“I was a kid. This one’s tougher to fix.”
“Maybe.”
“Trust me. Ol’ Uncle Brendan can’t fix this one.”
“Whatever it is, boyo, it’s just you and me here. You and me and the pigeons.”
“Those are seagulls.”
“Okay, seagulls, whatever.”
Joe smirked. No doubt Conroy meant well, but even if Joe had wanted to confide what he was feeling, he could not have named it. It was not fear. On the contrary he felt safer now than he had in a long time. He might even have been clever. By playing both sides of the fence, he had appeased the enemy without paying or promising anything. Nor had he actually done anything he felt ashamed of. The work was nothing. There were occasional mid-morning calls to transport a suitcase to the North End. And occasional rounds of hole-in-the-wall shops that did a small book-smoke shops, groceries, a shoe-repair joint-to collect the tax. Far from a villain, Joe felt like a functionary in an ancient and very large organization. He was just an errand boy, for now. And Fish had been the exception; the people Joe had called on thus far had not resisted or even resented paying. Capobianco’s tax was just ordinary overhead. It seemed to Joe that The Catastrophe had occurred without fanfare, so maybe-just maybe- it had not been a catastrophe at all. And yet, and yet…he could not shake this feeling. He did not feel comfortable around cops. He had a shameful secret. He was a spy among them. And stripped of his cophood, he did not feel quite like Joe Daley anymore. Maybe he never would.
“I took a wrong turn, Bren, that’s all.”
“What did you do?”
Joe hesitated. Well, what the hell. Might as well tell somebody. “I got in a hole. Betting.”
“Betting on what?”
“Numbers, sports, horses, name it.”
“And?”
“I have to-I kind of have to work it off. They’ve got me running errands. That’s it so far. I’m sure it’ll be more.”
“Who’s they?”
“Capobianco’s crew. It was Vincent Gargano came to me.”
“Ah. And how big a hole are we talking about?”
“Too big. More than I have.”
“I can get you the money.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be enough now. I don’t know that I can just walk away.”
Conroy nodded. “Who knows about this?”
“No one.”
“Not even Kat?”
“If Kat knew, my mother would know. If my mother knew…I kind of wanted to handle it my own way.”
“Of course, of course. Alright, keep it to yourself, then. Let me see what I can find out. Maybe there’s something we can do.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You’re not alone in this, boyo. You know that, don’t you?”
“Okay, sure.”
“Anyway, it sounds like you didn’t have much choice. Did you have a choice?”
“Yeah, a bullet in the hat.”
“Alright, then. So don’t grind yourself up over it. You do what you have to do, Joe, understand? Just don’t go too far. Run a few errands or whatever, just remember you’re still a cop. If you go too far, no one will know you.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll take care of it. You stay cool. You have a family, son. You have a son of your own. You have a responsibility to them. No one can say you did the wrong thing till they walk in your shoes.”
“Thanks, Bren. I’m glad my dad’s not around for this.”
“Let me tell you somethin’: Your dad was no saint, God rest his soul. Sometimes he did what he had to do, too.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like I’m not going to say. He’s passed away and he was a friend of mine and he loved you boys something awful. If there were things he did not want to tell you, then that was his decision and it’s not my place to do any different. No father tells his son everything, Joe. No father does and no father should. A son never really knows his father. There’s too many years in between. But I knew him. I knew him like a brother. Like a goddamn brother, your dad, and he was a good, clean, honest cop. He never did anything-anything-you boys should be the least bit ashamed of. So don’t misunderstand me. But just the same, he was a man, same as you, and he lived in the world, same as you, and that’s all I’m gonna say about it. I don’t want you coming up here on the roof mooning over ‘what would dear ol’ Da think?’ Because I’ll tell you: He’d understand and he’d back you up, same as I’m going to back you up. That’s what we do. We do what we do, and we don’t apologize. That’s how a family works.”
“Alright. Okay.” Joe wasn’t sure whether Conroy was referring to the Daley family or the police family. He suspected there was not much distinction, to Conroy at least. “What are you going to tell my mother?”
“What am I going to tell her? The truth: this young fella’s been working his fingers to the bone and he’s tired, and she and Kat and the rest of the ladies’ sewing circle should just leave yuz alone for a while, let us work it all out.”
35
Symphony Hall. Wednesday, three-thirty P. M., final closed rehearsal before the weekend’s performances.
Something was happening inside the music, something was stirring. The musicians seemed to sense it. During a rest they inhaled deeply, as if to fill their lungs with it. The orchestra had been augmented with freelancers to play the piece-Respighi’s Pines of Rome -and the stage was crowded with players and instruments, extra brass, an organist. Some of the horns were stationed in the balconies around the hall, where they stood at attention behind the gilded latticework railing. The conductor was a trim, bald man in a snug black cardigan, like a midshipman’s jacket. His upper body jerked with the movement of his arms. He barked curt German-accented instructions and expressive grunts: Hup! Tick! Ta!
At the back of the hall, Ricky lurked in the shadow of a doorway. Up to this point, he had not liked the piece very much. The earlier movements had reminded him of the corny orchestral music in Disney movies, bright and brassy in some places, self-consciously solemn in others. Probably classical music just wasn’t for him. But around the three-minute mark of the fourth and final movement, he felt it too.
The music unclogged. Out of a stagnant, reedy pianissimo passage, the horns stepped forward and began to blast away. The unstable B-flat opened out onto a major key-“Hah!” the conductor exclaimed-and the brass pulled the entire orchestra into a cycling crescendo that lasted two thrilling minutes, with the horns in the balconies blaring back over the empty hall and the conductor calling for “More!”
At the rear of the stage, the organist tipped his head back, his mouth yawned open, and he played in a sort of ecstasy or sustained orgasm. This was Kurt Lindstrom.
After the rehearsal Lindstrom emerged from the stage door with a couple of older musicians. The threesome stood chatting a moment. One of the men said something at which Lindstrom laughed too loudly, then he left them. He walked away on St. Stephen Street, bouncing on the balls of his feet, chest thrust forward.
Across the street and half a block behind, Ricky walked too. He had tracked any number of suckers with an eye toward taking them off, and he was meticulous about this aspect of his job. He was confident-overconfident-in his ability to size people up. He figured that any semi-intelligent thief could acquire the few basic facts needed to pull off a burglary: the victim’s daily routine, the sort of locks on the door, the jewelry or other things to be taken. What set Ricky apart, he believed, was that his empathy was more acute than that. He thought he understood something about the people he ripped off. When circumstances allowed, he lingered in their rooms, inspected their
