Boston Noir - By Dennis Lehane Page 0,1

fulfillment.

But Boston gives noir the strain of humor you never expect, which comes at you from directions you could never predict. The guys who placed that stolen cow in the middle of Broadway would fit perfectly in the pages you're about to read. The journey ranges from a pitch-black discourse on sin in John Dufresne's "The Cross-Eyed Bear" to a haplessly absurd kidnapper in Jim Fusilli's "The Place Where He Belongs," from the deliciously strange relationship between a black divorcee and a white escaped convict in Patricia Powell's "Dark Waters" to Don Lee's chilling meditation on questions of identity and self in "The Oriental Hair Poets," to a carload of knucklehead armed robbers tooling around North Quincy in Russ Aborn's "Turn Speed." And those are just half of the wonderful stories in this collection.

One of the recurrent themes of noir has always been the search for home. Not home in the physical sense--though that does happen--but in the irrational, emotional sense. The heroes and heroines of noir are usually chasing something they couldn't hold even if they caught up to it. Some part of them understands the futility of this chase even as another part clings to the need for it. This is probably why, if only to alleviate the pain of waiting, they chase something else in the meantime--a lover, a bank job, the murder of an inconvenient spouse. Yet the home being searched for in these pages might be Boston, and the journey to find it--however fruitless that goal may turn out to be--is as rich and varied, as hilarious and sad, and ultimately as engaging as the city itself.

Dennis Lehane

Boston, MA

July 2009

PART I

FEAR & LOATHING

EXIT INTERVIEW

BY LYNNE HEITMAN

Financial District

It had been one of those weird sticky cool summer days in downtown Boston, the kind that are as hot and humid as they're supposed to be until the breeze blows in off the water and all of a sudden it's freezing cold and the air stinks of salt and fish and brine. Sloan hates days that start out one way and then turn into something else. They make it harder to dress for work. She had spent most of last night trying to decide what to wear to the office today. Around 3 a.m., she'd settled on the pink summer-weight St. John knit instead of the blue Tahari because Mother loves the St. John. Says it makes her look svelte. Too bad Mother won't get to see that she's wearing it for her big day. She tugs the skirt up around her waist, but it sags back and settles on her hip bones. This suit has never really fit, and the dark blue Tahari would have hidden the bloodstains better.

The steady churning of the helicopters grows louder. Sloan flattens against the wall and peeks out into the night from behind one of Trevor's fancy Japanese shades. With the interior lights blazing, all she can see is her own reflection staring back. More than once she has wanted to rip those silly shades from Trevor's windows because who has an office on the thirty-seventh floor and covers up the view? Tonight, as flimsy as they are, she is glad to have them.

Her stomach cramps hard and doubles her over. She slides to the floor, which is where Trevor lies faceup, staring at the ceiling with the same look of surprise he died with. Sloan had never seen anyone die, not before today, but she's been to plenty of funerals. She always assumed that the way you look in the casket is the way you looked when your life ended. But she's had time to ponder this and it's now making sense to her. Once you're dead, you're dead. The light goes out and there is no time, no spark, no thought or impulse left to change the expression of absolute terror or disbelief or regret--whatever you were feeling the moment the bullet entered your brain and blew half of it out the gigantic hole in the back of your skull.

Her cell phone erupts in what had been until today her favorite Bach sonata. She taps the earpiece. "You said I had twenty minutes."

"You do, you do. I'm not trying to rush you. I'm just sayin' it doesn't mean we can't do it in less. Or that we can't spend the twenty minutes talkin'."

"I need that time. I need to think. I need..." It burns where the earpiece's hook has irritated the layer of soft skin around the top of