Boston Noir

THE DARK ISLAND BY BRENDAN DUBOIS

Boston Harbor

She was waiting for me when I came back from the corner store and I stopped, giving her a quick scan. She had on a dark blue dress, black sensible shoes, and a small blue hat balanced on the back of thick brown hair. She held a small black leather purse in her hands, like she knew she was in a dangerous place and was frightened to lose it. On that last part, she was right, for it was evening and she was standing in Scollay Square, with its lights, horns, music, honky-tonks, burlesque houses, and hordes of people with sharp tastes who came here looking for trouble, and more often than not, found it.

I brushed past a group of drunk sailors in their dress blues as I got up to my corner, the sailors no doubt happy that with the war over, they didn’t have to worry about crazed kamikazes smashing into their gun turrets, burning to death out there in the Pacific. They were obviously headed to one of the nearby bars. There were other guys out there as well, though I could always identify the ones who were recently discharged vets: they moved quickly, their eyes flicking around, and whenever there was a loud horn or a backfire from a passing truck, they would freeze in place.

And then, of course, they would unfreeze. There were years of drinking and raising hell to catch up on.

I shifted my paper grocery sack from one hand to the other and approached the woman, touched the brim of my fedora with my free hand. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked.

Her face was pale and frightened, like a young mom seeing blood on her child for the very first time. “Are you Billy Sullivan?”

“Yep.”

“Yes, I’m here to see you.”

I shrugged. “Then follow me, miss.”

I moved past her and opened the wooden door that led to a small foyer, and then upstairs, the wooden steps creaking under our footfalls. At the top, a narrow hallway led off, three doors on each side, each door with a half- frame of frosted glass. Mine said, B. Sullivan, Investigations, and two of the windows down the hallway were blank. The other three announced a watchmaker, a piano teacher, and a press agent.

I unlocked the door, flicked on the light, and walked in. There was an old oak desk in the center with my chair, a Remington typewriter on a stand, and two solid filing cabinets with locks. In front of the desk were two wooden chairs, and I motioned my guest to the nearest one. A single window that hadn’t been washed since Hoover was president overlooked the square and its flickering neon lights.

“Be right back,” I said, ducking through a curtain off to the side. Beyond the curtain was a small room with a bed, radio, easy chair, table lamp, and icebox. A closed door led to a small bathroom that most days had plenty of hot water. I put a bottle of milk away, tossed the bread on a counter next to the toaster and hot plate, and returned to the office. I took off my coat and hat, and hung both on a coat rack.

The woman sat there, leaning forward a bit, like she didn’t want her back to be spoiled by whatever cooties resided in my office. She looked at me and tried to smile. “I thought all private detectives carried guns.”

I shook my head. “Like the movies? Roscoes, heaters, gats, all that nonsense? Nah, I saw enough guns the last couple of years. I don’t need one, not for what I do.”

At my desk, I uncapped my Parker pen and grabbed a legal pad. “You know my name, don’t you think you should return the favor?”

She nodded quickly. “Of course. The name is Mandy Williams…I’m from Seattle.”

I looked up. “You’re a long way from home.”

Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. “I know, I know…and it’s all going to sound silly, but I hope you can help me find something.”

“Something or someone?” I asked.

“Something,” she said. “Something that means the world to me.”

“Go on.”

“This is going to sound crazy, Mister Sullivan, so please…bear with me, all right?”

“Sure.”

She took a deep breath. “My fiance, Roger Thompson, he was in the army and was stationed here, before he was shipped overseas.”

I made a few notes on the pad, kept my eye on her.

“We kept in touch, almost every day, writing letters back and forth, sending each other mementos. Photos, souvenirs, stuff like that…and he told me he kept everything I sent to him in a shoe box in his barracks. And I told him I did the same…kept everything that he sent to me.”

Now she opened her purse, took out a white tissue, which she dabbed at her eyes. “Silly, isn’t it…it’s been nearly a year…I know I’m not making sense, it’s just that Roger didn’t come back. He was killed a few months before the war was over.”

My hand tightened on the pen. “Sorry to hear that.”

“Oh, what can you do, you know? And ever since then, well, I’ve gone on, you know? Have even thought about dating again…and then…”

The tissue went back to work and I waited. So much of my professional life is waiting, waiting for a phone call, waiting for someone to show up, waiting for a bill to be paid.

She coughed and continued: “Then, last month, I got a letter from a buddy of his. Name of Greg Fleming. Said they were bunkmates here. And they shipped out together, first to France and then to the frontlines. And Greg told me that Roger said that before he left, he hid that shoe box in his barracks. He was afraid the box would get lost or spoiled if he brought it overseas with him.”

“I see,” I said, though I was practically lying. “And why do you need me? Why not go to the base and sweet talk the duty officer, and find the barracks your fiance was staying at?”

“Because…because the place he was training at, it’s been closed since the war was over. And it’s not easy to get to.”

“Where is it?”

Another dab of the tissue. “It’s out on Boston Harbor. On one of the islands. Gallops Island. That’s where Roger was stationed.”

The place was familiar to me. “Yeah, I remember Gallops. It was used as a training facility. For cooks, radiomen, and medics. What did your man train for?”

“Radioman,” she said simply. “Later…later I found out that being a radioman was so very dangerous. You were out in the open, and German snipers liked to shoot at a radioman and the officer standing next to him…that’s, that’s what happened to Roger. There was some very fierce fighting and he was…he was…oh God, they blew his head off…”

And then she bowed and started weeping in her tissue, and I sat there, feeling like my limbs were made of cement, for I didn’t know what the hell to do. Finally I cleared my throat and said, “Sorry, miss…Look, can I get you something to drink?”

The tissue was up against her face and she shook her head. “No, no, I don’t drink.”

I pushed away from my desk. “I was thinking of something a bit less potent. I’ll be right back.”

About ten minutes later, I came back with two chipped white china mugs and passed one over to her. She took a sip and seemed surprised. “Tea?”

“Yeah,” I said, sitting back down. “A bit of a secret, so please don’t tell on me, okay? You know the reputation we guys like to maintain.”

She smiled, and I felt I had won a tiny victory. “How in the world did you ever start drinking tea?”

I shrugged. “Picked up the habit when I was stationed in England.”