Boston Noir

Father Tom is warm under this snowy blanket and would like to take off his jacket. He feels the icy snow whipping at his face and sees a pearl-handled straight razor lying on a bloom of crimson snow by his groin. He’s on his back. His legs are buried beneath the drift. How long has he lain here? He gurgles, coughs, tastes blood in his mouth. He’d been dreaming of falling through a starless purple sky away from the vision of Christ when he realized he was tumbling toward the infernal abyss, and he screamed himself awake, thank God. His left arm is bent at the elbow and points to heaven. He tells the arm to move, but nothing happens. He might as well be telling someone else’s arm to move. He remembers long ago lying helplessly in Lionel’s bed with the dozing boy and trying to will him to turn, to rest his head on his, Father Tom’s, chest and his slender arm on Father’s waist. And later when Lionel whimpered and opened his teary eyes, Father Tom held him and said, “You’ve had a bad dream, Train, that’s all. Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry. Don’t cry.”

But if he did not, in fact, scream himself awake moments ago, and if this is, indeed, hell, this frozen drift of blood and guilt, then Father Tom is happy to know that at least they don’t take your memories away, which makes sense, because without a past you don’t exist, and there can be no hell for you. He knows that his memories of love and affection will comfort and sustain him for eternity. And then he sees Mr. Markey and Mr. Hanratty standing over him. But when Mr. Hanratty pulls back his balaclava, Father Tom sees that it’s Gerard, and he’s with Jesus and not with Mr. Markey, and Jesus has His arm draped over Gerard’s shoulders. Jesus waves at Father Tom and says, “So long, small fry!” They shake their heads and turn away.

“Stop, please!” Father Tom says, or thinks he says. And then he watches them somehow as they walk back in the direction of St. Cormac’s, watches Jesus whisper into Gerard’s ear, and the two of them turn again to glance back at him, but all they see is a black smudge in a white world that looks otherwise unsullied.

PART III. VEILS OF DECEIT

THE ORIENTAL HAIR POETS BY DON LEE

Cambridge

This was her, he figured. The poet. That was the first thing Marcella Ahn had said on the phone, that she was a poet. She was, in fact, the über-image of a poet, straight black hair hanging to her lower back, midnight-blue velvet pants, lace-up black boots, flouncy white Victorian blouse cinched by a thick leather belt. She was pretty in a severe way, too much makeup, lots of foundation and powder, deep claret lipstick, early thirties, maybe. Not his type. She stumbled through Café Pamplona’s small door and, spotting Toua, clomped to his table.

“Am I late? Sorry. I’m not quite awake. It’s a little early in the day for me.” It was 1:30 in the afternoon.

She ordered a double espresso and gathered her hair, the ruffled cuffs of her blouse dropping away, followed by the jangling cascade of two dozen silver bracelets on each wrist. With exquisitely lacquered fingers, silver rings on nearly every digit, she raked her hair over her shoulder and laid it over her left breast.

“Don’t you have an office? It feels a little exposed in here for this type of conversation.”

Actually, this was precisely why Toua Xiong liked the café. The Pamplona was a tiny basement place off Harvard Square, made to feel even smaller with its low ceiling, and you could hear every tick of conversation from across the room. Perfect for initial meetings with clients. It forced them to lean toward him, huddle, whisper. It didn’t lend itself to histrionics or hysterics. It inhibited weeping. Toua didn’t like weeping.

Besides, he no longer had an office. After Ana, his girlfriend, had kicked him out of their apartment, he’d been sleeping in his office, but he’d gotten behind on the rent and had been kicked out of there too. These days he was sacking out on his former AA sponsor’s couch.

“You used to be a cop, Mr. Xiong?” she asked, pronouncing it Zee-ong.

“Yeah,” he said, “until two years ago.”

“You still have friends on the force?”

“A few.”

“Why’d you quit?”

“Complicated,” Toua said. “Shee-ong. It’s Too-a Shee-ong.”

“Chinese?”

“Hmong.”

“I’m Korean myself.”

“What is it I can do for you, Ms. Ahn?”

She straightened up in her chair. “I have a tenant,” she said in a clear, unrestrained voice, not at all inhibited. “She’s renting one of my houses in Cambridgeport, and she’s on a campaign to destroy me.”

Toua nodded, accustomed to hyperbole from clients. “What’s she doing?”

“She’s trying to drive me insane. I asked her to move out. I gave her thirty days’ notice. But she’s refused.”

“You have a lease?”

“She’s a tenant at will.”

“Shouldn’t be too difficult to evict her, then.”

“You know how hard it is to evict someone in Cambridge? Talk about progressive laws.”

“It sounds like you need a lawyer, not a PI.”