Chapter One

It was only a slap, and hardly worth dying over. 

But at the moment it landed against the girl’s face, the Red Line train was thrashing south at speed, and its clatter and rattle should have deafened the passengers to anything else. A hard slap, then. Almost brutal. And as it fell, at least two dozen heads jerked up, and turned to look. At least a dozen of them were men.

It was a plump white girl in shorts and a tanktop that left her belly exposed. On the left side of her unfinished adolescent face glowed red where she’d been struck. A thin, brutish white man in a Boston Celtics tanktop and jeans loomed above her, swaying with the roll of the car. The hand that had slapped the young woman clutched at an overhead stanchion for support.

It had only been the one slap. Not two blows, or more. Not a real beating. For 10 seconds or so, no words. Then one by one, the witnesses lowered their eyes to the news headlines and videogames on the screens of their smartphones. 

Kenton almost did the same. He had been reading Recode just then, an article about yet another social media startup promising to offer all the pleasures of Facebook, only this time with privacy. Such stories always amused Kenton, who took pleasure in the feeling of dismissive contempt that they inspired. And so he’d been on the verge of returning to the story when for no particular reason, he took a last glance at the female who’d been slapped.

There was no blood, and hardly a mark. But their eyes met and for just a moment, Kenton saw fear, desperation, need. 

Or so it seemed to him. Even after long practice, he still found it difficult to read emotions. Mostly, he correlated facial expressions with recent events. A woman just slapped by a man might be expected to feel the emotions that Kenton believed he saw. And so he trusted his perceptions. The woman was shocked by what the man had done, terrified of what he might do next, too frightened to do anything but plead with her eyes.

Kenton did not care. Still, he rose to his feet, rocking against the motion of the train, and swayed over to the couple. He had no eyes for the woman. Just the young man who’d struck her and might strike her again. 

The assailant saw African skin, shortcut hair going to gray, a cheap sport jacket and even cheaper slacks. Nothing memorable except the gentle smile, with one eyebrow slightly raised. It was as if something funny had just happened, or was about to.

The man in the Celtics shirt turned toward him, loosed his hold on the stanchion, curled fingers into fists. “What you want?”

“Excuse me,” Kenton replied, and pointed at the man’s feet. “Couldn’t help noticing. Nice shoes.” The voice was a magpie chirp, and as he spoke, Kenton’s head cocked to one side in an attitude of wonder.

“They’re just shoes,” said the man. He was a little older than the girl, but still a youth, and his face bore fading traces of last year’s innocence. “What do you care?” he stuttered out.

“Just admiring the Bin 23s,” said Kenton. “Very nice indeed.” 

Kenton’s tastes ran to wingtips.   But the kids at church had schooled him a little. He’d guarded them one night while they slept outside the Foot Locker in Downtown Crossing, dreaming of the next day’s shipment of collectable kicks.  

He didn’t recognize the white guy’s shoes. But they were clean, unscuffed, newly bought. And it seemed unlikely the young man had anything else to boast about, not even his girlfriend. So start there, Kenton decided.

“These ain’t Bin 23s,” the kid grunted. His voice was hesitant, perhaps even abashed. Maybe he was embarrassed by his poverty or better yet by Kenton’s ignorance. Either way, he was thinking about shoes now, and the odd brown magpie confronting him. Not about the young girl, or about the progress of the train.

“You sure? I thought they looked just like that.”

“Look, man, maybe you should just mind your own business.”

“Oh, come on. I just like the shoes. What did they set you back? A couple hundred?”

“No, man, five hundred. They were on sale. Now why don’t you go someplace and sit down.” 

“Standing room only,” Kenton replied absurdly. His own vacated seat remained empty and several others besides. But there was no malice in his dishonesty. Instead, Kenton smiled, his face a model of clueless jollity.

The woman stared up at Kenton, her tear-stained face conveying wariness rather than gratitude. It was as if she hardly believed in the existence of a rescuer. No doubt she was a veteran of many such skirmishes and had already thought out the terms of an armistice. Make-up sex was part of the deal. In Kenton’s experience, stifled resentment made a poor aphrodisiac, but to each his own.

Kenton gestured at the girlfriend. “Good of you to give this young lady your seat.” He piped out the words and knew he’d gone wrong, not with the words, but in manner of speech. For just a moment, the cool indifference had fallen away. He’d shown the disgust and contempt that had lifted him from his seat. He’d shown his true feelings to the white man.

Even so, the punch took Kenton by surprise. The man’s fist crashed into the side of his head with the force of a thrown brick.

Kenton hadn’t been punched in 20 years. For a second or so the sheer novelty of it thrilled him and overwhelmed the shock and pain. But then came the surging ache of the blow and a haze that seemed to dim his vision and slow his mind and Kenton realized that he was in a fight, that no one would help and he’d have to stand or fall.

He was still on his feet, and determined to stay there. He wobbled to his full height, fighting against the impact of the blow and the sway of the train. Before him, the white guy stood, hands raised in defense, but only just, as if he wasn’t really expecting a counterstrike. As Kenton straightened out, the kid’s eyes showed surprise, as if Kenton had risen from the dead.

It was the white kid’s best shot, Kenton realized. It was the sucker punch that had ended every fight he’d ever fought. And there he was, a thirty-something deskbound journalist, still standing. Kenton tasted blood between his teeth, and savored it. In his madness, he half-wondered if he’d find a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead tomorrow morning. He was the boy who’d lived![HB1] 

Then his head cleared and he saw the white guy rearing back for another blow. There was no skill or martial training on display. He was young and hard and that was all he’d ever needed against girlfriends and drunks. 

Kenton knew he’d been lucky; another blow like the first, and the fight was over. Too soon. He had to know what it felt like to hit back, but he wasn’t sure how. For years he’d punched nothing tougher than the Shift key. So he ran at the man, head down, ducking beneath his flailing right hand, and slammed him into one of the subway car’s steel stanchions.

The air huffed out of the kid, and then he was squirming and thrashing, his fists pummeling against Kenton’s side and back, while Kenton, his arms wrapped around the stanchion and his feet thrust out behind him, tried to crush the kid against the metal pole.

He’d never win a fight this way, Kenton realized. With the side of his head pressed against his attacker’s chest, he looked out at his fellow passengers. All eyes were on them. There was alarm on a few of the faces, but most displayed a cool, appraising attitude, as if they hadn’t quite decided who to root for. 

Kenton tried to sway the crowd. “911!” he gasped, his voice throbbing out the number as the kid pummeled his ribs. “Call 911!”

He had mixed feelings about the cry for help. There he was, a black man fighting with a white one. When the cops met the train at an upcoming stop, he couldn’t count on a hero’s welcome. On the other hand, his cry for the police might convince some of the passengers that he was the victim and not the assailant. There was even an outside chance that one of them might offer help.

Nobody moved.

Kenton lurched forward hard, pinning the man a little tighter against the stanchion in order to get a split second of leverage. Then he slid down the man’s chest and crotch and before he could react, grabbed his left leg and shoved. The man toppled full length on the floor of the car.

Kenton flung himself atop the kicking, flailing man struggling to pin down his arms. But the man continued to flail and heave, trying to buck him off. Only one thing to do: Hit back. Yet despite a surge of aggression, Kenton dreaded the idea of throwing a punch. The thought of his knuckles crashing into the man’s face seemed to him disgusting. But if he didn’t strike the man he’d soon lose his hold of him.

Remembering something he’d read somewhere, Kenton cupped his hands and slapped them hard against the man’s ears. The effect was remarkable. The lurching movements of the man’s body degenerated into spasmodic twitches and jerks. He stopped trying to land punches and instead clutched at his head as if to keep it from splitting open.

Kenton remembered where he’d read about the blow, something about the fighting methods of Israeli commandos. His next move, he recalled, was supposed to be a vicious punch to the victim’s throat to crush the larynx. Then watch the fellow choke to death.

Instead, Kenton sat back on his knees, gazing down on his victim. He wondered how long before the man would regain his wits and start swinging again. Could he hold him off a second time or would he really have to hurt him? Kenton felt no doubt that he could hurt him, and realized that he wouldn’t mind. The realization surprised him. Where did that come from?

He looked up. The girl looked on, her mouth ajar. He turned his head, looked over his shoulder, then forward again, taking in the whole length of the car. No movement. Just silent staring. Here and there, a cell phone pressed to a rider’s cheek, the caller’s voice lost in the rattle of the wheels.

“Get off me!” The man flung his left hand up at Kenton’s face, made a glancing contact. “Off me! Off me!” Like a baby brother who’d had enough of the horseplay.

Kenton grabbed the arm, gripped it. “Not till you get control of yourself. No more hitting. Okay?” Kenton spoke to the man in the voice of a day care worker addressing a hyperactive child. “Okay?”

“Okay,” the man said. “Okay.” He dropped his arms, ceased to struggle. His face was flushed with pain and shame, his eyes evasive. Kenton knew the fight was on again the moment he let the man up. Then he felt the tug of deceleration as the train’s brakes took hold. He looked up and recognized they were pulling into North Quincy station. Time to take it outside.

“All right,” said Kenton. “This is your stop.”

“Naw, man. Quincy Center.” 

“Not this time. You’re getting off right here. Your girlfriend can join you or ride on. Her choice. But you’re getting off this train.”

The man swore at Kenton, his vulgarities unleavened by wit or style. Kenton just chuckled, and for a moment recalled his long-dead daddy, a man from Arkansas who knew how to curse. Everywhere you looked these days, standards had fallen.

The train braked harder now, and the pillars and billboards of North Quincy station scrolled past the windows. On the platform stood four men in dark blue. One of them canted his head toward his left shoulder to speak into a microphone pinned to his blouse. He looked up as the car rolled past, and right into Kenton’s eyes.

“Cops are here,” Kenton said. “Looks like the MBTA is buying you dinner tonight.”

The train stopped, but the doors didn’t open. Nearly every passenger in Kenton’s car was on his or her feet, no doubt eager to modify their travel arrangements. Still, the doors remained shut.

Kenton heard footsteps approaching at a slow run. He looked up to see the same cop peering in. He turned, waved to the driver two cars forward, bellowed “Open ‘em up!”

The car doors rolled open and the car emptied. It was just Kenton now, and the white man, and his girlfriend. Four MBTA transit cops stepped through the nearest open door. One of them had his gun out but pointed at the floor, his index finger not wrapped around the trigger but properly pointed down the side of the weapon.

Kenton knew what to expect. Two of the officers stepped behind him, lifted him to his feet, tugged his wrists behind his back and applied the cuffs. Same for the white guy, which was a good sign.

“All right, what’s it about?” one of the cops asked.

“It’s about him assaulting his girlfriend,” I said. “Bad enough to do it at all. But in public? No class.”

“So you had to step up.”

“Any gentleman would.” 

“Yeah. A carload of gentlemen just stepped out of this car. What were they all doing?”

“Maybe they’re tourists. Me, I’ve been riding the Red Line for years and I don’t like seeing it contaminated with men who hit women.”

The cop sighed, turned to the man. “Okay. Your turn.”

“I don’t know what’s his problem,” the man said. “I didn’t do nothing. Just talking to my girlfriend. That’s all. Then—bam!” He pointed to his ear. There was blood there, a thin stream of it. Kenton hadn’t noticed it while sitting on the man’s chest. But now it was trickling down his neck, soaking into his Celtics shirt.

The cop turned to the girlfriend, arched an eyebrow. “Well?” he asked.

The girl turned her sullen gaze toward Kenton, stared silent for a few seconds. Then she turned to the cop, while pointing to her boyfriend.

“Like he says,” she said.

The cop turned toward Kenton, displayed a wry sideways smile. 

“Let’s take a ride,” he said, and gestured toward the door.

The stainless steel bench in his cell was unpadded, and Kenton squirmed against it in a vain search for comfort. It wasn’t the lack of a cushion that bothered him; the cell was chilled like a meatlocker and the icy metal burned his back. 

Kenton could not distract himself. Upon entering the Transit Police lockup on Southampton Street, his belongings were collected, bagged and locked away. No smartphone to help him while away the time; no reporter’s notebook and pen to record a journal of the day’s events. Not even a copy of that day’s Boston Record, with his byline on Page One. He especially missed the newspaper; he’d have had a bit of padding for the bench, plus the comics.

Kenton couldn’t bring himself to regret the lack of a cellmate; no telling what sort of person he’d have been shacked up with. Maybe even the subway guy, eager for a rematch. Still, isolation meant nobody to talk to.

So he waited for his back to warm the bench and closed his eyes to the cell, and began thinking about machines. A Boeing 737 airliner, in this case. He’d been trying out some flight simulator software in his spare time. Made by a small shop in Kiev, the software promised to emulate the 737’s features with hyper-realistic accuracy. 

Nothing, not even prayer, delivered Kenton’s mind from worry quite so well as the contemplation of a machine. There were times, during the divorce, when he would wander away from the newsroom and over to the big, raucous annex where the presses ran. He became a familiar sight to the stained, middle-aged pressmen who attended the great machines. Kenton would usually keep to the lower level, where he’d watch the robots deliver the vast rolls of newsprint to the pressmen, who’d mount them on the giant spindles and tape them up so that the paster could attach a new roll just as the old one ran dry. 

And when there were no machines at hand, he liked to meditate on the ones he’d seen or read about. Printing presses, of course, but also railroad locomotives and airplanes. He’d spent many an evening reenacting in his mind the firing procedures for a 1944 New York Central 4-8-2 steam locomotive, based on an old training document someone had posted on the Internet. Kenton was pretty sure he could do it for real and from memory, if he ever got up to Canada, home to the last 4-8-2 that could still get up steam.

The arrival of the Russian software had turned his mind to airplanes.  Kenton pored over the user manual. Then a brief online search turned up a genuine 737 instruction manual, as well as a video in which two pilots ran the complete start-up sequence inside a real airplane.

Now Kenton closed his eyes to the harsh fluorescent light and turned his back on the cold, and made his way through the power-up checklist.   To make it more challenging, he assumed he was parked at some benighted, backward strip—somewhere in Africa, say, with no electricity for the airplane. He’d have to cut in the plane’s batteries, and use them to fire up the APU, the plane’s onboard generator. 

So…windshield wipers off, hydraulics off, landing gear lever down, engine fire switches in, test fire alarms, and switch APU to start.  Now wait, like the guys in the video, until the APU’s turbine was fully up to speed, and then kick in the generator bus. And that’s it. A cold, dark aircraft was awake again, and under its own power. A free agent now. Kenton could bleed compressed air from the APU, feed it into the engines hanging off the wings and turn them over.

Kenton couldn’t quite recall the engine start procedures. He wished he’d finished the manual before getting himself arrested. He might have been able to fly a complete mission—Abuja to Lagos, say, entirely in his head. A one-hour hop; Arik Air made the run three or four times a day in a 737.  He’d made the trip just last year, in a window seat both ways, with nothing below but wilderness, deep green or sometimes tan. Scarcely a road, rarely a town. 

And at the end of the journey, nothing. A great hollowing-out. As the taxi drew up outside the big house on Lungi Street, he saw Alicia standing at the doorway, legs apart and arms folded like a sentry. She didn’t approach or gesture. She just stared. There was no wrath in it, no contempt or mockery. Mere indifference. That was all.

Kenton sat there for about a minute, gazing from the cab’s rear window, half-ill with rage and spoiled longing and shame. He made as if to raise the window in a gesture of dismissal, but his trembling fingers skidded off the button on the first effort. He stopped himself then, determined to give her even less than she’d given him. He turned from the window, sank back against the seat, told the driver to roll right back to the airport.  He’d returned to Lagos on the exact same 737, and thence to an Airbus for the long ride home.

For a time, he lay on the bench, dialed in to that dark memory till the sorrow seemed near to choking him.  The first nauseous wave of claustrophobia rolled in. To clear his head, Kenton rolled over, so the cold of the bench could burn his right side and sting him out of one misery and into another. Then he breathed deeply, and prayed for a few minutes until he grew calm.

The rattle of an unlocking door seemed to come to Kenton from a great distance away. A slight sourness in the mouth confirmed to him that he’d dozed a little. 

The warder who stood in the open doorway seemed at once wary and apathetic. “Come on,” he said. “Your buddy’s here.”

They gave him back his belt and keys and wallet and shoelaces and smartphones, and Kenton was allowed to stroll uncuffed down a corridor and toward a blank steel door. He heard a thwacking sound as he approached when the unseen warder pushed a button to unlock it. Kenton gave a shove and found himself in the amber-tiled, antiseptic lobby. 

There was Damon Carter, a lean six feet of black denim and black boots, his Boston Police badge on a lanyard round his neck and a pistol at his hip.   

“Deacon,” said Kenton, “glad I didn’t waste my one phone call.”

“You ruined my evening. Off duty on a Friday, for a change, and here I am in a jailhouse.“

“I’ll make it up to you, in barbecue or beer or whatever you like.”

“I’ll get back to you. They were fixing to cut you loose anyway. You’re pretty well known in town, no criminal record, and the guy you smacked around was a proven scumbag. Nothing too serious on his sheet but enough to tip the battle of he-said-she-said in your favor.”

“She said? The girl blamed me for rescuing her? After this, she’s on her own.”

“Wise policy, deacon. Leave domestic violence to the professionals.”

Kenton nodded to Carter and together they strolled out of the station. It was about 9:45 by now, and even the long sun of summer was long gone. The two men crossed the floodlit parking lot, towards Carter’s middle-aged Ford Fusion.

“As a black man in America, I’m supposed to have an intimate knowledge of jail cells and the rear seats of police cars. And yet, that was my first time.”

“Was it good for you?”

“Anyway, it was brief. And I won’t hate myself in the morning.”

“My wife’ll do it for you,” said Carter. “We had reservations at the Ashmont Grill. When she sees you on Sunday, well…”

Carter’s wife Salome, a nurse, was a stern, astringent woman whose patients were glad to leave the hospital a day or two sooner than strictly necessary. Kenton began thinking of good reasons not to attend Sunday service, then remembered it was First Sunday—all deacons on deck. 

“She can take it out of my hide, the next time I’m diagnosed with a serious illness,” Kenton said.  “Now, you want to just drop me at a Red Line station? No need to take me all the way home.”

“I dunno,” replied Carter. “There’s a Red Sox game just wrapping up and the trains will be full of half-drunk fans. You’re liable to pick a fight with the meanest one, just because he didn’t give up his seat to a lady.”

Kenton smiled, and the two men rolled in silence toward the Southeast Expressway. 

“Seriously, you all right?” asked Carter.

“He barely laid a glove on me.”

“Except for that knot upside your head. Hurt much?”

“Hardly at all, to my surprise. The whole evening’s been a shock. Did you know I like to fight? I didn’t know. I’ve hardly ever done it, and I’m certainly not much good at it. And yet, it was a thrill. I could become a menace to society if I put my mind to it.”

“There’s a tattoo parlor on Hancock Street. Just say the word. I’m thinking ‘THUG LIFE.’”

“Thrilling might be too strong a word. It’s just that I was up for it. Never thought I could handle myself like that, but when it happened, I just did what I needed to do. And now…it’s all right. I’m not scared or embarrassed or worried about it. Just calm and…I don’t know. Satisfied.”

“A few of these gangbangers have shot at me a couple of times, and missed. It’s like that. You had to handle your business and you handled it. And now you know you can. It’s a good feeling, but don’t let it go to your head.”

“I won’t go looking,” said Kenton. “Matter of fact, when I saw him hit that woman, I didn’t care. He could have beaten her to a pulp, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me. Not a bit.”

Carter was silent for a bit, then replied, “So slapping that guy around was your idea of apathy.”

“No, it was me trying to be a deacon. Trying to be a Christian. See, I figured out a long time ago that I don’t much care about people. Never have. People matter to me when they’ve got something I want. Otherwise, they don’t matter to me one way or the other.” Kenton glanced over at Carter. “Not even you.”

Carter, a disciplined driver, didn’t turn his eyes from the road. If he’d glanced at his passenger just then, he would not have seen much. Only blank brown eyes and a cool, indifferent face.

 “So you just don’t care,” Carter said.

“Maybe a little, once in awhile. But it happens so rarely. I saw a child in a wheelchair once and I felt something for him. A strange, sickly feeling. I didn’t even know what I’d felt until a couple of hours later. I believe it was compassion. Fascinating.”

“That doesn’t sound normal.”

“Not at all. I’d read enough books to know that. I talked to a doctor about it. Antisocial personality disorder, he called it.”

“Because it sounds nicer than calling you a sociopath.”

“Yeah. He wanted to break it to me gently. Not sure why. It wouldn’t have hurt my feelings.”

“You do have feelings?”

“Oh, of course I do, but only for me. My health, safety and comfort matter a lot to me. It’s just that I’m indifferent about everyone else’s.”

“Did that include Alicia?”

Kenton thought about it for a bit. “No,” he said at last. “For her I felt something.”

“Above or below the belt?”

“Not sure. I asked myself that question a thousand times during our brief marriage, and I’m still not sure.”

“And what about me? Do you care about how you’ve messed up my evening?”

“Not in any emotional sense, no. But I know that you’ve done me a favor and that I owe you one. I’ll repay it at the first opportunity.”

“As a show of gratitude that you don’t actually feel.”

“Does that matter? As long as I do the grateful thing, what difference does it make how I feel about it? It’s like pastor’s sermon a few weeks back. Love isn’t a feeling, it’s a course of action.”

“But that’s just going through the motions,” said Carter.

“It’s the motions that matter, not how you feel while you make them.”

“You really believe that?”

“I have no choice. If salvation depends on feelings of love and compassion, I’m headed for the ninth circle of Hell.”

They drove on in silence for a time through expressway traffic that was still sluggish long after rush hour had ended. After awhile, Carter asked, “Why’d you become a Christian anyway?”

“Because I’d just come very close to murdering my father.”

“Very close?”

“Gun in my hand,” Kenton sighed. “They’d have had to dig two graves if I’d pulled that trigger. I didn’t care about the old man. But I knew my life was over unless I changed. 

“Right then, a verse popped into my head. From the Bible. Don’t ask me which one. I’ve been trying to remember ever since. Could have been about Cush begetting Nimrod, for all I know. But it made me think of God and salvation. Next day I went to a church and began to pray. Been praying ever since.”

“And your father?”

“Cancer got him not long after.”

“And whatever it was between you, did you settle it?”

“I forgave him, if that’s what you mean.”

“That’s what I mean. And what about him? He say anything to you about it?”

“Maybe. He said a lot right at the end, and most of it was pretty incoherent. But there was something in his voice as he said it. Might have been remorse. Of course, that could just be my imagination. He was pretty far gone by then. But I expect he had it on his mind. I would have, dying.”

“So you can empathize with people a little bit.”

“That’s not empathy,” said Kenton. “That’s common sense. I just ask myself what someone in his position might be thinking. That’s all.”

“So if you’re smart enough, you don’t need to feel for others. You can just approximate.”

“it works pretty well. I’ve watched enough movies and read enough books to have a fair idea of what somebody is most likely to feel in a given situation. I just try to behave the same way. Usually, I get it right. It’s like artificial intelligence. Computers can’t really think, and probably never will. But if you show them millions of examples of how people behave in a certain situation, you can train them to act the same way.”

“But that doesn’t always work, right?”

“No it doesn’t. Mainly because the computer runs across a situation it’s never been trained for.”

“Like that woman on the bus,” said Carter, grinning. “Your brain never trained for that. You went to help her and she turned around and got you arrested. Bet you didn’t see that coming.”

“Never thought about it. I was thinking about how I’d seen the same thing on a bus, years and years ago. That time I did nothing. I just looked away. This time, I was about to do the same. And then it came to me that I was a deacon this time. That meant I had to do something about it. I had no idea how she felt about being smacked around. Maybe she’s used to it. Maybe it turns her on. I just knew that I represented the church at that moment, and that it would be ungodly to turn my back when a man treated a woman like that. That’s the only reason I stepped in. Only reason. So I guess the whole thing was your fault.”

“How’s it my fault?”

“Well, to hear Pastor Rink tell it, you’re the one who figured I was cut out to be a deacon.”

“What?” said Carter with a surprised, snorting laugh. “So as a deacon, you get to roam the subway like Charles Bronson?”

Kenton sank into the car seat, his chin against his chest. After a long pause, he replied, “I don’t know. I just know that the world seems different to me now. It’s like everything has changed.”

It was Carter’s turn to pause and think. After a few seconds he asked, “is it being a deacon that’s changing you? Or being divorced?”

“I still don’t get it,” said Kenton. “Why me?”

“Happens to a lot of us, brother. Half of all marriages, they say.”

“No, I mean why make me a deacon? I’m a divorced man. Newly divorced at that.” Kenton sighed, scrunched further down in the seat. “My own house is not in order.” 

“Nobody’s putting you in charge of marriage and family ministries, that’s for sure. But you’re a born organizer, and a pretty good teacher as well. We’ve got 50 kids coming in every week studying computer science and engineering thanks to you. Some of their parents actually stick around for Bible classes. And that lecture series on smartphones and tablets packed the place out. Pastor Rink got a call from New Baptist about it. Their pastor was hopping mad—said we were trying to poach their members.”

“Not a bad idea. We need some new blood.”

“You’re making it happen,” said Carter.  “And besides all that, you’ve got the number-one qualification for the diaconate. You show up. Every Sunday, and several times a week. Almost anytime you’re asked to help out, and sometimes we don’t even have to ask.”

“It’s either that or sit home and watch Turner Classic Movies. I love ‘A Fistful of Dollars’ but I’ve seen it 50 times.” 

“There’s always HBO.”

“Filthy.”

“What about ‘The Wire?’”

“Brilliant. But I’ve seen it.”

“There you go. You’ve run out of television, and the church has work for you to do. It’s all working out perfectly. Or it was. Because now you’re throwing down on total strangers in the subway, and liking it.”

Carter sat silent for a minute or two. 

“Having second thoughts?” asked Kenton.

“About you, no. About making you a deacon? Well, let’s just see. No hasty decisions.”

“You can’t give up on me, anyway. You’re invested. They wanted you to drop me from the program when Alicia left, but you wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t have been fair,” said Carter. “Wasn’t your fault.”

“Don’t be too sure. I was no angel.” 

“She left you and moved in with somebody else.”

“She wouldn’t have left a good man.”

“What’s that mean? You beat her? You cheat on her?”

“No. I just withdrew. We lived in the same house but that was all.”

“How’d that happen? I mean, you married her, right? You must have wanted to be with her. What changed?”

“Nothing much. I think that was the problem. I was just too happy with my own company. I can sit down with a book and forget the rest of the world.  That’s how I lived all the years before I met Alicia. And I went back to living that way once we were married. It wasn’t deliberate. Bad habits, I guess.”

“Yeah, but that didn’t make you a bad man.” 

“A bad husband, anyway. Maybe if I’d stayed single I could have become a saint. When alone, I’m pretty near perfect.”

“Well, you’re alone again. So you should be the perfect deacon.”

Carter pulled off at Neponset, made the big looping curve onto Gallivan, then rolled across the Neponset River bridge into Quincy.  He pointed into the darkness, toward an adjacent railroad bridge where a Red Line train was rolling across the waters. “Right over there,” said Carter. “Right under the bridge. They found two of Whitey Bulger’s victims down there. Just bones by the time the FBI dug ‘em up.”

Kenton squirmed upright in his seat, craning to stare, though there was nothing to see. “Were you there?”

“I was on that detail, yeah. It was 2000 and I was new on the force. Easy work. No work at all, not for me. But it was kind of cool, in a morbid way. A gangster graveyard. They made that movie about it.”

“Yeah,” said Kenton. “They shot some of it right down the street from me. They waited till the snow melted, then they put a surfboard on the balcony of an apartment building, stuck some potted palm trees and fake grass out front and said it was Whitey’s California hideout. Never saw the movie. Did I miss anything?”

“I never saw it either,” said Carter.

The car swerved right onto Newport, a path through Quincy with fewer traffic lights.

“They ever going to make a movie about the gangs you deal with?” asked Kenton. “Or are only white gangs cool?”

Carter laughed. “They make movies about black gangbangers too, just not as stylish. When it’s white people they make it seem almost heroic. Like Michael Corleone becoming a killer, cause it’s the only way to save his father’s life.” 

“So those gang kids you lock up every day, you think they deserve their own version of The Godfather? A sweeping romantic epic about dope-slinging killers?”

“They’re no worse than the Corleones,” said Carter.

“True,” said Kenton. “I might even go see it.”

Carter turned left on Furnace Brook, then right on Hancock and pulled up in front of Kenton’s place, a drab gray brick high-rise.

“First Sunday. Don’t forget your communion kit,” said Carter.

“Not much chance of that, not after last month. Your wife made me drive all the way back here to get it.”

“She was right. You were needed. You had three shut-ins waiting on you. And it was Sister Madison’s last time. She passed three days later. Think about how you’d feel today if you hadn’t gone back.”

“Instead, I can head upstairs and sleep the sleep of the just,” said Kenton with a chortle, as he swung the door open. “See you Sunday, man. And thanks for springing me.”

“Thank my wife. She’s the one who convinced me to come get you. I wanted to leave you there. Toughen you up a little.”

“Maybe next time. I’m riding the subway a lot lately, so the opportunities for random violence are pretty much limitless.”

“Well, next time you’re on your own,” said Carter.

“A deacon,” Kenton replied with mock solemnity, “is never on his own.”

“True,” said Carter. With a wave of his hand, he pulled away from the curb and swirled away into the night.

It was almost 11 when Kenton unlocked his door. He noticed the familiar musty scent that had always followed him from one apartment to another—an odd amalgam of sweat, cooking smells and clothing both dirty and clean.  He’d only been in the condo for six months, and already here it was.  It was an odd smell, rather than a bad one. But just now Kenton realized that he preferred the rather astringent smell of the jailhouse.

He popped open the fridge, extracted a bottle of decaf iced tea and a packet of leftover pad thai. The food went straight into the microwave. He’d eat that with a set of wooden chopsticks pulled from a heap of them that he’d collected in recent months. No dishes to wash; everything to go into a leftover supermarket plastic bag, then straight into the garbage chute. His latest meal would thus contribute hardly anything to the scent of the place.

There were two bedrooms. The one where he’d slept with Alicia was the best-furnished room in the house and the least-used.  It was dominated by a vast bed—a memory-foam mattress framed in heavy oak. Bounce on it as hard as you liked, and it never made a sound. They’d tested. 

They’d bought the bed at the same time as the condo. Kenton now regretted the expense, but not the bed. It slept well, and carried fewer bad memories than he’d feared. So the bed would stay.  But not the wall-mounted large-screen TV that faced it. Watching television in bed, one of Alicia’s favorite pastimes, had always been repellent to him. 

He waffled on the empty chest of drawers she’d left behind. Storage was storage; he could surely find use for those empty drawers. But some empty floor space might be even more useful to him. It would take thinking about. 

One certainty, though—laundromat tomorrow, for the bed linens. They were due, and the smell rose from them.

Kenton moved to the second bedroom, a little dustier, a little smellier, a raffish clutter of bookshelves and boxes with wires hanging out and going nowhere. Against one wall sat a desk and a large monitor; a large black box sat quietly huffing on the floor. 

Kenton pulled back the comfy swivel chair and settled in. His left hand grasped the Saitek aircraft control yoke and his right hand fell naturally onto the throttle quadrant. Kenton had dug them out recently to try out that Ukranian flight-sim software, and had been surprised by how much his fingers still remembered.

He’d been hardcore about flight sims for years. Not as serious as the fanatics who’d simulate the 16-hour Los Angeles-to-Melbourne run by literally setting aside 16 hours. Still, the hobby had cost Kenton hundreds of hours. 

Alicia had stopped him. Too much fantasy for a grown man, she said. One time she’d put her hand on his, and snatched the throttle back, and the virtual DC-3 he’d been flying nosed over toward certain doom.  “I’m real,” she said, her fingers warm against his, while her other hand began undoing buttons.

Now she was in Abuja, with no further objections to how he spent his time. Besides, this was work. He hadn’t written about the odd little community of flight simmers in years and it was time for a refresher. Was that guy in Milton still around, he wondered—the fellow who’d built a 747 cockpit in his garage, out of parts raided from aircraft junkyards?  Surely worth a follow-up.

The microwave dinged. Kenton got up, retrieved the food, settled down again in front of the computer. His hands too busy to fly, he logged into Twitch and watched as others flew simulated missions. Someone called Airbum42 was up, pushing a 737 from Denver to Dallas. Kenton ate Thai noodles and crushed peanuts and watched as the simulated Rocky Mountains scrolled past.

The lump on his head was beginning to ache at last, and the rolling scenery began to nauseate him. Motion sickness—the gamer’s curse. He’d always suffered from it, but it would pass after a few days’ frequent playing. He was way out of practice now, and coming that close to a concussion hadn’t helped matters. 

Kenton decided on bed and went to brush his teeth.

The cell phone shrilled at him from the night table. Kenton lurched upright, stared at the Samsung like a man who’s just suffered an intolerable insult. He fumbled for it, accidentally hit the “reject call” icon, then came fully alert at last. He checked the call log, saw it was Carter who’d dialed him. What could he want? Or maybe it was his wife, unwilling to wait till Sunday to share a piece of her mind.

Kenton waited 30 seconds to make sure Deacon or Mrs. Carter had hung up, then hit “redial.”

“Henry, it’s Damon.”

“At 2 am?”

“Yeah, sorry. But we’re needed at the church. I’m on my way. You should get there too. I’m alerting all the deacons but especially you.”

“Why especially me?”

“Because she’s your friend.”

Right at that moment, Kenton knew, and his skin chilled.

“What happened?”

“Somebody got in and attacked her. Right in the church. In the computer room.”

“How is she?”

“Not good. Not good at all.”