The Reality Conspiracy (27 page)

The restful hum of air conditioners in upstairs windows gave way to a siren's wail. On the corner of Arlington Street, across from the Ritz Carlton, somebody's auto alarm screeched. Yet, it attracted no one's attention. The alarm could as well have been a rape victim's scream, or the cry of an old man being beaten.

Someday all this will change.

Day or night, it didn't matter, the city of Boston was always the same. The streets were rotten with crime, more every day, spreading godless filth like a putrefying contagion. McCurdy saw it clearly, without benefit of newspapers or television. Evil was growing; rearing its hideous head unchallenged, its deep obsidian eyes, cool, its Latin accent whispering threats.

On Boylston Street, near a hedge, an elderly man, unsteady as a toddler, stepped out of the shadows.
He was pissing in the bushes
, McCurdy thought.

The old man, his arms full of plastic shopping bags, staggered and swayed.

If he asks for money
, McCurdy thought,
I'll give it to him
. But he didn't. He stumbled past, eyes cast down. When McCurdy turned to take another look, the old man was gone.

A cab went by; one of its headlights was broken. A limo followed, its windows tinted dark, its interior invisible, its occupant anonymous.

Perhaps some wealthy lawyer cruising for girls. Or a fat North End don with some
mulignan
bitch sucking his lap, sharpening vampire teeth on his zipper.

McCurdy clicked his tongue.

He glanced at his watch: oh two hundred hours. And suddenly the street was empty.

For a long frozen moment the world was quiet and deserted, just as it should be at this time of night. There was a warm wind, scented vaguely with seawater. He sauntered across Tremont—no hurry—carefully staying within the designated crosswalk.

On the sidewalk in front of some Chinese fast-food place, a cop scraped the sole of his boot against the curb. McCurdy could almost hear him cursing unleashed mutts.

Ever since he'd been a child in South Boston, McCurdy had fancied that the city held two populations. And that's the way it used to be, really. Daytimers and Nighttimers, he called them. Entirely different races that never met because they never occupied the city at the same time. It was as if there were two different worlds, different universes maybe, completely dissimilar but forever identical in the one place they intersected—the city of Boston.

The Daytimers were the people McCurdy knew, and the people he remembered from his Southie childhood. Some were men in dark suits—politicians and bureaucrats—who walked to the trolley. Others carried black barn-shaped lunch boxes (dinner pails, his dad had called them). The latter might stop for a newspaper, the former to buy a flower for his lapel.

Daytimers said
good morning!
to the merchants who emerged at daybreak from their tiny shops like squinting groundhogs from their burrows.

Daytimers drove the ice cream trucks, or juggled bowling pins on the Common. They went to church, cheered at Fenway, walked their kids to school, and coached Little League in the summertime.

It had been their city and it had been grand.

Then, little by little, the Nighttimers intruded like a rising and polluted tide. The days seemed to grow shorter, the shadows farther reaching. And the warning signs arrived before the Nighttimers came: wind-lashed litter danced in schoolyards; rushing air blasted stench from subways; dark-skinned men with barely human faces dispensed liquor from the trunks of battered Cadillacs, or bought and sold adolescent girls using white plastic packages for currency.

"Gimmi dollah, man."

McCurdy started, stepping around the black man in the woolen navy coat. The crazy ones always dressed for winter on the hottest nights. They don't feel things the same way we do. Not them. Not the Nighttimers, not the soulless ones.

Jake Wirth's was closed at this hour, its doors and windows locked away, safe behind metal webbing. McCurdy walked past this final symbol of civilization, securely caged until the dawn.

And he entered the last circle of hell—the Combat Zone.

It was midday under garish neon suns. The whores were here, and the sailors, and the college kids looking for trouble. Huge windows that once displayed furs or finery now screeched with crude hand-stenciled signs: "Everything Half Off," "Checks Cashed," "Live Dancing Girls." There were dildoes and stroke books, magazines in cellophane, martial arts weapons. And videotapes, their packaging ersatz-tasteful with black censor-circles separating pursed lips from pimpled bottoms. Leather mysteries hung like hides on a rack, sun-faded bedroom ware hid the firm torsos of headless mannequins. Topless, McCurdy thought. A windowful, an eyeful.

"Hey, man, want some lovin'?" Was it a man's voice or a woman's? McCurdy scurried across the street to avoid finding out.

A giant spotted cat winked its neon eye from the far side of the street.
The Polka Dot Pussy
. A big black man with tattooed arms crossed upon his chest stood beside the door. He partially obstructed a glass panel where nude photos of timpani-titted temptresses beckoned indiscriminately. "Must be 18," a peeling sign reminded.

As McCurdy hurried by, loud music belched from the bowels of the cat.

More windows ahead. Rap booths. Adult movies. Live sex shows.

"Step right in, m'man," grinned the silver-toothed hustler outside
The Golden Ring
. The window sign offered "Fantastic Fighting Foxes." Beside it, a poster-size photo of a blonde in striped micro-shorts, her breasts bigger than her boxing gloves, smiled enticingly. Above it, a hand-lettered sign said, "This girl can't wrestle, but cum in and see her box."

A sailor staggered out of the next doorway, almost colliding with McCurdy. The lurching man steadied himself against the side of a parked van and threw up against the windshield.

The driver, a skinny spic in bell-bottoms, got out, grabbed the sailor by the epaulets, and threw him to the sidewalk. One swift kick, and the sailor puked again.

Nighttimers
, McCurdy thought. The soulless ones.

Two black women stood on a street corner talking in loud staccato voices and waving at the infrequent passing cars. "Com'on, Daddy. Two fo'da price a one," McCurdy heard one of them say. His eyes rested a moment on her purple, high-heeled boots.

When he turned away a man was in his path.

McCurdy stopped short.

The haggard specimen made no move to get out of the way. Slack-jawed, lips crusted with sputum, he stared at McCurdy with vapid, nearly dead eyes. The long greasy hair on the right side of his head was swept back. The left side grew wild and sparse, as if someone had pulled it out by the fistful. A scabby scalp glistened like Vaseline underneath.

In the hot moist air the man's stench of urine and filth was almost powerful enough to push McCurdy back. He turned aside, forced to detour around the standing garbage.
Garbageman
, McCurdy thought.

Before McCurdy could walk away, the man spoke. "Spare a half, Doctor?"

"No . . . I . . ." McCurdy arced around him, about to hasten away. Then he stopped.

He called me Doctor. How did he know?

McCurdy turned. Squinting, he searched the dirt-streaked face for some recognizable feature. The man was smiling oddly. Missing front teeth seemed to hold the squirming tongue at bay. The bulbous nose was a crimson weavework of burst capillaries.

Chuckling, the man reached down to the curbside for half a cigarette. He broke off the filter, tossed it away, and popped the remainder into his mouth.

McCurdy's stomach lurched wetly when the man began to chew the tobacco.

"You come with me now, Doctor." The man's voice was gruff, garbled. "Tonight's your night. It's time for us to meet. Come on. I want to lead you away from here."

McCurdy didn't move as the man turned away. Streaks of some slippery-looking brown substance smeared the back of the man's shapeless, ill-fitting trousers. A pint flask, brown paper twisted around its neck, protruded from a hip pocket.

The man didn't look back. "Come on now, Doctor. Your time's awastin'."

McCurdy couldn't believe his eyes. His ears were lying to him, too. How could he follow? Was this some kind of undercover operation? Could this be the man with whom he'd corresponded via the computer? Was this his contact?

"Wait."

The man stopped, turned. Now he wasn't smiling.

Somewhere, a car door slammed and McCurdy jumped. The man glared at him. "You're not cooperating, Dr. McCurdy. We can't talk here. You were informed we would meet. Now you must come with me."

"But I . . . You—"

"Enough. Come now. We have work to do."

"But first . . . Wait. Don't you have some kind of—"

"Identification?" The smile was back. It was thin, tight, deadly as a razor. "No. None at all. I'm homeless. Nameless. Without hope. But in a moment you'll have little doubt who I am. Come. Walk with me. I'll explain."

McCurdy took a guarded step. The next one came easier, and in a moment he was beside the man as they made their way north on Washington Street. "Where we going?

"My house. Come on. Just follow me."

"Why?" McCurdy slowed his pace ever so slightly.

"I want to tell you things," the man said. "Things about yourself." He spat on the sidewalk. "It is important for you to see how well I know you. Quite possibly as well as you know yourself. I've studied you a long time."

They were walking swiftly enough so that the man's acrid odor was not so nauseating.

Turning left, there was an unlighted, trash-littered alleyway between the old Flynn Theater and St. Catherine's Roman Catholic Church. The garbageman stepped into the lush shadows, but McCurdy held back. Without turning, without looking over his shoulder, the man said, "Come now. Almost there."

"Where are you taking me?" The shadows in the alley loomed thick and deep. The smells were foul.

"Church. We're going to church. Don't be afraid."

McCurdy watched as his companion hunkered down and lifted a rectangular metal mesh from the cellar window of St. Catherine's. Uneasily, McCurdy hovered over him, bending down just a little. He could see the three-paned cellar window was nailed shut. The man took the head of one of the loose-fitting nails in his fingertips, and pulled it out of the wooden frame. The nail moved easily, like a bolt in a lock. He pulled out a second nail and the window swung up. Carefully, he placed the nails on the windowsill.

"You're probably not used to going to church my way," the man said with a soft, noncommittal chuckle. Then he slithered through the two-foot opening.

A crippling, immobilizing fear seized McCurdy. It would be so easy to turn and run. He could be back at the Academy in twenty minutes, or he could hail a cab and be home in half an hour. But this—unlikely as it seemed—was his contact. This was the man he'd been waiting to meet. Duty overrode fear as McCurdy sat on the ground and slid his feet through the open window.

The great, brass-piped organ was directly below the steeple. On either side of the three-tiered keyboard, light oak panels of wainscoting connected the organ to the wall, making it appear that the instrument was solidly and forever built into the structure of the church.

The man slid a panel of wainscoting aside, revealing a passageway that led behind the organ.
Work space for repairmen
, McCurdy thought.

"Gimme a match," the man said.

McCurdy fished around in the pocket of his cardigan for his lighter. The garbageman took it, lighted it. Using it as a torch, he led McCurdy through the sliding wooden door and into the tight passageway.

The area behind the organ was the size of a closet. At a glance, McCurdy guessed the total floor space was no more than three feet by eight feet. Coffin-sized. The hideaway reeked of tobacco smoke and the sour scent of mildewed fabric.

It was obvious that the man lived here in this claustrophobic nest. A pile of ratty blankets formed the vague shape of a bed on the floor.

Stuffed plastic bags passed for pillows. Near the head of the bed, on top of an overturned milk crate, two stubby candles occupied red glass holders. No doubt stolen from the altar. An open box of Blue Diamond matches lay equidistant between the candles.