“What these men did wasn’t just a crime,” Porter said. “It was a sin. They deprived the world of some of the greatest works of art ever produced. I have no sympathy for them, and I wouldn’t let a little thing like their safety jeopardize a chance to give these works back to the public.”
Chapter Eleven
Eddie Ballick loved the sea as much as he was capable of loving anything. There was something about the unforgiving nature of the deep gray waters off the northern shores of the Atlantic that made him feel as though he had a place in the world. As a young man in the 1970s, he’d worked as a hand on the swordfish boats out of Gloucester. On his tenth run his boat ran into a squall and foundered. Three of the six-man crew had gone down with the ship. He, the first mate, and one other had survived for three days in a tiny raft, riding through some of the roughest seas of the season, before they were rescued. Since that time, Eddie Ballick feared nothing.
He’d never planned to enter a life of crime. But fishing jobs could be hard to come by, particularly for a hand who had already been on one doomed ship. There was never a suggestion that he was at fault, but it didn’t really matter; sailors are a superstitious lot, and in the minds of many, Ballick was a jinx.
Jobless, and without any friends or family to speak of, Ballick drifted through his early twenties. He was a big man-not tall, but solid, with bones as thick and strong as petrified branches, held together with thick slabs of muscle. He found work as a bouncer at one of the roughest bars, where some of the city’s connected hung out. It wasn’t long before some of them recognized the potential in a strong young man without fear.
Ballick was a perfect fit for Boston ’s criminal underworld. He had a disdain for other human beings that allowed him to cross lines of cruelty even some of his colleagues found troubling. He lived to live, without any care given to how long or how well. As a result, his rise through the ranks of Boston ’s organized crime in the eighties and nineties had less to do with any active ambition, and more to do with an oddly indifferent efficiency. Within five years, he owned the bar where he’d first been hired to run the door. It was rumored that his former boss was buried under the parking lot out back.
The bar was only one of Ballick’s quasi-legitimate businesses. For him, the crown jewel in his mini-empire was a run-down fishing shack at the edge of the water at the southern tip of Boston, just north of Quincy. It was the only place he cared about, and it was where he spent most of his time. It wasn’t much to look at: a small, rickety two-story building ready to slide into the edge of Quincy Harbor.
Ballick was sitting in a cheap aluminum folding chair at the corner of the building, watching the activity on the pier closely, when Finn and Kozlowski arrived. He looked as if he fit in there, and as if he would have a hard time fitting in anyplace else. He was in his late fifties, with a large round head fringed with matted white hair. A fisherman’s beard traced a smooth oval from ear to ear under his chin, and the only parts of him that seemed to move at all were his eyes. Boats were pulled up along a nearby pier, some of them already unloading their catches in the mid-afternoon sun. A few of Ballick’s buyers from the shack moved along the pier, watching over the unloading process, calculating their needs and the respective purchase prices in their heads.
“Eddie Ballick,” Finn said as he approached. He’d called earlier to tell Ballick he was coming; Ballick was known to be a man who abhorred surprises.
Ballick turned his head; the rest of his body remained still. He said nothing.
“I’m Scott Finn. Devon Malley’s lawyer. We spoke earlier.”
Ballick looked past Finn toward Kozlowski. “You didn’t say you were bringing someone with you.”
“Sorry,” Finn said. “This is Tom Kozlowski. He and I-”
“I know who he is,” Ballick said. “He’s a cop.”
“He’s no longer with the department,” Finn said. “He’s a private detective now.”
“He’s still a cop,” Ballick said. “Now he’s just a cop without a badge.”
Ballick’s head turned back toward the pier. “I only got a few minutes. I’m busy.” He shifted in his seat and brought his hands together on his lap. Finn had never seen thicker fingers. “Scott Finn,” he said. “I remember you.”
“I didn’t know whether you would,” Finn said.
“Looks like the other side is working out for you.”
“I suppose.”
“Fuckin’ shame.”
Finn was noncommittal. “In some ways, maybe.”
“And now you want to talk to me about Devon Malley.”
“It would be helpful.”
Ballick frowned. Then he got to his feet slowly. “We’ll talk inside,” he said. “Cop stays out here.”
Finn followed him around the corner of the building and through an undersized door that looked as though the hinges might fail soon. One room took up the entire first floor. It was concrete from wall to wall, and along the back there was a long sink where men in bloodstained sweatshirts and aprons worked steadily with long, thin gutting knives, slicing into the bellies of fish carcasses stacked in holding bins. With each casual flick of their wrists, innards spilled into the sinks and were washed down through an open drain that emptied into a trough in the cement along the wall, and were carried out through a chute in the corner of the building that led into the harbor. The sights and smells brought a rush of bile into Finn’s throat, but he managed to suppress the gag reflex.
“Upstairs,” Ballick said, nodding toward a rickety plywood staircase in the corner. “Mikey,” he called to one of the men bent over the bloody sink. The man stood and looked over his shoulder. Finn could see the muscles rippling under a thin T-shirt. “Keep an eye on the guy outside.” Ballick walked to the stairs and the entire building seemed to list to one side as the heavy man headed up.
The upstairs was only marginally less retch-inducing. The walls were open to the studs, and Finn could see patches of mold along the walls and on the ceiling. The stench from below seemed just as powerful. There was a small desk in the center of the room-painfully small for a man of Ballick’s girth-and a few rusted folding chairs placed haphazardly around. Stacks of newspapers and filing cabinets stood along one wall.
“Nice office,” Finn commented.
“Not what you’re used to, Counselor?”
“Actually, my office isn’t much bigger. Better ventilated, maybe.”
“With all the money you must be making these days?”
“I make a lot less than you do. Appearances notwithstanding.”
Ballick sat down behind the desk and slid open one of the bottom drawers, pulling out a thermos. He took the cup-shaped top off and turned it upside down on the desktop, then unscrewed the cap and poured out some of the contents. A thin wisp of steam wafted up. “I’ve never given much of a fuck about appearances,” Ballick said as he lifted the cup to his lips.
Finn nodded and pulled a chair over, sitting in front of the desk. “Me neither.”
“So?” Ballick said. “You said you wanted to talk. Talk.”
Kozlowski was leaning against the side of the building, close to the doorway so that he might hear it if things got loud upstairs. He’d have felt much better if he could have seen Finn and heard exactly what was going on. It was unlikely that Ballick would do anything. There were too many people around, and it wouldn’t be worth his effort. Still, Kozlowski felt uneasy.
The door opened and a man stepped outside. He was in his late twenties, a little taller than Kozlowski, with a shaved head and a goatee. An apron hung from his shoulders, covered in blood and fish guts, and his T-shirt, presumably once white, was splotched with yellow and gray. The arms that protruded from the sleeves were covered in green-black prison tattoos; cables of muscle and treads of veins shifted as he moved.