THE GHOST DETECTIVE: Boston by Lowenstein Thomas Kennedy

Author:Lowenstein, Thomas Kennedy [Lowenstein, Thomas Kennedy]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Schiller & Wells, Ltd., An Imprint of Stay Thirsty Publishing, A Division of Stay Thirsty Media, Inc.
Published: 2010-06-11T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

McParland

McParland’s missing heel throbbed. It was late afternoon, dark, and cold; he paused on the cement plaza in front of the modern, misshapen City Hall. He tried to remember where the streets of Scollay Square had been—the little bar South had frequented, the tobacco shop so many of the inverts had spent time in. A good place to hear things. He smiled—Scollay Square had been a good place to see certain things, too, if a man were of that mind. Beyond City Hall he could see the green metal, pot-holed slug of the highway, patchy with rust, that bisected the city, wrapping itself in endless curves and ramps before launching in a vast arc for the north shore. A thousand cars, ten thousand, blinking red and white through puffs of exhaust in the dark. When did they cut the city in half with that thing, McParland wondered. As if the ugliness of the design or the sheer weight of the metal increased its testament to human ingenuity or proved the value of the heavy automobiles it was designed to carry.

Redemption, God willing—the words came to him, metallic like laudanum. He had to stop thinking about it—he would be damned. God willing, a phrase as insidious as So help me God, and look where that had gotten him. In court he’d been admonished to tell the truth, so help him God, nine times, and nine times the condemned had been told, May God have mercy on your soul. Traitor.

He snorted and tapped his cane on the ground. Keep moving, McParland, he thought. Move. Look. Learn. Avoid thoughts of redemption. Traitor. No, not traitor. Purgative. Cleanser.

Three men with fat faces peered at him and he told them to move on. By an entrance to the subway a group of men and women in dark clothes had congregated, streaks of misty blue and green around their pale faces. They were talking to each other but glancing at him; it was endemic to ghosts to always think someone knew more than they did: knew how to die better than they did, how to have peace, how to say whatever they needed to say to whomever needed to hear it in order to move on, to rest. But if he knew anything, would he be there now?

He walked on, toward the river, away from the highway. Where am I now, he thought. Cluttered brick townhouses led up to the gold dome of the Statehouse. Yes, that is the back side of Beacon Hill. To his right there had been a neighborhood, too, a slum, all gone now, replaced by the highway.

Faces of tired men. Lawler. Dormer. Arms on his shoulders, pats on his back. Traitor. Bleach. God willing, God have mercy. The men in the bar that first night. Yellow light warm in the bar, sick in the headlamps of the miners, choked in the narrow crushing shafts.

He followed the curve of the road past the glass entrance to a hospital and a large intersection, over which hung footbridges leading to a subway platform.

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