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A LITTLE PAST two p.m. a Greek family came in to have their passport photographs taken. Cal rose from his chair, helped them fill out their passport applications for a trip back to the motherland, which they’d been saving for since their youngest was born. “At least you’ll get the fuck out of this cold,” Cal said as he mimeographed their paperwork, but the family didn’t understand him, which was just as well. When they left, he opened the mail and found a check from Merchant Tool and Die in Southie. It wasn’t much, but he thought he might be able to make it last a while.
It had been shortly before Christmas since the last good money had come in: Walter McGrath, a wealthy World War I pensioner, ex-army quartermaster, who lived in an eighteenth-century colonial on a rambling twenty-acre estate out in rich and exclusive Dover, called him, convinced that his chauffeur was abusing his privileges, using the Lincoln Continental sedan for personal use and depositing his checks into his own account. The chauffeur’s name was Roland Baggs, an ex-con from Mattapan who’d spent two years in Concord after being pulled over by state troopers for driving a truck with out-of-date tags, and when they searched the back, they discovered twenty television sets stolen from Sears, Roebuck in the Fens just days before.
Baggs could charm the skin off a cat, and Cal had actually liked the sap. But the quartermaster had been right. Roland was taking him for a ride, and he wasn’t smart enough to be inconspicuous about it. Cal had one of his security guards who needed some cash for the holidays, a first-generation American Pole named Wolaski, sit in the parking lot of the Wellesley train station and watch Baggs, on one of his weekends off, pick up the quartermaster’s great-niece, coming off the midday train from New Haven. After the train left, they’d parked the Lincoln in a corner of the lot and remained there for half an hour before Baggs took them on a jaunt into the city, first stopping to visit the Indian Head National Bank in Cambridge to deposit McGrath’s checks into his own account, and then to the Stuart Hotel in the Theater District, where they stayed for two successive nights.
After sacking Baggs, McGrath had given Pilgrim Security a large Christmas bonus. But that was two months ago, and now Cal hoped he could keep the heat on throughout the rest of the winter so that the pipes wouldn’t freeze and burst. If that happened, Pilgrim Security would be done, and with it all of his and Lynne’s savings.
With the money from Merchant Tool and Die, Cal wrote out checks to the half-dozen Pilgrim Security watchmen they still managed and, in the lobby, dropped them in the building’s mailbox, then crossed the avenue for a pint bottle at Trident Liquors on the corner of Brattle. The rain had let up a bit. He picked up a pint, two cold prepackaged bologna and cheese sandwiches, and cigarettes and the Globe and Bettor’s Weekly for Dante, and was about to cross the street and return to the office when he paused. At the corner lot between Hanover and Broad Street, three gleaming limousines idled with white smoke steaming from their exhausts.
In one of the abandoned lots where Caskell’s and Amerilio’s Pizza had once stood, a group of men were gathered in fine wool overcoats. Out on the street one of the limo drivers stood outside his car, pale from the cold and clearly trying not to show it. Cal rummaged in his pocket for the pint bottle and limped toward him. As he approached, the driver looked up warily. He was tall and thin, sickly-looking; his overcoat hung loosely on his shoulders. In another time, it had probably fit him. Before a fall off a ladder at a four-alarm in Adams Square, he’d been one of Boston’s most decorated firemen.
“Jesus, if it isn’t Tim Donovan,” Cal said. “Why the hell you standing outside?”
“Boss’s orders.” He nodded toward the four men gathered on the snowy clearing, where one of them was gesturing emphatically with his hands to the others, perhaps conjuring a vision of what would soon be built upon the empty lot.
“I work across the way,” Cal said. “Had to get something to keep myself warm.” He lifted the pint. “You want a pull?”
Donovan shook his head, sniffed loudly, and ran his gloved hand across his raw nose.
“C’mon, you’re half frozen to death. You think they’re looking from way over there?”
Donovan shook his head again.
“Who are they anyway?”
“The one on the right, the tall thin one, that’s Francis McAllister.”
“The developer?”
“That’s right.”
“Who’s the one next to him?”
“That’s Congressman Foley.”
Cal squinted toward the lot; from this distance they all looked alike, ordinary men in their finely tailored coats and expensive hats. “Is that so? Heard he’s going to be our next senator.”
“That’s what they say. Him and McAllister have got plans for the city.”
“They do, huh? Well, the city needs something all right.”
Cal looked at the other cars idling at the curb. “So, one of these cars belongs to the congressman too?”
Donovan nodded. “They’ve had us driving them down here every day, one location after the other for the last two months. Third time this week I’ve been here.”
A car blew its horn, and when they turned to look at it, double-parked in front of Tully’s Tattoo Parlor, they had to squint against the wind that nearly pulled the hats from their heads. Cal shivered; he needed the warmth of the office.
“Here,” Cal said, handing him the bottle. “Just one pull.”
“I can’t.”
“Sure you can. Standing out here in the cold like this.”
“The boss won’t like it.”
“Your boss sounds like an asshole, making you stand outside while the car’s still running.”
“Mr. McAllister, he’s not an asshole all the time. He pays me well enough.”
“Sure he does, but take the bottle anyway.”
Cal left him then and trudged back up the street toward the office. The sandwiches, cigarettes, and newspapers in his pocket felt sodden and cold. He glanced back briefly as he looked both ways crossing the avenue: at Donovan by his limousine, standing with his head bowed against the wind, taking a half-concealed pull from the pint, and at the other men still there—the architects of the new Boston, black figures on the white snow—and at the rainwater sweeping down exposed walls from the dislocated and torn gutters atop the brick façade of the next building waiting for the wrecking ball.