill to the Boys and Girls Club, just to give fate a chance. But he didn't see her there and didn't go inside. Instead, he hailed a cab and directed it up Packard Street and the alley behind there one last time. The purple Saturn with the
Breathe!
bumper sticker was back in its parking space. When the cab drove out of City Square, Doug looked back one last time, determined never to return to the Town again.
* * *
FRIDAY NIGHT, THEY STROLLED the caves of iron and stone beneath the stands, Doug and Dez, now in the company of packs of hungry, bladder-heavy fans.
The bored detail cop stood inside the short hallway between the open Employees Only door and the heavier door to the money room. Doug and Dez cruised it five or six times in the anonymity of the grazing crowd, getting familiar with the layout but learning nothing new.
The ambulance sat inside the closed bay door at the first aid station, a pair of EMTs sitting on the metal backstep, chatting up two girls. Doug's eye followed the tracks the door rose on, finding the manual on/off switch for the outside red lamp.
Concession lines ran ten and twelve deep, stretching back to the relish bowls and squirt tubs, condiment droppings spotting the stone floor like bat shit. Money was changing hands everywhere and Doug should have been thrilled. Red-visored girls tissuing out pretzels and milking soft-serve vanilla into collectible batting-helmet cups, kids jumping up and down with their pennants and posters and machine-signed team pictures, hassled dads pulling green from their wallets. Yellow-shirted snack hawkers humping empty drink racks and metal hot-dog boxes to a busy side room near Gate D, emerging moments later with a full whack and marching back out to the stands. And it was hot that night, nineties and humidity predicted all weekend, what Red Sox Nation called a
