The Boston Tangler
Chapter Eight: Last tangle
By Roland Merullo
At the news that he was being let out of jail, the old Louis Robinson would have leapt to his feet and been standing at the barred door as Lieutenant Bella slid it open, all sense of dignity lost in the first anticipation of freedom. But the events of that day, of that summer, had changed him.
Brief and bizarre as it had been, the visit to Fenway Park seemed to have fired up an old, broken cylinder of hope in him, something Alicia had all but permanently shut down.
He stood and spent a moment tucking his shirt into his pants. Max hugged him goodbye as if they'd been cellmates for 14 years, not 14 minutes. "Maybe it worked, Louie, the soccer-stadium trick," he said.
"Baseball, Max, not soccer. It was Fenway Park."
"Maybe anyway it worked, and Luba is waiting now outside, to bail you."
Louis nodded, lips set against the possibility of disappointment. He had already stepped out into the corridor when Max Twice reached one arm between the bars and took him by the shirt-sleeve. "Louie, my good pal," he said. Louis turned and was surprised to see a pattern of pain there in the muscles of his friend's face. Max seemed to be struggling to speak.
"Max, it's OK. Olga will be here in a few minutes to take you home. Luba or no Luba ... "
But the big Byelorussian was shaking his head. "No, Louie, no," he said. Lieutenant Bella shuffled her feet and snapped her gum. With an angry wave of his arm, Max Twice motioned her away. "Louie," he whispered, when Bella had stepped out of earshot. "I knew you weren't the Dangler."
"What?"
"I said that only because to throw you offs the smell."
"Offs the smell? Max, what the hell is going on? Off the scent, do you mean?"
The big head nodded rhythmically, a great, true Slavic sadness in the eyes. "Max had to know if he can trust. Now I know, Louie. Now, today, in the soccer stadium, Max knows what kind of the man you are, inside."
"Baseball, Max, I told you, not soccer. What are you saying?"
But Max wouldn't say what he was saying. "Go," he said. "Your unexpected love, she's now tell you everything, my Louie pal, my friend. Only don't hate Max for the armor he has on himself, ok-yey? For his little game."
Louis stood for a few seconds, squinting, wrinkling his forehead. Bella coughed, and he turned and followed her down the hallway. At the booking desk, Detective Hector was waiting for him with a false, soapy smile on his face. Louis glanced around the featureless room. "Who made my bail?"
"Me," Hector said. "I'm driving you home, too."
Louis did not have the energy to resist. Luba was gone now, certainly. Max - his stable, solid friend Max - was playing some crazy game. He went out into the evening air, weighed down with a sense of utter loneliness, and walked to the detective's plain Oldsmobile. Hector started the car and headed up Commonwealth Avenue in the first golden strokes of dusk. Louis could not look at him.
"The name Ellis Rim mean anything to you?"
Louis blinked.
"Your boss is a big contributor to the Police Athletic Association, you know. He finds out you were running around naked on Fenway property, and what do you think will happen?"
The light changed; Hector moved the car forward.
"He'll can your royal Irish ass, is what will happen. You'll never get another driving job, never get your own medallion. Not in this city, anyway. Think about it."
Louis made a point of not thinking about it. He was thinking, instead, about Max, about Luba, trying to fit all the strange little coincidences of that summer into a picture that made sense.
"We're about to arrest someone close to you," Hector said. "Very close. We have phone records, fingerprints, everything we need. It will go a lot easier if you give us the truth now instead of waiting for us to wring it out of her."
Her, Louis thought. He said nothing.
Hector headed up Brighton Ave., turned onto Linden, and pulled over in front of a hydrant. Louis still would not look at him.
"Fine, be tough all you want, pal - you and your radical friends. But the minute I leave you here, I'm driving to a press conference in Government Center, where I will let it be known that one of the vandals caught trespassing at Fenway today has been a suspect all along in the Tangler case. They'll descend on you like a pack of wild animals. Your face will be all over the paper, the TV. We'll see how silent you are then, tough guy."
Without giving Hector the satisfaction of a single word, Louis stepped out of the car and closed the door. The detective waited by the curb briefly, hoping for a last-minute confession, then drove off.
Louis sat on the top step of 898 Linden, elbows on his knees and chin in the palms of his hands. He could feel a small cold breath in the evening air now, a flash of autumn in the day's last light. All the bright promise of summer seemed to be slipping away like the string of a gorgeous kite he had been clinging to, leaving him sitting there in the dust of his dreams, watching it sail and shudder and drift out over the rooftops.
A middle-aged Asian man came walking along the opposite sidewalk, turned onto Farrington Avenue, and got into one of the cars parked there. The man wriggled the car out of its space and drove away, and, as Louis sometimes did, he amused himself by counting the seconds until the space was filled again. One, one-thousand. Two, one-thousand. At 13, one-thousand, a yellow Beetle came muttering down the street, stopped just beyond the vacated space, and swung back into it with a perfect parallel move. Luba stepped out - he could see only one shoulder and the side of her face. It was enough to make him weep.
She did not see him until she had crossed Linden Street and looked up. The muscles around her mouth worked and wobbled. It seemed, for a moment, that she might smile, and then, immediately, that she might just as easily burst into tears. Louis sat as if carved from granite, his hands gripping the splintery top step, his eyes fixed on her, unblinking.
"Was that for me," she asked, "what you and Max did at Fenway?"
"No, it was for Vizelot," Louis said. He could not help himself.
Luba winced, looked down at her feet and then up again. "You're angry,"
"Of course I'm angry."
"Did Max tell you?"
"He told me his accusing me of being the Tangler was all a charade, and then he left me hanging. But I've been thinking it through. You staged the whole argument with me at Kelly's after our golf date, didn't you? The tears, the not-another-Giorgio stuff. You did the same thing Max did. I was getting too close to the truth, so you both hit upon the cute trick of accusing me of being the Tangler. You lied to me about Irwin, probably cost me my job, made me run around half-naked in front of 40,000 people, yelling out, `Love! Love!' You've been playing with me all summer. I'm not supposed to be angry?"
For the first time since she had stepped into his cab on Atlantic Avenue, eight weeks ago, Luba seemed to lose her self-possession. She stood in the last dusky light like a schoolgirl caught in a lie, twisting her hands together, looking everywhere but into Louis's eyes.
"Can we go upstairs?" she said. "This is kind of a public place for arguing."
They climbed the stairs, walked through the door of Louis's apartment, and into a sticky silence. Louis went around opening windows and letting in the cool air, while Luba stood in the center of the living room, staring at the Wyeth prints as if she had never seen them before. At last, when there was nothing else to occupy him, Louis sat on the couch, and she came over and joined him, though at a safe distance.
"First of all, I apologize for not telling you about my brother," she said. "I wanted to, on that first date in the North End, but I thought you would think that we have a weird family or something. He's a little bit off, my darling Irwin."
"No, really?"
"Will you please stop being so sarcastic? My brother has a terrible problem, and I'm not talking about the Corey stuff, or the other things. Since my divorce, he's been obsessed with protecting me from unkind boyfriends. I can't tell you how many men he's chased away over the years."
"So he followed me around to make sure I was ... "
"Yes," Luba said. "To make sure you weren't another Giorgio. The ATM stuff was Irwin's idea. He was lurking outside the window at Pomodoro, listening in the whole time."
Louis was working things through in his mind, staring down at the old pine floor. "So you're the Tangler, then, is basically what you're saying."
"No," Luba said. "I mean, yes, in a way. It's a group effort."
"Wonderful." Louis could hear a siren in the distance, several sirens. "And I'm going to be arrested as part of the group effort, right?"
"I don't think so," Luba said.
"No? Right now, Detective Hector is giving a press conference to reporters from all over the world, mentioning my name, connecting what happened at Fenway today to what's been happening all summer. You don't think that's going to lead to an arrest?"
"The press conference will never happen," Luba said. She was leaning toward him now and had regained some of her old spark. "The electricity in that part of the city went out an hour ago; the reporters' laptops have all been jammed. We've arranged for something else in the meantime, a sort of distraction, another arrest. The press will focus on that, not you."
"How does it work, all this, all this ... ?"
"We have specialists. Hardware/software fire wall people. Electrical people, inside help in the Police Department, the MBTA, the Turnpike Authority. And we also have energy people working in some areas you don't believe in - human emotion fields, vibrational transfers, and so on."
"Nut cases, in other words," Louis said. "Aromatherapists."
Luba smirked. "You have this little prejudice, Louie. You think the world is only what you can see and touch. It isn't."
The sirens were moving closer, a wild animalistic shrieking in the breezy night. They could be heard turning from Brighton Avenue onto Linden Street. In a moment, blue lights were playing on the curtains, but neither Louis nor Luba moved. Vizelot, for some reason, had turned her radio up to full volume and was playing an opera there beyond the wall, and the sound of it mixing in with the sirens seemed, to Louis's ear, at least, the perfect surrealistic note on which to end a summer like this one.
"It was Max's idea to fix me up with you," Luba said. "He told me you'd be at that cabstand on Atlantic Avenue on that first day. He sent you to Harvard Square a few days later, remember, when you took me to Lynn? It was all his idea. I only went along with it at first because he said so many nice things about you, and because he's the leader - "
"Max! Max Maximov!"
Luba was nodding, watching him. "I didn't know I'd fall in love with you, but I did. From that first kiss in Government Center. I was hopelessly, madly in love after that. But then you ... you seemed to have this closed-minded attitude about certain things, and I worried if I told you honestly about the Tangler stuff, you'd just walk away forever."
At this, Louis's upper back went into a sudden spasm. "Fell in love?" he said, trying to turn his head toward Luba and partly succeeding. She was nodding. "Max fixed us up?" More nodding. "Max is involved in the Tangling, you, Irwin - who else?"
"You don't know ... " Luba started to say, but the commotion on the street interrupted her. Louis stood and made his way gingerly to the windows. Four police cars were parked below them, lights twirling. In the back seat of one of them, handcuffed, it appeared, but wearing a defiant expression on his face, sat Luba's brother, the mad professor, his wild hair and eyes bathed in flashes of blue. Patrolman Small and Lieutenant Bella were storming up the walk, leading a SWAT team of plainclothes men in blue jackets with POLICE printed front and back, and a throng of press people.
"I'm the one person I know who's not involved," Louis said. "And they're scooping me up, anyway."
"I don't think so," Luba said, from behind him.
The sound of footsteps could be heard at the top of the stairs; the mob was turning into the hall. Spasmodic back notwithstanding, Louis squared his shoulders and walked toward the door and his destiny. If he was going to be dragged out into the spotlight, he would do it with some dignity, at least.
But the stampede of footsteps approached and went past. A mistake, he thought. In their excitement, Small and Bella and the camera crew from Cops had gone to the wrong apartment. He and Luba were standing just inside the closed door. His palms were sweating, knees trembling. He was no hero. A few more seconds passed. A minute. There was a stampede in the hallway, but no one knocked. Finally, he pulled his door open and looked out to see a gaggle of reporters, microphones, TV cameras. Patrolman Small, towering above the fray, stood just in front of Vizelot's door. Bella was shouting at a reporter to get back or he would be arrested.
Louis edged through the crowd, little lightning bolts of pain shooting through the muscles of his upper back, and arrived in time to see Lieutenant Bella putting the cuffs on his neighbor, Vizelot Masjardins, the Haitian Haranguer, the Boston Tangler, the psychic weaver of benevolent urban chaos. He heard Bella tell Vizelot, "You have the right to remain silent" - unlikely, he thought. Then, handcuffed and looking like a revolutionary out of some other century, Vizelot turned to face the flashbulbs and the reporters' clatter. She winked at Louis, once, and then the crowd swept her away and down the stairs.
A few of the more enterprising reporters lingered behind to try and get comments from the neighbors. Before Louis could duck back into his apartment, one of them snapped a photo of him, an expression of profound surprise etched on his face. The photo appeared in the less reputable Boston papers the following day under the headline: "Neighbors in shock at Tangler arrest."
Louis locked the door behind him and stood there, facing Luba Neazhidina.
"I don't understand," he said.
"Irwin and Vizzy agreed to do the time. They'll claim the whole thing was their idea, they'll plea-bargain. No one was ever hurt, no property damaged. Three months in minimum security, and they'll be free."
"And the Tangling?"
"Done," she said. "Finished. There will be one last big event tonight, to commemorate the arrests, but we've made our point. We'll retire and let the legend live on."
"Nice for you. Meanwhile, I'm most likely out of a job, thanks to my Fenway exploits."
"Well," Luba said. "There will be book offers, a screenplay probably. We'll need somebody to do the writing. Max surely can't do it. Vizzy's a psychic; I'm a computer type; Irwin's a nut. That leaves the only literature person among us. You."
"I haven't written anything in 20 years."
"And you won't write anything now, not officially. At least your name won't appear on anything. You'll have a fifth share of the profits, though. International rights, film rights, Tangler toys, a line of Tangler clothing and outdoor products, Tangler video games. Five to 10 million dollars, the way we figure it. We're going to set aside half the money to form a not-for-profit group called the Foundation for the Return to the Humane Way. We'll need staff for that - Max, me, Vizzy, you ... if you're interested."
Louis stood there, bathed in disbelief, upper back aching.
"It's a good cause, Louie. It's been a dream since, well, since Max and my father were in the camps together in Uzbekistan."
"Max and your father!"
"People need to think a little bit about where technology is taking them."
Louis was about to put in a small word for technology - coffee makers and hip replacements and air bags, for example - when the lights went out in the apartment. He walked over to the window, barking his shin against the table leg as he went, and saw that the entire street was dark.
"It's a citywide blackout." Luba came up beside him and began kneading the muscles of his back and neck with both hands, gently, apologetically. "In honor of Vizzy and Irwin. It will last exactly an hour."
Last Tangle in Boston, Louis thought. Maybe they could get Brando for the film.
"Can you forgive me?" Luba said, in the darkness. She was massaging his back harder now, reaching down to the roots of some deep old pain, releasing the energy there so that it would flow in healthier patterns. "Can you forgive Max and me for lying to you?"
But Louis could not answer right away. He was thinking, for some reason, of the Red Sox, of the feelings that had washed over him the instant he'd stepped into Fenway Park, of all those people standing up and yelling, "Love! Love! Love!" All over New England, there were fans like that, millions of them. Eighty years of hurt, disappointment, and broken promises and they were still there, still clinging to their Impossible Dream. Had he ever thought of writing something about it, this enduring, unshakable, illogical love might have seemed a perfect metaphor for something much larger than sports. Under Luba's probing, kneading fingers, he felt a locked-up anger and bitterness dissolving, some old curse slowly releasing its hold on him. He was able to turn his eyes toward her, able to make out her features in the darkness.
"One favor."
"Anything," she said.
"I just want your opinion. As a fan, OK?"
"Ask, Louie."
"Do you really think ... "
"Say it, Louie."
"I'm almost afraid to. Do you really believe ... "
"What, Louie?"
"Do you ... "
"Louie, please, just say it."
"Do you think this could really be the year?"
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