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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781608090907 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Oceanview Publishing |
| Publication date: | 08/06/2013 |
| Series: | Dermot Sparhawk Series , #2 |
| Pages: | 320 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.20(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Beyond the Bridge
A Novel
By Tom MacDonald
Oceanview Publishing
Copyright © 2013 Tom MacDonaldAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60809-090-7
CHAPTER 1
I was sitting in my office at Saint Jude Thaddeus Parish in Charles town browsing a tattered paperback written by the late George V. Higgins when my mind drifted to a story about my father. It was a story that one of his Marine Corps pals from Vietnam told me when I was young. Some of it I knew, some of it I didn't, all of it fascinated me.
The leatherneck vet said that my father's favorite actor was Robert Mitchum, and that my father's favorite Robert Mitchum movie was The Friends of Eddie Coyle, filmed here in Boston in the early seventies, years before I was born. My father, Chief Sparhawk, was a Micmac Indian from Antigonish, a small fishing village turned college town in the northeast corner of Nova Scotia, thirty miles west of Cape Breton Island.
He came to Boston to find work. Two tours of Vietnam later, with a head full of shrapnel and a chestful of medals, he found work. Dangerous work. Indians expect this. He scraped bridges and welded high-rises, but mostly he was a man in search of his next job. During the filming of Eddie Coyle, Chief worked for the Teamsters alongside mob boss Howie Winter, head of Somerville's Winter Hill Gang. Howie ran the Teamsters, though his name never appeared on the masthead, and Paramount Pictures begged for his mercy throughout the shoot. Howie bestowed his blessings on Paramount the way popes of old bestowed indulgences on prosperous sinners: for cash up front.
The Teamsters had everything nailed down. You couldn't take a shit on set unless the union approved the outhouse. They organized all transportation, and my father landed a job as a driver. Driving big shots in limos was easy for Chief, especially compared to washing windows on the Hancock Tower. A dry steering wheel beats a wet squeegee every time. My father's philosophy was a simple one, taken from The Friends of Eddie Coyle, and it went like this: "Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid." The Coyle quip didn't prove true for Chief. Nobody was smarter than my old man. Nobody had a tougher life.
I was thinking about all this when a rap on the door disrupted my reverie. I bookmarked the paperback and answered it. A woman bustled in smelling of mothballs and cigarettes. Vaporous steam churned from her mouth. It was early January yet she wore no coat, but that didn't stop her. She plowed ahead as the metal door slammed behind her.
"Friggin' door's dangerous." She shivered and blew on her hands. "You oughta fix it before someone gets killed."
"The hydraulic gizmo is out of whack," I explained.
She looked up at me. "Jaysus, you're a big bastard." Her washed-out blue eyes matched her washed-out complexion. On top of her head, clumps of bleached hair sprouted like the straws of Saint Bridget's Cross. "Friggin' cold out there. Ain't much warmer in here, not that I'm complaining."
"The heat's out of whack, too. How can I help you?"
"I need something to eat, Father. My check don't come for two weeks."
"I'm not a priest, I just work here." She didn't look familiar. Most of the people in the projects looked familiar. "Let's go to the pantry and see what we can scare up."
"Thanks, Father." She huffed on her knuckles. Her fingernails were bitten to milky crescents. "Mind if I warm up first? My son swiped my jacket. Drugs."
"Have a seat," I said, and walked to the kitchenette. "I'll pour us some coffee. What's your name?"
"Gladys Foley. I just moved into Carney Court, been waiting eight months for a place. I lived in Southie for a while, over there in Old Colony. Then my son got pinched. Drugs again."
"It's epidemic."
"Housing is strict on drugs, 'specially if you're white. Me and my kid ended up homeless. Lived in shelters for a while, lived under the expressway, we met some nice people under the expressway. Then we got lucky, got this place in Charlestown. I was scared we'd end up in Roxbury or Dorchester. A white woman shouldn't live in Roxbury or Dorchester, not by Franklin Park anyways."
"Cream and sugar?"
"Yeah, cream and sugar." She flexed her hands, good as new. "Meant to ask you, what do you think of them priests getting crucified? Can't blame you for not wearing a collar."
"I'm not a —"
"You gotta be scared shit about them killings."
"Gladys, I'm not a priest. I just work here. My name is Dermot Sparhawk."
I usually give up telling women I'm not a priest after a couple of tries, unless they're good looking. Gladys sipped her coffee. My hand trembled as I raised mine to my mouth.
"Rough night there, padre?" She leaned in for a swallow and something plopped into the cup. "Cripes, my plate fell out. That dentist of mine can't get nothin' straight."
"Fit them back in."
"Nah." She shoved the dripping teeth in her pocket. "It ain't really the dentist's fault. I ran out of that gooey shit to glue 'em in with."
The paperback called to me. The bookmark stuck out like a tongue, teasing me to come back to it. Distractions are important when you work in the projects. Without them you're forced to look directly at the truth, and the truth can be damaging. It's best to view hardship indirectly, the way a schoolboy views an eclipse through a pinhole projector. Otherwise you'll go blind.
"I'm starving and you're staring at a book?" She chewed her thumb like a teething child. "Just kidding."
We finished the coffee and walked to the pantry. Gladys loaded a bag with dry goods and milk and meat, and her hands shook as she was doing this. Life had beaten Gladys Foley senseless, yet she refused to give up. She fit my definition of a winner.
"Got any work for me?" she asked. "I like volunteering, you know, doing favors for people."
She probably needed community service hours to offset the rent. Boston Housing would require it if Gladys didn't have a job. I asked her if she had a driver's license; she said yes. I told her I might have volunteer hours, running errands for the food pantry. She said that would be "mirific."
"Hey, since I'm gonna be doing you favors down the road, maybe you can do me a favor right now and front me a finnif till Mother's Day."
Mother's Day, the first of the month when the welfare checks go out. I handed her five dollars.
"Thanks." She put the money in her pocket next to the teeth. "I'm going home, gonna sit in my chair and rest my feet on the hassock."
CHAPTER 2As I headed back to the office, a lean man with dark hair and dark features fell in stride next to me. I knew him from the pantry, but I couldn't recall his name. He smiled at me with straight, white teeth. This was unusual for a food pantry client — both the smile and the teeth. The man followed me into the office and sat across from my desk. He didn't bat an eye when the metal door slammed behind him.
"Can I help you?" I asked.
He took a pen from the desktop and wrote, My name is Blackie Barboza. I'm deaf. I can't speak. He wrote stenographer fast. I read lips.
The name Barboza got my attention.
"Help with what?"
He shook the pen and wrote, My brother was Father Netto Barboza.
"The slain priest?"
He nodded.
The killing of Father Netto Barboza dominated yesterday's news cycle, spurred by the shock that he was the second Boston priest within a week to be crucified. The first victim, Father Axholm, had been found nailed to a concrete highway buttress in Dorchester. Joyfully for the press but sadly for the Archdiocese, Father Axholm was an accused pedophile. The press hinted at revenge as a possible motive — a brilliant deduction. Father Axholm had been awaiting trial at the time of his murder.
Yesterday, Father Barboza got it. He too was an accused pedophile priest, and he too was crucified, nailed to a wharf on the Boston side of the Charles River Basin. Monday morning Red Line commuters gawked at the wharf-turned-cross that jutted from below the Longfellow Bridge.
"I'm sorry for your loss." I wasn't sure what to say. I've dealt with trauma before. It happens all the time in the projects. "I can recommend a good grief therapist."
He wrote, I don't want that kind of help.
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the desk.
"What kind of help do you want?" I found myself annunciating each syllable. "Do you want to talk to a priest? Father Dominic will be glad to help you."
I don't want a priest. I want you to find my brother's killer.
"What?"
He wrote again, Find my brother's killer.
"Sure, no problem," I said. "I'll find him on my lunch break. Anything else while I'm at it?"
Yes. He wrote. Prove my brother is innocent. He is not a pedophile.
Apparently, lip-readers don't translate sarcasm.
"You can't be serious." I waited, but Blackie didn't respond. "You're pulling my leg, right?"
He scribbled, I am serious. Find my brother's killer.
I could tell by his expression that he was in fact serious. Was he also wacky?
"You're asking the wrong guy, Blackie. You should talk to the police."
I don't trust the police.
"Don't trust the police? What does trust have to do with it? I don't trust my bookie, but he's the guy I go to when I place a bet.
The cops will find the killer. They're all over it."
He tore off the top sheet. On a fresh page, he wrote, Maybe the cops will find him. Maybe they won't. Maybe some rich guy will pay them to look the other way. It happens.
"You watch too much TV."
I trust you. I know you. You won't stop until you find the truth.
"You think I'm a guy who won't stop?"
I know you are.
Blackie unfolded the morning tabloid, which showed Father Netto Barboza's image plastered on the front page. He pointed to it and wrote Help me under the photo.
"This is crazy," I said.
You help people.
"I run a food pantry. I don't track down killers."
I sat back and looked to the harbor. Arching above the projects like a rusting rainbow was the green hulk of the Tobin Bridge. An inbound semi humped across the upper deck and shook the building we sat in. It intruded further, blowing its air horn.
He scrawled, You are smart. You went to college. You played football.
"Sure, I played football. Big deal."
He pointed at the newspaper again. My brother is innocent. He was holy! He never hurt a child. Never! Those kids are lying. Fuck them!
Kids? Them? As in plural? More than one kid accused Father Barboza? What were the chances he didn't do it?
"Listen to me, Blackie. I can't prove your brother is innocent of those charges, and I don't find killers. It's not part of my job. Besides, it is way out of my league. I wouldn't know where to begin."
Just try. You will find the truth if you just try.He pointed at me, writing, You're supposed to help us.
"Oh, man."
He kept at it. I have faith in you. We all have faith in you back here. You are one of us. You are special.
"I'm not special, and your faith is misplaced."
He dropped the ballpoint and grabbed a Sharpie. In thick red letters he printed, Our faith is NOT misplaced. You are one of us.
The Sharpie fumes intensified the thumping in my head. Maybe the toxic inhalant was part of Blackie's ploy to get me to give in, and if it was, it was working.
"Cap that thing, will you?"
I tried to ignore him, but he wouldn't leave the office. He kept pointing to the newspaper and retracing the words Help me under his brother's photo. He showed me another photo; this one of Father Barboza distributing Communion at Mass. Blackie then took a twenty from his wallet and slid it across the desk to me.
My last twenty. Take it. I'll get you more.
"No." I pushed the bill back to him. "No money."
Maybe it was the way his eyes said it, the way his eyes believed in me when nobody else believed in me anymore. Blackie stared at me the way teammates once stared at me in the huddle, knowing I'd make the play. A faint memory of enthusiasm pinged in my soul, a ping I hadn't felt in years. I toyed with the idea of finding Father Barboza's killer, dismissed it out of hand, and toyed with it more.
I had to admit that the idea of looking for Father Barboza's killer excited me, but the excitement arose from self-interest and not moral duty. Looking for the killer offered an escape from the mundane, a diversion from eyeballing expiration dates on soup cans and rotating boxes of breakfast cereal. An escape, that's what excited me. And, besides, this guy wasn't going to let me say no.
"Let me think about it." I held up my hands. "No promises."
Blackie fumbled for the pen and wrote, Thank you. He hopped to his feet and shook my hand.
"I said I'll think about it."
The rest of the day crawled by like traffic on the Tobin, and, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shake Blackie Barboza's eyes from my mind. At five o'clock I locked up the office and walked to Packy's Liquor Store in Hayes Square. My knee throbbed with each step, indicating a low front was underway. A hell of a way to tell the weather.
Across the square in the Harvard-Kent playground, two boys passed the pigskin back and forth, enjoying the greatest game in its purest form. On a vacant lot behind Packy's, the city had broken ground on a new police station, and next to it, a new men's recovery house. At one time Charlestown had more bars in more places than AT&T wireless. Now we're building a recovery house to handle the fallout from those bars.
Inside the liquor store I grabbed a six-pack of Narragansett and a pint of Old Thompson and placed them on the counter.
"That all, Dermot?"
"That's all, Packy."
And I handed over my money.
CHAPTER 3Daybreak was tough, but I've had tougher. I washed down five aspirins with two Gatorades and began to feel human again. Some people might call this the waste of a day off. I call it morning. And now to fulfill an agreement I had made to a deaf and dumb project man to find the person who murdered his brother. Although I hadn't made an explicit promise to Blackie, I had implied a promise, and when a Townie implies a promise, he had better deliver on it. Why had I said yes to Blackie Barboza? Why did I get his hopes up? There was no way possible I could find the killer. An entire police force was already at work on it. What could I add to that?
I dragged my ass out of the house and hitched through the projects to the church office, where I planned to use the computer. I logged onto the Internet and searched for Father Netto Barboza. The search yielded hundreds of hits. I read some of the stories, looked at the pictures, and learned nothing new. Then I read an article about the first murder victim, Father Axholm.
Father Axholm had been found crucified on a concrete expressway stanchion at Neponset Circle. The article went on to say that a newspaper hawker discovered the body the morning after the killing when he was setting up his stand for work. I decided to visit the hawker and ask him about the dead body he saw. If I learned nothing new, I'd have an excuse to tell Blackie Barboza that I was done, that his request was over my head.
I locked up the office, walked to Community College, and rode the Orange Line to Downtown Crossing, where I picked up the Red Line for Ashmont. At Fields Corner, I boarded the 202 bus and stayed on it the length of Neponset Avenue and got off near the expressway.
Across the way, I saw a man standing beneath the highway overpass, selling newspapers to commuters as they stopped at the traffic light. I hoped it was the same newspaper hawker that found Father Axholm's body. Even the fact that I hoped it was the same guy surprised me. After all, I was looking for an excuse to drop the whole thing. With my knee now loose, I dodged three lanes of a Dorchester speedway called Gallivan Boulevard and made it to his makeshift milk-crate stand in one piece.
"Any Globes?" I shouted as I caught my breath.
"Don't sell Globes, just Heralds."
I asked for a Herald and gave it a token browse. The hawker eyed me as if I were a curiosity. Pedestrians never bought newspapers here, only drivers, and they were always in a rush. I waited for a truck to pass overhead, and then I asked him the question I came here to ask him.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Beyond the Bridge by Tom MacDonald. Copyright © 2013 Tom MacDonald. Excerpted by permission of Oceanview Publishing.
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