Once he’d decided on the crime, he was no longer one of them.
They crowded past on the sidewalk. Raucous college girls with pale necks and arms, laughing, stumbling arm in arm, celebrating the first summery evening of spring. An old couple shuffling toward Symphony Hall. Negroes traipsing back to the Mass. Ave. bridge, to the South End, completing their daily migration. They did not know that tonight was special, tonight there would be violence.
Michael knew.
In the pocket of his Baracuta jacket, clasped in his right fist, was a rock. At least it had looked like a rock when he’d first picked it up; on closer inspection it had turned out to be a chunk of concrete. It was heavy, roughly the shape of an egg, fractionally larger than his own fist. Pebbles were embedded in its stippled surface. This concrete egg fit his hand and had a pleasing heft like a well-made tool. And like a well-made tool it had an inviting quality: To hold it was to want to use it.
Ricky sat nearby, on a stoop, smoking a butt. “Sit down, Mikey. Don’t make a fuss.”
“Don’t feel like sitting down.”
“You’re making a fuss.”
“I’m not making a fuss. I just don’t feel like sitting down, alright?”
“Alright. So stand. I’m just sayin’, you’re gonna call attention.”
“I’m just standing here. What am I gonna call attention?”
“Alright. I’m just sayin’.”
That rock in Michael’s pocket felt like a mistake, and he seemed to see himself walking away, down Symphony Road toward St. Stephen Street, innocent, empty-handed.
But he could see the appeal of it, too, of lashing out. Armed, ready for action, he no longer felt quite as powerless against the accumulating anxiety. The city and the country beset by enemies. DeSalvo behind bars, but not the Strangler, not Amy’s killer certainly. And now the newspapers were speculating that Khrushchev had been behind the Kennedy assassination, still intent on establishing missiles in Cuba to menace us. Meanwhile, the city government had announced the demolition of yet another neighborhood, Barry’s Corner in Brighton, triggering a small revolt. Enemies without, conspiracies within. Hidden forces at work. Certainly the Daleys were acquainted with this mood, schooled as they were in the whole impacted Irish thing-a half millennium of impotent, irredentist, mythologized victimhood. At some point wasn’t it easier just to pick up a rock?
At last, Lindstrom rounded the corner from Hemenway Street with that jangling loose-limbed walk.
“That’s him,” Ricky said.
Michael glanced up and down the block, and saw no pedestrians, which he took to be a sign that his project was blessed, inevitable. Fate would not grant him a nosy old woman or an alert cop, a prudent excuse to abandon his duty. He started across the street.
“Kurt Lindstrom?”
Lindstrom’s face grew puzzled. “Yeah?”
Michael drew the rock out of his pocket. He meant to raise it above his shoulder, to smash it down on the crown of Lindstrom’s head. But he did not. He thought of Lindstrom in Margaret’s kitchen. He thought of Amy Ryan. His right arm felt paralyzed.
Lindstrom eyed the rock. He took a cautious half-step into the alley, away from Michael. “Yeah?” he repeated.
Michael stepped toward him, but already he knew he would not attack. Already he was asking himself, How far did he intend to take this? If he started, where would he stop? He stood there.
“You stay away from Margaret Daley,” Michael said.
“Margaret? You mean the lovely woman with the groceries?”
“Just stay away.” Michael let go of the rock. It clattered on the pavement.
“Is it a crime to help a woman with her groceries?”
There was a sound. Michael turned to see Ricky coming to join them. Ricky’s face registered nothing. Michael was about to tell him it was all over, that he’d said his piece, there was no need for anything more, but Ricky did not stop to listen, did not acknowledge his brother at all.
Ricky picked up the rock at Michael’s feet, and in three quick stabbing gestures he smashed the butt end of the rock down on Lindstrom’s head. There were two hollow-sounding knocks, the rock striking the helmet of bone under a thin layer of hair and tissue. The third blow made no sound.
With each strike, Lindstrom crumbled a little further until he was kneeling on the pavement, hands pressed to the sides of his head. His blond hair was speckled with red. On his knees, forehead nearly touching the ground, Lindstrom’s shirt went snug against his back, revealing a thin torso scooped along the sides like a woman’s. The spine rose up in the center, a ridge of peaked bones.
Ricky smashed that ridge, and Lindstrom cried out.
“Michael,” Ricky ordered, “stay here. Don’t let anyone come back here.”
Ricky dragged Lindstrom down the alley, behind the building.
The next minute lasted a year. Michael heard the sounds of his brother beating Lindstrom. The rock made a wet slap as it struck. Lindstrom barked out for help twice. Ricky grunted with effort.
When Michael finally went back there, he found Ricky splashed with blood. His right hand, which held the rock, was literally red. It looked painted. A spatter-line of blood droplets was stitched across his face.
Lindstrom lay on his side, covering his head. Tentatively he lowered his arms and his head lolled back.
Ricky stood over him. He seemed to target the broad bone of Lindstrom’s exposed forehead. He flipped the rock in his hand so that the narrower tip was exposed at the bottom of his fist-a more concentrated blow to punch a hammer-hole in that shell, to shatter it.
“Ricky,” Michael said. “Stop.”