2

Elinore Dobbs looked like she was in her seventies; Mahoney found out later she was actually eighty-two. She was wearing a 2004 Red Sox World Series T-shirt, baggy blue jeans, and cheap running shoes. She was a slender five foot one and had short gray hair she didn’t bother to dye or perm; she probably had it cut at a men’s barbershop. Bright blue eyes twinkled behind wire-rimmed bifocals.

The first words out of her mouth were: “I know you’re basically a useless shit, but I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by coming here.”

Mahoney laughed.

“What’s your name?” Mahoney asked.

“Elinore Dobbs,” she said.

Elinore Dobbs immediately reminded him of his maternal grandmother. Mahoney’s parents had both been working stiffs. His father had been a machinist in a shipyard that had closed down decades ago and his mother had been a waitress, a secretary, a clerk at various stores. His mom took whatever job she could get to send her son to parochial schools. So Mahoney’s grandmother had largely raised him. She babysat him when he was too young to go to school and when he started school, he’d go to her house afterward and stay there until his folks got home from work. And like Elinore Dobbs, his grandma was a tough old bird. She made him do his homework, wouldn’t let him hang around with boys she considered riffraff, and wouldn’t take the least bit of guff from him. If he annoyed her she’d box his ears and many a night Mahoney went home with ears as red as Rudolph’s nose—or as red as his nose would later become thanks to all the booze he consumed.

“So, Elinore, what can I do for you?”

“I live in an apartment building on Delaney Street and they’re trying to force me out. Two years ago, I signed a five-year lease to fix my rent because I didn’t plan to move until they carried me out in a coffin. But not long after I signed the lease—”

“A five-year lease is kind of unusual, isn’t it?” Mahoney said.

“I suppose,” Elinore said, irritated that Mahoney had interrupted her. “But the guy who used to own the building was a good guy and getting old, and some of the long-term tenants like me convinced him to give us longer leases. Anyway, like I was starting to say, not long after I signed the lease, the owner died and his kids sold the building to this damn developer. In fact, this guy has bought up all the real estate in the entire neighborhood, and now he’s trying to force everybody out of my building so he can tear it down and put up a fancy new one with high-priced condos.”

“I see,” Mahoney said.

“No you don’t. Let me finish. This developer, the first thing he did was triple the rent for everybody whose leases were expiring even though we did everything we could to stop him. We filed a suit in housing court but his lawyers kicked our ass. I organized protests. We protested in front of his house on Beacon Hill—there was a picture of me in the Globe—and protested around his construction site to keep the trucks from going in, but the cops made us move. Anyway, by the end of the first year, he managed to get rid of about eighty percent of the people who used to live in my building.

“The next thing he did was try to buy out the folks with long-term leases like me and offered to help us relocate. By the time he was done with that, all but four tenants had moved out.”

“But I take it he couldn’t buy you out,” Mahoney said.

“You’re damn right he couldn’t. And that’s when he started playing dirty. He fired the building super, a great guy who’d been there for twenty years, and replaced him with these two thugs, the McNulty brothers. Now the elevator hasn’t worked in a year, and some of the tenants aren’t in good shape like me and it practically kills them to take the stairs. The power goes out half a dozen times a month, and it’ll be out for days, like we’re living in some third world country. The front door doesn’t lock anymore so junkies can get in and steal things, although I don’t think it’s the junkies who are doing the stealing.”

“Geez,” Mahoney said, the grimace on his face real and not feigned.

“It gets worse,” Elinore said. “The hot water isn’t hot about half the time and the air-conditioning stopped working the first summer this all started. Today it’s like a blast furnace inside my apartment. They took out the washing machines and the driers in the basement so I have to go to a Laundromat four blocks away. Mail gets stolen. My apartment’s been vandalized twice. And the McNultys, these thugs the developer hired, they just hang around the building intimidating folks.”

“I get the picture,” Mahoney said, but Elinore still wasn’t finished.

“I’ve complained to everybody. The mayor, the city council, the cops. I hired a lawyer but this developer’s got slick lawyers coming out his ass, all of them smarter than the guy I hired. Right now, I’m the only one keeping the few tenants remaining from moving, but they’re not going to last much longer. Within the next couple of months, I’m sure I’ll be the only one living there. So what are you going to do to help me?”

Instead of answering her question, Mahoney said, “I’m just curious. Why don’t you take the money this guy’s offering you to relocate? I’m guessing you’re costing him a bundle, so he should be willing to pay quite a bit, and in the end, three years from now when your lease expires, you’re going to have to move anyway.”

“I told you. I don’t want to move.” Her lips compressed into a thin, unyielding line the way his grandmother’s used to when she got her back up over something. “I like where I live. I like the parks I can walk to. I like the bakery a couple blocks over where I go for bagels in the morning. There’s a T-stop just three blocks away so I can get around town. But those aren’t the main reasons I won’t move. I’m taking a stand against this guy and all the other guys just like him.”

“You’re taking a stand?” Mahoney said.

“That’s right. This kind of crap is happening all over this country. Places like Manhattan and San Francisco and Boston are becoming the domains of the ultrarich. The poor folks are being forced out and replaced with people who can afford to spend millions on condos or five or ten grand a month for rent. The rent on little mom-and-pop stores is set so high that none of the small shops can afford to stay in business and they’re being replaced by swanky boutiques where only rich people shop. I read just the other day in the paper, out there in Seattle, some developer is trying to force a bunch of tenants out of an apartment complex and an old lady like me is taking the guy on. So I’m taking a stand.”

“Huh,” Mahoney said.

But Mahoney actually liked this problem. He didn’t really think he could stop the developer from renovating the area where Elinore lived, but he could take her side on the issue. He’d give a speech about the need for affordable urban housing and how developers can’t be allowed to do what this guy was doing: cutting off the heat and power and using scare tactics to force her out. Yeah, he’d hold a press conference with Elinore at his side; she was articulate and photogenic in a feisty, little-old-lady kind of way and would look great standing next to him. He’d rant about income inequality and show how he was on the side of all the poor folks like Elinore Dobbs.

Then he’d go see the developer and get the guy to knock off the bullshit, at least for a while, so Mahoney would look like he’d made a difference. He’d tell him to blame what was happening on his employees, like these McNulty goons, and say that they’d been overzealous and doing things he didn’t approve of. Then he’d tell him to make Elinore a deal she couldn’t refuse; hell, a place on Cape Cod would probably be cheaper than what Elinore was costing him by delaying his construction project. Yep, Mahoney would champion the little people and would look good doing so, and when Elinore was eventually forced to move . . . Well, he could show that he’d done his best—and find some way to blame the Republicans.

“What’s the name of this developer?” Mahoney asked.

“Sean Callahan,” Elinore said.

Mahoney almost smiled. This was perfect. He knew Callahan well. He also knew a little about Callahan’s development in Boston. It was huge, and Elinore Dobbs’s building was just a small part of it.

But he didn’t smile, and he didn’t tell Elinore he knew Callahan. Instead he said, “Callahan. Yeah, I’ve heard about him,” making it sound as if Callahan was evil incarnate.

He called Maggie and told her to send in one of the kids. He was hoping she’d send in the good-looking coed again. Instead she sent in one of the boys—a tall, gangly dork who was probably a genius as Maggie only hired geniuses, and he was probably rich as she only hired kids whose parents were likely to contribute to Mahoney.

“What’s your name again?” Mahoney asked the boy. He’d never known the kid’s name.

“Mason Stanhope,” the kid said.

What a yuppie fuckin’ name! But Mahoney knew Stanhope’s father; he was a lawyer who’d made his money filing class action lawsuits against airline companies and had a house as big as a medieval castle on Martha’s Vineyard—another place where only rich people can afford to live.

“Mason, this is Elinore Dobbs. I want you to sit down with her and write down all the stuff she’s going to tell you. Elinore, you give Mason the facts. Dates, specific people you’ve contacted, details about the things these McNulty creeps have done. And Mason, you tell one of the guys you work with—like maybe that young lady who brought me the copy of my Knights of Columbus speech—that I want to understand the law on evicting folks from their apartments. You’ll understand after Elinore explains to you what’s going on. And I want you to move fast on this, Mason. Elinore and I are going to hold a press conference tomorrow, so you move chop-chop. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Mason said.

“You’re really going to help me?” Elinore said, sounding incredulous.

“You’re damn right I am,” her champion said.