Джон Краули - New Haven Noir

It was just up Union and left on Water Street, under the viaduct, to the train station. Easy enough for an ambush, but I didn’t think Finch wanted my death to look like a hit. I made a quick phone call to my professor to inform him that I wouldn’t be around for a while. I told him I was taking a train out of town right away.

The station was quiet. A family of four was being escorted down the stairway toward the platform by a big man — one of Finch’s mercs, one of my former colleagues. Two more mercs flanked the stairway. Two more came inside behind me and guarded the door. The only other person in the huge, high-ceilinged hall was a bull-necked, crew-cut man sitting with his back to me on the middle bench. Finch. Owner of SteelShield. More petty tyrant commandeering the station than the great and humble general he wanted the world to see him as.

I checked the board: my train wasn’t due for almost ten minutes. I went back to the bench, as Finch knew I would.

“Sit down for a while, Pete,” he said, as if I’d run into him at lunch. His eyes were two dark threats and he had long since forgotten the difference between a smile and a sneer. I declined the invitation, though standing there only made me a better target. “I want you to take a vacation for a while. On me.”

“Overseas?”

“We take requests... when we can.”

“Let it go, Finch. It wasn’t you who tortured those women. Just let it go. A few bad apples.”

He had become world-famous. And he built the fortune on his own. What started out as a newsletter for former servicemen had turned into a behemoth stoking the ever-expanding demands of the government at war. Mergers had brought on-site services — food and lodging, transport and entertainment — into the fold, but mercenaries remained the top priority. He didn’t do it by letting go.

“Well, you’ve gotten to the heart of it, Pete. It’s about loyalty. I have to stand by my men. You don’t seem to get that concept. You could have come to me. Directly to me. And I would have taken care of the problem. The boys let off some steam. They’re under pressure. Not everyone reacts the way you and I do. But—”

“You would have done what you’re doing now — tried to kill me.”

“I don’t want to kill you, Pete. But I can’t let you testify, either. The company is too big for that now.”

“I have a train to catch. C’mon. You’ll walk me out there.”

I reached back and brought out my gun and pointed it at him. I didn’t try to hide it from anyone.

Finch was not impressed. He stood. He was about my height but had gotten thick through the middle. For some reason it dawned on me that he was close to sixty years old.

“Arms up?” he asked.

“If you want to.”

He raised his right hand. It was a signal. One of the men at the door went outside for a moment and seconds later two of his comrades escorted Addie inside.

“They have their orders,” Finch said.

I maneuvered Finch toward the stairs, keeping his men in front of me. Addie was working to hide her fear. This was the moment for her slick moves, vicious flying kicks. The moment for me to shoot five men before they could shoot me. Neither of us thought we could pull it off.

“Let her go, Finch. You don’t want to die in this train station. Not your style.”

I ordered the two mercs guarding the stairs to move aside. I gripped Finch tighter and stood with my back to the staircase facing the other mercs. The one with the gun on Addie had sleepy, calm eyes, the kind that don’t panic.

Finch said, “Hold her. Just hold her. He has to catch his train and he’s not going to shoot me like this. Not Pete. He’s not up to it.”

The clock was out of sight and that was fine because I had no idea how to proceed. I listened, hoping the train would arrive and force me into a decision. Instead, I heard footsteps behind me. Coming closer. Coming up the stairs. I remembered the merc who had escorted the family downstairs but couldn’t remember seeing him come up.

“Go ahead, Pete, prove me wrong. Show the boys you’re better than them,” Finch said. “You’ll save the girl. Give yourself up to save her.” But it seemed more for the mercs’ sake than mine.

The footsteps came closer. More than one set. I’m sure Finch heard them too. I don’t know what they did to him but each step was like an ice pick creeping up my spine disc by disc.

Suddenly the mercs lowered their guns and the front doors opened and four men with US Marshal windbreakers swept in.

From behind me, a hand rested on my shoulder and I heard Haley say, “Thanks for the tip, Pete. We’ll take it from here.”

My grip on Finch had gone rigid and the US marshals had to yank him free.

Addie stood alone, in limbo, looking at me, but before I got to her, Haley pulled me aside. “How did you know the professor would contact me?”

“C’mon, Haley. Who tipped you I was in New Haven? I have to go now.”

“Where?”

I stepped away. He grabbed my arm.

“And what about her?”

I shook my head and avoided her eyes. “She doesn’t know anything. They told her to go to Sports Haven and wait for that little jerk. She came around tonight on her own to apologize to me. They caught her and tried to use her. That’s all.”

Addie reached me at the top of the stairs. I took her hand and we walked down and then out to the platform. The red lights began blinking. The tracks curved just out of the station so I couldn’t see the light of the train yet. Now I hoped it would be late.

“You didn’t look scared,” I said.

“I tried not to lean in too much. Do they sell tickets on the train?”

I shook my head. “I have to try to lay low. Running around with a beautiful movie star is probably not the best way.”

The train came in sight but we both turned back to each other at the same moment.

“Maybe when it’s all over I’ll look you up. If you’re still interested...”

“Count on it,” she said. “It’s a sure thing.”

I boarded that train and rode a long way wondering whether I wanted the trial to come soon so I could find out if she was right, or to come later so I could hope she was.

East Rock

I liked her right away. Or, I saw that she liked me right away, and I liked that. It’d been a bad year and any little expression of enthusiasm was gratifying. We walked into the East Rock Café at the same time, women in our thirties, double-knotted summer scarves and flat sandals on our dirty feet. We ordered identical lattes and avocado on toast. We rolled our eyes at the always likable yet glacially slow counter girl and took note of each other. She claimed a shaky little table and managed to drop her latte, step on her backpack, and trip over her pile of papers. I handed her a wad of napkins, smiled, and sat down at the opposite table, laying out David Gates in front of me, Khloe Kardashian’s secret heartache next to my latte, and the second section of the New York Times to my left. Who wouldn’t like me?

She glanced at my newspaper. “My God,” she said, “Oliver Bullfinch was killed. I knew him. I mean, I worked with him.” She looked tense and queasy. She told me he was her colleague, a lovable old coot. What a terrible, terrible thing, she said.

It was a terrible thing. It was also not a surprising thing. People had been hating Oliver Bullfinch for forty years (not always the same group of people, but always a robust cohort of colleagues and students and probably waitresses, bookstore clerks, and garage mechanics). I’d been hanging around New Haven for a long time and I’d never heard anyone call him lovable . I had taken a class with him (“Whales and Wilderness,” properly known as Melville and Thoreau, nineteenth-century American literary blah-blah) a million years ago. I’d sat in the same office in which Bullfinch had been found (310 Linsley-Chittenden, on High Street) while his grad student gave me an unmistakable smile and an A on a paper I’d written in the time it took to type it. I accepted the A. I returned the smile and my senior year was more fun than I’d expected.