A Fine Line (21 page)

“That’s it,” I said. “I like being out of touch. We’ve talked about this a hundred times.”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

I shrugged.

She picked up the phone.

“Put it down,” I said.

She hastily put it back on my desk, then lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t explain it to you.”

Julie shook her head. “Sometimes you are a profound disappointment to me, Brady Coyne.”

“Sometimes,” I said, “I’m a profound disappointment to me, too.”

T
he cell phone sat silently on my desk with its little green light winking, and after a while I stopped thinking about it. I spent the day catching up on phone calls and plowing through paperwork, and around four in the afternoon Julie tapped on my office door.

I called, “Enter,” and she entered.

She dropped a stack of papers beside my elbow. “This is your weekend homework. Machines are shut off. Except the coffee. I made a new pot for you on the assumption that, since you took one day off and missed the better part of another day this week, you were planning to stay and get caught up.”

I tapped the new stack of papers. “I don’t have a briefcase,” I said. “Can’t bring this stuff home.”

“That’s a good one, Brady,” she said. “Ho, ho. Do it before you leave, then.”

I gave her a salute, and she rolled her eyes. She knew I wouldn’t do any such thing.

After Julie left, I tried to return my concentration to my paperwork. Julie was right. It had piled up during the week, and if I were a conscientious attorney, I’d either stay there at my desk until it was done, or I’d bring it home with me and clean it up over the weekend. That’s what conscientious attorneys did.

I flipped through the stack of papers. There was nothing urgent. Nothing that couldn’t wait ’til Monday.

I hadn’t worked hard all my life because I wanted to end up being a conscientious attorney. I’d expended all that effort and energy so that I could become a lazy attorney, and I’d succeeded rather well.

I stuck it out until five, then said the hell with it. I straightened out the corners on those stacks of papers, stood up, stretched, went out to the reception area, turned off the coffee machine, and rinsed out the pot.

Then I went back into my office, picked up the cell phone, and slipped the damn green-eyed albatross into my pants pocket. I stood there for a minute. I recognized a familiar tension in my gut.

Listen to your heart, J.W. had said.

I listened, and my heart told me to go over to the safe behind the framed photograph of Billy and Joey. So I did. I pushed the photograph aside, spun the dial, opened the safe, reached in around the envelope that held Walt Duffy’s Meriwether Lewis letters, and took out my Smith & Wesson .38 revolver.

Once upon a time I killed two men with that gun. They were both evil men, murderers who would have killed me and the women who were with me, and in both cases I pulled the trigger and shot those men in the chest at point-blank
range, and I did it without compunction or hesitation or regret.

If I ever confronted the man with the muffled voice, the man who had killed Walt Duffy and Ben Frye and who set off explosions in buildings, I guessed I could shoot him without compunction, hesitation, or regret, too.

I always kept my .38 loaded with the hammer down on an empty cylinder. If I cocked it, the cylinder would rotate. If I then pulled the trigger, the hammer would fall on a live cartridge.

A .38 hollow-point from point-blank range makes an impressive hole in a man’s chest.

I stuck the gun in my jacket pocket, and its comforting bulk seemed to neutralize the barely noticeable weight of the vile little cell phone in my pants pocket. Yin and yang.

I locked up, and Henry and I headed home. We took my favorite route down Newbury Street, across Arlington, through the Public Garden and across Charles Street, and we were approaching the duck pond on the Common when a little beep sounded in my pants.

I glanced around. It was five-thirty on a pretty June Friday afternoon, and the Boston Common swarmed with people. As usual, there were clumps of Japanese tourists snapping pictures of each other, college-aged kids playing Frisbee, secretaries and loan officers striding along in their short skirts and high heels, investment bankers and lawyers lugging home their weekend briefcases, dog owners allowing themselves to be tugged around on leashes, homeless men tossing popcorn to the pigeons and drinking from bottles in paper bags.

Maybe it was my imagination, but it seemed that all of them—except the bums—had a hand pressed against an ear.
They all seemed to be frowning and gesticulating with their empty hands and talking intently, as if they were very important people and the fate of the world depended on the words they chose to yell into their cellular phones.

My pants beeped again. I reached into my pocket, fished out the little phone, and flipped it open. “Yes,” I said.

“A lovely afternoon for a stroll on the Common, isn’t it?”

The sonofabitch was watching me!

I looked around. Dozens of men were talking on cell phones. Any one of them could have been the voice.

“Why don’t you come over here,” I said, “so we can talk face-to-face.”

He chuckled. “All in good time, Mr. Coyne. I simply called to wish you a happy weekend.”

“Thanks.”

“You’ll be hearing from me again,” he said. “Be sure to keep those batteries charged.”

“You bet.”

“Oh,” he said, “and when you get home, why don’t you take a peek under your car.”

“What do you—?”

But he’d disconnected.

I walked the rest of the way home peering over my shoulder with my hand in my jacket pocket cradling my .38.

Henry and I took the stairs down into my parking garage. I kept my hand in the pocket with my gun and went over to my car, which was parked in its reserved slot against the green concrete wall. Even in the middle of the day, the garage was lit only by dim orange bulbs high in the ceiling, so that it always seemed like nighttime down there.

I wondered if the voice had attached some kind of bomb to the undercarriage of my car. He blew up buildings. I figured he could blow up an automobile if he wanted to.

But why tell me about it?

I knew the answer: To show me he could do it. To impress me with his control over me. To harass me, to confuse me, to frighten me.

But why would he want to do that?

Well, I figured sooner or later I’d get my answer. I’d have to wait. For now, he was in charge.

I knelt down on the concrete floor and peered underneath my car. I saw instantly what was there.

It was my briefcase, tucked behind the left rear tire.

I slid it out, brushed it off, and put it on the hood of my car. My treasured Harlan Fiske Stone briefcase.

Maybe the bomb was in the briefcase.

Well, the hell with it. I couldn’t live my life wondering if everything I touched would explode.

I held my breath, popped the latch on the briefcase, and peered inside. It was full of papers. I took them out and riffled through them. Photocopies of legal documents. All the stuff that had been there when I was mugged. As near as I could tell, nothing had been added and nothing had been removed.

When I started to put the papers back, I saw that my wallet was in the bottom of the briefcase. I opened it. There was cash in it. I didn’t bother counting it, since I didn’t know how much had been there in the first place. Credit cards, membership cards, other cards—all there.

Hm.

Henry and I took the elevator up to my apartment. I dropped my briefcase in its usual spot just inside the door,
and went directly to the kitchen, where I poured a double shot of Rebel Yell into a square glass. I added two ice cubes and took it into my bedroom.

Henry came along behind me and flopped down on the floor.

I put the cell phone and the revolver and the glass on my bedside table, peeled off my office clothes, and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt.

Then I lit a cigarette, bunched up the pillows, and lay back on my bed. I balanced my drink on my chest and alternated sipping and smoking until I decided what I had to do.

I picked up my regular plug-in portable phone and hit the speed-dial number for Evie.

She answered on the fourth ring. She sounded a little breathless.

“Hi, baby,” I said.

“Oh, Brady. You caught me just stepping into the shower. I’m gonna be all clean and squeaky and sweet-smelling. You’re on your way, I hope?”

“I’ve got to call off our weekend, honey.”

She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “Well, okay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You mean the whole weekend?”

“Yes.”

“What’s wrong, Brady?”

“I can’t explain it right now.”

“It’s not that you—that you don’t want to see me, is it?”

“Not hardly. I want desperately to see you.”

“Because,” she said, “if that’s it, you’ve got to tell me. We’ve agreed about that.”

“That’s not it. I love you.”

She laughed softly. “Well, me, too.”

“I’m really sorry,” I said again.

“I know.”

I hung up the phone, drained my glass, picked up the cell phone, hefted it in my hand. I had to fight the urge to fling it against the wall.

God
damn
him.

I took my glass to the kitchen, hesitated, and put it in the sink. I figured that was enough booze for one evening. I wanted to remain alert.

I was eating a fried-egg sandwich out on my balcony, watching darkness gather over the harbor and feeling lonely and angry and frustrated and altogether sorry for myself, when Henry, who was sitting beside me making eyes at my sandwich, started growling. I told him to shush, and when he did, I thought I heard a soft scratching sound coming from the front door.

I went in, paused to listen, then picked up my .38 from the kitchen table where I’d left it and tiptoed to the door.

Henry poked it with his nose and growled. I told him to go lie down, which he did, reluctantly.

There it was again. The scratching sound. It was coming from the other side of my door.

Someone was trying to get in. Picking my lock.

I held the revolver behind my back with my right hand. With my left, I slowly turned the knob.

Then I yanked the door open.

Evie was standing there with her key in her hand. She had a big carryall slung over her shoulder, and she was wrapped in a trenchcoat.

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Honey,” I said, “I thought I told you—”

“Banyon’s Escorts, at your service.” She gave me a halflidded smile and opened her coat.

She appeared to be clean and squeaky and sweet-smelling all over.

I
glanced up and down the hallway, then grabbed Evie’s arm and tugged her inside.

She leaned back against the door with her trenchcoat hanging open.

“Jesus,” I said. “You’re naked.”

“Yes,” she said. “But I am discreet.” She saw Henry sitting there and closed her coat. “Stop peeking,” she said to him.

“You shouldn’t be here, honey,” I said. “I told you that.”

“It sounded to me like you had a problem.”

I shrugged.

“You’ve got to share it with me,” she said. “That’s our deal.” She reached out her hand, then jerked it back and pointed. “What the hell is
that?”

I realized I had my .38 dangling from my hand. “It’s my gun.”

She frowned at me. “That bad, huh?”

“I don’t want you involved.”

“I am involved,” she said. “I’m involved with you. Put the gun down, okay?”

“I thought you were somebody trying to break in.” I went into the living room, put the gun on the coffee table, and sat on the sofa.

Evie sat beside me. “It wasn’t that long ago,” she said, “when I was the one with the problem. I kept telling you to stay out of it. You refused, if you recall. You said my problems were your problems. Share the good stuff, share the problems, you said. That’s what loving each other means. Remember?”

I nodded. “But this is different.”

“Why, because you’re a big strong independent man and I’m just a weak flighty girl? Girls need help but men don’t? Is that it?”

I shook my head. “It’s dangerous.”

“Most problems are dangerous in one way or another.” She leaned her head on my shoulder and put her hand on my leg. “I do believe you’re frightened,” she said.

“I’m not sure that’s the word for it.”

“Anxious?”

“Definitely.”

She put her arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth. “I bet you could use a nice massage, hm?”

“I don’t remember calling for an escort,” I said.

She was nuzzling my throat. “A friend sent me,” she murmured.

“How much?”

“It’s on the house, baby. You couldn’t afford me.” She leaned back and looked into my eyes. “Leave the gun, though, huh? I don’t do kinky.”