Lorraine hugs her son and then looks out at the street. Lorraine is Marty Butler’s woman, so she’s been trained to look for threats in anything that looks out of place. She probably would have made Mary Pat and Bess if Mary Pat hadn’t backed up as soon as she saw George pull over. She sits at the start of a curve about thirty yards back up the street, under a tree that throws a nice late-afternoon shade. To see her, Lorraine would have to stand in the road and catch the light just right.
Lorraine and George head inside.
Mary Pat settles in.
At one point, she turns her head and sees Jules sitting beside her in the passenger seat. Jules yawns and gives her a sleepy smile.
It’s the sound of the outboard that wakes her.
It’s dark. Bugs mass under the lone streetlight. At the sound of a screen door creaking open and then snapping shut, she turns her head to see George Dunbar exit the house and walk across the road to the small cup of shoreline. He wears shorts and no shoes.
Mary Pat takes the binoculars from Dukie’s kit bag and trains them on the boat as it cuts its engine and bobs toward shore. Brian Shea jumps out of the boat as George half waddles in to meet it, and the two of them tug it to shore. Brian kills the light on the boat, and now the binoculars are no good.
Mary Pat turns off her dome light and exits Bess. She softly pushes the door shut behind her and crosses the road. Only one tree to hide behind and then just a beach wall that doesn’t even reach her knees. The tree stands at least twenty yards from Brian and George. But there’s no one else around and not much to muffle the sound, if only they’d speak the fuck up. She settles in behind the tree and strains to hear.
Brian Shea tells George, “You gotta...” and “We didn’t fucking...” and “...no free lunches.”
George’s back is to her, and his words travel upwind. He’s a lot harder to understand. She thinks she hears him say “I know” a couple of times. And something that could be “concrete” but she somehow knows isn’t. She knows that it’s also not “discreet” but “creet” is said for sure.
A sudden breeze carries Brian Shea’s three clearest sentences to her: “You already owe. Now you owe more. No one’s gonna grow a sense of humor about this.”
The breeze dies.
“I—” George says.
“...move it... Blue Hill Ave... I don’t fucking care.”
“...just sayin’...”
“...excuses are your own. Come on.”
They lift something out of the boat. They carry it through the dark, each man about four feet from the other. As they cross the road, they pass under the edge of the streetlight, and Mary Pat sees they’re carrying a duffel bag. It’s dark green, similar to the one Noel returned home from the army carrying, except she’s pretty sure this one has a zipper running up the center. George opens the trunk to his Impala, and they place it inside.
The car is only five or six yards away; Mary Pat can hear them pretty well now as Brian puts his hands on George’s shoulders.
“You tell those stoned-up Moreland monkeys I expect maximum bang for my buck.”
George nods.
Brian slaps George’s face. Not lightly. “You listening?”
“I am, I am.”
“You make damn sure they know they don’t do something makes the front page, we’ll dry up their entire fucking pipeline.”
“Okay.”
“And then you move the rest of the shit.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Not next month, not next year. Now. We clear?”
“We’re clear.”
“You’re not family, kid.” Brian steps in close and makes like he’s going to slap George in the face again, but at the last moment, he pats his cheek instead. “You’re just the son of the broad my boss fucks.”
“I know.”
“You what?” Brian’s voice is sharp.
“I said I know. I know.”
Brian Shea stares at him for a bit before walking back across the street. He drags his boat into the water with a few splashes and a few grunts, then engages the outboard and motors off.
An hour later, when George exits the expressway, Mary Pat thinks he must have made a mistake — instead of turning right toward Southie, he turns left toward Roxbury. She figures he’s distracted and will bang a U-ey soon, but he takes them deeper and deeper into the heart of Roxbury, down streets she’s never visited before, subsections of the city that feel as alien to her as Paris. But Paris is on the other side of the Atlantic; these streets are less than five miles from Commonwealth. It’s midnight on a Sunday, but some streets are as lively as a block party — coloreds mingling on their porches or gathered on the sidewalk around their cars. Other streets are dead quiet, not so much as an alley cat’s meow to break up the stillness. She feels eyes on her everywhere. Wonders if someone will just step in front of her car and scream, “White woman!” before they descend and tear her limb from limb.
That’s what they do around here, isn’t it? Wait for the unsuspecting honky, the disoriented whitey, the naive ofay? So they can show her who really owns these streets and how angry they truly feel.
She has no idea why they hate her so, but she feels their hate, in the looks she won’t acknowledge, the looks she doesn’t exactly see but knows are there, the looks that come from under the hoods of thick, sullen eyelids that clock her every movement.
Look around, a voice dares her.
She accepts the dare. Looks at the porches and stoops. No one’s looking at her. No one’s even aware she’s there.
And they’re not looking at George. Because...
George isn’t there anymore. An intersection glows yellow a block ahead, but George’s car isn’t at it. She accelerates, the fear suddenly overtaking her chest with the pounding of cymbals: I have no idea how to get out of here. She reaches the intersection and looks up at the street signs to her left — she’s on Warren Street, intersecting with St. James. She can’t tell if George went right or left. Can’t see his taillights. She looks up at the street signs again, this time to her right, and she wants to thank Jesus and the Holy Ghost and Saint Peter too that in a neighborhood this shitty, the street signs are actually intact, because it appears Warren Street splits two streets up the middle — to her left, St. James, but to her right, Moreland.
You tell those stoned-up Moreland monkeys I expect maximum bang for my buck.
She turns right on Moreland and accelerates. After one block, no George. After two blocks, no George. Resisting the urge to stand on the gas pedal, she keeps Bess at a steady pace. At the next stop sign, she looks to her right and sees the Impala. It’s parked on the other side of a playground a half block over. Parked beside a white van with its left rear door open. Three black guys stand with George at the back of the van. One’s tall and fat, another is skinny and short, the third is average height and build. They all have tall Afros and facial hair. They all wear glasses and turtlenecks. George is handing them items from his trunk, one after another after another.