Chapter 4 - THE ACCOUNTING AT THE ANCHOR
The Anchor Tavern sat on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Commercial Street, its low wooden building dating back to the days when Boston’s harbor was filled with three-masted schooners bringing molasses from the West Indies.
Tonight, the windows were covered with thick wire mesh, dark green curtains pulled tight to hide the yellow light inside.
Outside, the wind coming off the harbor was bitter, carrying the salty, metallic stench of low tide and freezing oil from the diesel engines of the tugboats moored at Long Wharf.
A dark utility van—its rear doors dented, its license plate coated in frozen slush—was parked in the narrow alley beside the tavern’s beer garden.
Callum Vale parked his Lincoln Continental fifty feet away, directly across the double yellow lines, leaving the high beams of his headlights shining squarely against the front door of the pub.
He didn't take a gun from his glove box. He didn't call the two precinct officers who normally patrolled Atlantic Avenue on the night shift.
He opened his door, stepped out into the freezing wind, and walked across the asphalt, his long black coat billowing slightly around his knees.
He didn't knock on the heavy pine door. He kicked the brass latch with the heel of his boot.
The wood split near the frame with a dry, sharp CRACK like a rifle shot in the quiet alley.
The door swung inward, slamming against the plaster wall inside.
Inside, the tavern smelled of stale lager, sawdust, cheap cigar smoke, and fried pork fat. Six men were sitting at the long oak bar—heavy-set men in dark flannel shirts, work boots, and wool caps, holding glasses of dark ale.
At the far end of the room, sitting in a circular booth under an old brass clock that read 1:22 AM, was Frank Cormack.
Cormack was sixty-four years old, with a neck as thick as a beer keg, a thick head of silver hair, and a face scarred by fifty years of dock fights and union disputes. He was wearing an expensive dark blue wool suit, his gold watch chain glittering against his red waistcoat.
Sitting across from Cormack were two younger men—the two men in work boots who had spent their evening on the reservoir access road.
When the front door burst open, all nine men turned, hands instantly reaching inside coats or under bar counters for heavy iron wrenches, lead pipes, or snub-nosed revolvers.
Then they saw Callum Vale standing in the doorway.
The high beams of his Lincoln Continental were shining directly through the open door behind him, casting his broad frame into a sharp, dark silhouette surrounded by a halo of white, blinding fog.
Nobody moved.
Nobody spoke.
The only sound in the entire tavern was the slow, wet tick-tock of the brass clock on the wall and the hum of the beer cooler behind the bar.
Callum walked inside, taking three slow, deliberate steps until he stood in the center of the sawdust-covered floor.
His eyes didn't look at Frank Cormack.
They went directly to the younger man sitting on the left side of the booth—a heavy-set man with red hair whose right wool sleeve was pulled up slightly, exposing three inches of blue ink on his wrist: an anchor with three iron links.
Callum moved.
He didn't draw a weapon. He stepped forward with the terrifying, explosive speed of a heavyweight boxer who had learned his craft in the basement gyms of South Boston thirty years ago.
Before the red-haired man could pull his hand from his coat, Callum caught him by the throat with his left hand—his powerful left arm driving the man’s head backward into the wood-paneled wall of the booth with a sickening THUD.
The second man tried to stand, reaching for an iron pipe lying on the vinyl seat, but Callum’s right fist struck him squarely in the center of his chest.
The blow carried the full weight of Callum’s six-foot-two frame. The man’s lungs cleared with a sharp, wheezing gasp as he collapsed sideways onto the sawdust, curled into a tight, agonizing ball.
Callum didn't look down at him. He maintained his grip on the red-haired man’s throat, his fingers tightening until the man’s eyes rolled back in his head, his hands clawing helplessly at Callum’s sleeve.
"Callum!" Frank Cormack shouted, his face turning pale as he scrambled back against the leather cushion of the booth, his broad hands raised in the air. "Callum, Jesus Christ! Stop! It’s Christmas!"
Callum turned his head slowly, his eyes fixing on Cormack with a look so cold, so entirely empty of human warmth, that the old union boss felt his heart skip two beats against his ribs.
"You sent two men to break a woman's arm on the reservoir road, Frank," Callum said. His voice wasn't raised. It remained trapped in that flat, quiet register that made the men at the bar back away until their shoulders touched the beer taps.
"She was just a maid, Callum!" Cormack stammered, his fingers trembling as he adjusted his gold watch chain. "We didn't mean to hurt her! We just wanted the ledger! The Vale family has run these docks for forty years, but Julian is dead! You don't have the stomach for this business anymore! You sit up there on Beacon Hill with your books and your tea while the Irish boys on the waterfront do the heavy lifting!"
Callum let go of the red-haired man’s throat.
The man collapsed onto the table, coughing violently, gasping for air.
Callum reached down, picked up the four-foot iron pipe the second man had dropped on the floor, and held it in his right hand.
He looked at the iron pipe—the dark, greasy metal that had struck Maeve Donnelly’s wrist on the reservoir road six hours ago.
Then he looked at Frank Cormack.
"My brother died five months ago, Frank," Callum said quietly. "My father died four years ago. And you thought that because there was no one left in that house except me and a thirty-one-year-old girl from South Boston, the Vale family was finished."
"Callum, listen to me—"
Callum raised the iron pipe with his right arm and brought it down across the thick mahogany top of the booth table.
The heavy wood split in two with a sound like thunder, sending glass tumblers, beer bottles, and ash trays crashing onto the floor in a shower of broken glass and amber foam.
Frank Cormack screamed, flinching back into the corner of the booth, covering his face with his arms.
Callum dropped the iron pipe onto the ruined table.
He leaned down until his face was six inches from Cormack’s ear.
"The docks stay with the Vale family, Frank," Callum whispered. "Every union steward on Atlantic Avenue will hand his accounts to my office by five o'clock on Monday morning. If I see your face or the faces of these two dogs south of the Charles River after sunrise tomorrow... I won't come with an iron pipe."
He stood up, adjusted the cuffs of his white dress shirt, and turned toward the bar.
The six dockworkers stood entirely frozen, their eyes fixed on the floorboards.
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"Merry Christmas, boys," Callum said quietly.
He walked out of the tavern, pushed through the broken front door, and stepped back into the freezing white fog of Atlantic Avenue.
