Star Chamber Brotherhood (14 page)

Werner caught the beer can and sat across from Alvarez in a low leather armchair. Each man raised his beer can to acknowledge the other and drank. Before speaking, Werner set his backpack on the floor and withdrew from it a bottle of fifteen-year-old Matusalem Gran Reserva rum imported from Alvarez’s birthplace in the Dominican Republic. Hector accepted it with enthusiasm, opened it, inhaled its rich vapors and placed it on the sideboard. The bottle was a sign of respect for Alvarez that would reinforce Werner’s rapport with him, and he intended to use it.

“Thanks for agreeing to see me on your day of rest, Hector,” Werner began.

“I am always happy to see you, Frank. And I am honored that you visit me in my home,” Alvarez replied. “There is no favor too great to ask among friends who have shared what we have shared.”

“I am overjoyed that you see it this way, Hector,” Werner replied. “Every morning I look in the mirror, and I ask myself why I am still alive. And until a few days ago, I didn’t have an answer. But now I think I do. And the answer may apply to you, too, which is why I have come today.”

Werner removed a manila envelope from the backpack, opened it and handed Alvarez the short newspaper article inside. It was dated within days of Fred Rocco’s arrival in Boston and contained a brief profile of his recent government postings as well as new FEMA programs planned for the Northeast Region.

Alvarez’s face darkened and his eyes turned hard.

“I see you still remember the Warden,” Werner observed.

“A man like that has no right to live,” Alvarez replied.

“Yet he lives. And he prospers,” Werner remarked. “Within a mile or two of where we sit now.”

“What is being done about it?” Alvarez asked with an indignant expression. “Is there no resistance organization to deal with this?”

Werner withdrew from his pocket a white paper disc the size of a half dollar inscribed with a five-pointed star, the numeral “1” at its center.

“There will be one shortly. A Star Committee has already pronounced sentence on Warden Rocco, and they’ve asked me to form a team to carry it out. I’ll need your help, Hector.”

He held out the star to place it in Alvarez’s hand.

To Werner’s surprise, Alvarez recoiled as if from a venomous snake.

“It must be done. Yes, Frank, I understand that. But I cannot be involved. If it were only me, I would join you with my whole heart. But my sister and my nephews, they depend on me.”

“This is not a suicide mission, Hector. If everything goes as planned, each of us will continue with our lives as if nothing had happened. And you will never again be contacted by anyone from the Committee. Look, Hector, you take certain risks in your work every day. If you were arrested for that, the effect on your sister would be much the same.”

“In that you are wrong, my friend,” Alvarez disagreed. “If I am caught as a criminal, I will get a small punishment or maybe none at all. The Unionists have a soft place in their hearts for the working criminal. But if I am caught as a rebel, Rocco’s people will kill me and send my sister to the camps. My nephews will grow up in a state orphanage. I was once an orphan, Frank, and I cannot let that happen to my nephews.”

“I understand, Hector. I know how important your family is to you. I had a family once, too. And I came back to Boston for one reason only: to find my daughter. But now that the Star Committee has given me this mission, I have set aside my dream of finding her for the sake of finding justice for the prisoners who never made it home. I know it is a lot to ask, Hector. I didn’t accept the assignment right away, either, but in the end I did, just as I think you will.”
 

Hector Alvarez rose from the sofa and paced back and forth before the blank television screen.

“Do you know what it is like to be an orphan, Frank? An orphan from a poor immigrant family from Santo Domingo with no money? Do you know what it is like to see your little sister be treated like a slave by her own relatives because she has no father to protect her?”

Werner shook his head.
 

“Let me tell you what it was like for me. When I was sixteen, my family lived on a migrant farm south of Orlando. One night, fire broke out in our shack. Nobody knew why. Twelve people were killed, including my parents and my two younger brothers. Only my sister and I survived.”
 

Hector looked at Werner with eyes that showed long-repressed anger, sadness and fear.
 

“My father’s relatives blamed me for the fire. They kicked me out of their family but kept my sister and treated her like a slave. I moved in with a friend’s family until I earned my high school diploma. Then I enlisted in the Marines. The first chance I got, I grabbed my sister out of my uncle’s house and found her a place to stay with an old couple in Orlando. Before long she married a good man and they were doing well. But now he’s dead and her life is difficult again. Cara needs my help. I promised her that those boys would have a better life than we had, and, by God, they will.”

“I’m certain they will, Hector. And I would never want to come between you and your sister or your nephews. Everything you’ve told me reinforces my impression of the kind of man you are. It’s clear that you give your complete loyalty to your family and friends and that you have a deep sense of justice.”

Werner paused to measure his friend’s reaction to this bit of flattery before continuing. He now had Alvarez’s full attention.

“Once you commit yourself to something, Hector, I know you never quit until you finish it. You’ve paid your dues and earned the respect of everyone who knows you. At Kamas, you stood up and joined the rebellion even though you weren’t a political prisoner. We both fought alongside some of the finest I’ve known anywhere. But now very few of us are left.”

Werner leaned forward, as if to share a secret.

“You see Hector, it can’t be just anyone who carries out the sentence against Rocco. This is a judicial act carried out by the Star Committee under authority from the Kamas prisoners. And to do it properly, we need men of integrity who risked their lives in the Kamas rebellion and suffered the consequences. There aren’t many of us left alive, Hector, and you’re one of the very best. We need you on the team. Will you join us?”

Hector Alvarez stopped pacing. He stood at the window and looked out upon the flea market across the street with an anguished expression.

“I cannot say yes, yet I also cannot say no. If I say yes and break my promise to my family, I am not a man. But if I refuse to avenge the deaths of my comrades, I am also not a man. What will be the meaning of my life if I turn my back on what I have lived for?”

“Only you can answer that, Hector,” Werner answered. “You must do what you believe serves the highest good and gives your life its greatest purpose and meaning. But, if it makes your choice any easier, I can offer you this: if you join us and are killed or captured, I will take personal responsibility for the boys’ care and education until they are adults. I’m an old man, Hector, but I ought to be good for another ten years. And in my heart I do believe God will preserve at least one of us long enough to see those boys become U.S. Marines like their uncle Hector.”

Hector remained expressionless as he left the window and approached Werner. For a moment, Werner thought his host might attack him with his bare hands. Then he saw Hector’s eyes glisten with welling tears. A moment later Hector Alvarez held him in a tight embrace.

“I will join you,” he answered in a hoarse whisper. “May God help us all.”

****

The sun was low on the horizon when Werner returned to Carol Dodge’s Brookline apartment. He could detect the odor of boiled cabbage the moment he entered the stairwell. It was apparently not coming from Harriet Waterman’s ground-floor apartment, which was dark. Probably the Russians on the second floor, he thought. He had come to know many Russian prisoners in the Yukon and grew to love them. He had introduced himself to the family on the second floor, ethnic Russian refugees from the Caucasus, within a week of moving in.

When he opened the door to Carol’s sixth-floor flat, the smell of cooking was close to heavenly by comparison. It was a Lebanese dish that Carol had learned from her relatives, baked with ground lamb, bulgur wheat, onion, pine nuts, and Middle Eastern spices. She usually served it with a salad of romaine, cucumber, tomatoes, feta cheese, and olives topped with pita bread croutons. Werner’s thoughts immediately turned to how good the meal would taste with a bottle of full-bodied Lebanese red wine.

He was surprised to find Linda Holt seated on the living room sofa with a hardbound novel in her lap. She looked up at him with a contented smile.

“Did you have a good walk, Frank? It must have been a lovely afternoon to be outdoors.”

“It certainly was,” he agreed. “I followed the Jamaicaway to Jamaica Pond and then came back up around Leverett Pond. I’ve never seen so many bikes on the bicycle path.”

“That’s what I should have done today,” Linda confessed with a mischievous smile. “A long walk would have done me good, instead of laying about eating bonbons and reading racy novels on Carol’s sofa. Shame on me.”

“Well, it’s too late to do much about that, Linda. But it seems to me that the best way to recover from a day of decadence is a good strong cocktail.”

Linda Holt laughed.

“In a while, perhaps,” she replied. “But why don’t you ask Carol if she’d like one? She’s in the kitchen with Harriet making dinner.”
 

Werner nodded in acknowledgement before setting off for the kitchen, where Harriet was chopping vegetables and herbs, while Carol checked the oven temperature.

Harriet stopped speaking the moment he came into view. Werner saw a fleeting look of surprise in her eyes, as though she had been saying something that she did not intend him to hear.

“Would either of you like a cocktail before dinner?” he interrupted. “Linda’s having a Sidecar with me.”
 

“Not me, thanks,” Carol replied. “Too strong.”

“Harriet?” Werner asked.

“Oh, I’d better not,” Harriet answered nervously. “I have a troop of visiting relatives to feed. If I don’t start dinner soon, I’ll have a mutiny on my hands.”

“Talk about a housing crisis,” Carol added.

“It’s a crisis, all right,” Harriet replied sourly. “And it’s right downstairs in my apartment. Seven adults and two children in a two-bedroom flat. There’s no room left to turn around.”

“But weren’t your cousins promised a place weeks ago?” Carol inquired. “I thought you said they were on the Housing Authority’s priority list.”

“They were,” Harriet continued. “But as fast as the BHA says something is available, it’s taken over by squatters. FEMA has given the BHA millions to house the flood refugees, but the refugees aren’t the ones who end up in the units.”

“Why doesn’t the City crack down, then? Who are these squatters, anyway?” Carol probed.

“Locals, for the most part,” Werner interjected, interested in Harriet’s reaction. “They’re not Party members or politically important, but when push comes to shove, the local police won’t touch them because they grew up with many of them and have to live with them.”

“Well, something’s got to give,” Harriet responded, avoiding Werner’s gaze. “FEMA is putting city hall under huge pressure to make room for the refugees. If they don’t find beds for another thirty thousand people by fall, The feds have threatened to cut off the BHA’s federal funding and handle things themselves.”

“The City would never let that happen,” Carol scoffed. “They’d throw people out into the street to make room for the refugees if they had to, but they wouldn’t give up their claim to more federal money. Not in Boston.”

On the last point, Werner agreed: squeezing current tenants to make room for new ones was precisely what he thought the Boston Housing Authority would do. And when it did, tenants like Carol would become prime targets. Yet Carol refused to admit that her apartment might be at risk. And the closer the threat approached, the more she seemed to deny it.
 

Suddenly Werner noticed a look of resolve in Harriet Waterman’s eyes. She wiped her hands in a dishtowel, removed her apron and addressed herself to her hostess and part-time employer.

“Carol, I have a confession to make. You’re not going to like it, but you need to hear it anyway. Yesterday morning, some community organizers from the BHA came to the building to measure apartments. I let them in because I had no choice. Yours was one of the apartments they wanted to see. Now that you don’t have a waiver to exceed the maximum living space standard anymore, they have the power to evict you or to sublet the apartment without your consent.”

Carol Dodge glowered at Harriet and at that moment Werner noticed Linda Holt standing in the doorway listening. The concierge continued.

“Now, if you brought in some qualified tenants to live with you, the square meters per person would be below the limit and the BHA would probably leave you alone…at least for a while. That could buy you enough time to find a new job and get your waiver back.”

Harriet stopped, took a deep breath, and waited for an answer. As there was none, she continued.

“What I’m suggesting is that you take in two of my cousins for a while. They’re a young married couple, no kids, and both of them will be out most of the day working two jobs each. They lost everything in the Portland flood and are just getting back on their feet. They’d be with you only until they got a place of their own or you got your waiver back, whichever happens first.”