Dreams of an Absolution II

["The Last King"]

Dreams of an Absolution II

Rebecca sips from the gin and tonic it takes us ten minutes to order. I’m in no hurry, and anything that gets her more comfortable and talking more freely is fine by me. There’s no tables — this is the kind of place with wide open dance floors and four different bars, none of which will fill your order quickly. I sip from a Sam Summer draft and wait.

“You must be wondering how I heard about you,” she’s staring at her drink the whole time she speaks until the very end, when she looks up at me and I’m hit by how gorgeous she is — dark eyes, late 20s at the most, make-up but only a dash, only enough to highlight her own better features.

“I did consider it, considering I’m not listed anywhere that I know of.”

“Jane told me. Jane McIntyre. I know her from yoga. She said you were… well. She said you knew how to get certain things done. Knew things.” Jane… Jane is my ex, bitterly so. I guess screaming matches and divvying up the apartment in the most contentious way possible didn’t stop her from tossing me a client. She was always good to me.

I take another long pull from my draft and nod. ”I have a unique skill set.”

“I’m sure you can tell I’m uncomfortable. I don’t know enough about all this to… well, who does, right?” She starts to laugh, inviting me in to share her self-deprecation. “What, you just hop on craigslist and hire a P.I.? See which one has the best reviews on Yelp?”

I give her a half smile and shrug, “Its okay. Not a lot of people have expertise in this area. Why don’t you just start at the beginning?”

She takes a deep breath and its a matter of having a well trained eye not to stare at her cleavage as she exhales. One last sip of the gin and tonic for courage — I hear that, hon.

“I work at Gregori Industries. Nothing special, really — I’m a general project assistant. I basically do oversight on whatever my division — Interior Defense Tech — is working on at the moment. I don’t have code level clearance, so my work is done in alpha phases with a lot of data info redacted. Nothing to write home about.”

I nod to show her I follow. She glances around to make sure no one is listening in — fat chance, considering the closest people to us are two 22 year olds licking each other’s necks.

“I work directly under a man named Bernard Davidoff. Bernie. He’s a really great boss, always understanding and easy going. He’s a genius, too, Harvard undergrad and a PhD from MIT. He’s a company man…been there for decades."

"About two months ago, we start in on a new project, named Hummingbird on all our internal docs. It’s an ink-through — what we call the early-stagers where all the code-clearance material is removed. What we can tell is that it’s a new homeland security tool, something to do with being able to identify red flags early and monitor the threat, cross checking data across all bureaus and organizing them by perceived priority. How it does that is above my pay grade."

"All I was doing was budget analysis — numbers are given to me, with barely any context for how they’re supposed to be used — and I’m supposed to see how effective an efficient this project would be if it was implemented nationwide. That’s the frustrating part of my job — I’m barely told what any of this data means, but the higher ups still expect relevant analysis.”

She pauses as the two neck-lickers take a breather to order two shots of Red Label. I see the look of contempt on her face and surreptitiously lower my hand before she could see I was signalling the waitress for a third.

“All of us in the department, we could see Bernie was sweating some pressure from higher up. This was the project for Q1 2013, the one they wanted to unveil before the next defense appropriations vote. He was snapping at us, firing interns, being short with me — something he’s never, ever done before.” Rebecca shifts her eyes here and brings a hand to her hair — I’ll put the odds she was banging this Davidoff guy at 7:3. “The pressure was clearly getting to him. And then one day, he’s just…gone."

"No calling in sick, no leave of absence, he just didn’t come in to work anymore. A corporate rep for Gregori came through the department and told us Bernie had been shifted to an overseas project needing his expertise…”

“And you don’t believe that,” I interject, and she starts. I’m pretty sure she half forgot I was there.

“It’s not outside the realm of possibility… but I just have this feeling. You know? Like this…dread. In my gut. That something isn’t right… I suppose that sounds pretty stupid.”

“I’ve worked off stupider feelings before…” She frowns, and I hold up my hands in supplication. “A joke. It’s not stupid at all, Ms. Meyer, and you’re doing the right thing to act on those feelings.” This gets a grateful smile. She leans towards me and puts a hand on my shoulder.

“I know I’m giving you little, if anything, to work on. And I can pay, but… well, low level clerical workers don’t exactly pull in Financial District money, you know what I mean?”

“We can work that out. I want you to start over, and tell me everything you can about Davidoff and the hierarchy over at Gregori…”

---

I step off the T at Maverick and flag down one of the boozed-out smoke hounds that’s working the cab stand across the square. The notebook in my jacket is full of leads to track down from Meyer, and it feels good to have a purpose again, to be on the job. What doesn’t feel so great is having to tap all her expendable income just for my retainer, even after cutting her a deal. I never could be a hardass about money, especially to cute twenty-somethings in soft, tight sweaters.

I rattle off the address to the cabbie and we swing through Eastie in the late night dusk. For the hundredth time my instincts are telling me this is a bad idea, but it’s the only play I have right now and I have to roll the dice somehow.

I’m not a rich man, never have been and never really cared for money one way or the other… but Sam and Brandon just lost their entire world, and no one’s left to look after them but me. Jake would do it for me, if the situations were reversed… and I had anyone to look after, that is.

So that’s my motivation for being here, at this shitty, one-floor compound at the outskirts of East Boston. It’s the home of the Irish-American Boston Social Club, East Boston Chapter – Ibbas to the locals. A place for old men to play poker in smoke filled rooms and pretend they still pull any of the strings in the underworld, trading stories about who knocked off what liquor store back in the day, who was in Whitey’s crew and knows where the bodies are in Southie.

Toothless old men.

I walk to the steel door and give the coded knock. Old men who take themselves seriously — just like little boys playing fort in a treehouse. Some Lurch in a Pats jersey swings the door open for me and tries to look intimidating — no doubt some geezer’s nephew, too dumb to work construction so he’s given a “security” job. Cigar stench is already clinging to me, not two steps in the door. Lurch waves me into the basement, where sounds of poker chips and phlegmatic recriminations are already hitting my ears.

People eye me up as I enter the main room, but I know most of these assholes already know me. I haven’t been around since I was a kid, but these guys don’t forget. I see my target at the head table, surrounded as he always is by hangers-on, ashtrays and Cuban sandwich wrappers. He’s about to take a bite out of that Cuban when he sees me, stops in an almost farcical overreaction, and beckons me forward.

“Scott fuckin’ Wilson, as I live and breathe! Back in the belly of the beast, are ya?” Less beast, more belly — Davey’s put on a good 50 lbs or so since I last saw him. Davey’s the cock of the walk around here, been running small time game since before there were Kennedys in Boston office. Never anything major, which is probably why he’s allowed to live his golden years here, killing himself with MSG and tobacco instead of out in Bay State Correctional.

“Davey. I see your fat ass hasn’t keeled over from — what is it, three? Four heart attacks?” He gives me a shit eating grin.

“Three and a triple bypass — those fucks at MGH keep tellin’ me I’ve got one foot in the grave, and yet here I am.’

“Here you are. It’s good to see you.”

“Good to see you too, son,” he waves a croney off and invites me to sit. “I… ah, that is… I’m sorry I didn’t say hello at the funeral. Didn’t want to disturb ya. Or the family.”

Davey was Jake’s uncle — pretty much the only blood family he had left, at least on this coast. Jake always distanced himself from Davey’s games, he never wanted to grow up to be another Eastie piece of shit like the rest of his family, but they loved each other. Davey was like a father to Jake after his own passed — and took care of me too, when I moved here and took up with Jake.

“It’s all good Davey. It was tough for all of us.” Davey nods, sips from his mug of whatever cheap Irish piss they keep stocked here and puffs on his cigar. Emotions make old Irish fucks like Davey more uncomfortable than a homophobe getting a colonoscopy.

“So what brings you round here, Scotty?” He says it “Scatty”. These old timers will wear the Bay accent like a badge of honor till they die.  "Need some help with the funeral costs? I never did thank ya for puttin’ that up for Sam and the lad.”

“Nah… I need a little bit more than that, actually. Work, if you got it.” Davey’s eyes light up and I can see he’s intrigued.

“You never were interested in our business before, son.”

I feel for the hundredth and first time this is a bad idea. Davey’s a good enough guy, but as much as he loved his nephew, and as much as I’m sure he’s got at least affection for me, he’s not the kind of guy you want to have their hooks in you. I steal a cigarette from one of Davey’s cronies and light up.

“I’m still not. But you know what I do, Davey. I have talents that I’m sure you can use in a …more or less legal fashion.” He nods thoughtfully at this, cocking a head to the side.

“I’m sure we can think of a few things…though you know, there might just be something else, too. You used to wrestle, didn’t you? Wrestling school or camp or some shit as a kid, weren’t ya? We got a line on something that you might just be perfect for…”

---

Well, from last week’s Asylum show, we found out that when you hit your mid-life crisis, you tend to do anything to make yourself feel superior. You do anything to make your self-made propaganda sound believable. If you want a perfect example of this type of behavior, look at my opponent from last week, Peter Shelley. Peter is so afraid of defeat that he needs to use under-handed tactics to make yourself feel relevant in this new era that you simply cannot compete in. Everyone in their right mind knew that I had the match won. But I am not going to continue to fret about last week’s match. This week, Asylum’s general manager has granted me with another opportunity to gain revenge over Peter Shelley. I was granted another chance to prove to everyone that not only am I the best wrestler between me and Peter, but I am out to prove that if you choose to cross me the wrong way, you have a price to pay. No matter how severe the cause, the effect is going to be repaid tenfold. Peter, you have and enemy of the wrong person. And now, you are going to bear witness to my true wrestling skill.

Peter, do you honestly believe that just because you pinned me last week that this was gonna be forgotten? That this was gonna just fade from existence? I thrive on people like you who think highly of themselves. You honestly believe that you have a chance to become champion? Well, by your reasoning Mr.Shelley, if you could barely beat me, what makes you think you can compete with others such as Terry Marvin or AJP or CJ Gates? The absolute worse trend in the wrestling world is the acceptance and indeed promotion of cheating individuals like you, Mr.Shelley. And what is this about having Frappuccinos with management? Do you think you REALLY caught the attention of anyone? You probably believe that everyone is just lining up for a match against you as if you were famous. You think people have heard of you, which they undoubtedly have not. This man, Shelley, has made a career out of being a second rate, cheating excuse of a professional athlete. If you If you doubt his record of cheating, again please refer to last week’s Asylum recording for further evidence.

Peter didn’t take too kindly to the words I said last week, unsurprisingly I suppose. But, when he confronted me backstage after committing his act of cheating, he told me he wanted a rematch, a request he now disingenuously denies. But here is the key distinction, Mr. Shelley. Before we delve into your ridiculousness, just know that you are not, nor will you ever be superior to me. But let us proceed Mr.Shelley. What makes cheating morally justifiable by you? It gets the job done? It cuts a lot of time out of your seemingly busy schedule with management? However way you want to look at it, your cheating ways are wrong. Whatever drives you to cheat, whether your fueled by the inevitable fact that you cannot compete with me, will soon come to an end. I personally will expel such an inhuman form of competition from you. And if you believe I will have to worry about the elephant in the room, Jack Slade, then you seriously have mental issues. But no need to fret, Mr.Shelly. Because the pain and suffering that feel internally will soon be over. And when I am finished with you, all you will feel is numbness. You will lose all feeling, both physically and emotionally. But as I said last week,


You have nothing to lose, right?