William Landay - Mission Flats

‘Right.’

‘I mean it, Diane.’

‘I used to be not bad. Now I’m not even not bad.’

‘That’s just not true.’

She dismissed this with a wave of her hand. ‘Ben, tell me what you’re going to do when you leave here.’

‘Go home, I guess. I have a meeting in Portland tomorrow.’

She shook her head again, the long-suffering Diane. ‘Not when you leave the room. When you leave this fucking town.’

‘Oh. I don’t know. Go back to school, I guess. Maybe just go have an adventure somewhere.’

‘Right. Prague.’

‘You could come, you know. There’s nothing holding you here.’

‘I don’t know from Prague.’ She slid a hand over her hip, smoothing the clothes that were not there. A gesture to fill the space. When she was ready, she said, ‘I thought you were going to be a professor. Isn’t that what you were in school for? English or something?’

‘History.’

‘You’ve got a good name for a history professor. Professor Benjamin Truman. Very intellectual.’

‘It’s probably not going to happen, Diane.’

‘Yeah, it will.’

‘I only got through one year of grad school. It takes a lot more than that.’

‘You say it like you flunked out. You got called back here. That’s different. You came back to help your mother and now she’s dead, so — You don’t have to stay, you don’t have to be here anymore. You should go back to school. It’s where you belong. Join the chess club or the prom committee or whatever.’ She took a drag on the cigarette and looked out at the hills, then, as if she’d reached a decision, turned to me. ‘You should go to Prague. I have some money, if that’s what’s stopping you.’

‘No, Diane. It’s not about money.’

‘Well, you just make sure you get there. Go to Prague, then get back to school. You know, those guys — Bobby and Jimmy, even Phil, all them guys — they look up to you. They want you to do all that shit you talk about.’

I had no response.

‘It’ll make them happy to see you out there somewhere. Just to think of you out there, like, flying. It’s important.’

‘How about you, Diane? Would it make you happy if I left?’

‘I’d get over it. There’ll be a new chief after you. Maybe I’ll just use him for sex, same as I did you. Maybe he won’t even be a prude like you.’

‘They might hire a woman. They do that now.’

‘That’d be just my luck.’

Neither of us spoke for a while.

‘Maybe we shouldn’t do this anymore, Ben. It’s starting to feel like a bad idea.’ The tip of her cigarette hovered at the window like a firefly. ‘We both got places to go.’

Monday, October 13. 10:00 A.M.

We met at the Attorney General’s office in Portland, a two-hour drive from Versailles. There were twenty or twenty-five people there, a number that necessitated theater-style seating. At the front of the room — onstage, as it were — was the Boston Homicide detective Edmund Kurth. He stood off to the side, arms folded, watching people find their seats. There was still that luminous intensity about Kurth. He looked like he was itching to knock somebody’s hat off.

The audience consisted mainly of state troopers from Maine and Massachusetts, husky guys with buzz cuts and friendly smiles. There were prosecutors from the Maine AG’s office too. It had been a long weekend for the lawyers; they had a gray, haggard look. Cravish, the Game-Show Host, stood off to the side.

I slipped into the back row of metal folding chairs, feeling vaguely like an eavesdropper. My invitation to this meeting was a formality, a courtesy extended to the locals. There were no illusions about that. My job was to show up, have my ticket punched, and go home. I hadn’t even bothered to put on my uniform. I wore jeans and a sweatshirt. (The outfit was more than an expression of my outsider status, though. The truth is, the Versailles police uniform is pure hayseed and I try not to wear it any more than necessary. The uniform consists of a tan shirt, brown pants with a tan accent stripe, and a ridiculous Smokey the Bear hat, which my father insists on calling a ‘campaign hat.’ I dislike the whole getup, but it’s the hat especially — no citizen could respect a policeman wearing that hat.)

Kurth struggled to remain still as the troopers and prosecutors found seats. The muscles in his face played under the skin. After a while — but before his audience had completely settled — he’d had enough of waiting. He walked to a corkboard at stage left, tacked a mug shot to it, and announced, ‘This is the man we’re after: Harold Braxton.’

I craned my neck to see the photos, the traditional twin frames showing the suspect face-on and in profile. Braxton looked to be in his twenties, African-American. The sides of his scalp were shaved and the remaining hair was pulled back tightly and gathered in a little tuft at the back of his head. The hairstyle seemed more Tibetan than hip-hop. His skin was as smooth and dark as a seal’s.

Kurth added: ‘He’s an absolute fuckin’ animal and we’re going to hunt him down.’

The audience shifted uneasily. Kurth was from away, and the Maine troopers didn’t like being lectured by him, much less informed what they were going to do. His melodramatic tone caused some eye-rolling too, even among the Massachusetts guys.

‘Do you have some evidence?’ an older guy finally asked. ‘Or should we just take your word for it?’ He smirked, proud of the sarcasm.

Kurth tried to smile too, but the smile flickered and died on his lips. ‘Evidence,’ he said.

He went to his briefcase and fished out a bulging manila folder. He riffled the folder until he found a few photos, then returned to the corkboard. First a color eight-by-ten of Danziger’s mutilated face, the right eye and forehead obscured by a dry cookie of blood. ‘Our victim, Robert Danziger.’ Then he added two rows of similar photos. ‘Vincent Marzano. Kevin Epps.’ With each name, Kurth punched a pin through one of the photos. ‘Theo Harden. Keith Boyce. David Huang.’ The victims were all young, in their early twenties. Marzano was white, Huang Asian, the rest black. All bore the same dark stain on one half of their face. Harden’s features were a blur beneath the blood. ‘All shot in the eye with a high-caliber weapon, like a. 44,’ Kurth informed us. ‘That’s his signature.’ Kurth leaned against one of the tables. This was supposed to be a relaxed pose, but he managed to look like a two-by-four leaning against a barn. ‘Harold Braxton runs a crew called the Mission Posse. The Mission Posse moves a lot of rock, makes a lot of money, and they’re willing to do just about anything to defend their business. All these guys here’ — he gestured toward the photos — ’threatened Braxton’s business in some way. Some of them were cooperating with the police. Some tried to open up a corner in Braxton’s neighborhood.’

‘Why a bullet in the eye?’

‘It’s a message. In Mission Flats everybody understands. It means, Close your eyes, don’t see what we do.’ Kurth locked his gaze on the guy who’d needled him moments before. ‘That’s called evidence.’

‘And Braxton’s never been prosecuted for any of this?’

‘Nobody talks.’

‘But why Danziger?’ one of the troopers asked.

‘Bob Danziger had a pending case against a member of Braxton’s crew, a carjacking case. No big deal except the defendant was Braxton’s second-in-command. The trial was scheduled to open a couple weeks ago, in early October, which is about the time Danziger was murdered. So that’s your motive — no DA, no trial for Braxton’s buddy. Braxton protects his own.’

One of the prosecutors asked, ‘Why kill him in Maine?’