Mercy Street(18)

The street was quiet except for an unfamiliar green Nissan parked two doors down, its engine idling. Timmy lit a cigarette and monitored the situation. He watched the idling car.

In Boston, winter was endless. He could barely remember how it felt to open the windows, walk unarmored out in the open, sunshine on his skin. His aversion to winter was a recent development, middle age creeping in. Growing up on the South Shore, he’d been impervious to the cold, made it to Christmas with nothing but a jean jacket. Florida had ruined him, lost years in Tampa Bay. At that time in his life, he had trouble making decisions. Civilian life was a shock to his system. He was like water spilled everywhere. He no longer had a container for his life.

In Florida he didn’t need one. There was a landscaping job, year-round, for anyone who wanted one, a tropical peninsula covered in Bermuda grass and soaked in ChemLawn, fifty thousand square miles of ornamental plantings and dwarf date palms. Timmy—young then, and still in Marine shape—worked like a slave in the hundred-degree heat. At night he slept hard, blackout sleep, then woke at dawn to do it all again. It didn’t sound so bad from where he was standing at that moment: hip-deep in the frigid Boston winter, obsessing over a parked car across the street.

He’d been selling weed for twelve years. He hadn’t planned on a career in the retail space (or, let’s be honest, in any space at all). Like everything else in his life, it had happened by accident. In Florida he’d sold a joint here and there, a favor for a friend. When his wife kicked him out, he came back to Boston and got a job driving a Coors truck. Then his uncle, who had thirty years in the Stagehands, got him a union card.

Remember the Stagehands? It was, no question, the best job of his life. Anytime a show loaded in or out of FleetCenter, ten or twenty Stagehands would get the call. Timmy had loaded in Springsteen shows, Bowie, Prince, U2. If you wanted to play Boston, you had to use the Stagehands. Always and forever, Boston was a union town.

He worked for the Stagehands, but not enough. There were too many nephews and cousins on the list, too many guys like him. I’m dead wood, he told a guy named Paul Pruitt, as they broke down an Aerosmith show. And just like that, Pruitt offered him a job picking up packages at the UPS Store.

Packages of what? Timmy asked.

Pruitt said, You don’t want to know.

To limit his exposure, Timmy took precautions. He opened a UPS account in a fake name, Brock Savage, and invented a cover story to tell the clerk. Brock had his own business building custom skateboards. He had business associates all over the country, customers and suppliers who, once or twice a week, sent him small, lightweight packages shrink-wrapped in clear plastic.

When a package was due, Timmy ran the tracking number through the UPS website. Then he waited in the parking lot for the truck to roll in, keeping an eye out for police. If everything looked legit, Brock Savage would flash his fake ID and claim his package. Pruitt paid him a hundred bucks a box.

This went on for nearly a year, until Paul Pruitt accused him of stealing: Timmy had brought him an empty box that should have contained three pounds of medical-grade kush. Timmy saw right away that Pruitt was forcing him out, so he invented a new story for the UPS clerk. Brock was in a dispute with his business partner. If a stranger tried to claim one of his packages, the clerk should give him a call.

A day later, the call came. I didn’t give it to him, the clerk said proudly. I’ll call the cops if I have to.

Don’t do that, Timmy said.

The parcel, when he opened it, was a dense brick of midgrade commercial bud, wrapped up like a welcome package.

Welcome to selling weed.

HE SENT BRENT AWAY WITH AN EIGHTH OF LEMON HAZE. THEN he stepped out to pay the cable bill. Comcast would take cash if you paid in person. On his way home he ran into his upstairs neighbor, Mrs. Rivera, crossing Washington Street. As always, she carried several shopping bags.

“You got another visitor,” she said. “He been standing there for half an hour.”

Mrs. Rivera had lived in the upstairs apartment basically forever. Timmy knew nothing about her except that her mailbox overflowed with catalogs—for shoes and luggage and home decor, rugs and kitchenware and discount pet food. The catalogs came addressed to Maria Elena Dominguez Rivera; was she all of them? Had there ever been a Mr. Rivera? (Or Dominguez?) Timmy had no clue. Every so often, a Rivera child or grandchild sent her a massive fruit basket wrapped in yellow cellophane, so heavy she could barely lift it. Timmy carried the basket up the stairs and placed it at her door.

Back at the house, he found Winky Blanchard waiting on the porch.

“Winky, man, how long you been standing here?” Timmy glanced up and down the block, at the cars parked on either side of the road. Ten, maybe fifteen, had a clear view of the porch.

Winky Blanchard was a fucking moron.

“You could’ve texted me,” said Timmy.

“I did,” Winky said.

Timmy reached for his phone and sure enough, there was Winky’s text: This is Anthony. Are you home?

Inside, Winky settled into the couch. Timmy clicked on the television. Then he reached behind his chair and fished two fat buds out of the jar. “I’m out of Bay One. This is Bay Two.”

Winky did his signature blink: left eye first, then the right, like a breeze blowing across his face. He said, “I like the One.”

Timmy was tired of hearing this. All his customers liked the One, which should have been good news but wasn’t. His inventory was unreliable—and in the retail space, supply chain was everything. In the retail space, you lived and died by its whims.