William Landay - Mission Flats

He sights along the barrel to that weak point, the fissure in the door. That is where the battering ram is being held — and six inches higher — no, higher still, because Artie Trudell is so goddamn big — eight inches above the point of impact. Boom! The door rocks again, and the whole building shudders. The floor beneath Gittens’s feet quivers with the impact.

Gittens raises the rifle to take dead aim at Artie Trudell’s head — deep breath — slow, cool breath — and squeeze.

‘I suspected it even then,’ Franny told us. ‘I didn’t know for sure, but I had my suspicions. Artie’d told me what Gittens did to Fasulo. Then the way Gittens got to the red door so fast that night and jumped in front of the door without a second thought… I had my doubts. But I kept my mouth shut because it still looked like Braxton was the guy. Now I’m certain. Vega’s dead, and I’m certain. Gittens shot Artie. I just know it.’

‘And Raul? Who was Raul?’

Franny shrugged. ‘Maybe there was a Raul, maybe not. Maybe Gittens did get a tip from some rat and he used it to set up Artie. I figure there was no Raul — Gittens was Raul. But what’s the difference? Gittens was the shooter, that’s all that matters. Who knows, maybe Braxton was Raul. All those years Gittens had this know-it-all snitch in the Flats, and all those years Braxton managed to skate on just about everything. That sure sounds like someone was protecting him. But I don’t know. We’ll never get the truth about Raul.’

‘But you stood up in court, you vouched for it. You said the whole story about Raul was the truth.’

‘Chief Truman, I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t there. I only know what my witnesses tell me.’

‘Bullshit.’ John Kelly, who’d been listening to the entire tale in silence, practically spat the word in Franny’s face. ‘Gittens lied, and you played along. You knew something wasn’t right, but it was easier to prosecute Braxton with lies than to figure out what Gittens was really up to.’

John Kelly glared at Franny with obvious contempt, as if Kelly, not Braxton, had been the victim of Franny’s cowardice and lying.

‘I-’ Franny fell silent. The little burst of composure and vitality that had carried him through the story was extinguished. You could almost see the light go out. For all his brio and talent, Franny Boyle’s life since 1987 had been a relentless ebbing. He must have felt himself receding from that time, carried off by the current.

‘If you need me to testify,’ Franny said to no one in particular, ‘I’ll do it. I said the same thing to Danziger.’

Kurth asked Caroline, ‘You want Gittens picked up?’

She shook her head no. ‘We have three murders and no proof of any of them. There’s no one left who was on that bridge the night Fasulo was killed. With Vega dead, there’s no one who can tell us firsthand about the night Trudell died. And there’s no one who was in that cabin when Danziger was shot. Three murders, zero witnesses. I’d say Detective Gittens covered his tracks perfectly’

‘We do have one witness,’ I said. ‘Harold Braxton.’

Chelsea, Massachusetts, just outside the Boston city limit. 6:34 A.M.

We waited for them in a desolate parking lot. At our backs the Tobin Bridge soared a hundred feet in the air, its exoskeleton of I-beams topped by a vertebral elevated road. Dick Ginoux stood with us, having driven the department’s Bronco down from Versailles the night before. He stamped his feet in the cold, looking slightly bewildered in his uniform and Smokey the Bear hat. Kelly wore his usual flannel coat, but this morning he had pinned his little six-point star on the breast pocket: OFFICER, VERSAILLES POLICE DEPARTMENT. He spun his nightstick contentedly and whistled under his breath ‘I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.’ It was hard to tell if the nonchalance was a deliberate attempt to keep me cool or if Kelly truly felt blase about being here. For my part, I struggled to suppress an adrenaline smile. The scene reminded me of an exchange of spies in a Cold War novel. In the Bronco I found my Versailles Police Department jacket, with its little embroidered Chief Truman.

We did not speak much. The sky was ash gray, the air intensely cold for November. For a long time the only sound was the traffic noise on the bridge high above us, Kelly’s whistling, and the spinslap of his nightstick.

Inevitably, Dick picked up the tune and began to sing softly, ‘I’m looking over, a four-leaf clover, that I’ve overlooked befo-o-ore. The first is for sunshine, the sec-und for rain — ’

‘Dick.’

‘The third’s for my ba-by that lives down the lane.’

‘Dick!’

‘Oh, let him sing, Chief,’ Kelly advised. ‘There’s nothing better to do.’

‘Come on, Ben,’ Dick prodded. ‘I’m lookin’ oh-ver, a four-leaf cloh-ver, that I oh-ver-looked be-fo-o-ore.’

Incredibly, Kelly sang too — and horribly. ‘The first is for sunshine, the secund for ra-a-ain. The third’s for my baby…’ It was like watching a beloved uncle fast-dance at a wedding. You didn’t know whether to laugh or avert your eyes. ‘There’s no use explainin’, the one ree-main-in’, is sum-one that I a-do-o-o-ore! Come on, Ben Truman.’

I gave in and moaned along with them for the finale. ‘I’m lookin’ over a four-leaf clover that I overlooked — bum-bum — that I overlooked — bum-bum — that I overlooked bee-fo-o-ore.’

Kelly looked down and indulged me with an approving nod. ‘Attsaboy,’ he said.

It was nearly seven when Beck’s black Mercedes sedan slid into the parking lot. The car came to a stop in front of us, and Beck and Braxton stepped out. Braxton wore an oversize, hooded sweatshirt under a leather Avirex jacket. He scowled at us.

I stepped forward, but Kelly caught my wrist. ‘You’re the senior officer here,’ he reminded me. ‘Let me do this.’

Kelly frisked Braxton while reciting the familiar litany: ‘Harold Braxton, you are under arrest for the murder of Robert Danziger. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to have an attorney present at all questioning. You have the right…’

Braxton stood with his arms extended, glaring at me, resenting this whole procedure and resenting me for failing to exonerate him. By his furious stare, he seemed to be proclaiming that he was not submitting, not really, not in his heart. He did not recognize our authority or his own impotence.

Kelly pulled Braxton’s arms down to cuff him behind his back.

‘Chief Truman,’ said Beck, ‘is it necessary for him to ride all the way to Maine with his arms behind his back? Why don’t you put the handcuffs in front? It’s a long ride.’

Braxton looked down. He wanted no part of a plea for leniency.

I nodded. Kelly uncuffed and recuffed Braxton so his hands were in front, then led him to the backseat of the Bronco. This was the trophy arrest every cop in the city was stalking, yet there was little pleasure in it.

‘Arraignment will be tomorrow morning,’ I said in a muted voice.

Beck nodded and turned to leave.

I glanced up at the bridge for one last look — the same bridge Frank Fasulo had jumped off twenty years before. All that exposed framework, miles of girders. It was one of those ugly places where a city’s substructure is revealed. We see them — train yards, power plants, manholes — and we are reminded of the hidden complexities. It is as if the skin has been pulled back and the skeleton of the city is exposed, the pumping veins, the secret systems. I’d had enough of all that.

‘It’s done,’ I told Kelly and Dick, and myself. ‘Let’s go home.’

I had been away from Versailles only seventeen days, but I had the sense I’d been away longer and traveled farther. I came back with the peculiar feeling that accompanies the end of a long trip: the pleasant tension between at-homeness and alien-ness, the sense of being an outsider in your own home. You notice details. You find beauty in a street or park or building where somehow you’d never discerned it before. It is the shock of the familiar, the same jolt you sometimes feel when you see your wife or your lover standing on a street corner, and for a split second you see her as a stranger would. You realize, She’s lovely. I forgot how lovely my wife really is. Versailles seemed profoundly beautiful, even the parts that I know are not beautiful at all.