Free The Town: A Novel by Chuck Hogan Page A

long-haired Portuguese girl with teardrop-shaped breasts. He succumbed to the hypnotizing power of cleavage, the pendulousness of femininity, as she ran her small hands over the muscles of his shoulders and leaned boldly into his face. When she turned and ground herself into his lap, waist and hips undulating, the swelling in Doug’s jeans reminded him that he was already four months in to going 0-for-1996.
    Afterward, as she dressed in the seat next to him, Doug felt shitty and alone. Even a guy without a girlfriend had to admit that patronizing a strip club was like cheating on womankind in general, and with this vague sense of guilt came a philandering husband’s determination to repair and repent. She relieved him of his $20 wad with a wink and a smile, then paused, giving his face a pursed-lipped look of concern. She reached out and explored, gently, the sliver of skin where Doug’s left eyebrow was split, planting a soft kiss on the old scar there before walking off in search of her next dance.
    The free kiss threw him. Twenty doughnuts for tits and friction, and then a gratis moment of actual intimacy? She could have saved the dance and charged him twenty just for the compassion.
    Hitting the sidewalk outside the Foxy Lady was like quitting PlayStation, gravity reclaiming Doug, the night air a chilly hand cupping the back of his neck. Laughter gave way to honking snores at the Massachusetts border, the Monte reeking of spicy Drakkar Noir and stripper sweat as Doug sped back toward Dodge, his orphan mind once again returning to the image of Claire Keesey sitting blindfolded in the van. He crossed the bridge back into Town, turning toward Packard Street for a quick detour—just one look, her door, her dark windows—before shuttling his slumbering Townies back home.

5
INTERVIEW
     

     
    I N A WAY ,” said Claire Keesey, shrugging, “nothing since that morning’s really seemed real to me.”
    She was curled up on the maroon cushions of a college rocking chair, the Boston College seal emblazoned over her head like a small sun. Her father’s home office took up half of the living room, a desk-and-shelf unit of austere mahogany behind brass-handled French doors. Claire’s mother—tight smile, anxious hands—had tucked a quilted paper towel beneath the tin BC coaster supporting Frawley’s glass of water, as an extra layer of protection. Her father—gull-white hair over a rare-meat complexion—had taken the early Friday train to be there to answer the door and eyeball this agent of the FBI.
    Frawley glanced at his Olympus Pearlcorder on the bookshelf near the head of the rocker. The handheld tape recorder had been a gift from his mother on the day of his graduation from Quantico, and every Christmas since, along with the sweater or turtleneck or pants from L.L. Bean—one year she mailed him bongo drums—she included a four-pack of Panasonic MC-60 blank microcassettes,
For your stocking!
    It clicked over, the tiny spools reversing, thirty minutes gone by. Claire sat with her legs tucked beneath her, arms folded, hands lost inside the cuffs. Her eggshell sweatpants announced
BOSTON COLLEGE
in a maroon and gold banner down one leg, her loose, green sweatshirt whispering
BayBanks
over her breast. It looked like a sick-day outfit, though her hair was brushed and smelled faintly of vanilla, and her face was scrubbed.
    “My mother doesn’t want me to work at the bank anymore. She doesn’t want me to leave the
house
anymore. Last night, after three or so vodka tonics, she informed me that she had always known something bad was going to happen to me. Oh, and my father? He wants me to get a gun permit. Says a cop friend told him pepper spray is useless, only good on scrambled eggs. It’s like, I’m
watching
them take care of me. Like the thirty-year-old me has gone back in time but is still a child in their eyes. And the scary thing? Sometimes I like it. Sometimes, God help me, I
want
it.” She shuddered. “By