Brothers and Bones

  BROTHERS AND BONES

  ALSO BY JAMES HANKINS

  Jack of Spades

  Drawn

  BROTHERS AND BONES

  James Hankins

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © James Hankins, 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  For information and inquiries, contact Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, One Union Square West, Suite 904, New York, NY, 10003, or e-mail Michael Bourret at mbourret@dystel.com.

  Author’s website: jameshankinsbooks.com

  Cover design by Asha Hossain

  ISBN 978-0-9883775-8-5

  To my wife, Colleen, for…well, for everything.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  BROTHERS AND BONES

  ONE

  I sometimes feel like my own little world is encased in a souvenir snow globe, the kind you shake so you can watch fat white flakes swirl around a miniature Eiffel Tower. Every now and then—far too often, I feel—fate has taken my globe in its unfeeling fingers and given it a cruel, vigorous shake, unleashing a merciless blizzard that left me snow-blind, dazed, barely able to breathe. It’s happened to me three times in my thirty-six years, and each time it happened I knew nothing would ever be the same again. The first time, it was an empty fried chicken bucket. It killed my parents. Tragically absurd, I know. I’ll explain that later. The second time, it was a telephone call—and I wasn’t even a participant in the call. Nonetheless, that call—to someone else, from someone else—dramatically altered the course of my life. I’ll explain that later, too. The third time, though, the third time fate let winter’s mad fury loose in my world started with two little words. Those words, just three syllables all told, left me as cold and confused as I’d ever been. And again, my life was forever changed.

  When it happened I was an Assistant United States Attorney—a federal prosecutor, that is—on my way to work on the most important day of my professional life. As a member of the Organized Crime Strike Force Unit, I specialized in prosecuting mob guys—an absolute plum assignment for any AUSA, and a job, for reasons that will become clear, that I had a particular reason to be passionate about. I was heading to court that morning for the start of the biggest case of my career—prosecuting an accused mob underboss, a second in command for the Russian Mafia named Vasily “The Red” Redekov. We’d been after the guy for years and it looked like we might finally get him. And I was lead counsel on the case. It was an incredible opportunity for me, the culmination of eleven years of hard work as a lawyer, after three grueling years of law school.

  I was scheduled to make my opening argument to judge and jury at eight thirty a.m. sharp, with defense counsel’s opening to follow. Because this was such a big case for the federal government’s efforts against organized crime in Massachusetts, U.S. Attorney Andrew Lippincott, the top federal prosecutor in the state and my ultimate boss, had decided to sit at counsel’s table with me that first day and observe the proceedings. What I’m trying to get across here is that the stakes were high—for me, for our office, and for the good of the people of our state. It would have been a bad day for me to be late for work.

  So I probably shouldn’t have chosen that morning to have a power breakfast at my favorite little place in Kendall Square in Cambridge, which I did at least once a week. But I just couldn’t sleep the night before. I found myself wide awake at three thirty in the morning, going over the evidence in my head, tweaking the opening statement I’d be making a few hours later. Rather than do that while staring at the ceiling and waiting for my alarm to ring, I decided to go to my favorite diner and do it there. So I got up early, showered, put on my best suit with the snazzy striped tie my girlfriend gave me last Christmas, and took a subway train one outbound stop to Cambridge.

  Big mistake, as it turned out. After breakfast, on my way back into Boston, Kendall Station was unexpectedly packed. There I was, on the day in my life when I could least afford to be late for work, being jostled by commuter after commuter as we pushed our way down the stairs toward the subway platform. There was elbowing, more jostling, a few angry looks, and hardly a “good morning” or “excuse me” as we bottlenecked at the turnstiles. I slid my subway pass through the slot and fought my way onto the platform. Things got even more hectic when we all heard the screech of an approaching train. The pack of commuters surged forward with me about in the middle. A woman’s staticky voice squawked from a loudspeaker somewhere, announcing that the trains were running behind. We let out a communal, disappointed groan and pressed forward until our group pushed up against the group of people already tightly packed at the platform’s edge. As the arriving train screeched to a stop and its doors whooshed open, I let myself be carried forward, but knew I’d never make this one. Sure enough, after a few shuffling baby steps, the doors slid shut with me on the wrong side of them. I’d squeeze onto the next train, though.

  I looked at my watch. Thirty-six minutes until opening arguments, not sure how long until the next train arrived, a fifteen-minute ride once it did, followed by a panicked, seven-minute run from the subway station to the courthouse. I might make it. Maybe. It’s not like, if I was late, the jury could just decide to acquit the guy and knock off for the day, but pissing off the judge and jury with my inconsiderateness, while at the same time displaying a lack of professionalism, would be a lousy way to start a three-week trial. And it certainly wouldn’t earn me any kudos with my boss.

  As I tapped my foot nervously, waiting for the next train, surrounded closely on all sides by impatient non–morning people, with my mind running through my legal arguments, I became aware of a very strong, ve
ry unpleasant odor. I recognized it immediately as the stale, pungent smell of a homeless person—sweat, old urine, clothes that hadn’t been exposed to laundry detergent in a long time, and a body that hadn’t touched soap in even longer. And the smell was very close, right beside me, in fact, just to my right. I did what most people do in such situations. I ignored both the smell and its owner. I kept my eyes straight ahead but I might have reacted in some small, noticeable way because, a moment later, there was a jingling sound in front of me. I looked down and saw a dirty styrofoam Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup hovering near my stomach, clutched in a grimy hand which, I noticed, had only four digits. The little finger on the hand was gone, only a smooth stump left in its place. The fingers that remained were gnarled. The cup shook again and a few coins clinked together inside. The action of shaking the cup seemed to have shaken loose a cloud of that rank odor and my nostrils filled with it. For a terrible second my stomach twisted and I honestly worried that I might deposit a partially digested sausage-and-egg sandwich on the gray herringbone suit jacket in front of me.

  No one near me was rushing to fill this guy’s cup with money. No one even looked his way, as far as I could tell. I certainly wasn’t judging them. I don’t usually give money to homeless people, either. It’s not a matter of principle to me. I simply don’t carry much change. I don’t like it banging around in my pocket. But that morning I’d found a quarter on the sidewalk outside the diner and picked it up, thinking it might be a sign that this was going to be a good day. As it turned out, it wasn’t.

  A distant rumble echoed from the darkness up the tracks and the crowd of commuters tensed in anticipation. People maneuvered for position, trying to estimate the stopping point of the train and where its doors would open. I barely heard the jangle of coins as the coffee cup in front of me shook again. Knowing the train would arrive soon, I let my eyes drift to the man they’d been carefully trying to avoid. And I recognized him. I’d seen him before, dozens of times, actually, in subway stations around Boston. As always, he was dressed in rags, several layers of clothing I hoped he’d gotten from a shelter but knew he’d probably picked from trash cans. He wore a stained, threadbare overcoat on top of a stained, faded Harvard University sweatshirt. His hair fell below his shoulders, dark, dirty, tangled, and, I was fairly certain, filled with a small variety of wildlife. I could barely see two scabby lips sunk in a thick, matted beard that obscured the lower half of his face and hung in clumps down to his chest. Just looking at it made me itch. I had trouble seeing the rest of his face, though, partly because he hunched his shoulders quite a bit, as if he were slowly being pressed toward the ground by a hundred unseen hands, and partly because he kept his face mostly averted, like he was looking for loose change on the ground a little off to his right. Although he was a few inches taller than I am, maybe six feet two, his stoop made him seem shorter. He was silent, which I knew was unusual for him. As I said, I’d seen him several times before and on only a few of those occasions was he silent. More often he was spouting a stream of gibberish coherent to no one except, perhaps, himself. Sometimes he barked obscenities at passersby. Other times he just growled at them. Once I saw him argue violently with a face on a billboard. But today he was quiet.

  And maybe I was crazy, but I suddenly had the distinct feeling he was watching me from the shadows on his face. And it wasn’t the uninterested, dull-eyed stare of a panhandler waiting for someone to toss him a quarter. It was more than that, it seemed to me. As the rumble of the train grew, a familiar sensation grew too, that feeling I get more often than I should, prickling the back of my neck like a cloud of tiny gnats stinging my skin. Was he watching me?

  Of course he wasn’t. Really, he wasn’t. And Dr. Fielding would have confirmed that for me if he had been there.

  But now I definitely wanted to get a better look at the guy’s face…his eyes. I realized that, all the times I’d seen him before, I’d never once looked him in the eye. I’d barely glanced his way, actually, other than to register the sight of him as a curiosity carrying on his half of a heated debate with an unending river of commuters flowing past him. I’d certainly never spent this long in such close proximity to him. I doubted many people did. But now I had to see his eyes.

  As the train ground to a slow stop with a piercing, sustained, metal-on-metal shriek, I took the quarter from my pocket and started to bend down to look into his face. Then the doors of the train shushed open and the commuter crush began. I dropped the coin into the Dunkin’ Donuts cup just as I was pushed forward, and I found myself twisting around, trying to get a look at the man’s eyes.

  And then it happened. As I was swept onto the train by the human tide, I heard the homeless man say in a dry, sharkskin-rough voice, “Thanks, Wiley.”

  A harsh bell was certainly sounding on the train just then—it had to be, because it always shrilled long and loud just before the doors closed. There undoubtedly was a din of voices all around me. A subway worker might have told the crowd remaining on the platform to stop pushing, that another train would be along soon. I heard none of it. All I heard were those two words in my head, spoken by a tangle-maned man in rags who certainly had a tighter grip on his change cup than he did on reality. Thanks, Wiley.

  My name isn’t Wiley. It’s Charlie Beckham. And the only person who ever, ever called me Wiley was my brother, Jake. And Jake went missing thirteen years ago.

  TWO

  I botched it in court. The first day of the most important trial of my career and I booted it like a shortstop kicking a groundball. And Andrew Lippincott was there to see it. As I sat at my desk afterward, my head in my hands, just beginning to wonder with hope whether I was being a little hard on myself, a voice came from the doorway to my office.

  “How come you crapped the bed today, Charlie?”

  I looked up. Standing at my office door was Angel Medina, a lawyer one year behind me at the U.S. Attorney’s office and the junior member of the Organized Crime Strike Force Unit. Since being hired four years earlier, Angel had adopted me as his unofficial mentor and become my closest friend. He had also been assisting me on the Redekov case, had sat with Lippincott and me at counsel’s table in court that day, and had therefore witnessed my staggering incompetence. I shot him the bird and dropped my head back into my hands.

  “I mean, what the hell happened?” Angel asked. “You choked.”

  And I did. I was terrible. The case was huge and I’d blown it so far. I didn’t even crash and burn in spectacular fashion. Rather, I made mistake after mistake, took misstep after misstep. Death by a thousand cuts.

  For four years our office had been part of a joint task force with the FBI and local law enforcement focusing on Vasily Redekov. As an underboss, his conviction would send a powerful message to organized crime in Boston. Our office had even tried him once before, without success. But this time, our case was stronger. We’d gotten a few dozen quality tips and the task force had done a terrific job of gathering evidence, from surveillance video to authorized wiretaps to eyewitnesses. Redekov himself helped us out by losing his cool, personally and sloppily shooting a snitch, as well as an eyewitness to the shooting, and arrogantly doing very little to conceal the crimes. His problem was that the witness survived, though the six bullets Redekov put into him led me to believe that he hadn’t let the poor sap live out of a sense of compassion. Despite having pretty good evidence and an eyewitness to the murder, however, our case against Redekov for murder, attempted murder, and various racketeering-related charges, wasn’t a slam dunk. His mob mouthpieces were good at what they did, and one of the bullets he’d left in the eyewitness’s skull had scrambled the poor bastard’s thoughts a little, leaving him with fewer of his faculties than I normally like my witnesses to have. But I was optimistic, as was everyone in the Organized Strike Force Unit. In fact, we were hoping for an even bigger prize than Redekov. If I did my job in court, showed him what a strong case we had against him, he might get nervous about his chances and cut a deal,
roll over like a good boy and deliver us the rest of the big dogs in the Russian family, including, we hoped, the biggest dog of all, the head of the whole organization. That was our hope, anyway, and it would all start with me demonstrating how capable I was, how airtight the government’s case was, how deep the shit Redekov was wading in was.

  Instead, I performed miserably. I stumbled through my opening argument, then had to sit beside a silently seething Andrew Lippincott as we listened to Redekov’s lawyer strike the perfect tone of self-assurance and indignation at the government’s attempt to besmirch the good name of his client. He was smooth, well spoken, likable, prepared, and everything else I should have been but wasn’t. Then, after a short recess during which Lippincott reminded me of the importance of the case and during which, I think, he kept looking into my eyes to see if I had, perhaps, downed a six-pack before arriving that morning, I stood up again and began to set forth the government’s case-in-chief. And I wasn’t any better. I forgot critical facts, which is highly unusual for me. I have something akin to an eidetic memory, which some people call a photographic memory—that is, the ability to see something and recall it later in extraordinary detail. Frankly, I’m not sure the phenomenon truly exists. But I will say that, all my life, I’ve been able to look at something briefly and remember it later with great accuracy. It’s just something I could always do. Some people have blue eyes, some can hit a baseball a mile, some can engrave the Gettysburg Address on a single grain of rice. I can do this.

  But that first day in court I couldn’t even depend on my somewhat freakish recall. Not only did I forget facts, but most of the ones I remembered I presented in a disjointed way, failing to impress upon my audience their proper significance. I stammered, mumbled, backtracked, lost my train of thought, and twice nearly threw myself out a window in frustration. The best thing that could be said about my performance was that I didn’t break wind during it. I’d been hoping to use this case as a springboard to even bigger cases. After today, I’d be lucky even to retain my position on the Organized Crime Strike Force Unit. In fact, I supposed it wasn’t entirely out of the question that Lippincott would ask for my resignation.