A Town Called Malice Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  St. Martin’s Press ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  With love for Sam and Antonia

  There is no commandment to be consoled.

  —NAHMANIDES

  PROLOGUE

  The dream plays like clockwork, before the birds collect their sheet music for the day, a high ghost moon steeping toward a weak-tea dawn: June in Boston and the living is sleazy as Gus Molten cruises his black Cannondale through the neon gauntlet of Washington Street. Hot for so early in the season, mirage hot, the sledgehammer of another Boston summer falling early, ushering in a new Season of Living Dangerously.

  Two fifty-four in the morning, to be exact; the bars almost an hour empty, the short strip of the Combat Zone still bustling like the floor of some illicit stock exchange, trading heavy.

  Watchu need, bro? Watchu lookin’ for?

  The usual. On each side of the street, thin track stars lope about in two-piece Fila, Adidas, and Gianni Versace running suits, Olympic gold chains looped around their necks, dull dollar signs and the threat of instant violence fixed in glassy predatory eyes. Home Sweet Home as Gus hooks a right onto a deserted LaGrange, the yo-blow-yo-smoke-yo-pussy mantra echoing off the corners, ringing sweet as a lullaby, familiar and warm to his ears.

  He glides the Cannondale to the curb, nurses the brakes to a full stop before an outdoor foyer of black iron bars roughly the size of a holding cell; the entrance, as always, reeking of beer and piss, the floor littered with the spill of fast-food containers and shattered green and brown glass, street diamonds glittering in a shaft of sympathetic moonlight. Above the foyer a broken electric sign reads, GO D TIM S, the hours midnight to 2 A.M. shaded on its shattered clockface. A few doors down, the Glass Slipper is quiet except for the schizophrenic wink of its pink neon illuminating the cartoonish figure of a large-breasted blonde clutching the strap of a sparkling stiletto-heeled shoe brick-painted above its entrance.

  She looks nothing like Cinderella.

  From where he stands, Gus can hear the rumbling of muscle cars—Thunderbirds, Chargers, Camaros—turning the corner off Kneeland, prowling the block for hookers and late-night thrills; watches for a moment as they wheel up Washington; sets his eyes to blank as a two-tone cruiser peels off toward him and passes out the other end onto Tremont, its strobes spinning blue ghouls into the night. He jangles a set of keys from his messenger bag and slips one into the gate’s lock, the bolt giving way with a heavy click like the sound of a hammer on a gun being cocked.

  The man comes out of a darkened doorway, walking unsteadily with his head down, his right hand nursing a brown paper bag held close at his side. When Gus turns for his bike the man is right behind him, the bag-hand extended high like he’s offering him a drink.

  Strange.

  It’s not like Gus to miss someone standing in the doorway like that. Sure, it’s late and dark, but he’s normally cautious about checking the street for anything out of whack, any dangers beside the usual sharks and bottom feeders the neighborhood—if you could call it that—draws. Maybe his carelessness has something to do with that reading in Harvard Square the other day, all that “moon in Venus and Uranus” shit messing with his head. Maybe all the cash he’s pulling making him cocky. Big-Time Hood. Seen too many Scorsese movies. Maybe he’s stoned.

  Whatever.

  Gus opens his mouth to say something when the first bullet takes out his front teeth, pings off the metal stud in his tongue, and exits out the back of his neck, severing the spinal column. The foyer door swings open as Gus buckles backward, but not before two more flashes catch him, the reports muffled like firecrackers set off under a pillow; not even loud enough to stir the rats from their busywork.

  The man’s hand bursts into flame.

  Gus slams against the inside door and slides down, blood mixed with piss and little chunks of his last thoughts dripping onto his shoulders.

  The cruiser doesn’t stop for a closer look at him until the sun’s wedged itself into the sky. Except for the large pool of deep crimson that seeps from under the bars, over the sidewalk, and into the street, he looks like just another drunk sleeping the hard night away.

  They have to torch the gate to collect him; it had been locked with his Kryptonite. Of course by then the Cannondale is gone, as is his pack, leaving only the sidewalk stamped with red footprints that read: Nike, Fila, Reebok, and Adidas.

  And one long strip of bicycle tread.

  ONE

  I’m in the middle of my set at Nick’s Comedy Stop on Warrenton Street when Homicide Detective Batista Wells walks in with a beautiful woman on his arm. I haven’t seen Wells since I’d been subpoenaed to testify in front of the grand jury that eventually brought indictments against Darryl Jenkins on money laundering and tax evasion charges. Detective Wells and his partner, Brill, would have preferred murder charges but the evidence wasn’t there for that; there were plenty of bodies, my friend and business partner Gus Molten among them, but none they could rightly pin on Darryl.

  I had cleaned myself up for the court date, which took some doing, bought a pair of polished Camper wing tips, donned a suit and a tie—though not nearly as nice as Wells’s; he’s the Boston Police Department’s sartorial torchbearer—and invoked my Fifth Amendment rights, sparing everybody the agreed-upon lies the Boston Police Department and the FBI had concocted in the wake of Devlin McKenna’s bloody return to his former killing grounds.

  Darryl is nearly halfway through his four-year bid at MCI Concord, a medium-security prison situated directly across from the Massachusetts State Police barracks on Route 2, within easy driving distance of Boston by way of Cambridge. I’m not sure if this proximity to the city makes it easier or harder for Darryl to do his time, the shimmering downtown and new harbor skyline visible through the bars of his cell working as a tease or inspiration as he counts down the days toward his release; it’s not what we talk about when I visit him if we end up talking at all. Sometimes we just sit staring at each other across the chipped and scarred visitation table, elbows down as if holding phantom cards, our collective history piled like chips between us, searching for a tell in the other’s eyes.

  After the grand jury had its day I gave my suit to a longtime homeless neighbor of mine by the name of Albert who used to camp out in the loading docks of the industrial loft on Thayer Street I’d been evicted from in the months before Darryl’s trial, when I was still recuperating from gunshot and stab wounds at Beth Israel hospital. Albert, as is his way, wasn’t much on giving thanks, and accepted the handout blank-faced before turning the collar out, peeking at the label for a recognizable brand name. Then he inquired after my shoes.

  “What good’s a suit without shoes, Zesty?” Albert mumbled through the catacombs of his beard, crumbs tumbling like ashen snow to the sidewalk. To look at Albert you’d never imagine the suit would fit him, but in truth he was a homeless onion: Peel back the layered T-shirts and sweaters, and we were about the same size.

  “You going some
place, Albert?” I said.

  “Gotta look presentable. Neighborhood done changed.” Albert leaned in conspiratorially, his hot breath an open oven of baking compost. “I’m trying to blend in, see, lay low. Where you living now? I don’t see you around much no more.”

  “I’m renting a closet on Union Park,” I told him.

  “Oh.” Albert took a moment to consider the implications of that address. “So you right in the thick of it. How you like it?”

  When I had moved onto Thayer Street it had no lighting, the road was dirt, mud when it rained, the loading docks and sidewalks littered with condoms, crack vials, spent needles, and trash from contractors who would dump their waste at all hours of the night. The Pine Street Inn, the city’s largest homeless shelter, on Harrison Avenue, was within view of my windows. Now that the Big Dig’s been completed, the artists, musicians, and misfits who had inhabited the rough industrial lofts either evicted or bought out, this once neglected outer edge of the South End rebranded as a historic district, Thayer Street has been reborn with art galleries, a cobblestone path, well-lit sidewalks, high-end restaurants, and condominiums with sand-blasted redbrick exteriors that start in the seven figures.

  On Union Park it’s bumper-to-bumper BMW and Subaru sedans, the sidewalks clogged with eight-hundred-dollar ergonomic carbon-fiber baby strollers and long-limbed mommies tucking yoga mats trailing the ever-present honeysuckle scent of a perfume that might as well be called Eau de’Entitlement.

  “It’s different,” I told Albert and left it at that.

  “They gonna let you stay?”

  It was a fair question. “Long as I got shoes,” I told him.

  Detective Wells is wearing dark indigo Levi’s and a fitted Harris Tweed blazer over a gray Converse All Star T-shirt. From the stage I can’t see his shoes, but it’s a safe bet they cost more than box seats in Fenway. The woman with him has long dark hair that spills out over her shoulders and looks like a million dollars in a little black dress that goes well with everything, even Detective Wells.

  “So,” I say, stumbling into my delivery, thrown off by the detective’s presence. “Seems the Russians just started their own version of the NBA, successfully bypassing the American franchising fee. Their slogan?” Pause. “Nothing but Nyet.”

  A fat man who has the entire front row of tables to himself laughs out loud and I feel the sudden urge to jump offstage and hug him. There are about twenty-five people in the club on this Sunday night. Nearly half of them are aspiring comics and fellow comedy workshop classmates participating in tonight’s performance hosted by Hank Aroot, a veteran New York City comic and former Boston transplant. Hank teaches the stand-up class twice a year under the auspices of Emerson College on Commonwealth Avenue; for a few of us, this is the first time onstage. It’s ludicrous. I’m actually paying money to fail.

  “Nothing but Nyet,” I repeat as Detective Wells cracks a smile in the darkness, whispering something to the woman, who laughs with her eyes and covers her mouth with her hand. “Which coincidentally also happens to be the title of Vladimir Putin’s autobiography.”

  The workshop students laugh out loud in an exaggerated show of support but I’ve lost the fat man in the front row. Could he not know who Putin is? I take a deep breath, resist the urge to explain the joke to him, and move on. I can feel my heart hammering inside my chest, a drop of sweat trickling its way down my temple past my ear. The red light facing the stage blinks on, signaling that I have about thirty seconds left before Hank will come bounding onstage to pry the microphone from my cold clammy hands. Death by Spotlight, Hank calls it. To be avoided at all costs.

  I’m a bike messenger by trade, a job that places me in mortal danger every time I slip my size-ten Adidas into a set of toe clips, and two years ago I’d narrowly survived a collision with a gold Buick, the first link in a chain of events that culminated with me staring down the barrel of a gun held by Boston’s most infamous crime boss. I was scared then, but I’m terrified now, squinting into the hot stage lights; which probably doesn’t speak much for my level of intelligence. Or sanity. McKenna ended up shooting me twice, one bullet narrowly missing my spine, but not getting a laugh on my last joke hurts nearly as much. There’s got to be something very wrong with me.

  Out of the corner of my eye I catch Hank in the wings twirling his hand in a circular motion, telling me to get on with it.

  “So, uh, I started taking a pottery class recently, really enjoyed it. It’s relaxing. Creative. But after doing it a few times I started getting nervous because everyone knows pottery’s a gateway art to, like, some of the harder stuff. Stained glass. Mixed media. Oils … And I didn’t want to get hooked.”

  Crickets.

  Hank comes bounding onstage and mugs me for the microphone. “Gateway art!” he says in an inexplicable and exaggerated Irish lilt, Riverdancing with his thumbs under his armpits, which cracks everybody up. My joke but Hank kills with it. “Zesty Meyers, everybody. Nice job, Zesty.”

  There’s a smattering of polite applause as I leave the stage and when I pass the fat man he tosses a couple of beer nuts into his mouth and opines around them, “Don’t quit your day job, kid.”

  I back up and plunk myself uninvited into an empty seat beside him. “Putin’s the prime minister of Russia,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “That joke’s funny.”

  “Maybe. But your delivery was terrible.”

  Onstage Hank is saying, “Our next comic is coming to you from … her mother’s vagina. Well, not directly! Please give a warm round of applause for Caitlin—”

  “My delivery?”

  “It’s practice is all, don’t get offended.” The fat man shrugs into his shirt pocket and hands me a card that reads, OTTO HELMS: NICK’S COMEDY STOP, printed in dark black letters. There’s no phone number printed below his name. No Web address. It’s a card from the Dark Ages; by all rights it should be etched on stone. “When you’re ready. What do you do for day work, kid?”

  I tell him and dig out a card of my own, a winged Mercury on a bicycle trailing flames from his rear wheels. “You could actually say I specialize in delivery.”

  “Now that’s funny.” Otto Helms pockets the card without looking at it, his attention firmly back on the stage. “Will you look at the rack on this broad.”

  I look up at my classmate Caitlin. Being the observant type, I’d already sussed out that her rack, as Helms referred to it, is largely the product of a miracle push-up bra and I’ve heard her tepid material before, which centers around her former marriage to a stockbroker and her current penchant for serial dating policemen. Still, she is easy to look at and I have to give her credit, the stage doesn’t seem to make her nervous like it does most of us, the spotlight bathing her in an enervating glow, which she uses to full effect.

  “Why are you here? Isn’t this a little like bird-dogging the minor leagues?” I flick Otto Helms’s card loudly with my index finger, momentarily drawing his eyes off Caitlin’s chest.

  “Just killing time,” Helms says. “Like you kill punch lines.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah, try being more funny. Do you mind? I wanna listen to this.”

  The entire class is slated to perform tonight and Caitlin’s last up before we take a short break to give people a chance to hit the bathroom, maybe smoke a few cigarettes outside to calm their jangling nerves. I wasn’t going to approach Detective Wells—he’s as entitled to a night out without heckling as the rest of us—but he waves and kicks out a seat for me to join them. I amble over but stay standing. It’s not that I don’t like Wells, but his date is even prettier up close, gold flecks in deep brown eyes, and I’ve been told that I have a problem with staring so I’m inclined to keep this visit short and leer-free.

  “Anitra Tehran.” Wells pretends not to notice when I slide the chair back in. “I’d like you to meet Zesty Meyers.”

  “The Zesty Meyers?” His date leans back slightly in her chair as if I w
ere growing taller on the spot. She extends her ring-free hand for me to shake; her name is familiar to me for some reason, only I can’t place it.

  “I suppose,” I say. “Depending on what the ‘the’ stands for. Detective, how are you?”

  “I’m good, Zesty. I was just starting to regale Anitra here with how we met, but she already seems to know that story. Among others.”

  This is usually the point in a conversation where my defenses go up. Most people who think they know something about me or my family usually start by referring to my mother and her role in the 1986 robbery of the Allston branch Bank of Boston, in which a retired police officer and bank manager were killed. After which my mother disappeared into an underground network of disposable aliases and vacant safe houses, the narrative of my family’s history written in blood until last year’s revision, when I learned a more complicated truth. Not that it turned out to be easier to bear than the fiction.

  I look at Wells, who keeps his blue-green eyes neutral but observant. Not much escapes Wells’s notice; it’s one of the things that makes him a sharp detective and could make him a solid poker player if he ever chose that route.

  “I’m sorry.” Anitra Tehran swivels from me to Wells. “Did I say something wrong?”

  “He’s touchy about his family.” Wells dispenses an elaborate shrug.

  “Why should he be any different?” Anitra Tehran smiles an apology and I notice a tiny mole at the corner of her left eye, the effect like an exclamation mark on her beauty.

  Walk away, Renée, I tell myself. Pillar of salt.

  “Would you want your family’s history plastered on the front pages for a week?”

  “Wouldn’t sell as many papers,” Wells says.

  “You’re a reporter.” I snap my fingers, Anitra Tehran’s name finally catching up to my brain.

  “I am.” Anitra stretches out the words, narrowing her eyes toward Wells.