Promised Land (20 page)

Chelsea is a shabby town, beloved by its residents, across the Mystic River from Boston. There was a scatter of junk dealers, rag merchants and wholesale tire outlets, a large weedy open area where a huge fire had swallowed half the city, leaving what must be the world’s largest vacant lot. On the northwest edge of the city where it abuts Everett is the New England Produce Center, one of two big market terminals on the fringes of Boston that funnel most of the food into the city. It was an ungainly place, next door to the Everett oil farm, but it sports a restaurant housed in an old railroad car. I pulled my car in by the restaurant and went in. It bothered me a little, as I sat at the counter and looked out at it, that my car seemed to integrate so aptly with the surroundings.

I had a piece of custard pie and a cup of black coffee and looked things over. It was a largely idle gesture. There was no way I could know where the swap would take place. There wasn’t a hell of a lot for me to gain by surveying the scene. I had to depend on the buttons to show up, like they would when I put my hands in my hip pockets.

The restaurant wasn’t very busy, more empty than full, and I glanced around to see if anyone was casing me. Or looked suspicious. No one was polishing a machine gun, no one was picking his teeth with a switchblade, no one was paying me any attention at all. I was used to it. I sometimes went days when people paid no attention to me at all. The bottom crust on my custard pie was soggy. I paid the bill and left.

I drove back into Boston through Everett and Charles-town. The elevated had been dismantled in Charlestown and City Square looked strangely naked and vulnerable without it. Like someone without his accustomed eyeglasses. They could have left it up and hung plants from it.

For reasons that have never been clear to me the midday traffic in Boston is as bad as the commuter traffic and it took me nearly thirty-five minutes to get to my apartment. Pam Shepard let me in looking neat but stir-crazy.

“I was just having a cup of soup,” she said. “Want some?”

“I ate lunch,” I said, “but I’ll sit with you and have a cup of coffee while you eat. We’re going to have to spend another night together.”

“And?”

“And then I think we’ll have it whipped. Then I think you can go home.”

We sat at my counter and she had her tomato soup and I had a cup of instant coffee.

“Home,” she said. “My God, that seems so far away.”

“Homesick?”

“Oh, yes, very much. But… I don’t know. I don’t know about going home. I mean, what has changed since I left.”

“I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to go home and find out. Maybe nothing has changed. But tomorrow Rose and Jane are going to be in the jug and you can’t sleep here forever. My restraint is not limitless.”

She smiled. “It’s kind of you to say so.”

“After tomorrow we can talk about it. I won’t kick you out.”

“What happens tomorrow?”

“We do it,” I said. “We go over to the Chelsea Market about six in the morning and we set up the gun sale and when it is what you might call consummated, the cops come with the net and you and Harv get another crack at it.”

“Why do I have to go? I don’t mean I won’t, or shouldn’t, but what good will I do?”

“You’re kind of a hostage… Rose figures if you’re implicated too, I won’t double-cross them. She doesn’t trust me, but she knows I’m looking out for you.”

“You mean if she gets arrested, I’ll get arrested too?”

“That seems her theory. I told her that didn’t seem sisterly. She said something about the cause.”

“Jesus Christ, maybe you are the only person I can depend on.”

I shrugged.

It was raining like hell and still dark when I woke up with a crick in my neck on the sofa in my living room. I shut off the alarm and dragged myself out of bed. It was quarter of five. I took a shower, and got dressed before I banged on my bedroom door, at five o’clock.

Pam Shepard said, “I’m awake.”

She came out of the bedroom wearing my bathrobe and looking her age and went into the bathroom. I checked my gun. I stood in my front window and looked down at Marlborough Street and at the rain circles forming in the wet street. I thought about making coffee and decided we wouldn’t have time and we could get some in the railroad car. I got out my red warm-up jacket that said LOWELL CHIEFS on it and put it on. I tried getting the gun off my hip while wearing it, and I left it unbuttoned, it wasn’t bad. At five-twenty Pam Shepard came out of the bathroom with her hair combed and her make-up on and my robe still folded around her, and went back into my bedroom and shut the door. I took my car keys out of my hip pocket and put them in my coat pocket. I went to the window and looked at the rain some more. It always excited me when it rained. The wet streets seemed more promising than the dry ones, and the city was quieter. At five-thirty Pam Shepard came out of my bedroom wearing yellow slacks and a chocolate-colored blouse with long lapels. She put on a powder blue slicker and a wide-brimmed rain hat that matched and said, “I’m ready.”

“The wardrobe for every occasion,” I said. “I have the feeling you had Susan buy you a safari hat just in case you had to shoot tiger while you stayed here.”

She smiled but there wasn’t much oomph in it. She was scared.

“This is going to be a milk run,” I said. “There will be more cops than fruit flies there. And me, I will be right with you.”

We went down the front stairs and got in my car and it started and we were off.

“I know,” she said. “I know it’ll be all right. There’s just been so much, and now this. Police and gangsters and it’s early in the morning and raining and so much depends on this.”

“You and me babe,” I said, “we’ll be fine.” I patted her leg. It was a gesture my father used to make. It combined, when he did it, affection and reassurance. It didn’t seem to do a hell of a lot for Pam Shepard. At twelve minutes of six in the morning we pulled into the restaurant parking lot. It was daylight now, but a gray and dismal daylight, cold as hell, for summer, and the warm yellow of the lighted windows in the railroad car looked good. There were a lot of trucks and cars parked. The terminal does its work very early. I assumed that two of the trucks contained our side but there was no telling which ones.

Inside we sat in a booth and ordered two coffees and two English muffins. Pam didn’t eat hers. At about two minutes past six King Powers came in wearing a trench coat and a plaid golf cap. Macey was with him in a London Fog, and outside in the entry way I could see Hawk in what looked like a white leather cape with a hood.

“Good morning, Kingo-babe,” I said. “Care for a cup of Java? English muffin? I think my date’s not going to eat hers.”

Powers sat down and looked at Pam Shepard. “This the buyer,” he said.

“One of them. The ones with the bread haven’t shown up yet.”

“They fucking better show up.” King said. Macey at in the booth beside Powers.

“That’s a most fetching hat, King,” I sad. “I remember my Aunt Bertha used to wear one very much like it on rainy days. Said you get your head wet you got the miseries.”

Powers paid no attention to me. “I say fucking six o’clock I mean fucking six o’clock. I don’t mean five after. You know what I’m saying.”

Rose and Jane came into the restaurant.

“Speak of coincidence, King,” I said. “There they are.”

I gestured toward Rose and Jane and pointed outside. They turned and left. “Let us join them,” I said, “outside where fewer people will stand around and listen to us.”

Powers got up, Macey went right after him and Pam and I followed along. As we went out the door I looked closely at Hawk. It was a white leather cape. With a hood. Hawk said, “Pow’ful nice mawning, ain’t it, boss.”

I said, “Mind if I rub your head for luck?”

I could see Hawk’s shoulders moving with silent laughter. He drifted along behind me. In the parking lot I said, “King, Macey, Hawk, Rose, Jane, Pam. There now, we’re all introduced, let us get it done.”

Powers said, “You got the money?”

Jane showed him a shopping bag she was carrying under her black rubber raincoat.

“Macey, take it to the truck and count it.”

Rose said, “How do we know he won’t run off with it?”

Powers said, “Jesus Christ, sister, what’s wrong with you?”

Rose said, “We want to see the guns.”

“They’re in the back of the truck,” Macey said. “We’ll get in and you can look at the guns while I count the money. That way we don’t waste time and we both are assured.”

Powers said, “Good. You do that. I’m getting out of the fucking rain. Hawk, you and Macey help them load the pieces when Macey’s satisfied.”

Powers got up in the cab of a yellow Ryder Rental Truck and closed the door. Rose and Jane and Macey went to the back of the truck. Macey opened the door and the three of them climbed in. Hawk and I and Pam Shepard stood in the rain. In about one minute Rose leaned out of the back of the truck.

“Spenser,” she said, “would you check this equipment for us?”

I said to Pam, “You stand right there. I’ll be right back.” Hawk was motionless beside her, leaning against the front fender of the truck. I went around back and climbed in. The guns were there. Still in the original cases. M2 carbines. I checked two or three. “Yeah,” I said, “they’re good. You can waste platoons of old men now.”

Rose ignored me. “All right, Jane bring the truck over here. Spenser, you said you’d help us load the truck.”

“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Me and Hawk.”

Macey took the shopping bag that said FILENE’S on it, jumped down and went around to where Powers sat in the cab. He handed the money in to Powers and came back to the tailgate. “What do you think, Spenser. This okay to make the swap.”

We were to the side of and nearly behind the restaurant. “Sure,” I said. “This looks fine. Nobody around. Nobody pays any attention anyway. They load and unload all day around here.”

Macey nodded. Jane backed in a blue Ford Econoline van, parked it tail to tail with Powers’ truck, got out and opened the back doors. I went back to the front of the truck where Pam and Hawk were standing. “Hawk,” I said softly, “the cops are coming. This is a setup.” Macey and Rose and Jane were conspiring to move one case of guns from the truck to the van. “Hawk,” Macey yelled, “you and Spenser want to give us a hand.” Hawk walked silently around the front of the truck behind the restaurant and disappeared. I put my hands in my hip pockets. “Stay right beside me,” I said to Pam Shepard.

From a truck that said ROLLIE’S PRODUCE Sylvia and McDermott and two state cops emerged with shotguns.

Jane screamed, “Rose,” and dropped her end of the crate. She fumbled in the pocket of her raincoat and came out with a gun. Sylvia chopped it out of her hand with the barrel of the shotgun and she doubled over, clutching her arm against her. Rose said, “Jane,” and put her arms around her. Macey dodged around the end of the van and ran into the muzzle of Bobby Santos’ service revolver, which Santos pressed firmly into Macey’s neck. King Powers never moved. Klaus and three Chelsea cops came around the other side of the truck and opened the door. One of the Chelsea cops, a fat guy with a boozer’s nose, reached in and yanked him out by the coat front. Powers said nothing and did nothing except look at me.

I said to King. “Peekaboo, I see you,” nodded at Jackie Sylvia, took Pam Shepard’s hand and walked away. At seven we were in a deli on Tremont Street eating hash and eggs and toasted bagels and cream cheese and looking at the rain on the Common across the street.

“Why did you warn that black man?” Pam Shepard said, putting cream cheese on her bagel. She had skipped the hash and eggs, which showed you what she knew about breakfasts. The waitress came and poured more coffee in both our cups.

“I don’t know. I’ve known him a long time. He was a fighter when I was. We used to train together sometimes.”

“But isn’t he one of them? I mean isn’t he the, what, the muscle man, the enforcer, for those people?”

“Yeah.”

“Doesn’t that make a difference? I mean you just let him go.”

“I’ve known him a long time,” I said.

It was still raining when we drove back to my apartment to get Pam’s things, and it was still raining when we set out at about eight-thirty for Hyannis. There’s an FM station in Boston that plays jazz from six in the morning until eleven. I turned it on. Carmen McRae was singing “Skyliner.” The rain had settled in and came steadily against the windshield as if it planned to stay awhile. My roof leaked in one corner and dripped on the back seat.

Pam Shepard sat quietly and looked out the side window of the car. The Carmen McRae record was replaced by an album of Lee Wiley singing with Bobby Hackett’s cornet and Joe Bushkin’s piano. Sweet Bird of Youth. There wasn’t much traffic on Route 3. Nobody much went to the Cape on a rainy midweek morning.

“When I was a little kid,” I said, “I used to love to ride in the rain, in a car. It always seemed so self-contained, so private.” There we were in the warm car with the music playing, and the rest of the world was out in the rain getting wet and shivering. “Still like it, in fact.”

Pam Shepard kept looking out the side window. “Is it over, do you think?” she said.

“What?”

“Everything. The bank robbery, the trouble Harvey is in, the hiding out and being scared? The feeling so awful?”

“I think so,” I said.

“What is going to happen to Harvey and me?”

“Depends, I guess. I think you and he can make it work better than it has worked.”

“Why?”

“Love. There’s love in the relationship.”

“Shit,” she said.

“Not shit,” I said. “Love doesn’t solve everything and it isn’t the only thing that’s important, but it has a big head start on everything else. If there’s love, then there’s a place to begin.”

“That’s romantic goo,” Pam Shepard said. “Believe me. Harvey’s preached the gospel of love at me for nearly twenty years. It’s crap. Believe me, I know.”

“No, you don’t know. You’ve had a bad experience, so you think it’s the only experience. You’re just as wrong as Harvey. It didn’t work, doesn’t mean it won’t work. You’re intelligent, and you’ve got guts. You can do therapy. Maybe you can get Harv to do it. Maybe when you’ve gotten through talking about yourself with someone intelligent you’ll decide to roll Harv anyway. But it’ll be for the right reasons, not because you think you’re frigid, or he thinks you’re frigid. And if you decide to roll Harv you’ll have some alternatives beside screwing sweaty drunks in one night cheap hotels, or living in a feminist commune with two cuckoos.”