Dennis Lehane: Moonlight Mile

“I always assumed Big D didn’t take much interest in the subcontractors.”

Dent shook his head. “He’s got encyclopedic knowledge of this place. All its employees, all their spouses and relatives. And all the subcontractors. It was Duhamel who told me about your association with a weapons dealer.” He raised his eyebrows at me. “The old man doesn’t miss shit.”

“So he knows about me.”

“Mmm-hmm. And he likes what he sees. He’d love to hire you full-time. So would I. Put you on a partner track. But if, and only if, you lose the attitude. You think clients like sitting in a room with a guy they feel is judging them?”

“I don’t-”

“Remember last year? The CEO of Branch Federated came up here from headquarters in Houston, specifically to thank you. He’s never flown in to thank a partner and he flew in to thank a sub . You remember that?”

Not an easy one to forget. The bonus on that case paid for my family’s health insurance last year. Branch Federated owned a few hundred companies, and one of the most profitable was Downeast Lumber Incorporated. DLI operated out of Bangor and Sebago Lake, Maine, and was the country’s largest producer of TSCs, or temporary support columns, which construction crews used to stand in for support beams that were being restructured or built off-site. I’d been inserted into the Sebago Lake offices of Downeast Lumber. My job had been to get close to a woman with the wonderfully alliterative name of Peri Pyper. Branch Federated suspected her of selling trade secrets to competitors. Or so we’d been told. After I had worked with Peri Pyper for a month, it became apparent to me that she was gathering evidence to prove that Branch Federated was tampering with its mills’ pollution-monitoring equipment. By the time I got close to her, Peri Pyper had gathered clear evidence that Downeast Lumber and Branch Federated had knowingly violated both the Clean Air Act and the False Statement Act. She could prove Branch Federated had ordered its managers to miscalibrate pollution monitors in eight states, had lied to the department of health in four states, and had fabricated the results of its own quality-assurance testing in every single plant, bar none.

Peri Pyper knew she was being watched, so she couldn’t remove anything from the building or transfer it to her home computer. But Patrick Kendall, her drinking buddy and a lowly marketing accounts manager-he could. After two months, she finally asked for my help at a Chili’s in South Portland. I agreed. We toasted our pact with margaritas and ordered another Triple Dipper platter. The next night, I helped her right into the waiting arms of Branch Federated security.

She was sued for breach of contract, breach of fiduciary responsibility, and breach of her confidentiality agreement. She was prosecuted for grand theft and convicted. She lost her house. She also lost her husband, who bailed while she was under house arrest. Her daughter was bounced from private school. Her son was forced to drop out of college. Last I heard, Peri Pyper worked days answering phones at a used-car dealership in Lewiston, worked nights cleaning floors at a BJ’s Wholesale in nearby Auburn.

She’d thought I was her drinking buddy, her harmless flirtation, her political soul mate. As they’d placed the cuffs on her, she’d looked into my face and seen my duplicity. Her eyes widened. Her lips formed a perfect O.

“Wow, Patrick,” she said, just before they led her away, “you seemed so real.”

I’m pretty sure it’s the worst compliment I’ve ever received.

So when her boss, a doughy dickhead with a 7 handicap and an American flag painted on the tail fin of his Gulfstream, came to Boston to thank me personally, I shook his hand firmly enough to make his man boobs shake. I answered his questions and even had a drink with him. I had done all that was asked of me. Branch Federated and Downeast Lumber could continue shipping its TSCs to construction sites all over North America, Mexico, and Canada. And the groundwater and top soil in the communities in which its mills operated could continue to poison the dinner tables of everyone within a twenty-mile radius. When the meeting was over, I went back home and chased a Zantac 150 with liquid Maalox.

“I was perfectly polite to that guy,” I said.

“Polite the way I’m polite to my wife’s sister with the fucking herpes sore under her right nostril.”

“You swear a lot for a blue blood,” I said.

“You’re fucking right I do.” He held up a finger. “But only behind closed doors, Patrick. That’s the difference. I modulate my personality for the room I’m in. You do not.” He paced a circle around his desk. “Sure, we snuffed out a whistle-blower in DLC, and Branch Federated compensated us regally. But what about next time? Who’s going to get their business next time? Because it isn’t going to be us.”

I didn’t say anything. The view was nice. A sky caught between gray and blue. A thin film of cold mist turning the air pearl. Far off beyond the center of the city, I could see trees that were black and bare.

Jeremy Dent came around the desk and leaned against it, his ankles crossed.

“You fill out your 479s on the Trescott case?”

“No.”

“Well, take the sub office and do that. Fill out your expense reports and don’t forget to file your 692s as well. See Barnes in equipment so he can clear you on the gear you used-what’d you go with, the Canon and the Sony?”

I nodded. “I used those new Taranti bugs in the kid’s place, too.”

“I heard they were glitchy.”

I shook my head. “Worked like a charm.”

He finished his drink and leveled his gaze at me. “Look, we’ll find a new case for you. And if you can just get through that one without pissing anybody off, we’ll hire you permanent, okay? You can tell your wife I gave you my word.”

I nodded, a hole in my stomach.

Back in the empty office, I considered my options.

I didn’t have many. I was working one case and it was far from a cash cow. An old friend, Mike Colette, had asked me to help figure out which employee was embezzling from his freight company. It took me a few days with the paperwork to narrow it down to his night-shift supervisor and one or two of his short-haul truckers, but then I did some further digging and they didn’t look as right for it as I’d originally thought. So now I’d turned my attention to his accounts-payable manager, a woman he’d promised me was a trusted confidante, beyond reproach.

I could expect to bill another five, maybe six, hours for that job.

At day’s end, I’d walk out of Duhamel-Standiford and wait for their next call, their next trial. In the meantime, the bills arrived in the mailbox every day. The food in the fridge got eaten and the shelves didn’t miraculously fill back up. I had a Blue Cross Blue Shield bill due at the end of the month and not enough money to pay it.

I sat back in my chair. Welcome to adulthood.

I had half a dozen files to update and three Brandon Trescott reports to write, but I picked up the phone instead and called Richie Colgan, the Whitest Black Man in America.

He answered the phone, “ Tribune, Metro Desk.”

“Not an ounce of you sounds like a brother.”

“My people don’t have a sound, just a proud and royal legacy temporarily interrupted by racist crackers with whips.”

“You telling me if Dave Chappelle answers one phone and George Will answers the other, I’m gonna have trouble guessing which is the white guy?”

“No, but to discuss it in polite company is still verboten .”

“Now you’re German,” I said.

“Only on my French racist father’s side,” he said. “What up?”