Boston Cream (25 page)

“Can four of us take Halladay’s?”

“Not so fast. What he agreed to was they’ll meet us. We’ll sit and discuss the plan and they’ll decide how deeply they want to be involved, was how he put it.”

“That’s it?”

“I told you, Jonah, this guy has what your people would call
schlep
. He has pull.”

“A made man?”

“I won’t acknowledge that verbally but watch me nod. Now, as long as there’s nothing too wacky, I think they’re in.”

“They provide their own guns?”

“Sidearms, sure. More than that, we might have to outfit them.”

“Then let’s hope Lugo works Sundays.”

Lugo was indeed home and working. Ryan told him what we were looking for, listened and said, “For that price, John, you should be coming with us. No, I’m not haggling. I’m just saying … all right, but you’re going to miss out on all the fun.”

When he hung up, I called the Stayner home and got his wife. She said he couldn’t come to the phone right now.

“Tell him it’s an emergency.”

“Aren’t you the man who was here yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“And you had an emergency then?”

“This one’s worse.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Geller, it’s Sunday. Charles needs his downtime.”

“Ma’am, please pass the phone to your husband. Let him decide if he wants to take it or not.”

Ryan said, “Tell her if she doesn’t, I’m gonna shove it up her ass.”

“If you don’t put him on,” I said to Mrs. Stayner, “he’ll have to talk to the police instead.”

“About what?”

“You can ask him when we’re done.”

“Oh, just a minute.”

She put the receiver down none too gently on a hard surface and I heard steps recede into the distance. A minute later, different steps approached.

“What the hell are you trying to do!” Stayner said. “Implying to my wife I have something to hide from the police? She doesn’t know anything about what’s going on.”

“If you don’t want her to, shut up and listen.”

“You can’t—”

“David is dead,” I said.

“What!”

“He was murdered this morning.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Oh, God. Poor David.” His voice sounded choked with genuine emotion. For whom, I wondered.

He said, “Do the police know who did it?”

“I don’t know. Let’s call from your house and ask.”

“You’re coming here?”

“Right now.”

“But there’s nothing else I can do.”

“Oh yes, there is.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you when I get there.”

“You’re not bringing your goon?”

“Watch it,” I said. “David was shot to death this morning in front of my eyes. The goon could easily be me.”

J
esus Christ, Sean thought, the big blonde bitch had broken Kieran’s leg with her car. He’d needed a plate to stabilize the shin bone, she’d busted it so bad. He had a deep gash in the back of his head too, from where his head had banged off the headlight of a parked car, all kinds of glass and paint and chips they had to pick out of there. They’d had to shave the whole back of his head, but left the long floppy front until he woke up so they could ask him if he wanted that buzzed off too. But when he came around, he was so pissed off at what had happened, at what she’d done to his leg, he told them the first person to touch him with a buzzer or anything else was gonna die. Sean was glad they were keeping Kieran in the bed with his leg up, all those tubes in his arm. Otherwise, he’d be hopping bare-assed down the hallway in his hospital gown, looking for his car to go run down the bitch.

But she was already down, way down, which left one to go: the PI from Toronto who had led them to the good Dr. Fine. And wasn’t that poetic, using one Hebe to track down another, when they were always so protective of each other—like some secret little society you couldn’t get into if you didn’t have the nose and the big mouth and all their other shit. He wants to rescue his girl? Let him try. Him and the buddy he had with
him now, an Italian in dark clothes; nothing much physically, his watchers said. They had shown his picture to a few North End friends with bent noses but no one gave up his name. So what? One guy, two guys. Didn’t matter to Sean. His boys would just dig the grave deeper.

Freddie Hogan hadn’t been near a girl this good-looking in a long time. Maybe at a party for like two minutes before she spotted a better prospect and moved off. This one was better looking than any of them. Tall, Christ, a good three inches taller than him, with that rare combination: a great big body, fit but lots of curves, and a great face too, even with her eyes closed and a tube down her throat. He’d seen her alive and kicking when Sean had brought her in and thrown her down onto the bed, put the gun on her and told her if she moved he’d blow a hole in her and gut her right there. Freddie had seen her eyes then: beautiful blue eyes, scared, angry, scornful. He’d seen her mouth with even white teeth and full lips telling Sean he was an asshole and worse. Didn’t get to Sean. He’d just smiled and held his pistol while she took off her clothes with her back to them—Jesus, what an ass, full and creamy, two good handfuls—and put on the thin hospital gown that barely hid anything. It was chilly in the prep room and it took no time for them rosebuds to appear beneath the front of her gown, especially as her boobs moved against the cloth as she squirmed while he strapped down her arms and wrists. She stopped once the drip took hold. Then she just lay there while he intubated her and put in the catheter, not using any of the antiseptic the kit provided, and watched her as she settled into the long dark sleep that was going to follow. Sean watched too, over Freddie’s shoulder, until she was gone, then told him that no one was to so much as touch her until Monday. Watch her, Sean had told him. Call if there were complications.

There wouldn’t be any, Freddie said, and Sean left to go
about his business. Now there she lay naked under a gown thinner than a hostel bedsheet. Talk about pulling prize duty, all because he knew how to keep someone on ice like this. Leave it to Sean to think of it. Normally, you abduct someone and you want to keep them alive a few days, you need to find someplace secluded, feed them, watch them go to the bathroom, take their shit, listen to them plead. Sean said, “Fuck that shit—knock ’em out for a few bucks’ worth of P.”

And he was right. Propofol, run through someone properly at a good level dose, was a nice clean drug. It kept Sean’s people quiet as mice. He didn’t have to do shit but run a few tubes in them, keep an eye on them, make sure they didn’t barf and then choke on it.

The place itself, this prep room at Halladay’s Funeral Home, gave Freddie the creeps, though. Big time. How could it not? All the dead bodies that had been worked on in the room, embalmed, made up and what have you. Stuffed into their best suits, their lips sewn shut and their ties knotted just right. But Sean paid well and all Freddie had to do was keep people on the drip until they were needed. This girl, though. Look at her. Look at the titties rise and fall with her breath.

The way her lips parted around the tube, you could tell she’d give good head. Pretty features on her, nice straight nose. Good skin. Shiny blonde hair and not a dye job. Ten to one she was blonde down there too. And there was something about blonde pussy that seemed sweeter, cleaner, pinker than any other kind.

The other guy on duty, John Callahan, had to keep watch out by the door that led to the parking bay. There was a buzzer that controlled the garage door itself. No one got in without stopping and looking into the security camera so Callahan could check them in, log them in his book. But there’d be no action tonight: Monday was the night. That’s what Sean had told them.

So who would know if he took a peek? Nothing wrong with that, not in this situation. She wasn’t sick or dead, just on a drip. He’d never been with anyone like her. Not even close.

It made him think of all the ones who had walked away from him in bars or at parties. Whose eyes had kept roaming, hunting, as he’d tried to get their attention, whose relief he could feel when they spotted someone they knew and could say excuse me. Sometimes not even that.

His hands moved quietly to her breasts and hovered over the gown, as close he could to the cloth without touching it. This was no ordinary pair. Too bad Sean wasn’t doing titty transplants, these would be worth a fortune. His hands whispered over her nipples lightly, as if he were a true lover of hers, and he felt their perfect size and shape, wishing she could be awake but still strapped in.

He was so hard just from touching her, he knew he would ache like hell if he didn’t resolve this. And there was a way this could still be good. Conscious, unconscious, she could still lie there and take it.

He went out in the hall and called, “John?”

“Yeah?” Good. His voice coming from his post out by the door.

“You hungry for dinner yet?”

“No way, man. Lunch was only three hours ago.”

“Okay, guess you’re right. Let me know when you’re ready.”

Beautiful. John was where he should be. Sean was on his way somewhere. No one else was expected. It was just him and the girl, down in whatever depths the drug had taken her to.

They would spend two weeks every summer south of the Pinery on Lake Huron, the Raudsepps up from the farm, the McKenzie side over from Stratford, where they had their restaurant and souvenir shop. The families rented adjacent cabins and the cousins ran up and
down the beach the entire time, in the water or up through the scrub and trees at the top, never getting tired, it seemed. They’d play Frisbee in the water, or monkey in the middle or Marco Polo, it didn’t matter. It was being with family that counted
.

She loved the water best of all. More than the volleyball games, hacky sack, castle building; more than bonfires, marshmallows or the breathtaking sunsets that streaked the sky with purple, orange and pink; more than the corny songs on guitar or the board games in the musty front room of the cottage. Always the first one into the water, our Jenn, always the last one out, lips blue and gooseflesh raised. Their farm was hot in the summer and always buzzing with flies. In the water, she was free of heat and flies, of the heavy smell of manure. Sometimes she’d just float like a starfish with her head pointing at the horizon and she could see the sunset like that, upside down
.

Floating
.

Something bumping against her, almost like an eel inside her thigh. Probably one of her cousins—Eric, was her bet—reaching in there with that big foam noodle he needed to hold onto when the water got deep
.

She wanted him to stop so she could get back to floating and watching the sunset, weightless, careless—how many more days was it until they had to go home?

I
n the past few days, it seemed, I’d spent all my time in the studies of men who were supposed to be doing good in this world. A rabbi, a doctor, a congressman. Learned, righteous men in their studies, getting people killed. Now I was in Stayner’s again while Ryan went to Lugo’s to fill out his deadly list.

“You have to understand,” Stayner said, “nothing like this was supposed to happen to David. Daggett told me all along he wanted David to assist in the surgery Monday. If David got in touch, I was supposed to reassure him of that.”

“You sure he never did?”

“Never. Not a word after our last conversation.”

“But why would Daggett kill David if Dr. Reimer hasn’t healed yet?”

“But he has.”

“What do you mean?”

“We met Thursday. I’m not saying he’d be ready to lead such a procedure, but as far as assisting, his injuries had sufficiently healed.”

“Did you tell Daggett that?”

Stayner hesitated, losing some of his assertiveness. “He asked. I answered. That’s how it works with Sean Daggett.”

“Didn’t you realize what that meant? You made David expendable.”

“How was I to know you’d lead them to him? Don’t project your guilt onto me, Geller. It’s your fault he got killed. And it was up to you to keep your partner from being grabbed, not me!”

He was leaning against his desk, legs crossed at the ankles. I came at him fast from his right. He pushed off and moved instinctively toward the wall where his family photos hung in black frames. I squared up with him, crowded him against the wall and drove my left fist through the drywall next to his ear. Two family photos slid down and crashed against the floor, the glass shattering loudly. Plaster dust fell like snowflakes into his finely combed hair.

“That’s me projecting,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, you’re crazy!”

“If I hit your chest that hard,” I said, “I could stop your heart.”

I heard footsteps outside the door and his wife’s voice calling, “Honey? Is everything okay?”

“Tell her,” I said.

Stayner was shaking; whether in fear or anger was his business.

“Everything’s fine,” he called. “Just me being clumsy.”

“Are you sure?” she said.

“Please, Gwen, leave me alone. Everything’s under control.”

“Don’t you wish,” I said in his ear.

“It was the media that did me in,” Stayner said, once his wife had left the house on an errand he encouraged her to run.

“That’s original.”

“It’s true. When our transplant program marked its fiftieth anniversary a couple of years ago, we made all the local papers. The
Herald
ran a feature on me and my role in shaping
the program. Sean Daggett got it into his head that I was the only man to help his boy.”

“How did you get Carol-Ann involved?” I asked.

“Rather easily. She’s one of those women who hit forty and realize they’re as likely to get blown up by a terrorist as they are to get married. So she wanted the one other thing that would provide security, and that was a house. She’d bent everyone’s ears about it around the department. She wanted a foreclosure she could fix up, with tenants to help pay off the mortgage. She jumped at the chance to make some cash.”

“How did it work?”

“We ran Michael Daggett’s blood and tissue samples against all the ones she’d collected to date. Matches don’t have to be perfect,” he said. “But the better they are, the fewer anti-rejection drugs the patient has to take, which means a lighter toll on the body. We isolated eight matches in the Greater Boston Area that were more than acceptable. Three were discarded immediately because of age or health concerns. Of the remaining five, I’m told, Daggett found one who responded to whatever offer he made.”