Like a sentence out of Orwell, the United States Army had taught me on time was late, and fifteen minutes early, on time. Dot’s message said 7 pm, so I was there at 6:45.
The Dugout on Commonwealth Avenue in Kenmore Square was a basement saloon. The underground bar dated its birth to the days of Prohibition. Outside, there’s a railing to facilitate the descent into the cavernous watering hole, and the same wrought iron acted as a ski lift for the inebriated. Inside, the wood was dark, the lights were dim. The front of the house was for common folks and conversations, whereas the back room of the establishment attracted criminal conversations. Rumor had it that the Brinks Robbery had been planned there over pints.
Honest as your mother’s apron was the legend that Ted Williams frequented the place as a freshman Boston Red Sox, and there was truth in the story that the owner of the joint had owned racehorses, managed prizefighters, and decked a governor and got away with it. He was a character, a bootlegger, and his establishment retained some of his homespun New England charm. Little has changed since he poured pints and took bets at the bar or over the phone. It was a ref’s call whether beer or blood had stained the hardwood floor and walls.
The sun was shining on nearby Boston University these days. The drinking age had been lowered to eighteen in ’73 and that was as much of a boon for the Dugout as the repeal of the Volstead Act in ’33. The BU Terriers had the best hockey team on the east coast. Some of the players had rejected skates and scholarships at the university across the Charles River and at Brown in Rhode Island, downwind from Beantown, because they preferred the casual air of Kenmore Square to the cold ivy around Harvard Square and Providence.
I expected to find him in the back room, far from the crowd. He didn’t raise his hand as a signal. I saw it as a test, as if he wanted to see whether my skills had rusted in the rain of civilian life. When we last saw each other, our lives depended on knowing without looking, speaking without talking, on taking quiet steps, and quieter breaths under triple canopy foliage. We’d danced to a frenzied rhythm of life few could understand. We had met the devil, and we knew all his demons by name.
We hunted. We killed. We drank bitter beer. We weren’t without humor, though. We imitated the way LBJ said Vietnam. He’d pronounce it as ‘Vet-nom.’
He stood up. We did the shallow embrace and the two sharp taps to the back. Each unit has its traditions. Most men, on meeting, would put a challenge coin on the table, which meant the man seeing it was obligated to buy a round. Long-range reconnaissance patrols such as ourselves were associated with the 101st Airborne, and the ‘Screaming Eagles’ traced their lineage to World War I but achieved immortality during D-day. They had their own coin, but so did smaller units like us. I reached into my pocket and placed the modest coin on the table. Small and with a tiger on it, easy to mistake for Flying Tiger Airlines, which transported men in either a Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8 aircraft to Vietnam. The coin meant brotherhood. He put his coin on the table to confirm our bond.
He was of average height and build, and blonde like a surfer. He was more rugged than Newman and prettier than Redford. Women were always interested in him, though I think his silence intrigued them more. Cat, my first girlfriend, once said that a beautiful man threatened women, made them insecure.
“I’ll get the first round,” he said and left me there in the booth.
The backroom was as quiet as a convent. When he returned, he placed a pint of suds in front of me and sat opposite me with his. I looked at him, and he looked at me. His chin rose, which told me not to talk. I heard footsteps behind me. A server pushed a basket of popcorn between us.
He grinned, and I said it for us, “Brings back memories, doesn’t it? Popcorn.”
“Big Green had a pellet for everything, didn’t it?”
The US Army provided troops on the ground with pills for every conceivable ill the jungle could inflict on troops. Halazone purified water but made it taste like iodine, and it gave us the runs. We took two Lomotil four times a day because diarrhea dehydrated, and the stench gave you away in the bush and could get you killed. Salt tablets offset the loss of electrolytes from sweating, if not from the jungle heat, then from humping eighty to a hundred pounds of gear. An orange pill a day kept malaria away. And then there were the green and yellow capsules.
Twenty milligrams for 48 hours. Dexamphetamine. Popcorn.
Nostalgia made for easy reading, but I was an impatient editor. “Dot-dot-dot-dash.”
“The chick on the phone. She’s from the Midwest. My guess is Ohio, am I right?”
“You always had an ear for places and languages. Reason you’re in town?”
“So much for foreplay,” he said and grinned. “Can’t we catch up before I get to that?”
“Five questions is your ration,” I said and nursed my neglected beer.
“Married?” he asked.
“No.”
“Divorced?”
“No, and I’ll give you the next answer for free. No kids either.”
“But you have a girl.”
“I might,” I said.
“You do have a girl in your life. Good for you. What does she do?”
“You want to spend your second to last question on her MOS.”
In the military, the job you had was your Military Occupational Specialty.
“Sure, why not,” he said. “What your girl does for a living provides insight into character, hers and yours.”
“She’s a lawyer. Criminal defense, but she’s worked both sides of the aisle. At the moment, it’s for the accused, and she’s with a firm.”
He drank and listened, but his eyes tracked everything in the environment. I trusted him with the perimeter because I had my back to the door into the room. He held his pint with his left hand, not because he was left-handed. His right hand was beneath the table and within reach of his sidearm. My expert guess: a Browning .9mm.
“I’ll cut to the chase,” he said.
“You left one in the chamber. Question number five?”
“Okay, then,” he said and set aside his pint glass. “Last time we talked, you were a cop. How’d that work out for you?”
“It didn’t.”
“So much for a fifth question. Sorry for your disappointment.”
I smiled. He’d sort of flipped the tired expression we’d hear from civilians. They would say, ‘Thank you for your service,’ which we would hear as, ‘Sorry for your service.’
“Don’t be,” I said. “What about you?”
“I stayed behind.”
“You did another tour, and then what?”
“Spent a lot of time reading Russian literature,” he said, sipped, and asked, “What went down on the beat?”
“A bad shoot in the projects.”
“Bad shoot, huh,” he said. “You pull the trigger?”
“No, another cop did.”
I had interpreted his comment about Russian literature as he had left the service and went to work for the CIA, or maybe some private contractor outfit that dedicated itself to making a pelt out of the Soviet bear.
People don’t realize that there aren’t many career options for infantrymen after they separated from the military, whether it’s the Army or the Marine Corps. The movies glorified us as bullet catchers or as modern Spartans, but none of that testosterone translated into a legitimate job in the World other than law enforcement or something vague in security. The FBI or Secret Service, while the crème de la crème, required advanced testing and screening. Men with extensive combat experience were considered risks or unteachable. It took time and money to rewire a house, and some houses were best abandoned.
“Let me guess, there was an internal investigation into this bad shoot, and politicians circled like vultures.”
“Pretty much,” I said. “It went to trial, and he expected me to cover for him.”
“And you didn’t? That’s not the Shane Cleary I remember.”
I wet my mouth with beer. “The officer misread the situation. He shot and killed a kid he thought was dealing drugs.”
He didn’t blink. He processed what I’d said and responded. “No drugs?”
“No weapon either. The kid was coming home after shooting some hoops.”
His hand opened and closed. “Investigation came and went, and this cop lost his badge?”
“Lost his badge and caught some prison time.”
“And you helped put him in a cage?”
“Some people seem to think so.”
His head ducked down, and the eyes glanced up. “What am I missing here?”
“I was called to the stand. I didn’t swim with what the defense put in the water, but I didn’t support the prosecution’s narrative either.”
His jaw pulsed. He was thinking. “Not saying something was saying something. The boys in blue expected you to be definitive, unequivocal, but you left the jury to think it through, on their own.”
I gripped my pint glass. “Which they did, and you? After you were done reading Russian literature, what then?”
“I was extracurricular, for a while.”
“Hell of a euphemism, extracurricular,” I said. “You couldn’t walk away, could you?”
“I did, though. On my word, Shane Cleary. All of that is behind me.” He tapped the coin on the table. “You know, a lot has been said about what we did.”
I followed his lead and placed my finger on my own coin. “People who weren’t there can talk all they want. They didn’t wear our boots, or walk in them.”
“Lo que tenga que ser será. What will be, will be.”
“Tell me why you’re in town.”
“To settle a score, and I need backup. Hence, the call to Shane Cleary.”
“You always were direct.”
“This is not for profit. This is personal.”
“I’m not sure that makes it any better. What is it that you need?”
“Someone I can trust. Someone who knows the lay of the land. I don’t know Boston.”
“Expect me to participate in what you put on the scoreboard?”
“No, I couldn’t ask you to do that, but I’ll make it worth your while. Cash.”
I let him take a sip of beer, and I took a sip of mine.
I said, “You’re not going away, are you?”
“No, so you’re either part of the static or the white noise. Your decision.”
“Have a place to stay?”
“A no-tell motel.” He named it, and it was a fleabag dive for fleas without bags.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the keys to my apartment in Union Park. I recited the address and apartment number, and I told him to use light feet up the stairs since the landlady was nosier than Gladys from Bewitched.
“She won’t be a problem if she sees I’m not you?” he asked.
“No. You can mention my name. We’re good because she gets her rent in advance.”
“Paid in advance. Shane Cleary has done well for himself. Anything else I should know?”
“She has yappy Corgis,” I said, and I gave him instructions as to where he could shop for food and find the nearest liquor store for beer. I said I’d call him the day after tomorrow because I had to clear the deck in order to help him out. I asked if that was okay with him, and he said it was.
I took back my coin and rose from my seat. “Thanks for the beer.”
He had that look I’d come to know so well in the past in the dark. It was no smirk, or tease, and it wasn’t enigmatic either. His was a stony look, an expression of knowledge and certainty. He said, “Those guys at the morgue weren’t FBI.”
I answered, “I know.”