We Were Kings Read Free Page B

said, “and it’ll get you and Claudia out of the house for once.”
    “Oh, she’s been getting out of the house plenty.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Her boyfriend. She’s barely around anymore.”
    “The same guy?”
    “Yeah, it’s the same prick, going on four months. The way she carries on with him—” Dante shook his head angrily. “You’d think she was eighteen or something.”
    “For her it probably is like being eighteen again.”
    “Fucking embarrassment, that’s what it is.”
    “So come then, have a night where it’s just the two of you. Tell the boyfriend to go fuck himself.”
    “Okay, okay. I’ll ask Claudia. We’ll get a babysitter. We’ll fucking come.”
    “Yeah? Good.”
    From the Hennesseys’ front window a pale incandescent light spilled onto the curb. They had one of the few televisions in the neighborhood. Dante and Cal could hear The Jack Benny Program, which was blaring because old man Hennessey was almost deaf. They listened for a while and then the sponsor’s commercials came on. Tonight it was Lucky Strike. Cal murmured the slogan aloud—“Be Happy, Go Lucky”—and Dante looked up. Assuming Cal wanted a cigarette, he pulled one from his pocket. He lit it up and passed it down, and Cal drew long and deep on the cigarette that he hadn’t really wanted and the smoke seemed to coil in his lungs and got his gut writhing. It was too much in the heat and he felt sick to his stomach. He handed the cigarette back to Dante and, taking another pull from the bottle, stared out over the water. Together they watched as the city went to sleep—nothing but a lone car passing over the drawbridge every once in a while—and until their bottle was done, they listened to thunder rolling, it seemed without end, through the starless Boston night.

4
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    Boston Harbor
    SHORTLY AFTER DAWN Owen was on a BPD patrol boat with a federal agent and two of his own men, the vessel churning across the inner harbor toward the Chelsea waterfront, where ships and boats shimmered vaguely. Seagulls swooped low across the water—white on silver—and then Owen lost them as they rose into the silver glare of the sky and the low sun. He had to squint and look away.
    Their speed and the spray from the water offered only a mild relief from the heat, and the water became choppy from ships and tankers moving out in the bay, sudden swells lifting the pilot boat and dropping it so that the hull banged loudly and the engine seemed to sputter and groan, and spumes of spray lashed the deck. Owen felt the shuddering in his feet and up through his legs as the small boat took each wave like a depth charge to the keel. He could smell the greasy odor of oily gasoline, the carbon monoxide seeping from the port exhaust and up from the engine room, and when he looked at the water, everything seemed to swirl in the same sickening, myopic haze.
    Somehow something had gone wrong and their tip-off had been found out. They’d laid a network of cops and patrol boats around the harbor, waiting for the shipment of contraband that the informant had told them would be arriving from New York at noon, had locked down the docklands on both sides of the harbor since midnight, but still a boat had found its way in through their snare at some point during the night and only now had they discovered it, moored in Charlestown, with no sign of its crew or its cargo. Someone had gotten word to them and if it was one of his own, there would be hell to pay. The thought of all the work they’d done that was now wasted—all for nothing—made him feel sick. He considered telling the cop at the wheel to slow it down, that the motion and the heat and the diesel fumes were bringing on one of his migraines, then thought better of it. A wave of nausea forced him to close his eyes and breathe deeply. When he opened them again, the federal agent was looking at him, and he nodded to assure him that he was okay.
    The two-way sputtered from the