Third Rail (9 page)

“Get them away from me, Gus,” Harkness shouts. One of the dogs gets too close, and he kicks at it. If he had his gun, Harkness would have shot it.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” the jeweler shouts. “This is where I work, motherfucker.”

“Got a question about a drug. Thought you might be the man to ask.”

“Not anymore.” Gus “the Chemist” Donovan shakes his head and his glass eye swirls in its socket, making him look even crazier. “I sell rings and necklaces. That's it. You and your pals put me out of business.”

“Did that all by yourself.” Harkness keeps his eyes locked on the snarling dogs, knowing his stare is all that's keeping them at bay.

“How's that, asshole?”

“Shipping by commercial jet after 9/11.” TSA uncovered Vicodin mixed in a shipment of semiprecious jewels, putting an abrupt end to Gus's import business. “Heard of drug dogs?”

“I know all about dogs.” Gus nods at his Dobermans, the bold dog nipping at Harkness's shoe, the clever one trying to sidle around and sink his teeth into the back of his leg. “One word and they're on your throat, Harkness.”

“You're on probation, Gus. Want to go back in?”

“I'll just say it was an accident. They freaked out. Dogs do that, you know.”

“Really?” Harkness bends down and stares into the dog's white-blue eyes. Without breaking his gaze, he reaches under a display case and pulls out a filthy stuffed rabbit. He holds it up for a second and throws it at the window.

The bold dog leaps for it and smashes through the glass. The other circles beneath the windowsill, sniffing a spray of blood on the floor, then giving it a tentative lick.

The showroom turns silent for a moment as Gus walks to the window and looks down through the shattered glass.

“Shit. He's dead.” Gus keeps staring down at the alley as he screams. “What are you, some kinda ninja? They been looking for that fucking bunny for weeks.”

Harkness shrugs.

Gus herds the remaining dog into the back room and gives it a kick before slamming the door. “Useless piece of shit,” he whispers. “All that fucking training.”

Back in the showroom, Gus looks out the window again for a second, shakes his head, and pulls the window shade over the broken glass. “You're lucky it's not twenty years ago, Harkness. Because I'd be throwing you out the window on top of my dog.”

“Need something from you, Gus.”

“You got to be kiddin'. You just killed my dog. Go fuck yourself.”

Harkness pulls the amber vial from his coat pocket and sets it on the glass counter above the glittering engagement rings. “Any idea what this is?”

“I'd have to say it's probably some kind of drug. Why don't you ask your other asshole cop friends?”

“They're busy,” Harkness says. “You're better and faster than a drug lab. Plus, you owe me a favor.”

“Really? I'm already down one dog and a window.”

“We busted you with two thousand Vicodins, right?”

“So what?”

“DEA wanted to wait for the twenty thousand you had coming into Logan the next week so you'd look like a big fish. We said move fast. If we hadn't, you'd still be in Walpole.”

“Okay, okay.” Gus holds up his thick-fingered hands. “I'll look at this shit for one minute because you're such a nice fucking cop. But then you're out of here. And don't ever fucking come back.”

“Deal,” Harkness says.

Gus reaches for the vial and unscrews the top, then breathes deeply like a wine drinker about to sip a fine Burgundy. He lifts a piece of blotting paper from a drawer and puts a drop on it, then smears it across the paper and holds it up at the light. He licks the paper and moves his face around.

“Not liquid Ecstasy, not dissolved heroin or opium, not in-process meth or anything obvious. Where'd you get it?”

“Car wreck.”

“What kind of car?”

“Volvo S80, almost new.” Harkness summons up the crushed silver car melded with the town monument.

“Where?”

“Nagog.”

“Rich people's drug, then?”

“Maybe.”

“I'd say it's some kind of speed but it ain't bitter enough,” Gus says. “I'm pretty sure it's this new stuff called Third Rail.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Takes you places. Even if you don't want to go. And once you touch it, it's too late. Get it?”

“So what is it?”

“Synthetic cousin of meth with a splash of dopamine to wake up your brain and an ephedrine chaser to squeeze it like a lemon. Guanfacine to mess with your memory. All mixed with this Chinese herb,
má huáng,
to make things really batshit crazy. Hard to make. Way expensive.”

“Designer meth.”

“More than that. It's a wild ride, from what I hear. Nothing else like it. Not that I know. Or care.”

Gus tosses the vial at Harkness, who catches it in midair. “Now take this shit, get the fuck out of here, and don't ever come back.”

***

Walking back across the Common, Harkness sees Little Dorothy, pale and glowing, near the Frog Pond, where there's a roller rink in summer, ice skating in winter. It's empty between seasons, and a few kids shuffle across the abandoned rink, pretending to skate on the crushed leaves.

Harkness walks toward her but she slips away. He sits down on a bench next to the rink to wait for her return.

Little Dorothy first appeared on a meth bust on Queensbury Street three winters ago. A couple of small-timers from New Hampshire had come to the big city to make a million in meth but got caught. The cop running the bust told Harkness there had to be major crank hidden somewhere. But they'd ripped the place apart and still hadn't found it, so they brought in the smart guys from Narco-Intel.

Harkness was a dowser, minesweeper, Geiger counter, Ouija board. From the moment Harkness walked into the grim apartment, a kitchen wall sent out a signal. There was no way that meth cookers would bother to hang new wallpaper in part of the kitchen.

Lost things don't want to stay lost. Money wants a warm wallet and street drugs crave a narrow pocket. Rings call out for a finger, cell phones want a hand, and bullets need a gun. Harkness didn't do anything special to find the meth hidden in the ragged Fenway apartment. It called out on subtle frequencies and he listened.

Harkness took hold of the edge of the flowered kitchen wallpaper and used a razor blade and a bowl of warm water to peel it back inch by inch as the cops watched, slit eyed with suspicion. He revealed a flush-mounted gray metal door the size of a school locker. When he opened the door the putrid wind knocked them all back. The upper shelf held a plastic-wrapped cake of backyard meth. The lower shelf, once for mops and brooms, held tubing, bags of chemicals, and a yellow bucket with a doll sticking out of it, feet encased in cheap pink plastic skates from the
shut-the-kid-up aisle of a convenience store.

Harkness reached for the doll's legs and felt stiff, cold flesh instead of plastic. He shut his eyes for a moment as he lifted, opening them a sliver to see the head emerging from the bucket of bleach. This was no doll. As Harkness held her emaciated legs, the child's bloated face fell back into the gray chemical ooze like scrambled eggs sliding from a tipped plate, leaving only a glistening white oval of bone with darker voids for eyes, nose, and mouth.

The hardest cops in the room fell on their knees to heave or stumbled out on Queensbury Street. Harkness set Little Dorothy back in her bucket, leaving her reassembly to Forensics. He did his part, revealing the hidden, for what it was worth. He could only drift away, tainted by revelation.

Now Harkness walks slowly through the Public Garden, leaving Little Dorothy behind.

W
HEN THE MAIL TRUCK
finally lumbers ar
ound the corner, Harkness hits the flashers and siren. He's spent most of the afternoon lurking near the town forest instead of emptying meters along Bridge Street.

The mailman rolls down his window.

“Need to see all the mail for the Old Nagog Tavern, please.”

The mailman shakes his head and blinks. “Not called that anymore, officer. It's 375 Forest Road. Private home.”

“Then all the mail for 375 Forest Road.”

He shakes his head again. “We can't just hand over mail without a warrant.”

Harkness takes off his sunglasses and leans inside. “Ira. It's me. Eddy Harkness. Used to live on Nagog Hill.”

The mailman tilts his bald head. “Harkness. Your father ordered clothes from Orvis. Subscriptions to all kinds of financial newsletters. Your mom got
Cook's Illustrated
and
Granta.
You got music magazines from England
.”

“That's us.” Or that
was
us, Harkness thinks.

The mailman looks into a bin. “Still can't give it to you. But you can take a look, Eddy. Just don't tell anyone.” He hands Harkness a packet.

“Know a Declan Nevis? Goes by Dex?” Harkness flips through the stack of cable bills and postcards for gutter cleaners.

“Nice enough kid,” the postman says. “Doing a lot of work on that house.”

“Met him once,” Harkness says. “Seems okay.”

“His mother was a science teacher. But he's definitely not.”

Harkness looks up. “Where did she teach?”

“Taught at the high school for years. Name's Allison Nevis.”

“Call me if you see anything unusual in his mail.” Harkness hands him his Nagog Police card.

“Is he a terrorist or something?”

Harkness shrugs. “Can't say at this point.”

***

“George, heard of Allison Nevis?” Harkness stands out on the cement slab around the refueling station, where Nagog cops go to call their sports bookies and girlfriends.

“No,” his brother says. “Why?”

“I think she may be on the list.”

“There're thousands of people on the list, Eddy. Can't remember them all. Why do you care?”

“Her son may be messing with me.”

“I'll look her up,” George says.

“Thanks.”

“Dinner tonight?”

“Can't.” Harkness can't imagine doing anything but trying to find his gun.

“Don't you want to introduce your girlfriend to your favorite-slash-only brother?”

“You really want me to answer that?” Harkness waves at the overnight shift, just leaving.

“I'll see you at the bar at Number 9 Park at six. Bring your girlfriend, she can meet Suzanne. We'll have a nice dinner. I'm buying. And I'll behave, promise.”

George hangs up before Harkness can say no.

***

“We're having dinner with George and his girlfriend,” Harkness says.

His mother brightens. “George!” She's bundled up in her green fall coat.

“He's doing great, Mom. Working hard, you know. At the car wash.”

“Cut it out,” Nora says.

When their mother was first diagnosed, they tried to bring her back. They handed her their father's favorite scarf or showed her a painting they'd bought on their honeymoon, hoping that memories would break through her congealing mind. Then they realized none of it mattered—the resonant objects, their careful words, nothing. She just kept drifting further out of reach, caught in a riptide of forgetting.

So now they just walk through Nagog, past pastel fields of loosestrife, its purple stalks beautiful but obvious, like a plant designed by a hairdresser.

“Cold today, isn't it?” Nora still tries to engage, always the good daughter, even better when compared with her feral brothers.

Their mother nods because she senses she probably should. Once she was a sharp-minded elementary school principal who loved Yeats. Now she nods and walks.

“Mom, I have a question,” Harkness says, looking her in the eye.

“Yes?”

“Do you remember a teacher named Allison Nevis?”

She just stares until Nora nudges him.

“Don't make her feel bad, Eddy,” she says.

 

When they cross the bridge, wisps of fog are rising off the black river. The slow-spiraling road, once theirs, leads to the old town waterworks. On Nagog Hill the large houses are set back from the street and the gracious lots are dotted with sheltering maples, lawns cleared of leaves by Salvadorans.

Harkness and his sister lag behind their mother when they come to what they always think of as the Lenoxes' house, even though the Lenox family moved away long ago. No one really leaves Nagog.

“Got a problem, Nora,” Harkness says.

“Must be a big one or you wouldn't tell me.”

“Lost my gun.”

“You mean they took it away from you or something?”

“No. Lost it. I got really drunk. It was the anniversary of . . . you know . . . the incident.”

Nora stops and pushes on his shoulder to spin him toward her. “Jesus, Eddy. You're supposed to be the responsible one.”

“I am, usually.”

“Well, this sounds like a major problem.”

“It is.”

“You have to get it back, and fast.”

“No kidding.”

“Any idea of who might have it?”

He shakes his head. “Working on it.” He waits for a moment, the silence thickening. “I'm chasing down a guy who may know something about it. Or maybe Thalia does.”

“That girl's bad news.”

“She makes me feel better, Nora. And she's got a good heart.”

“Well, that's not always enough, is it? You look like crap. Like you haven't slept in days.”

He gives his sister his you-don't-need-to-worry-about-me look.

“Be careful, Eddy. One piece of bad luck has a way of leading to another.” No need to explain—she's talking about the Harkness family's fast slide down Nagog Hill.

They look at their mother, trudging ahead.

“I know you've got your problems, Eddy, but you've got to listen to mine for a second.”