scawcha,
perfect for moving ice cream bars and Cokes.
But all this chewing and spending he viewed through a filter of disgust. The swine and their swill. He sidestepped a lump of cheesy nachos on the floor that looked like someone had shat them there and kept on moving, then ducked into the men's room to take a leak at the trough. The ballpark seemed to him a factory of shit and piss and cash. At root, the business of baseball was no better or different from the movies or from church: put on a show, promise people something transcendent, and then bleed the suckers dry.
They took their seats again in the sixth, just back of the right-field pole. A foul ball arced high over their heads, slowing at the top of its ascent like a fire-work shell about to explode, bloom, and twinkle away, then drifted back over the roof boxes out onto Van Ness. The fans groaned and sat back down, except for Doug and Dez, who had never stood.
Doug was hunched over a bag of peanuts, shelling one after another. Some asshole had kicked over a beer two rows back, the stain spreading like urine under Doug's seat. He dropped the cracked shells down there to soak up the spill, the same way the peanuts absorbed the saliva flooding Doug's mouth. He would never give in for a Fenway beer.
Thinking about drinking now was like fantasizing about the perfect crime. How he would do it--
if
he were going to do it.
A halfhearted wave came by, fans rising and falling in a ripple around them, Dez and Doug again keeping their seats. Dez said, "And I used to think the beach-ball thing was annoying."
Doug muttered, "Fucking retards."
Dez checked him. "What's up? You been pissed all night."
Doug frowned, shook it off. "Thought I could lose myself in the prep, but it's not happening. I'm like borderline okay when I'm focused on the job."
"Otherwise?"
Doug cracked another peanut shell. "This thing can't happen fast enough for me."
"You always said, Duggy-- no marquee scores."
Doug nodded. "That is what I always said."
"And never be greedy."
"Right."
Dez looked him over. "Is it the girl?"
Doug shook his head. "Girl's gone, man."
"That's what I'm talking about."
"It's the Florist, it's the G-- it's fucking everything."
Dez watched him working the peanuts. "They don't bake fortunes in those things, you know."
Doug spread his hands and saw the heap of cracked shells between his work boots, kicking it over like the mound of trash that was his life. The smell of piss-water beer assailed him from all sides, but especially from the guy in the brand-new Red Sox ballcap sitting next to him.
"Dezi, man, listen. I've been thinking it over, and this one's not for you. There's no tech on this job, nothing cute. It's us walking in the front door with guns in our hands. Something goes wrong, it could get messy. I'm serious."
Dez looked at him. "You think I can't-- "
"The other two, I couldn't talk them off it if I tried. Wouldn't waste my breath. I told Jem this morning to pack a bag just in case, he didn't even hear me. But you. You know better. And I'm the one who got you into this thing. Dez-- you know I used you, right? I mean, in the beginning."
"I-- sure."
"'Cause I'm a piece of shit that way. 'Cause it was all about the job then, and nothing else. But now you're my responsibility, and I can't have that on me, okay? Because things are ending. You don't wanna be in business with the Florist anyway. Think of your dad."
Dez looked out at the field. "I
been
thinking about him. Probably too much."
"Fuck the Florist. Guy's a relic. Once he goes down, the whole Town goes. All the old ways."
Dez said, staring out at the field, "Someone's got to get him."
"Forget about that. Hey." Doug punched him in the shoulder. "I don't even want to hear that from you."
Dez shook his head. "I'm not backing out now, Duggy. Even if I wanted to, see? Which I don't. And besides-- you couldn't pull this off with just three guys."
"Easily."
"You lie. You're full of bullshit, and I don't like this, Duggy. You look desperate. And everything you taught me, everything you're about, says that's the wrong way to go into this."
"Then gimme your out. Steer clear."
"Fine, I'll walk. When you do."
"Cut that shit out now." Doug cracked his last peanut shell, then crumpled the bag and threw it to the floor. "See, I am desperate. My life right now-- fuck it. Two or three weeks ago, I could have walked away, come out way ahead. Now, I need this. Makes me sick, this whole thing-- Fergie, the G-- fuck them all. But I'm not leaving here without nothing. I thought one big final stake would free everybody, but Jem's not gonna stop. Gloansy, neither. It was just my fantasy. But you-- you got your thing going, you got your job, your ma to take care of."
"Is there something about this job you're not telling me?"
"What I'm telling you is that you should walk. You're clear right now. Me? I'm a point down, I got no choice but to pull my goalie from the net, go for a last-minute score. I gotta finance my walkaway. This is the only way I know how."
The crowd surged around them again, jumping up-- then diving out of the way of a screaming foul ball.
"The fuck-- !"
A splash of wet into Doug's lap. Coldness soaking his chest through his shirt, running down his arms.
The guy next to him righted himself, standing, his beer cup dripping empty in his hand.
"Oh, Christ!" he said, the MLB hologram-logo tag dangling off his ballcap. "
Shit,
I'm sorry about that. Let me get some napkins, let me buy you something-- "
Doug got to his feet and slammed the guy in the face. The guy went over backward into the row behind them, his brand-new hat popping off his head.
Doug continued to whale on him until someone hooked up Doug's arms-- Dez-- practically climbing onto Doug's back to stop him. Everyone shouting, no one making sense, Doug ready to turn and start fighting Dez.
Only the sight of the kid made him stop. Eight years old, sitting in the next seat over, frozen in fear. Also wearing a new ballcap. The guy's son.
Doug shook off Dez and slid past the cowering kid into the aisle, ducking quickly down the ramp into the caves just as blue security shirts arrived on the scene. He walked out the first open gate he could find and started running when he hit the street-- trying to escape the odor of piss-beer rising off him, the stink watering his eyes.
47
Getaway
A
FTER THE GAME, THERE was a party two doors down from his, and Doug lay across his bed, hearing the music, the laughter in the hallway, the late-night splashing in the hotel pool. He busied his mind by cooking up a grand scheme to implicate the Florist in the heist, while at the same time cutting him out of the split-- with the double cross forcing the four of them into permanent exile from the Town, thereby saving them all. It was a plan both vengeful and heroic, but he grew tired working out the particulars, falling asleep happy. When he woke up Saturday morning, the scheme's logic fell apart like wet tissue in his hands.
The one dream he remembered was him watching the lottery drawing on his hotel-room TV, Claire Keesey in a sparkling lottery-girl gown pulling four zeros in a row from the ball machine, matching the ticket in Doug's hand.
He paced, trying to keep himself holed up inside the room and away from trouble. All the time now he was thinking about that crappy baseball lounge in front of the hotel. Everything still so open-ended. The getaway he had set up for the job was a good one, maybe even a great one-- but he still had no getaway plan for himself. No getaway from the Town.
He slipped out the rear hotel entrance at the end of the hall and did a circuit around the park's perimeter. He told himself it was just light recon, passing Boston Beer Works, Uno's, Bill's Bar, Jillian's. Anything could be endured, he thought, so long as it had a foreseeable end. What he needed now, and what he did not have, was a future worth being strong for. Suddenly it was obvious to him why he had been so reluctant to plan his getaway.
Doug heard the players being announced over the Fenway PA system as he returned to the gardens on his third or fourth pass in as many days. Her plot looked empty, and it was almost with relief that he turned away, only to catch a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye. He looked back and there she was, standing in the middle of her garden.
He gave himself no time to think or chicken out. His chest was a beehive as he walked to her gate, trampling his better judgment on the way, his mind telling him not to do this, his heart telling him he must.
She turned when the latch clinked. A floppy straw sun hat veiled her shocked expression, her bare limbs glowing in the afternoon sun. White T-shirt and jeans shorts, a pair of pruning shears in her gloved hands. Her knees smudged with dirt.
"Just let me say this."
She took one step backward, the pruning shears falling from her grip. She looked pained, scared-- this was what seeing him did to her now.
"I am hanging by a thread here," he said.
She looked at him as though he were a man she had murdered, returned from the grave.
"We can do this," he said. "We can, I know we can. We can make this work. If you want to. Do you want to?"
"Just please go."
"We met in a Laundromat. You were crying-- "
"We met inside the bank you were robbing-- "
"We met in a Laundromat. It's true if you believe it.
I
believe it. The rooftop, that first night? We are still those same two people."
"No, we're not."
"I took advantage of you. I admit that. And I would do it all over again, exactly the same, if it were my only chance to get close to you. Telling you I'm sorry for it now-- that would be a lie."
She was shaking her head.
"You want control over your life. You said that. You want to be in charge. I want to give you control over both our destinies. Everything about us, all in your hands."
The words were tumbling out. She was listening. Doug pointed to the light towers above Fenway Park, behind her.
"Monday," he said. "Two days from now. An armored truck will enter the ballpark to pick up receipts from this weekend's games. I'm going to be there."
She stared. Frozen. Appalled.
"I don't care anymore," said Doug. "About anything, except you. After this job, I am done. I am gone."
"Why tell me this?" She made fists of her hands at her sides. "Why are you
doing
this to me?"
"Frawley probably told you, what-- to report anything I say? Okay. What I just told you-- you could send me away forever. If you hate me, if you want me gotten rid of, that's the easiest way."
She shook her head, hard. He couldn't tell whether that meant she wouldn't report him, or didn't want the choice, or didn't want to hear any more.
"But if you don't," he said, "then come away with me. After. That's what I came here to ask you to do."
She was too shocked to speak.
"We'll ride out the statute of limitations together. Anywhere you want to go. Your 'if only.' "
A horse's snort interrupted. Doug heard hooves clopping and saw Claire's eyes track left and widen. A mounted policeman was trotting down the path toward them.
"You decide," Doug said, backing to the gate. "My future, our future-- it's all up to you."
He was outside her gate now, surging with devotion, the horse hooves clopping near.
"Doug-- " she started, but he cut her off.
"I'm at the Howard Johnson down the street." He told her the room number and the name. "Either turn me in or come away with me," he said, then started back toward the ballpark, back toward the job.
48
Night Crawlers
S
ATURDAY NIGHT FOUND FRAWLEY in a surv van down the block from the Magellan Armored Depot with a young agent on loan from the fraud squad named Cray. Dino had knocked off after the depot went dark at seven, the turnpike traffic overhead the slowest it had been in Frawley's week of watching, Cambridge Street giving over to the night crawlers shuttling back and forth between Allston and Cambridge, from bar to party to club. Cray, single like Frawley-- family men usually caught a break on weekends-- ran the radio awhile, a show called
X Night,
broadcast live and commercial-free from one of the dance factories on Landsdowne Street. A taste of what they were missing.
The crew's activity around the depot had slowed to a trickle. Magloan was there yesterday for two hours with dark sunglasses on, the bug in his car picking up snoring. Coughlin had cruised the depot exactly once, though the Pearl Street detail reported a lot of activity in and out of his house. Elden was the only constant, parking there for lunch every day-- even that day when he had switched work trucks, ditching their bug.
