Serpents in the Cold (25 page)

_________________________

Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Mission Hill, Roxbury

THE RADIO HAD
forecast heavy snow, but only a few plows were on the deserted roads as the trolley made its way up Huntington Avenue. Two inches of snow lay on the ground and it continued to fall thick and heavy, but there was no wind, and to Cal the snowfall seemed to make the city even quieter and stranger. From the window of the trolley he saw no traffic or pedestrians and only now and again a glimpse of a plow working, its swirling amber lights sparking in the gloom. There was only one other passenger on the trolley, sleeping fitfully, and the driver didn't even bother to turn on the interior light, so they passed through the city in darkness, the trolley's bell clanging vacantly at empty intersections, and he stared from the window and watched the snow coming down. Because of ice on the tracks, the trolley trundled along the line like an aged arthritic, and it took him forty minutes to get to Mission Hill.

He sat near the front of the church, his head lowered, hands clasped and resting atop the pew back before him. He had his eyes closed, and his senses filled with the muted voices of prayer murmuring throughout the church—so purposeful and insistent in seeking solace, peace, the intercession of the saints and of the Virgin Mary on behalf of a loved one. And though he tried to pray, he couldn't focus; for the third time he forgot what prayer he was reciting and began it again and then, frustrated, whispered the words so that he might hear them. Still, the words and their meanings passed through his head as if it were a sieve and he remained empty-feeling and agitated. He exhaled and looked up.

Above the altar the hands of Christ were held to the cross by the spikes driven through his palms; he stared at the hands, the rigid tendons of his alabaster wrists, flexing as if from the pain as the weight of his body and the force of gravity drew him down and the nails tore through his hands, and for a brief moment Cal was inside the cold of the trailer again and staring at the hands of the dead women bound by chains to dangling meat hooks.

AT MICKI'S ON
Tremont, Cal ordered a double whiskey and went to the pay phone by the betting board at the back of the room and called Dante. The operator patched him through and he listened to the flat whine of a dead line and remembered their phone had been cut. He picked up the receiver again, stared blankly at the day's races marked in white chalk, the horses, and their odds, as he waited for the switchboard operator. At the morgue the phone rang and the operator cut in twice to ask if he wanted her to keep trying. Finally a breathless technician picked up and Cal had to wait while he went to look for Fierro. Through the static on the line he could hear the squeal and slam of doors being opened and closed, and what he took to be the whirring buzz of a dissecting saw. Two drunk men by the jukebox with their arms about each other's shoulders began to sing “You're Breaking my Heart,” a painful baying that brought the hairs up on the back of his neck and forced him to lean in over the phone. The operator cut in again asking for another nickel and, cursing, he rummaged in his pocket for change, deposited a nickel and two dimes.

The familiar moribund voice came on the line, wheezing as if he'd picked up Owen's cold: “Fierro.”

“It's Cal, Tony. I need your help.”

“Cal, I really don't have the time. I've got four bodies from a car that went into the Charles at dawn, I've got—”

“I need you to look at the bodies again, just the photos. I need to know something.”

“What's this about, Cal?”

“Just look at the photos and tell me if the markings on the wrists are different. If Sheila's markings are different from the other girls'.”

“Cal, I can't—”

“Tony, this is the last thing I'm asking you in the world.”

Fierro paused on the other end of the line and he heard the strike of a match and a soft exhale and knew Fierro was smoking. After a moment: “All right, give me a couple of minutes to pull the file.”

While he waited he placed the phone down and went to the bar to get another double, then returned, put the phone back to his ear, listened to the odd hiss of static from the line, the distant, muted sounds of the morgue. A gurney rattled by once, amplified and close, like the sound of the elevated subway passing, thumping in his ears, then the line became quiet again. He sipped his whiskey slowly, rolling it in his mouth but not really tasting it anymore. Three men stood to his right before the betting board discussing the horses running later on the West Coast, and he turned his back to them, knew that once they made their picks they'd want to use the phone to call their bookies. The door of the bar opened as someone stepped inside and a blast of cold air traveled the length of the room.

Fierro came on the line clicking his tongue, as if with annoyance. “The ligature marks aren't the same,” he said, and Cal could picture him frowning. “The others were clearly bound by some kind of metal cuff. It didn't fully bind the wrists, so there are only marks at contact points on the wrist. Sheila's looks to be a thin rope of some kind—you can make out the braid of the different fibers. I should have noticed that, but I don't see how that changes anything. The killer probably used what was at hand.”

“Yeah, you're probably right. I just needed to know.”

“You sure that's all?”

“That's all. Thanks, Tony. I owe you one.”

Cal put the phone down, stared at the wall, and slowly finished his drink. He sensed one of the three men to his right waiting for the phone, and he turned away from him. He picked up the receiver again and tried calling Kelly's Rose to see if Dante was there, but there was no answer and he hung up, walked back up the bar, mulling the discovery in his head. Sheila wasn't killed in the trailer with the other girls; it was only made to look that way. He saw Blackie climbing into the rig down at the Calf Pasture, checking and knowing the seal on the doors had been tampered with because, of course, he'd already been there a few nights earlier depositing Sheila's torn underthings, the purse, and the crucifix, placing them where he knew they'd be found.

_________________________

Wollaston, Quincy

CAL EASED THE
beat-up Fleetline into a parking space along Wollaston Beach and waited. An empty public works truck hulked at the far end of the lot, nose pointed toward the islands, but otherwise the lot was deserted. Before him the water stirred, and farther off the rotted remains of what had once been a pier stretched through the frothy white straits toward Squantum and Moon Island. A yellow snowplow rolled slowly along Quincy Shore Drive, its plow lowered and raising sparks as it struck clear tarmac.

The stacks from the pumping station out on Moon Island stood in black relief against the horizon. Smoke, seeming to glow white, churned into the sky and across the bay—a still picture through which the lights of a plane bound for Logan intermittently broke.

In his rearview he watched the lights of a shiny blue Plymouth sedan as it slowed and, tires losing traction upon a stretch of ice, angled itself awkwardly through the lot's entrance. When the car parked, Cal looked over, opened his door, and climbed out. Shaw met him on the cement walkway before the breakwater. He wore a long dark tweed overcoat, and pushed down over his big mick red head was an olive wool cap with ridiculous-looking earflaps. From where they stood along the vacant beach they could see the low Boston skyline across the black water, lights glittering through a smoky haze of ice.

“I heard about that,” Shaw said and gestured at Cal's ruined face. “You look like shit.”

Cal shrugged, lowered his head against the wind.

“We all know that Blackie's a reckless fuck. Out his goddamn mind these days.” Against the wind, Shaw sucked his teeth, reached up his leather-gloved hands to tighten the collar of his overcoat.

“What do you want?”

“Sully's got to protect his interests.”

“Yeah. What's that got to do with me?”

“Don't be a fucking idiot. There's only one guy that needs to get fingered in all this.”

Cal dug his hands deeper into his coat pockets, hunched his shoulders. “You're asking me for a favor, aren't you? A goddamn yellow-belly favor.”

“No one's going to be looking for payback, that's all I'm telling you.”

“A fucking bookie's coming to tell me this? You must be real important these days.”

“I'm just speaking for Sully, Cal. Take it while you can.”

“For all I know this sounds like a way to get me to do your dirty work, a setup with me as the fall guy, piss off half this city's scum on your behalf. No thanks.”

Shaw raised his hands in frustration. “Jesus, Cal, you know I'm telling you because of what he did.”

“That's a load of shit, Shaw, and you know it.”

“We're all family men, right? We always respect the old neighborhood and the people in it. Sully's word on this. The O'Sheas and Kinneallys and everybody else will fall in line. Through thick and thin, we look out for our own. All we want is that he's gone.”

Cal laughed, but without humor. “Except none of you have the balls to do anything about it.”

Shaw pressed his hands deeper into his coat pockets, squinted out toward the city lights.

“What makes you think
I'm
going to do anything about it—risk my neck for this?”

Shaw lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter bending back and forth in the wind. He handed one to Cal.

“Because since you came back from the war you're a fucking mess. You're a fucking bozo, a rummy.” He smirked in an all-knowing manner, blew his smoke out at the water, but it returned into his face and into his eyes. “Because you got nothing to lose, Cal. You're a fucking joke. Everyone knows that. They've been taking bets on the street on who's in a coffin sooner, you or Dante.”

“Yeah? What are the odds?”

“Odds on you, three to one.”

They stood in silence and watched the skyline in the distance shimmering like a cheap crown. The refraction of light through ice gave the city a strange illusory quality, made it seem to have moved closer as they spoke. “We'll give you enough money to start over, Cal. You and Lynne can get out of town. Go. You'll never have to look back.”

Cal looked out over the water, at the way it disappeared in blackness a hundred feet from shore.

“Well, that's it,” Shaw said. “I'm not standing like a jackass out in this fucking cold any longer. You got what you need to know. You can do what you want with it.”

“Why should I trust you? You're the ones who stand to gain in all this.”

“Sure, everyone does. And especially you, O'Brien. You get to kill him before he kills you.”

“Is that right? It still feels like a setup to me.”

Shaw shrugged. “I ain't got no beef with you, Cal. Yeah, we could set you up, but there ain't nothing in it for us.”

“For fuck's sake, just kill him yourselves. Not the first time you took out one of your own.”

“You know how tightly wrapped this city is. That would start a war, and an Irish gang war would tear this town apart.”

“Why isn't Sully telling me this himself?”

“If it all goes down, Sully can't be associated with you. What, do I have to write a fucking book for you?”

“You're afraid of him, and Sully's afraid of him, and that's why you're freezing your ass off talking to me here.”

“Sure, that's it, Cal.”

“Fuck off, and tell your buddies if they want Blackie taken out to take him out their fucking selves. I won't do your dirty work for you.”

“Whatever you say, Cal.”

“And another thing.”

“Yeah?”

“You touch Dante again, I'll kill you.”

“It's business, Cal, purely business. You know that.”

“And my business is what I'm telling you now. Your boys touch him and I come after you. As you said, I've got nothing to lose.” He spat tobacco from his lip and threw Shaw's cigarette into the snow.

“Fair enough.”

“Good, then. Now go fuck off.”

Cal watched Shaw climb into his car and start the engine. The windows had iced over so he had to climb out and scrape the glass, and though it took several minutes, the two didn't speak again. When the car had left the lot, fishtailing onto the Shore Drive, Cal climbed into his own car and turned the engine over. He was tired and cold, but his conversation with Shaw had made the world about him seem sharper and more distinct.

He lit a cigarette and exhaled. The water chopped against the cement and stone, washed over the large ancient iron mooring hooks and the mushroom-headed bollards, but otherwise the sea was still. Peddocks Island was a black fortress to the southeast and the lights of an oil tanker, passing out of Boston Harbor, blinked beyond it.

_________________________

Savin Hill, Dorchester

IN THE MORNING
when Cal woke it took him a moment to remember where he was. Lynne was hanging sheets on the clothesline strung on a looping pulley wheel between the triple-deckers, pulling over yesterday's clothes made flat by ice and wind and smelling of bleach as they warmed on the rack in the kitchen. Even though he knew she was in the other room, he reached over to feel where her body had lain next to him in the night. He caressed the sheet, inhaling the smell of her. He had slept through the night without any dreams, without any nightmares. He could smell the air of the room, the sharp winter scent coming in off the bay like a whiteness brightening his senses. Coffee was brewing in the kitchen. He pulled himself up, pressed his feet onto the cold floor, and sat, smiling, on the edge of the mattress as he stared at Lynne's sheer nightgown stretched across the bottom of the bed.

In the kitchen she was at the stove in a white terry cloth robe, and he stood for a moment in the doorway looking at her. She turned and smiled at him, gestured for him to sit at the table, then went back to cooking. “Eggs okay?” she asked over her shoulder, and he nodded to himself as he grasped the chair.

“Good, eggs are good.”

He rolled his neck and listened to it crack. He smiled, and when the words came, they surprised him. “I want to get out,” he said. “I'm ready to leave.”

Lynne turned from the counter to look at him, wide-eyed and with concern. She probably thought he was sick and running a fever. He laughed at the look of her, at the strange relief and comfort he felt. It was as if he'd been holding his breath. “I want us to move somewhere, anywhere you want to go. We'll start over.”

She came to him and he pulled her onto his lap, wrapped his arms about her.

“You mean it? But how are we—”

“It won't be easy, it might even be hard at first, but we can do it, Lynne.”

Her face was against his. Her chin trembled and he could see her fighting back tears. He pulled her tighter, felt the subtle tremors that shook her body. “I love you,” he whispered against her ear. “I love you, and I don't want to lose you.” He put his face into her hair and breathed her in. He kissed her ear, her neck, her soft cheek.

Now it was her turn to laugh. “I almost believe you,” she said.

He pressed into her, felt the fleshy heat of her, and she grasped at his face as they kissed, her tongue working against his. They groped at each other's clothes, hips grinding and thrusting, half dragged each other to the floor. Clothes wrapped about their ankles, entwined about their legs, they moved into each other. A breeze came up from the bay and whipped and snapped and smacked the clothes on the clothesline and the door to the porch closed itself and they listened as soft clumps of wet snow, like rain, began to tap upon the kitchen windows and stream down the glass in steady rivulets that sent thin, sinuous shadows on the wall above them bending in sudden, violent tremors.

When they were done, they lay on the floor together, his hand between the cleft of her bottom. Lynne's skin was pebbled with goose bumps, and they were both sweating although it was cold. When he stroked her with his free hand Lynne shuddered, and though she smiled, her eyes were big and dark and distant. He could feel her heart beating beneath the center of her breasts. He wanted to say something that would show how grateful he was that she was with him and had stood by him and show how very much he loved her, but something inside him was opening, breaking, and he could put no words to it. Perhaps it was the look in her eyes, but for no reason that he could explain he felt panicked, as if he were falling from a great height.

“Are we leaving, really leaving?” she asked, and he saw the doubt there, as if in the time since he'd said it he might have changed his mind.

“Yes,” he said, and he did mean it. “We're leaving. I promise.”

With sudden urgency, before the sensation of darkness engulfed him completely, he needed for them to make love again, and he pulled her to him, rolling her on top, his hands spreading her bottom wide. He felt her thighs, the strong, taut flesh trembling as she pushed against him as eagerly, he wanted desperately to believe, as he did against her, and that in some strange, inexplicable way, this was what, in the end, might save them both.