The Burning Soul

called in and favors promised. Dig, dig, dig, then wait. At noon, an e-mail came in from an ex-BPD cop turned private investigator in Fitchburg, sent from a Hotmail address that would never be used again after this message.

Tommy Morris was Valerie Kore’s older brother. There were links to any number of articles, the most recent from this week concerning the killing of one Joey ‘Joey Tuna’ Toomey, an Irish-American businessman and a beloved scion of the Boston fish trade. There was a further link from that report to a Sunday magazine feature entitled ‘Meet the Old Boss, Same as the New Boss,’ a consideration of the current state of organized crime in the city that included various mentions of power struggles in the Boston underworld, and particularly among Irish- American elements still working to fill the void left by Whitey Bulger’s enforced absence. The e-mail concluded with a single line from my source: ‘Tommy Morris is going down.’

Suddenly the stakes had been raised, and I was glad of the impending arrival of Angel and Louis. In the meantime I called Aimee and told her of what I had found. More than ever, we needed to protect Randall Haight, if and when he came forward, because I had the feeling that the rule of blood was about to be invoked. Engel was in Pastor’s Bay because he believed that Anna Kore’s disappearance might be a consequence of her uncle’s criminality. Even if it wasn’t, he would expect her uncle to try to involve himself regardless. That was the rule of blood: Blood came before everything. I also repeated to Aimee my earlier ultimatum, based on the pedophiliac nature of the photos received by Haight and on Anna Kore’s age: Haight needed to confirm that he was willing to talk to the police, and he needed to do so quickly. Aimee was angry at having a gun put to her head. She asked me to give her a couple of hours, and I agreed.

‘And what about those text messages?’ said Aimee.

‘There have been no more,’ I said.

‘Are you going to tell the police about them? They contain serious allegations about one of the principals in the investigation.’

I noticed that she was careful not to use names.

‘Not yet,’ I said.

‘One rule for our client, and one rule for you, right?’ she said, and hung up.

Tommy Morris had taken a bus from Logan after killing Joey Tuna, and stayed the night at an inn in Newburyport, eating in his room, watching television, thinking of what he had done to Joey, of what he had ordered done to Oweny Farrell and how it had not come to pass. He couldn’t figure out how the cops had got to Oweny so fast, but it didn’t matter. Joey Tuna was dead, and it was only in the quiet of the inn that Tommy felt the impact of the enormity of what he had done. There would be no forgiveness, no possibility of a rapprochement. He was a doomed man now, and they would unite to hunt him down. Joey’s uncle would demand it. Honor would demand it. Sound practice would demand it.

But his niece was still missing. In a way, this had begun with her. Not only was he a man whose business had collapsed, and who now faced a hostile takeover from a competitor; he could not even protect his own family. His sister had fled from him. He had driven her away. He loved her, but he had forced her from his sight. She and his niece were the only surviving blood that meant anything to him. He would not leave it to the cops or the hated feds to search for the lost girl. He knew now that Joey and Oweny had not been responsible for her disappearance. She had not been a pawn in the game that they were playing.

Tommy liked chess, so the analogy pleased him. He had only three pieces left on the board but he refused to concede, even as all potential for movement was being limited by the forces arrayed against him. He had his knight, Dempsey; his rook, Ryan; and himself, the trapped king. He played with combinations of moves on the little travel set that he carried with him everywhere, deliberately allowing his own forces to be routed until he was reduced to these three – king, knight, rook – and he took his inability to secure victory not as a rebuke but as a challenge. He stayed awake all night, moving and thinking, and only when dawn came did he allow himself to sleep.

He had a throwaway cell phone, and with it he stayed in touch with Dempsey. He didn’t tell him where he was, just advised him to take Ryan and get out of town. He needed more time to think, to play, to test the moves.

Later that evening he summoned Dempsey and Ryan to him, and the three men headed north.

At the same time, two other men were also drawing nearer to their northern destination. Music played in the car, a subdued yet intricate classical piece that at first hearing appeared to consist only of the same extended phrase repeated, but on closer listening gradually revealed tiny yet significant differences and developments. It was a song of humility and wonder, a wordless ode to the Divine.

‘How much longer?’ asked the passenger. Angel’s dark curly hair had less gray than his years merited, and his face had fewer lines than his sufferings might have earned. He wore a Big-Bam-Boom era Hall & Oates T-shirt, boot-cut jeans that were a size too big for him, and a pair of designer yellow-and- turquoise sneakers that he had bought for almost nothing in an outlet. The sneakers had a certain rarity value, mainly because the company responsible for their design had realized its terrible mistake in creating them almost as soon as they saw the light of day, and quickly discontinued them when it became clear that their likely customer base consisted solely of the mentally ill, blind people with cruel friends, and, had they been able to put a name on him, this man, who was neither mentally ill nor blind but merely unusual in a great many ways.

Beside him, driving with his eyes barely open, was Louis, who had long been shaving tight his own graying locks, but not in any effort to hide the aging process, not if his beard was taken into account. His suit was gray, his shirt white, his knitted wool tie black. His shoes gleamed.

‘How much longer?’ said Angel again.

Louis checked the dashboard. ‘Another hour.’

‘Of this? You have to be kidding me. The tune hasn’t changed since it started. It’s like a really quiet car alarm for nervous people.’

‘No, another hour to Boston.’

‘Great. In the meantime, can we play something else?’

‘No.’

‘I’m bored.’

‘What are you, nine years old? Shut the fuck up. Go to sleep.’

‘I did sleep. This put me to sleep. Then I woke up, and it was still playing. I thought I’d died and gone to hell’s waiting room.’

‘It’s not the same piece.’

‘It sounds like the same piece. This guy Arthur Part is running a scam.’

‘That’s Arvo Part. You are a philistine, man.’

‘Yeah, the Hungarian.’

‘Estonian.’

‘Just turn it off. I swear, the hillbilly shit was better than this.’

‘You complained that that all sounded the same too.’

‘It did, but at least it had words, and it was too annoying to be dull. I hear any more of this and we’ll have to get an elevator put in the car.’

‘Maybe some of those inspirational pictures as well, like they have in the offices of companies that are about to go under,’ said Louis. ‘You know, “Let Your Imagination Soar,” with a photograph of an eagle, or “Teamwork,” with those meerkat rat things.’

‘A dung beetle,’ said Angel. ‘A picture of a dung beetle, and “Eat Shit: You’ve Been Retrenched.” I hate that word “retrenched.” At least “redundant” is honest. “Let go” is honest. “Fired” is honest. “Retrenched” is just a way to sugar the pill, like undertakers refusing to use the word “death” and talking about “passing on” instead, or doctors telling you that you have a “condition” when what they really mean is you’re riddled with cancer.’

‘It’s from the French,’ said Louis. ‘Retrenching is digging a second line of defense. It means that you’ve been cut off again.’

‘What does that have to do with being fired?’

‘Literally? Nothing, I guess.’

‘See?’

‘No. Why, you worried about your future?’

‘Yeah, it gets shorter every day. That fucking music makes it seem longer, though.’

‘It’s nearly done.’ The piece concluded. ‘There, see? You want to spoil anything else?’

‘Why, you got something else worth spoiling?’