Chapter 10 - The Broken Lock on Border Street
The winter dusk had settled completely by the time Frank pulled the black town car up to the curb on Border Street.
East Boston looked derelict and hostile under the yellow sodium streetlights, a stark contrast to the quiet granite of the North End.
Piles of frozen garbage were heaped against the chain-link fences, and abandoned cars sat on rusted rims in the slush.
The tenement building where I had lived for four years rose four stories into the freezing mist, its brick facade cracked and peeling.
Two teenage boys in oversized hooded parkas were leaning against the front stoop, smoking cheap cigarettes and watching our car.
When they saw Frank’s heavy profile and the sleek lines of the Lincoln sedan, they immediately pushed themselves off the rail and vanished.
Chloe was sitting in the back seat, holding a coloring book Martha had given her, her small hand resting on my knee.
"Mommy, are we going to sleep here tonight?" she asked, her voice tight with unmistakable anxiety.
"No, baby," I assured her, smoothing back her blonde hair.
"We are just here to get your stuffed bear and the winter blankets."
"We are going back to the church for supper."
Chloe visibly relaxed, leaning back against the plush leather seat with a relieved sigh.
"Stay in the car with Frank, sweetheart," I told her, reaching for the door handle.
"I'll be down in ten minutes."
"Bennett," Frank said from the front seat, turning his heavy shoulders around.
"Take this."
He reached into his overcoat and pulled out a small, flat black semi-automatic pistol, offering it butt-first across the seat.
I drew back instinctively, my hands recoiling from the cold steel.
"I don't know how to shoot a gun, Frank," I whispered, panic flaring in my chest.
Frank frowned, his scarred eyebrow twitching with mild annoyance.
"You pull the slide back, point it at the chest, and pull the little lever," he said bluntly.
"Sal Valenti’s boys have spotters in this neighborhood."
"If they saw Callahan’s trucks moving toward Pier 14 this afternoon, they might have traced the leak to your old address."
"I don't want a gun in front of my daughter," I said firmly, refusing to take the weapon.
Frank stared at me for three seconds, then shrugged and slipped the pistol back into his holster.
"Fine," he grunted, reaching into his door pocket and pulling out a heavy steel flashlight instead.
"Take the heavy light."
"If anyone gives you trouble on the stairwell, hit them across the bridge of the nose with the metal rim."
"I'll be watching the front entrance from the curb."
"If you aren't down in eight minutes, I'm coming up the stairs with a twelve-gauge."
I took the heavy flashlight, stepped out into the freezing slush, and pushed through the broken front door of the tenement.
The entrance hallway smelled of boiled cabbage, damp concrete, and urine.
The single bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling had been shattered, leaving the stairwell in pitch blackness.
I clicked on the flashlight, its powerful beam cutting through the shadows and illuminating the peeling floral wallpaper.
My boots made a hollow echoing sound as I climbed the worn wooden steps toward the third floor.
Every floorboard creaked with familiar misery.
For four years, I had walked up these stairs every night with aching muscles, wondering if I would have enough money for milk.
Now I was walking up them with a full bank account, a legitimate corporate job, and a protector whose name cleared entire streets.
When I reached the third-floor landing, my flashlight beam hit Apartment 3B.
The wooden doorframe was splintered.
The deadbolt lock had been violently kicked in, hanging by a single strip of torn metal from the frame.
My breath caught in my throat.
I flattened my back against the hallway wall, my fingers tightening around the heavy aluminum casing of the flashlight.
Inside the apartment, the sound of drawers being pulled out and dumped onto the floor echoed through the dark.
"Find the receipt book!" a rough voice hissed from inside my living room.
"Marcus said she kept the delivery slips in a shoebox under the sink!"
"There's nothing under the sink except roach powder and bleach!" another man answered from the kitchen.
"Tear the mattress open!"
My mind raced with sudden, blinding clarity.
These were not random junkies looking for copper pipes.
These were Sal Valenti’s men, sent by Marcus Vance to recover the duplicate receiving receipts before James Moretti could audit them.
Marcus knew that if I produced the original signed invoices, his connection to Valenti’s illegal steel operation would be cemented.
I took a slow, silent step backward toward the stairwell, keeping the flashlight beam pointed at the floorboards.
I had to get back down to the car.
I had to get Frank.
Before I could reach the first step of the landing, a heavy floorboard gave a loud, agonizing creak beneath my boot.
The noise inside the apartment ceased instantly.
"Who's out there?" the first voice barked from the darkness of my hallway.
Heavy footsteps rushed toward the shattered doorway.
A tall man in a dark canvas jacket burst through the opening, holding a crowbar in his right hand.
When the beam of my flashlight hit his face, he squinted violently, raising his arm to shield his eyes.
"It’s the cleaning broad!" he yelled over his shoulder.
"Grab her!"
He lunged forward across the landing, his fingers reaching for the collar of my navy cardigan.
Instinct took over—the primal, desperate rage of a mother who had fought for six years to keep her child alive.
I didn't scream.
I didn't beg.
I swung the heavy steel flashlight with all the strength in my arms, slamming the aluminum rim directly across the bridge of his nose.
The sound of cartilage crunching was sickeningly loud in the narrow stairwell.
The man shrieked in agony, dropping the crowbar as blood gushed from his shattered face.
He stumbled backward against the wooden banister, clutching his head with both hands.
The second man burst from the apartment, holding a switchblade with a four-inch chrome blade that clicked open in the dark.
"You crazy bitch!" he snarled, lunging down the stairs toward me.
I turned and bolted down the second-floor flight, my boots slipping on the worn wooden treads.
"Frank!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, my voice echoing down the stairwell like an alarm.
"Frank!"
The man with the knife was fast, his heavy shoes pounding down the stairs three at a time right behind me.
He reached out and grabbed the back of my wool sweater, jerking me backward with violent force.
My feet flew out from under me, and I slammed hard onto the second-floor landing, knocking the wind from my lungs in an explosion of pain.
The flashlight flew from my grip, rolling into the corner and casting wild shadows across the ceiling.
The man stood over me, his face twisted in a vicious sneer, raising the chrome blade above his shoulder.
"You should have stayed in the kitchen, Bennett," he hissed, preparing to strike.
A deafening roar shattered the stairwell.
The wooden front door at the bottom of the steps was blown off its hinges in a hail of splintered timber and smoke.
Frank stood in the entryway, holding a short-barreled pump-action shotgun against his hip.
He didn't say a word.
He pumped the slide with a heavy, metallic clatter that sounded like an executioner’s axe falling into place.
The man with the knife froze, his arm hovering in mid-air, all the color draining from his face in a fraction of a second.
"Drop the toothpick, greaseball," Frank growled, his voice carrying the absolute weight of thirty years of waterfront violence.
"Or I'll paint this entire hallway with your breakfast."
The switchblade clattered onto the wooden floorboards instantly.
The man raised both hands into the air, his knees shaking so violently they knocked against each other.
"Don't shoot, Moretti’s man!" he begged, his voice high-pitched with terror.
"We was just looking for papers! We didn't know the boss put a flag on this address!"
"The boss put a flag on everything this woman touches," Frank said, stepping onto the first riser of the stairs.
He didn't fire the shotgun.
He stepped up to the second-floor landing, grabbed the man by his leather jacket, and hurled him over the banister.
The man screamed as he fell twelve feet into the ground-floor hallway, crashing onto the concrete with a sickening crack of breaking bone.
Frank walked over to where I was struggling to sit up against the wall, offering me a massive calloused hand.
He pulled me upright with effortless power, his eyes scanning my face for injuries.
"You hurt, Bennett?" he asked gruffly.
"My shoulder," I gasped, clutching my bruised arm.
"The first one... I broke his nose with your flashlight."
Frank looked at the bloody aluminum tube lying in the corner, then back at me, a genuine grin spreading across his scarred face.
"Good girl," Frank muttered, picking up the flashlight and tucking it into his belt.
"You hit like a dockworker."
He looked up the stairs toward Apartment 3B, where the first man was still groaning in the dark.
"Forget the teddy bear, Grace," Frank said, pushing me toward the stairs.
"Sal Valenti just turned your apartment into a war zone."
"The boss is not going to like this."
We walked out into the freezing night air, stepping over the shattered remains of the front door.
Across the street, the black Lincoln Continental was still idling quietly at the curb.
Inside the back seat, Chloe was still looking at her coloring book under the amber dome light, completely unaware of the blood on the stairs.
Frank opened the rear door and helped me inside, my breath coming in ragged, painful gasps.
"Where are we going?" I asked, pulling Chloe into my arms and holding her trembling body against my chest.
"To the church?"
Frank climbed behind the steering wheel, racked the shotgun slide one last time, and laid the weapon across the passenger seat.
He shifted the transmission into gear, the tires spinning on the slush before gripping the asphalt.
"The church was for a cleaning lady who needed a warm bed for Christmas," Frank said, looking into the rearview mirror with cold, dark eyes.
"You aren't a cleaning lady anymore, Bennett."
May you like
"You are a target in a waterfront war."
"We are going to James Moretti’s private residence in the North End."
