Eddie Bourque: Speak Ill Of The Living Part 6

Durkin chuckled. Eddie got a mental picture of the dragon's grin before he sprayed fire. "Here's what I want you to do..."

The truck needed shocks; it bounced over pitted streets toward the Daily Empire Building.

Or that's where Eddie a.s.sumed it was going. He couldn't see a d.a.m.n thing from the back of the truck, sealed inside a fifty-five gallon metal drum, which, according to its label, was supposed to hold newsprint ink.

This is crazy. Durkin is crazy. I'm crazy.

The big diesel slammed over a large b.u.mp, and Eddie's chin clacked against his knee. His lower legs were going numb.

How much air is in one of these barrels?

He took comfort from the tiny hole in the lid that shone like a star. The truck driver, a buddy of Durkin's from their service in Vietnam, had a.s.sured Eddie that plenty of air could squeeze through that pinp.r.i.c.k. It was supposed to be a short ride on the flatbed truck with the barrels of ink, but Eddie began to wonder if the driver had taken a wrong turn. It started to get warm inside the barrel.

Finally, the truck stopped, idling. Eddie heard the driver's door open and then slam. And then a m.u.f.fled conversation: "S'pose to be seventeen barrels on this truck."

"That's what I brung you."

"You got three rows of six, that's eighteen."

"Eighteen, huh? And you're complaining?"

m.u.f.fled laughter.

"Okay, you're fine. Bring 'em in."

The truck door opened and then slammed again, then the diesel growled and jerked forward. Eddie could feel the truck angling down a ramp. It leveled off, then stopped, and the engine shut off.

Chains rattled. Bolts were thrown open. An electric motor hummed. Eddie's barrel shuddered and clanked into its neighbors. His head banged the steel. He cringed silently and rubbed the spot. He heard a beeping, felt motion, a.s.sumed that a forklift was unloading the pallet of ink barrels. The forklift slammed the barrels down and motored off, doing more work nearby. Eddie rubbed his numb ankles. He was supposed to wait in the barrel for Durkin to let him out, but how long could he stand being squished in there?

Soon, the forklift finished and drove off. He heard the truck start again. It snorted and went away. A metal door slammed. And it was quiet outside the barrel.

The pinp.r.i.c.k in the lid glowed more dimly than before. Eddie was inside the the Empire building, probably in the production warehouse room.

He waited, waited, waited, hearing nothing. After what seemed like half an hour, but probably was less, Eddie felt a wave of claustrophobia. The air inside the barrel grew steamy. Where the h.e.l.l was Durkin?

Screw it. I gotta get out of here.

Eddie reached his hands to the lid. It was warm. He pressed, gently at first, trying to be quiet. The lid was stuck fast. He pressed harder, as hard as he could. No good. Eddie pounded the lid with the heel of his hand. It made a dull sound that vibrated around him. The lid wouldn't budge.

What if Durkin forgot?

Durkin would never forget.

But what if he got delayed somehow? What if he had a blackout? Or a heart attack?

What if he went out for a sandwich and-by a case of mistaken ident.i.ty-got arrested for a crime he didn't commit? And then was hauled off to the police station while screaming nonsense about his friend stuffed in an ink barrel. And what if it took the police and a dozen lawyers a week to sort out the facts? Eddie would be decomposing by then. He thought of the perfect headline: STINK FROM INK IS MAN IN CAN.

Eddie sighed.

Stop thinking stupid stuff.

What if Durkin just forgot?

A door slammed nearby. Eddie held his breath. He thought he heard the clip-clop of metal crutches on the concrete floor. He was about to call out for Durkin when the barrel tipped over.

"Whoa!"

The barrel rang like a gong when it hit. And then it rolled. Eddie slammed around inside like a pair of sneakers in a clothes dryer, until the barrel crashed into a wall and the lid popped off.

Eddie dragged himself out, to a blast of hoa.r.s.e laugher.

"G.o.ddamit, Durkin," Eddie said, staggering to his feet, "I'd give you that a.s.s kicking right now, if my legs weren't numb."

Durkin laughed even harder. His huge shoulders jiggled. He balanced on his one leg and pounded his metal crutches on the floor. He looked different than when Eddie had last seen him. Same big square head, same silver hair, but his goatee had spread to a full white beard. His diamond stud earring had been replaced by a humble paperclip, threaded through the hole in his earlobe.

Eddie stamped his feet. They erupted with p.r.i.c.kles as the blood returned. Durkin's laugh was so hearty, so long-lasting, that even Eddie had to smile at the prank.

Durkin balled his ma.s.sive fist. "Anytime you think you're man enough, Bourque," he said.

"Someday," Eddie promised. "I'm a lot younger than you. You won't be bench-pressing four hundred pounds when you're eighty."

Durkin laughed, thrilled by Eddie's threat.

"So don't be surprised," Eddie warned, "when I sneak into your nursing home and push your wheelchair into traffic."

Durkin slapped his thigh in delight. His need for combat was satisfied, and he was ready to be helpful. "It's been too long, Eddie," he said. "Whadda you need from me?"

Down in the Empire's bas.e.m.e.nt news library, Durkin lorded over a dimly lit world of unlabeled file drawers, stacks of newsprint and cobwebs. His AM radio was tuned to conservative talk radio, his desk littered with empty paper coffee cups and motorcycle magazines. Durkin had lost his left leg in an explosion in Vietnam when he was just nineteen, but he moved with grace on his crutches, like a hulking Minotaur through his labyrinth of file cabinets.

The file on the crimes and trial of Henry Bourque was more than thirty years old. In it, Durkin's predecessors had dutifully filed news clippings of every story published in The Daily Empire that had mentioned Henry Joseph Bourque.

"Is this an uncle of yours, or something?" Durkin asked.

Eddie didn't want to answer, and couldn't decide why. He trusted Durkin, who was risking his job by letting Eddie into his library. So why didn't Eddie want to admit the truth? Why was his first instinct to lie? He forced out the words, "Not an uncle. My brother."

Durkin frowned. "But Ed, this guy's gotta be at least twenty years older than you."

"Twenty years and a few months," Eddie said. He sighed, then explained: "My folks married young and planned to have one kid-that was Henry. He was a genius-I've heard-and an athlete, with a room full of trophies. My parents were devastated when he got arrested, and they decided to-uh, well, they decided to start over. My mom was in her forties when I was born. They thought I'd be another Henry, except with a clean record." He chuckled at the dark humor. "Didn't work out that way. Henry's conviction took too much out of them. They blamed themselves, of course, for raising him wrong, and then maybe they tried to be too perfect with me. I dunno-I've given up trying to a.n.a.lyze it. They split when I was a kid. Don't hear much from either of them anymore."

"I wonder sometimes what makes a family," Durkin said.

"So that's the legacy of Henry Bourque," Eddie said. He tapped the file folder on Durkin's desk. "As well as whatever atrocities are in this file."

Durkin studied Eddie's face a moment. He looked away, leaned against his desk, stroked his beard three times, and then said quietly, "When I got home from the war, I didn't see outside of my hospital room for three months." He smiled out of the corner of his mouth. "Shrapnel f.u.c.ked me up all over. I'm lucky I kept the leg that I got." He slapped that leg. "What kept me going were the visits from my brother and from my fiancee."

"I didn't know you were married."

Durkin's brow wrinkled like a package of hot dogs. "I ain't," he said. "Don't jump ahead. Anyway, the reason I ain't is because after my brother and fiancee visited me, they were visiting each other."

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Eddie felt uneasy hearing of the heartbreak of someone so physically imposing as Durkin. He figured that Durkin would despise being the object of pity. Eddie asked, "Did you break his neck?"

Durkin shrugged. "I got over it."

"What? You had to be furious."

"Oh yeah? I had to? Says who?" He looked at Eddie. There was no answer, but Durkin let the question hang there a while. Then he said, "I don't gotta be anything I don't want. I didn't have to hate him." He pushed himself suddenly away from the desk. "I'll be in the back. Scream when you're done."

Eddie watched him clip-clop away. He had known Durkin for years, but was beginning to doubt that he had ever known him well.

Eddie turned his attention to the file folder on the desk. It was layered with a fine grit of paper dust. The file tab was labeled in red ink: "Solomon Co./armored car heist." A list of cross-referenced subjects written across the front included: "Henry J. Bourque trial/sentencing." There were other names printed there, too, which Eddie did not recognize.

It struck Eddie odd to see Henry's name on the file; a myth from his childhood had been proven true. Henry Bourque was real. It was like seeing the Loch Ness Monster at the aquarium.

The stories had been filed in chronological order, starting with the earliest: ARMORED CAR ROBBED Three Guards Missing $600,000 in Cash Stolen The Daily Empire had done a competent job on deadline covering the morning robbery. From the story, told in straightforward, declarative sentences, Eddie learned that the armored truck from Solomon Secure Transport Company had reported by radio that a broken-down car was blocking its path on a back road in Tyngsboro, the tiny town to the north, on the New Hamps.h.i.+re border.

That was the truck's last message.

When the transport company couldn't raise the driver by radio, it called the police.

The cops found the truck in a hayfield two hours later. The armored car's guards, locked in back with the money, had been under a policy to never open the truck in a robbery, but the truck was empty. The driver, the two guards and the money were gone. The paper reported the names of the missing men: Dumas, Forte and Nicolaidis.

The names had long been out of the news, and they meant nothing to Eddie.

His eyes lingered over one detail in the story-the police had found blood in the back of the truck.

Oh Jesus, Henry.

Henry's crimes had always been an abstract. Now they were becoming real. Eddie felt a nervous flutter. He suddenly noticed that Durkin kept the bas.e.m.e.nt too warm. He unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt collar.

G.o.d, I need coffee.

"Durkin? Hey Durk!"

He heard clip-clop, clip-clop in the darkness, and then Durkin appeared. "Done already?"

"You got any of that industrial waste you like to brew?"

He chuckled. "Didn't learn your lesson last time, eh? Fine. I can make a pot." He went off. Eddie left Henry's file alone while Durkin brewed the java. He had decided not to look at the file alone. On his expedition into his brother's criminal past, Eddie wanted somebody with him to watch his back.

Durkin returned in a few minutes with two paper cups of steaming black sludge. "Don't spill any," he said. "This stuff stains."

Eddie sipped and flinched at the bitterness. "Like licking a car battery," he said. "I love it."

Durkin laughed and turned to leave.

"Hang on a sec," Eddie said. "This murder case-my brother's case." He sighed. "I guess I could use a hand going through this stuff." He smiled. "I could take your crutches away, I suppose. But I'd rather you just offered to help."

Durkin looked at him. Eddie readied himself for more verbal combat. But Durkin didn't want to fight. He sat at the edge of the desk and flipped open the file.

"What I remember best is that they never found the money," Durkin said. He searched through the file, pulled out a story about the missing money and flipped it on the desk for Eddie. "And they never found the guards' bodies, either."

Eddie blanched. "Three murders? I didn't know it was three."

"Naw, just two," Durkin said. "Nicolaidis survived." He tugged out another story for Eddie: MISSING ARMORED CAR DRIVER ALIVE.

Ralph V. Nicolaidis escapes captors "The guards were tied up in a bas.e.m.e.nt somewhere," Durkin explained. He gestured to a head and shoulders photo of a thick-necked man with heavy black eyebrows. "They blindfolded this guy, Nicolaidis, and brought him out into the woods, out in Tyngsboro somewhere, probably to shoot him. But he managed to run off."

Eddie scanned the story. The driver told police he had escaped in darkness and wandered through the woods for hours, until he heard the sound of traffic and staggered out onto a road.

Eddie was thrilled to learn that Ralph Nicolaidis had lived. Nicolaidis was just twenty-two, the paper had reported at the time. He had a mother and a stepfather. He had been accepted into the police academy. He played the drums.

In one sense, there was little difference between two murders and three-one man escaping didn't make Henry any less of a killer. But the difference of one life was infinite.

"So how did they catch them?" Eddie asked.

Durkin pulled out another clip. "Partial fingerprint in the truck. They finally matched it to a punk stickup man, who was doing life in prison on the installment plan-a year or two at a time." He pointed to a mug shot of a young man with sharp, bony features. "This is the dude, Jimmy Whistle. He helped your brother pull off the heist."

Eddie stared at the picture. He whispered, "My brother's partner."

I gave away the table I made to my partner's old lady.

"Once the police nabbed Jimmy, he turned on Henry Bourque-fingered him as the mastermind and the trigger man who killed the guards, Dumas and Forte," Durkin said. "Your brother admitted he had helped Whistle hold up a convenience store a few months before the armored car robbery, but he denied any involvement in the Solomon Transport murders. The jury saw it otherwise."

Eddie read the story. In exchange for testimony against Henry, prosecutors had offered a plea bargain for James J. Whistle: parole in thirty years.

"He'd be out by now!" Eddie shouted.

Durkin read over the story. "I guess, a.s.suming he stayed out of trouble. Cripes, imagine that-going into prison in your twenties and getting out at my age. That's a lot of life to miss."

Eddie flipped through the file. "Something doesn't make sense," he said. "Without the guards' bodies, and just the testimony of a convicted felon, how did the state stick the murder charge on Henry?"

"Blood evidence, if I recall," Durkin said. He explained as he searched the file for the right story. "They found blood on his shoes." He found the clip he was looking for and scanned it quietly for a minute. "Yeah, the cops found b.l.o.o.d.y sneakers in your brother's closet. Henry tried to say it was his own blood-and he did have a cut on his hand at the time. But you can't run from science. This was long before DNA testing, but an expert matched the blood types on the shoes to the missing guards."

"How could they do that?"

"They knew from Army records that Dumas was blood-type B-negative," Durkin explained, reading from the story. "Forte was AB-positive. Both types are rare-just two percent of the population is B-negative, four percent is AB-positive. Your brother is O-positive, which is common. But they didn't find any type O on his shoes-they found both of the rare types. It's pretty hard evidence."

He offered the story to Eddie.

Durkin was right. Considering that Henry had tried to claim it was his own blood, the scientific conclusions were solid evidence. Beyond a reasonable doubt, for sure.