Authors: Brendan DuBois
The student raised his head, grunted something in return.
Felix said, “Pull it in, zip it up, or I’m coming out. And if I come out, your hands will be worthless for a month, and you’ll be wearing an adult diaper. Got it?”
The student got it. He wandered back out to the street, moved away. Felix raised the window. He sat, silent, looking out the windshield.
“What’s going on?”
Felix looked left, looked right, looked left again. “Don’t know. Just got the feeling we’re being followed.”
“The cops?”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
I kept quiet, gave him space. A few long minutes passed. “After years of being out there, doing what I do, you gain . . . a sixth sense, or a sight, or something like that. Nothing you can put your hand on, but you learn to trust it. Has saved my skin on a number of occasions.”
“And you’re feeling that now?”
He tugged at an ear. “That I am.”
“But I don’t see anything.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “But I feel something. . . .”
He switched on the headlights, put the Cadillac in drive, slid us back out on the narrow North End street. “Eh, probably nothing. I’m tired, you’re tired, and it’s damn late at night.”
A few minutes later, he pulled up in front of our quarters. There was an empty spot in front of the four-story brick building. There was always an empty spot there, and when I had noted that to Felix our first night here, he had said, quietly, “Nobody in this neighborhood would dare to take it.”
We got out into the chilly early morning air. Lots of lights out there, the hum of traffic, car horns and distant sirens. The street was jammed with parked cars, wet trash was underfoot, and, by the near alley, there was the strong smell of recently released urine.
Big-city life.
I hated it.
I wanted to be back at Tyler Beach, in my small hundred-year-old-plus home, deep in bed, listening only to the creaks of the old timbers and the gentle roar of the ocean waves crashing in, with no worries besides what I was going to have for breakfast the next day.
If I said something, I knew Felix would take me back right away. Tyler Beach was just about an hour away, and then we’d both be back where we belonged, instead of here, where we had to be.
We retrieved our respective pistols and then, from the back seat of the Cadillac, took out our duffel bags. Our first night here, after another long night of surveillance, I had been in favor of leaving our gear in the Cadillac instead of humping it up three flights of stairs, but Felix had instantly quashed that idea. “Not for a minute,” he had said. “Leave stuff like that out in the car, you’re leaving evidence. All it would take is some nitwit sideswiping or trying to steal the damn thing, and cops will be here, asking questions.”
Now with duffel bags over our shoulders, Felix led the way and we went up some stone steps, and he unlocked the door. Dim light bulbs flickered in the stairwell, and we slowly went up the creaking stairs. Instead of the smell of urine and wet trash, there was the smell of spices and sauces.
On the third-floor landing, Felix unlocked another door and we stepped inside a very warm and cozy living room. There was a thick braided rug in the center, and two plush couches with lace doilies on the armrests. A light had been left on for us by the owner of this building, Aunt Teresa, a relative of Felix’s who was no doubt fast asleep in her own room. We softly let the duffel bags down, for Aunt Teresa was quite the light sleeper, for which I couldn’t blame her, since she was closing in on her tenth decade of life.
A small kitchen was on the other end of the living room, and there were two other small rooms, one of which was a spare bedroom, the other a sewing room. In a burst of generosity when we had first arrived three days ago, Felix had taken the sewing room and a fold-out couch. I think it was a positive comment on his character that he didn’t readily seem to regret that decision, which was why I always let him use the tiny bathroom first.
When he was done I went into the bathroom myself. It had an old porcelain sink and a claw-footed bathtub. A small statue of Jesus was propped on top of the medicine cabinet.
Felix was already in his room when I got out, and I went into my lodging, closing the door behind me. I undressed and tossed my clothes on a simple wooden chair in the corner. I crawled into bed, switched off the light, and stared up at the ceiling. Even with the shade drawn, the outdoor light was illuminating everything inside, from the simple chest of drawers to the chair with my clothes on it, to the nightstand with another lace doily, and up on a small shelf by the door, a statue of the Virgin Mary. The statue was glow-in-the-dark, and her eerie light seemed to look right at me.
The bed was lumpy and old, and it had a musty smell. The pillow was too thick. I tossed and turned, tossed and turned, the sounds of traffic and horns still driving at me. I flicked the bedside lamp back on, reached over, and picked up a copy of yesterday’s
Boston Globe
. I flipped through the pages, trying to get myself relaxed, and read the breathless stories about the upcoming presidential election and the usual distressing news from overseas. I then went to the editorial pages of the
Globe
, which typically had the most boring op-ed columnists on the planet, coupled with sincere letter-writers who railed against everything from the sales of bottled water to the military influence on kindergarten classes.
In the Metro section, which covered the area around Boston and its suburbs, there was a brief news item about the Falconer nuclear power plant and the continued investigation into the violence that had erupted during the last demonstrations. Two dead from gunshots from yet-undetermined shooters, several injured, and hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to the power plant, which was still operating despite the damage.
I closed my eyes for a moment. Four days ago, I had been at the last Falconer demonstration, where members of the Nuclear Freedom Front had stormed through, and where gunfire had broken out, and where my dearest and oldest friend, Diane Woods of the Tyler Police Department, had been beaten nearly to death with an iron pipe.
As of now, from what I knew, Diane remained in a coma at the Exonia Hospital’s ICU, just a twenty-minute drive from Falconer.
As of now, police and others were still looking for the Nuclear Freedom Front leader, Curt Chesak, whom I had seen with my own eyes pummeling Diane with an iron pipe.
And as of now, Felix and I had been trying to talk to BU History Professor Heywood Knowlton about his connection with Curt Chesak. A police source had earlier told me that Professor Knowlton was friends with Curt and had supported him through his rise in the ranks of the NFF.
Our goal was to get to Curt before the police, and so far it had been a bust.
I thumbed through the rest of the paper and then tossed it back on the floor. A car alarm kicked off just up the street. I turned off the light and tried to sleep with a glowing Virgin Mary staring down at me, probably in disapproval for what I had in store for Curt Chesak.
Some draggy hours later, I joined Felix and his Aunt Teresa in the tiny kitchen for a brunch, which she had expertly prepared while she and Felix chattered at each other in Italian. Her kitchen looked like it could have been highlighted in the September 1959 issue of
House Beautiful
, with linoleum, an old-style white Frigidaire refrigerator with a big silver handle, and a skinny three-burner stove. Aunt Teresa looked a shade under five feet tall, with her gray hair tightly secured in the rear in a bun, bright brown eyes, and a wrinkled face and a quick mouth. She had on a long black dress with a yellow apron tied around her, and sensible black shoes.
But even in the kitchen’s close quarters, she turned out a meal of strong black coffee, orange juice, fresh pastries, eggs, sausages, and oatmeal. I ate as well as I could while Felix sat across from me, and each time she came over to take away a plate or refill our coffee cups, she would gently caress Felix’s shoulders or give him a kiss on the top of his head. I had on yesterday’s shirt and khaki slacks, while Felix was making do in a blue bathrobe that had belonged to dear old departed Uncle Joseph.
Aunt Teresa came over and dropped three more links of sausage on my plate. She said something in Italian to Felix, and he laughed and said to me: “Aunt Teresa wants to know if a good-looking man like you is married.”
“Go ahead, tell her the answer.”
Felix replied and there was another back-and-forth, and Felix said: “Why, she asks. Haven’t you found the right woman yet?”
I halted with my knife and fork. What a question. “I think I have,” I said. “It’s just that . . . well, circumstances. I’m in New Hampshire, and she’s in Washington, trying to get Senator Jackson Hale elected president. Not sure what’s going to happen when the election is over.”
Felix translated that to Aunt Teresa, and then she stood there, glaring at me, and went into a long speech, waving a spatula around for emphasis. She went on and on, and I tried to keep up and look interested, and when she was done, she looked at Felix with emphasis and then stomped back to her stove.
“What was that all about?” I asked.
Felix picked up his coffee cup. “Aunt Teresa said you find the right person, don’t let her go.”
“Excuse me? I think she said a hell of a lot more than that.”
Felix shrugged. “Just old family history. You don’t need to know.”
“But I want to know.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say morbid curiosity. She seemed to have a lot to say.”
Felix laughed. “Morbid. Good guess. Okay, she said you find the right person, you don’t let them go. That in the years that God has put her on this earth, that her true love was her first husband, Peter, God rest his soul, whom she married in 1936 and who died in Anzio in 1944, God rest his soul and may the souls of the Nazis burn in eternity.”
“That sounds—”
“Wait, I’m not finished. She said that she rushed into her second marriage, with Michael, who was a drunk and bitter man who chased women in the neighborhood and embarrassed her and his family, who beat her children. And then when her marriage to him ended, thank you Mother Mary, she was so lucky to find her sainted Joseph, who treated her as a princess and who raised her three girls as his own, God preserve him. And when he died, she went into mourning and never left it. So, young man, she says, she was lucky twice, but you may only be lucky once, and don’t tempt the fates by ignoring this offering.”
Felix picked up a napkin, wiped his fingers. I waited for a moment and said, “Is that all?”
“Pretty much.”
“What do you mean, pretty much?”
“Let’s just leave it at that.”
So I finished my coffee and Aunt Teresa came back, picked up our plates, and when I tried to follow her to the sink, she shooed me back and gave me a slap to my hand. Felix laughed. “You’ll learn, like the others, you don’t mess with Aunt Teresa.”
Something nudged at me, and I said, “Her second husband. Michael, the one who drank and beat her three children. She said that marriage ended. How? Desertion? Divorce?”
“Death,” Felix said.
“Oh,” I said. “That must have been rough.”
“Sure was,” Felix said. “Was years before I heard the real story.”
“Which was what?”
Felix seemed to ponder that for a moment, and said, “All right. Family secrets revealed. Just don’t let on that you know this, and don’t let it affect your view of Aunt Teresa.”
“Except for the fact she doesn’t like help in the kitchen, I think she’s an old sweetheart.”
“Thanks, I’ll make sure she knows that. Anyway, it was 1950, about four years after she remarried. Like she said, Michael was a creep. Drank too much, beat on her and the kids, and chased women all around the North End and beyond. He also managed to tick off some . . . independent businessmen who lived here.”
“Your future employers?” I asked innocently. Felix always claimed that he listed “security consultant” on his 1040 tax return form every year, and I loved trying to get a rise out of him by poking holes in his so-called employment history.
“This is Aunt Teresa’s story, not mine,” he said, with a disapproving tone. “So here it was, summer of 1950, a scorching hot day, no A/C back then, just open windows, fans, and sleeping out on the fire escapes at night. Michael comes stumbling in about six
A
.
M
. or thereabouts, demanding breakfast, and Teresa says something like, well, you weren’t here for supper last night, why should I make you breakfast? And in the kitchen, he cold-cocks her right in front of her three girls. She picks herself up, tells the girls to go back to bed and stay there, and they do. Michael sits his wide butt in that very same chair that you’re sitting in, picks up his copy of the
Record-American
, and starts picking his races for Suffolk Downs.”
Aunt Teresa was at the sink, singing some tune with a high, lilting voice.
“So while Michael is smoking a cigarette, picking the races, Aunt Teresa sets down a plate with bacon, toast, and two eggs over easy, and when Michael starts digging into his first meal of the day, Aunt Teresa steps behind him, grabs his hair, tugs his head back, and with her best kitchen knife she slits his throat.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
He shrugged. “You asked, I told. And I never joke about family stories.”
More singing from the old woman at the sink.
“What happened to her?”
“Short-term, she grabbed Michael’s plate and ate her own breakfast. Didn’t want good food to go to waste. Long-term, the police came by, local businessmen and others vouched for her good nature, and the charges eventually got swept. So there you go.”
I wiped my own fingers on my napkin. “I get the feeling dear old Uncle Joseph was either very brave, or very loving.”
“A bit of both.”
Aunt Teresa came over, smiling, and spoke a rapid sentence. Felix said, “She wants to know if you need anything else.”
I smiled up at her. “Not a thing.”
A
fter breakfast, I gave Felix first crack at the bathroom, and then it was my turn, and I had to make do in the large tub with a hand-held shower fixture that had weak water pressure that barely dribbled on my hair and skin. Plus, since Felix had gone before me, the water had started off lukewarm and got colder from there.