Fixer Redux Read online

  They were on a late-night shift in Roxbury, an area of town that—along with Mattapan—was mostly black. Sal never really knew if his partner was a bigot because of the area he policed, or if that was just an unfortunate coincidence. Whatever it was, the disdain pouring from his mouth regarding the people he was there to serve and protect was constant—which, again, was why they argued about doughnuts so often. It was the only thing Sal could stand to listen to.

  The call was in response to a burglar alarm going off at one of the downtown liquor stores. It was two in the morning, which was around when those things started to roll in. Almost every time, it ended up being a false alarm for some reason or another. Since the liquor stores downtown all had heavy metal roll-gates and bars on the windows, Sal didn’t want to be there on the day the alarm was legit; the guy who could get through those gates was a guy he didn’t care to meet.

  His memory was a little sketchy on the rest of the details, as they pertained to the liquor store itself. It was a thing they ended up doing almost every night—stopping the car in front of a shop, getting out, looking around, telling dispatch to reach the owner or the alarm company or both—so Sal couldn’t quite recall how this particular stop ended with him chasing someone on foot.

  But give chase was what he did. As the youngest and most capable of rapid movement, that was his role in the partnership. Moe’s part was to get back in the car and try to follow the chase in the vehicle, and call for backup if needed. It wasn’t a bad division of labor so long as whoever they were chasing continued along a path a car could follow.

  This kid didn’t do that. He darted down an alley, and then it looked like he disappeared into a particular building. Sal followed without thinking, which was neither wise nor necessarily protocol. Thirty years later, he still couldn’t recall what the suspect was supposed to have done, but whatever it was didn’t warrant barging into an abandoned row house at two in the morning, without backup.

  Sal cleared the first floor and then the second. The place was completely empty, which was frankly not a good sign. Even the squatters knew better than to be in this place. That was what he’d tell himself later.

  By the time he reached the third floor he was pretty winded, and thinking maybe he’d picked the wrong building. Then he noticed there was someone else on the floor with him.

  “Hey,” Sal said. “Police, get your hands up.”

  His flashlight beam only hit the guy’s pants at first, so he didn’t register right off that this wasn’t the guy he had been chasing.

  “There you are,” the man said.

  He was a big, rugged-looking dude, not attractive or unattractive so much as facially interesting in a memorable way. He had on a leather jacket and big construction worker boots. He was also white, and therefore definitely not the perp.

  “Show me your hands,” Sal repeated, putting his own hand on the butt of his unclipped gun.

  The man raised his hands.

  “I’ve been wondering if I was in the right place or not,” the guy said, amiably.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I don’t usually have appointments in the middle of the night; I was worried I got confused about the location.”

  “Pal, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Pretty positive whoever you’re here to meet, it isn’t me.”

  “No, it’s you. The time is right.”

  “The time for what?”

  “I don’t really know. I haven’t been doing this for very long, but…well, something anyway. I’m here for a reason. We’ll know soon enough. Can I put my hands down?”

  The guy was obviously certifiable. But he was also all the way on the other side of the room.

  “Go ahead,” Sal said. “You on something?”

  “I don’t…drugs? Drugs, no I’m not on any drugs.”

  “Do you own this place?”

  “No.”

  “So, you’re trespassing.”

  “I guess so. Did you want to arrest me for that?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  He used his flashlight to check out the rest of the room. It was what might be called an open floor plan if he were selling the property. More accurately, it looked like a few walls were missing.

  “See anybody else come up here?” he asked the man.

  “No. Were you looking for someone?”

  “I chased I guy, yeah. You sure nobody else came up here?”

  “Honest.”

  “Well, I’m gonna take a look around anyway. You stay put, we’ll figure out what to do with you later.”

  Sal took two steps forward, and there was a loud groan from the floor.

  “There we are,” the man said.

  Sal was halfway through the floorboards before he even realized what was happening. He would have fallen further, but the weirdo from the other end of the room launched himself across the wood surface, belly-first, like he was helping a kid out of a swimming pool. He caught Sal’s right arm with both of his.

  “I got you,” he said calmly.

  A second earlier, Sal’s right hand had been on his gun. Now he could hear the revolver slap the floor one flight down. He must have started to pull it instinctively when his feet went out. Those feet were still dangling in the air.

  “This whole floor’s gonna give,” he said to the stranger. “Let me go, it’s only about ten feet.”

  The guy didn’t answer right away. He just stared at nothing much for a few seconds.

  “I can’t do that,” he said after a time. “The second floor won’t take it. You’ll end up in the basement. Give me your left.”

  Sal tossed his flashlight over the guy’s shoulder, then reached up, locked wrists with his savior’s free arm, and let himself get pulled up. A minute later they were both on the solid part of the third floor.

  “Hey, thanks,” Sal said.

  “Don’t thank me yet,” he said.

  The building groaned.

  Until right then, Sal didn’t know buildings could groan. Not the gentle settling sound of an old structure passively adjusting to gravity, but a loud, feral noise, the kind of thing people blame on angry ghosts. It was an elephant roaring or a whale dying, something to be both heard and felt.

  It was a discomfiting noise for anyone who’d spent their lives in buildings without thinking about how far away from the surface of the Earth they actually were.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked.

  “The building’s coming down,” his new best friend said. “It’s condemned; didn’t you see the sign?”

  “I went in the back. Why’re you here, if you knew it was condemned?”

  “Had to be here. Come on, we don’t have a lot of time. I’m Corrigan, by the way.”

  Sal got to his feet, grabbed his light, and followed Corrigan down the stairs.

  “One sec,” he said. “I gotta get my service piece.”

  There was no door to open to get onto the second floor. He could see the gun; it was only a few steps away. But when Corrigan put his hand on Sal’s shoulder and told him to stop, he listened to the man.

  “I’d argue about this, but you’re going to insist the paperwork for a lost revolver is worse than death, and we don’t have time to have that conversation,” Corrigan said. “Do you trust me?”

  “How much do I need to trust you right now?”

  “If you go get that gun, you’re going to end up going through this floor like you did the last one. But I can get it.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Like I said, you have to trust me.”

  “All right, sure.”

  Corrigan looked the room up and down for a second or two.

  “Stay in the doorway,” he said. “No matter what.”

  The act of retrieval took only about thirty seconds, but to get to the gun Corrigan approached from a peculiar angle, taking steps the way a guy sneaking through a minefield might. Sal honestly couldn’t decide whether this was completely nuts or not.

&
nbsp; He reached it, though, and when he made it back to the doorway he handed it right over.

  Then the building started coming down, and they had to run.

  The stairwell was the sturdiest part of the row house, but that didn’t mean their descent was easy. There was plaster-dust, and splinters, and dirt billowing from doorways and windows, and the noise was awful. It sounded like something was eating the building from the top floor down.

  Corrigan had his arms around Sal’s shoulders, and was actively guiding him out. It was a halting, graceless dance routine with odd stops and pulls and pushes, and sudden shifts in speed. Once, Corrigan stopped them dead, turned around and covered Sal while a beam collapsed nearby.

  It was like being escorted by a psychic fireman.

  They got out of the building, and kept on going until they’d made it halfway down the alley.

  Sal was on his knees coughing up dust for a few seconds before he could speak.

  “How’d you do that?” he asked.

  Corrigan was leaned up against the brick wall of the alley. He looked pretty spent.

  “It’s a little complicated. It’s what I do. I’m a fixer.”

  “A fixer?”

  “If something bad is about to happen, I go and fix it so it doesn’t happen. Like I said, it’s complicated.”

  Sal stood, and offered his hand.

  “I’m Sal Wilcox, and I don’t understand how you did what you did, but it saved my life and I appreciate that. You ever need anything from a cop, you look me up. Corrigan, right?”

  “Corrigan Bain.” They shook on it. “And maybe someday I will.”

  They were still six blocks away when the BOLO went out.

  “Assaulting a police officer?” Sal said, over his shoulder. Corrigan had remained on the floor for the entire trip, and probably wasn’t all too comfortable back there.

  “That’s not really how it happened,” Corrigan said. “Your sergeant is a little excitable.”

  “But he’s okay?”

  “He was conscious when I left the room. He’s probably more embarrassed than anything.”

  “The cameras, though, how did…you know what, I don’t think I want to know any more. But, he came after you, huh? Is that what the deal was?”

  “That was the deal. You want to turn around? I could tell them I overpowered you too, made you drive me out.”

  “No, but when you do get caught, make sure it’s not anywhere that connects us. And maybe don’t tell anyone how you made it out.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it.”

  Sal turned off the main street and down an alley so narrow there was only room to get out of the cruiser on one side. He came to a stop.

  “Where are we?” Corrigan asked.

  “Roxbury. C’mon, we should get you indoors. For all I know your face is already all over.”

  Out of the car, they went halfway down the alley to the side entrance of a building whose front door was on a different street at the other end of the alley. Corrigan stopped, and looked around.

  “You’re joking.”

  “Don’t worry, this one isn’t gonna collapse on our heads.”

  He brought Corrigan to the third floor, just because that seemed like the most poetically appropriate thing to do.

  “I own the building,” he said at the door. “About ten years ago my wife—my ex now—thought I should invest some of the overtime into real estate, and I didn’t know enough to say no to her about it. I own a few properties in this neighborhood. Gentrification, right? This one, though. I think the ground is cursed or something. I can’t get anybody in here.”

  “This isn’t the same building?” Corrigan asked.

  “Nah, not really. I kept one wall, that’s it. Same basic design, though.”

  He opened the door to a large common area. It was the open floor plan Wilcox still saw sometimes, in his nightmares, but this one was open without the sacrifice of any of the retaining walls.

  “I got it for cheap. Price of the land, basically. Lots of loans available to people interested in investing in this part of town. If you’ve got some money, might be worth checking out yourself.”

  “Except this building is vacant.”

  “Like I said, the land might be cursed. Buy a lot in a different part of the neighborhood, you’ll make out, I’m sure.”

  He stomped on the floor to emphasize his point that the new version was plenty sturdy.

  “And the furniture?” Corrigan asked.

  “I got this idea maybe it would move if it was fully furnished. But nobody officially lives here. It’s got electricity and heat, and the phone even works.”

  “Well. This is much more than I could have hoped for. Thank you, officer.”

  “Hey, there was a debt. And now it’s cleared.”

  “Now it’s cleared,” he agreed. “But I need three more favors from you before you go.”

  “Ah, c’mon. As it is, if you get caught here I’m dead twice over. My name’s on the damn building.”

  “I won’t get caught here. It’s not much, I promise. I need the phone number for that phone, and I need you to deliver a message for me. Oh, and some food. Unless the refrigerator’s stocked.”

  Sal really wanted to get out of there and back on the street. The sooner he got the GPS in the squad car away from this location, the better.

  “There’s Chinese take-out around the corner,” Sal said.

  “Right, I’ll just have them deliver to the vacant building.”

  “Okay, I see your point. Who’s the note for?”

  “You aren’t going to like the answer to that.”

  5

  What I want to know is, was he really a guest? Or did he manifest bodily into the room?

  —anonymous commenter on the ‘Corrigan Bain = K’ message thread, FindTheBostonFixer.com

  Maggie looked at her phone. Again.

  Over the past six hours, it was fair to say she’d spent more time staring at the face of her phone than she’d done anything else. And as with every other time, there was no new information.

  The two things about the phone which held her interest in particular were the time—it was probably dark outside now, but she hadn’t been near a window in two hours and couldn’t verify this—and the number of messages and/or missed calls, which remained distressingly unchanged.

  About ten hours had passed since Corrigan saved the lives of everyone at the ceremony, including about three-quarters of the people who now shared the conference room with her. It had been a wild ten hours.

  “All right, we’re going to get started,” Justin Axelrod said.

  Justin was Maggie’s boss, the Special-Agent-In-Charge for the state of Massachusetts, and probably the most important person at the table who hadn’t been nearly blown up that morning.

  Various mini-meetings broke up as people took seats around the long conference table. She knew only half of them: the people from her task force, including David; Detective Joe White, with whom she’d had five loud altercations already; Chief Gregorian of the BPD; and a representative from the mayor’s office named Cindy Lane. Everyone else was some version of law enforcement, political animal, media liaison or technical expert.

  The conference room was hidden on a top floor of the downtown police headquarters. The choice of venue carried a certain jurisdictional weight, especially considering one of the matters currently under dispute was whose case this should be.

  “I’m gonna start with everything we know,” Axelrod said. “This’ll be review for most of us, but let’s make sure we’ve level-set the facts before we start arguing about what we don’t know yet. Mikey?”

  Mikey was the kid running the projector and the laptop that was attached to it. Maggie thought he looked twelve, but conceded that every new agent looked like that to her nowadays.

  The first image was a stock photo of the State House.

  “At 10 AM, a ceremony honoring the work of many of the people in this room began…around here.”


  Justin had a laser pointer, which he used to identify a second-floor window on the western side of the building.

  “At 10:42 AM, this happened.”

  Mikey cut to video footage taken from the foot of the stage, showing a crazed-looking Corrigan bum-rushing Maggie and Jim Duplass. The shot froze just as he landed atop the deputy mayor.

  The ten-second scene had been playing on news channels and all over the Internet for the entire day. She had seen it a few hundred times and hated everything about it, from the way it made Corrigan seem like a madman to how her butt looked when she was thrown to the ground.

  The image froze on a shot of the side of Corrigan’s face.

  “This man is Corrigan Bain,” Axelrod said. “We’ll be talking about him shortly, but let me just say that a fair number of the people in this room know Mr. Bain personally. I’ve met him twice myself. I don’t know right now the extent of his involvement in anything that happened today, but I want to be clear about one thing: regardless of what that involvement is, we owe it to our dead, and our city, to get to the truth. If the truth is that Corrigan had a hand in things, we will find that out. And if it’s true that he saved the lives of some of the people at this table…if it’s true that this man is a hero, well, we’re going to find that out too.”

  Justin didn’t make eye contact with Maggie once during this speech, and neither did any other person in the room. It was awkward. But, at least she was in the room.

  “According to reports from the scene—we don’t have any footage of this part right now, but you guys have been pretty consistent in your stories—the first person to act after this happened was Agent Trent, who upon being informed of a bomb by Mr. Bain, took the necessary steps to get the building evacuated. That was nice work, Maggie.”

  Joe White glared at her. She wasn’t looking at him, but she could feel his eyes nonetheless.

  She was told White was a good cop—about five people made a point of saying this already—but so far, she hadn’t seen evidence of it. He was jumping to conclusions all over the place.