Seagulls had nested on the roof of Station One. They came and went from the yellow-brick parapet, landed, squawked, fretted, flew off again. Three dun, speckled eggs lay unprotected in a nest of twigs. A fat furry chick bumbled around the edge of the roof, following the high yellow-brick wall. It was the same speckled gray-brown color as the eggs. The chick paused here and there to inspect bits of garbage collected in the stones that covered the rooftop, cigarette butts, beer cans, Christmas lights. When the chick reached an enormous pair of black shoes, it tried to hop up toward the laces.
“Beat it,” Joe Daley said.
He shifted his feet and the little bird waddled off. Joe returned his attention to the view from the parapet, rooftops bristling with antennae, Beacon Hill and the waste field of the West End at dusk. Below, cars emerged from the Sumner Tunnel and disappeared again into the city.
A voice behind him: “Jesus, Joe. What, are you hiding up here?” Brendan Conroy negotiated the roof door, the raised threshold, the steel bar that propped the door open. He was awkward in the top-heavy way that big old men are. To Joe he looked like a moose crossing a stream, from stone to stone. “I’ve been all over this fucking place looking for you. Three flights of stairs, pshh. The hell are you doing up here?”
Joe removed a cigarette from his lips and showed it.
“Ah. Why didn’t you tell the lieutenant? What if they needed to find you?”
“I’m off.”
“Go home, then. You’ve got a family, young fella.”
“What’s on your mind, Brendan? You must have climbed those stairs for a reason.”
Conroy came over. He was not tall enough to look out over the parapet, so he scanned the rooftop. Three chimney stacks, an air shaft, those filthy goddamn birds screeching and flapping. The one finished feature was a cupola complete with Palladian windows, gold dome, and pineapple finial. Conroy was in full uniform, gold chevrons on his arm. “You know, I’ve never been up here.”
“Only place you can be alone around here.”
“Go home, Joe. It’s time to go home.”
“That’s what you come up here to tell me?”
“Your mother’s worried about you.”
“And she sent you.”
“If your dad was still around…Joe, you can’t blame the woman for worrying about her son. What’s wrong with you?”
“You don’t want to know, Bren. Trust me.”
“Come on. Can’t be that bad, boyo.”
“It is.”
“Maybe I can help.” Conroy waited but got no response. “You remember the time you got pinched for that thing in Dearborn Square, looking for trouble? ’Member? Who’d you call when you were too scared to tell your old man?”
“I was a kid. This one’s tougher to fix.”
“Maybe.”
“Trust me. Ol’ Uncle Brendan can’t fix this one.”
“Whatever it is, boyo, it’s just you and me here. You and me and the pigeons.”
“Those are seagulls.”
“Okay, seagulls, whatever.”
Joe smirked. No doubt Conroy meant well, but even if Joe had wanted to confide what he was feeling, he could not have named it. It was not fear. On the contrary he felt safer now than he had in a long time. He might even have been clever. By playing both sides of the fence, he had appeased the enemy without paying or promising anything. Nor had he actually done anything he felt ashamed of. The work was nothing. There were occasional mid-morning calls to transport a suitcase to the North End. And occasional rounds of hole-in-the-wall shops that did a small book-smoke shops, groceries, a shoe-repair joint-to collect the tax. Far from a villain, Joe felt like a functionary in an ancient and very large organization. He was just an errand boy, for now. And Fish had been the exception; the people Joe had called on thus far had not resisted or even resented paying. Capobianco’s tax was just ordinary overhead. It seemed to Joe that The Catastrophe had occurred without fanfare, so maybe-just maybe-it had not been a catastrophe at all. And yet, and yet…he could not shake this feeling. He did not feel comfortable around cops. He had a shameful secret. He was a spy among them. And stripped of his cophood, he did not feel quite like Joe Daley anymore. Maybe he never would.
“I took a wrong turn, Bren, that’s all.”
“What did you do?”
Joe hesitated. Well, what the hell. Might as well tell somebody. “I got in a hole. Betting.”
“Betting on what?”
“Numbers, sports, horses, name it.”
“And?”
“I have to-I kind of have to work it off. They’ve got me running errands. That’s it so far. I’m sure it’ll be more.”
“Who’s they?”
“Capobianco’s crew. It was Vincent Gargano came to me.”
“Ah. And how big a hole are we talking about?”
“Too big. More than I have.”
“I can get you the money.”
“I don’t think that’s going to be enough now. I don’t know that I can just walk away.”
Conroy nodded. “Who knows about this?”
“No one.”
“Not even Kat?”
“If Kat knew, my mother would know. If my mother knew…I kind of wanted to handle it my own way.”
“Of course, of course. Alright, keep it to yourself, then. Let me see what I can find out. Maybe there’s something we can do.”
“I appreciate that.”
“You’re not alone in this, boyo. You know that, don’t you?”
“Okay, sure.”
“Anyway, it sounds like you didn’t have much choice. Did you have a choice?”
“Yeah, a bullet in the hat.”
“Alright, then. So don’t grind yourself up over it. You do what you have to do, Joe, understand? Just don’t go too far. Run a few errands or whatever, just remember you’re still a cop. If you go too far, no one will know you.”
“Okay.”
“We’ll take care of it. You stay cool. You have a family, son. You have a son of your own. You have a responsibility to them. No one can say you did the wrong thing till they walk in your shoes.”
“Thanks, Bren. I’m glad my dad’s not around for this.”
“Let me tell you somethin’: Your dad was no saint, God rest his soul. Sometimes he did what he had to do, too.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
“Like I’m not going to say. He’s passed away and he was a friend of mine and he loved you boys something awful. If there were things he did not want to tell you, then that was his decision and it’s not my place to do any different. No father tells his son everything, Joe. No father does and no father should. A son never really knows his father. There’s too many years in between. But I knew him. I knew him like a brother. Like a goddamn brother, your dad, and he was a good, clean, honest cop. He never did anything-anything-you boys should be the least bit ashamed of. So don’t misunderstand me. But just the same, he was a man, same as you, and he lived in the world, same as you, and that’s all I’m gonna say about it. I don’t want you coming up here on the roof mooning over ‘what would dear ol’ Da think?’ Because I’ll tell you: He’d understand and he’d back you up, same as I’m going to back you up. That’s what we do. We do what we do, and we don’t apologize. That’s how a family works.”
“Alright. Okay.” Joe wasn’t sure whether Conroy was referring to the Daley family or the police family. He suspected there was not much distinction, to Conroy at least. “What are you going to tell my mother?”
“What am I going to tell her? The truth: this young fella’s been working his fingers to the bone and he’s tired, and she and Kat and the rest of the ladies’ sewing circle should just leave yuz alone for a while, let us work it all out.”