THE BALANCE OF THE DAY

BY GEORGE V. HIGGINS

Roxbury

(Originally published in 1985)

John Lynch turned left off Washington Street onto Boswell and found number 27 among the neat three-deckers by driving slowly between the parked cars until he saw the '51 Ford coupe, black, listing to port on a flat rear tire next to the pillared porch. There were two faded bumper stickers plastered to the trunk, one on either side of the lock, each reading: "Support the Blanket Men." Lynch without stopping continued on up the street toward where it intersects with Centre, turned right, and headed east toward Jamaica Plain. He angle-parked the lime-green '85 Ford sedan at the curb in front of a block of stores next to a Getty station, about a mile from Boswell, and shut the engine off. In the rearview mirror, he could see another block of stores across the street.

There was a small variety store directly in front of him. A man about seventy, carrying a newspaper and a cardboard container of coffee, came out into the spring morning onto the sidewalk. He glanced casually at Lynch's car, and headed west on foot. When he reached the lunchroom at the end of the block, he went inside.

Lynch sighed and switched his gaze back to the window of the variety store. In approximately forty seconds, a man about fifty in a white shirt open at the collar peered through the plate glass at Lynch's car. He scowled. He came out onto the sidewalk and looked up at the sky like an air raid warden. Then he looked directly at Lynch through the windshield of the Ford and scowled again. He went back into the store. A few more seconds passed and Lynch saw him come to the window. He had a telephone in his left hand, the coiled cord stretching out behind him. He spoke with vehemence that Lynch could not hear, nodding vigorously. When the conversation was evidently complete, he lowered the phone and stood staring at Lynch. He pantomimed spitting. Then he disappeared into the deeper gloom of the store.

After about five more minutes a blue '84 Ford sedan carrying three men came up Centre Street, heading west, and pulled into a parking place on the opposite side of the road. Lynch through his rearview mirror watched the brake lights go off. He waited thirty seconds. No other cars passed on Centre Street. He leaned over the passenger seat, opened the glove box, took out the microphone, pressed the transmitting button, sighed again, grimaced, and put the mike back, shutting the box as he straightened up.

Lynch got out of the green Ford, locked it, hitched up his pants, buttoned his blazer, and after looking both ways crossed Centre Street to the blue Ford. He got into the backseat on the right and closed the door behind him.

The driver met his gaze in the rearview mirror. The front-seat passenger turned so that his left elbow rested on the back of the seat and he could look at Lynch directly. He had a trace of a smile on his face. "Now are you impressed?" he said.

"I certainly am," Lynch said. "I realize those guys've been at it for a long time now. But after all, they're getting old. You'd think they'd've slowed down a little by now. What are they, crowding eighty?"

The other man in the backseat snickered. "How you think they got to be eighty, John?" he said. "Not by being careless." He was about fifty-five. He had iron-gray hair and he looked resigned.

"Besides seeing them make you in record time, John," the front passenger said, "what else did you see? Get anything?"

Lynch shrugged. "Nothing the Judge'd turn cartwheels to read. The old car's in the driveway, with the stickers on it. Looks like it hasn't been driven for years, but that's probably a decoy. Old Sean's probably got a bulletproof Cad in the barn with a couple of Sidewinder pods, case he feels like going out."

"Unlikely," the front passenger said.

"Yeah," the man in the backseat said. "Sean's legs're giving out. He doesn't go out much alone. Needs someone to steady him."

"Well," Lynch said, "why's he need to, now I think of it? Network he's got working, what's the point of going out? Just stay inside, give orders, monitor the street, make sure nobody does nothing he doesn't know about. He's got the scanner, by the way. You can only see a little bit of the lead coming out of the window in the front room on the third floor, and most of it's hidden behind the shutter until it gets to where they had to cross it over and hide it behind the drainspout before they could drill a hole through the eaves and get it back into the attic. But it's there all right. Wonder how many crystals he's got for that thing. Hundred be a good guess?"

"Nah, way too high," the man in the backseat said. "Why'd he need that many? One for Boston, one for State, one for us, one for MDC that he probably doesn't use. Say, a half a dozen spares, plus a couple or three old ones that he took out a year ago, when we changed frequencies. I'll bet old Sean hasn't got more than a dozen of the things." He snickered again. "Old bastards weren't so damned and determined to spend everything they get on guns and ammunition, he'd be computerized. Except probably not, now I think about it. For that he probably is too old. Doesn't trust anything invented since gelignite."

"Don't be too sure of that, Nick," the driver said, craning his neck to see the man in the back through the mirror. "Last shipment had ten Redeyes in it. BOAC isn't nervous because these guys use bows and arrows, you know. They're sophisticated."

"Your thoughts, John," the front passenger said.

"We know what Sean is doing," Lynch said. "We know he's some sort of guru to the money-raisers. We know the money-raisers are raising money. We know they're bringing it to him. We know the old bombthrower's sitting there and ordering the ordinance."

"Ordnance," Nick said absently.

"Huh?" Lynch said.

"Ordnance," Nick said. "I assume you mean: cannons and rockets and rifles and sidearms, and the ammunition for those things. 'Ordnance.' 'Ordinance' is different. Says you can't leave your dog run loose. City ordinance: 'Leash your mangy dog.' Army ordnance: 'Bazookas.' Not the same thing at all."

"Whatever," Lynch said impatiently.

"Right," Nick said.

"We get into that house," Lynch said, "we have got a pretty decent chance of intercepting either a whole bunch of money or a whole bunch of weapons that're headed for someplace that the Judge doesn't want them going."

"We get into heaven," the driver said, "we don't have to worry about any of this crap anymore. We can all retire to Florida where it's warm all the time, and play a little golf."

"I don't see what that's got to do with anything," Lynch said.

The front passenger sighed. "Your thoughts, John," he said again.

"The people on the first floor work," Lynch said. "Both of them work days. Cornelius Finn and his child bride, the lovely Mary Anne. Connie's down at Sawyer Steel. She's at Mass. Rehab. We have a little weight with Connie—least I think we do. Brother Andrew's on parole. He's working nights at Daley's and he's seeing the wrong guys. I could tell Connie, as a favor, 'Baby brother's gonna fall, you don't do me a favor.'"

"And what might this favor be?" Nick in the backseat said. "You think if you can't drive by the house once without getting spotted, you can sneak into the place and set up shop? Sean'd have you made in ten seconds. The last time somebody sneaked onto Sean Geogan's turf without getting made was in 1916, before the moon rose. And what'd you do once you got in there? Hold a housewarming and invite him? Say you're the new boyo in town, want to get acquainted?"

"Well," Lynch said, "we have got the junction box in the basement under the pantry floor, you know. Get one of Lester Daley's magicians in there with a spool of wire and a bitstock, might be able to pick up some interesting stuff on the phone."

"Won't work," the front passenger said. "One thing they have got for modern improvements is state-of-the-art sweepers. He'd pick up the drain on the first call he made."

Nick snorted in the backseat. "No, he wouldn't, Ernie," he said. "There wouldn't be any first call on that phone after the wire went on. The last call on that line would've been made fifteen seconds after John got finished putting the hammer on Connie down at Sawyer Steel. Sean's friends'd spend the next afternoon and evening bringing in carrier pigeons and putting them in the attic next to the scanner antenna. You'll get more out of wiring a rock'n you will out of tapping Sean's phone."

Lynch sighed again and squared his shoulders. "Oh-kay," he said. "The second floor. The second floor occupants are Tom and Kathy Dolan and their two lovely children, Brian and Kate. Tom I sort of know. He was two years ahead of me in school. He's got a department-head job in the schools. He's got something to lose. Assistant superintendency, I hear, may be coming up. Kathy? Same sort of thing. Very hardworking lady. Busts her hump down at the Brigham, working Night Emergency. Those people've got something at stake, that old Bolshevik gets busted or bombed out on the top floor of their house."

"How do you know Kathy?" Nick said, looking interested and skeptical at the same time.

"Well," Lynch said, "I don't. Not personally, at least. But I ran her through the computer, you know, and I got all this stuff, and I know her type. I know what she'll do."

"Right," Nick said. He put his left hand under his chin and cupped his fingers over his mouth.

"You think I'm wrong?" Lynch said. "You think I don't know what I'm talking about?"

Nick removed his hand from his face. "Frankly," he said, "yes."

"Nick," Lynch said, "all right? Have you ever seen Sean Geogan? Have you ever laid eyes on the man? Personally?"

Nick shook his head. "Nope," he said. "I know what he looks like. I have seen his picture and he looks like Captain Kangaroo, only smaller and without the hair. But personally? No, I have not."

"That's what I thought," Lynch said smugly.

"It's no disgrace, John," Nick said. "Thousands of British soldiers have never laid eyes on Sean Geogan, and they've been trying for more than sixty years. Very hard, too. Very hard. I've just never felt the need that bad."

"Well," Lynch said, "I have."

"And you're going to again, too," Nick said.

"I hope so," Lynch said.

"Bank on it," Nick said.

"The way I look at this approach," Lynch said, speaking earnestly to the front passenger, "and not that it's basically different from the idea I had with the Finns, but we just sort of approach them and tell them, you know, this is how it's going to be. And these people are not gunmen. I mean, it's one thing you've got this old revolutionary living on the top floor of your house and all, and maybe you think that's amusing. But people are dying in Ireland today because of him and his kind, and we want to stop it. And we're going to stop it. 'And if you, Kathy Dolan, and you, Thomas Dolan, don't cooperate with us in this, we're going to cause you come inconvenience.'" He turned toward Nick. "And like I say, Nick, I know these people. I know what they will do."

"I think you're wrong," Nick said. "I don't think Kathy Dolan will do what you expect. Not if she is the Kathy Dolan that I think she is. Which is the former Kathy Brennan, daughter of State Representative Edmund and his lovely wife, Rosemary, both of them deceased. Tragic highway accident in Saugus, back in 1969, if I recall. Edmund was shitfaced. Both under forty, too, I think. Really a tragic thing. Leaving a little babe like that, almost alone in the world."

"I guess that's right," Lynch said, perplexed. "I didn't look it up, of course, but that does sound right."

"Take his word for it, John," the front passenger said firmly. "Nick has blown his share of details, but never one like this."

"Thank you, Ernie," Nick said. "Always like a word of praise. Rosemary Brennan, John, Kathy Brennan's mother, had a maiden name of Keating. Father's name was Ted, I think—his brother's name was John.

"John and Ted came here from Galway back in 1921. It's reported that they traveled across the pond in crates shipped as cargo in the hold of a tramp freighter out of Liverpool—no passengers on her manifest. Their law-abiding friends assure us that the Keatings traveled in those spartan accommodations because they were poor farm lads who had no money for their passage to the promised land. Their detractors have more exciting explanations which describe bridges blowing up and similar events that attracted the attention of the soldiers of the Crown. Who became so anxious to talk to the Keatings that they thought they'd better leave.

"Wherever the truth lies," Nick continued, slouching down in the seat and rubbing his left eye with the knuckle of his left forefinger, "John and Ted once on these shores proved to be industrious greenhorns who found gainful employment and worked diligently at it. And, when Prohibition ended, they were made law-abiding in their chosen trade. By then, of course, they were fairly prosperous, and had been able to send for their loved ones back in Galway. John sent for his sweetheart, Mary Shea, and married her, but for some reason or another they never had any children. Unkind persons said that this was because Mary failed to conceive on John's first night of conjugal bliss, and that because John on that occasion was so rough with her, he never got another crack at her. Mary ran that roost.

"The result was that John Keating after Mary's death had no children of his own to whom to leave his fine three-decker he had worked so hard to build at 27 Boswell Street. Therefore he left it to his only and beloved grandniece, Kathy. Who is the daughter of the daughter that Ted Keating and his bride conceived soon after she came from Ireland after Ted got prosperous. Which was Rosemary.

"Soon after that conception, Ted Keating died. Peacefully in bed, for which the Lord be praised, but still a young man, as they say. Made a good living while he lasted, but died before he really managed to pile up much of an estate. His widow, Annie, went to work, and John of course helped out. But then she died when Rosemary was about sixteen. The girl moved in with her uncle, John, and his good wife, Mary. So naturally, when she got married, she got the second floor for herself and her new husband, the up-and-coming young State Rep, Edmund Brennan. And they had Kathy. Then they got killed. So it was only natural, when old John died, Kathy got the house. He had nobody else. And the house came complete, course, with the vacant owner's apartment on the third floor, where old Sean lives today.

"Ted Keating's bride was Annie Geogan. She was Kathy's grandmother. Annie Geogan was Sean Geogan's sister. Him you know about. Sean was on his uppers back on the old sod, too old to fight much more. Kathy brought him over here, about nine years ago.

"Now, let me ask you this, John," Nick said, grinning at him. "What you think your chances are, of putting this together using Kathy Dolan's help?"

"Not too good," Lynch said. "Not too good at all."

"That's what I think, too," Ernie said meditatively, staring past Lynch's right shoulder through the back window. Lynch wrenched his body around so that he could rest his left arm on the top of the backseat and look back across the street.

He saw an old black Oldsmobile sedan pull slowly into the space next to his green Ford. A man about forty, wearing a black suit coat and trousers and a white shirt with no tie, got out of the driver's side and opened the left rear passenger door, carefully preventing it from touching the flank of the Ford. Lynch saw a man's right hand emerge from the backseat and grasp the top of the door. Then the left hand and the left leg emerged, the hand grasping a blackthorn walking stick and the foot in a black shoe groping for the pavement. The head came next, a few white hairs trailing over the mottled scalp, and then the short and frail torso in the dull green suit. Lynch saw several decorations pinned to the left lapel of the coat. "Son of a bitch," he said.

"The very same," Nick said. He was opening the car door.

"Where the hell're you going?" Lynch said, as the old man headed lamely toward the door of the variety store.

"Well," Nick said, "we started this. Man has to finish it. Finish what he starts. I'm going to buy a paper and I'm going to say hello."

"You want me to come with you?" Lynch said.

"I think you should," Nick said.

"What do you think he'll say to us?" Lynch said, leaving the car.

"He'll say," Nick said, "'Top of the morning.' That's what I would say."

"And what do we say back to him?" Lynch said across the car.

"The same thing he'd say back to us, if he came on our turf, and we had caught him there. 'And the balance of the day to yourself, sir.' A man should show some class."