Boston Cream (27 page)

I didn’t stop. “You helped keep this mad thug in business. You chose to overlook the depraved fucking nature of it so you could build your synagogue.”

“You make it sound like I did it for myself.”

“Didn’t you?”

“Only so I can help others.”

“And build a monument to your name. You’re done with Brookline, now you can take Beacon Hill.”

“Get out!” Shana said. “Leave him alone and get out.”

“He helped get David killed,” I said.

All she said was, “So did you.”

R
yan had had a good time shopping at Lugo’s. On the bed in his room were two shotguns, which he said were Mossbergs, and an Uzi, which I recognized right away. “And this is for you,” he said, lifting an assault rifle with a pistol grip and long banana clip. “That cut-down M-16 you told me about, the one you carried in Israel?”

“The Mikutzrar.”

“This was the closest thing he had to it. A Colt M4. Thirty inches long, a little shorter with the stock retracted, and weighs five and a half pounds empty. Muzzle velocity is over twenty-six hundred feet per second. A few bursts out of this will cut a guy in half.”

“He provide ammunition for all of these?”

“Gave me everything but a duck decoy.”

Frank was the bigger of the two men who came to meet us at a café near the hotel. Solidly built, near fifty, with some old acne scars and a receding hairline. Victor was younger by a decade or more, with brown hair he wore long enough to tuck behind his ears. A lot thinner too, with a nervous energy that burned around him like he was a hot filament. Ryan introduced us all, first names only, and he and I took some mild shit over the
uselessness of Toronto’s sports teams compared with Boston’s while the waiter brought water and bread. We scanned the menus and ordered various combinations of appetizers and a bottle of red wine, three glasses. I stuck with water.

“So,” Frank said. “I’ll speak for me and Victor to keep it short on our end. The man we work for, he says he owes you. He’d like to pay that debt. On the other hand, he tells us this is strictly voluntary. We’re here to listen to your situation and your proposed solution, and only go ahead if we like it. So. Are we going to like it?”

I said, “We need to free a hostage.”

“Where?”

“Wellington Hill.”

“By blacks?”

“No. An Irish guy named Sean Daggett.”

“In Wellington Hill? Christ, some days this town makes no sense. Who’s the hostage?”

“My partner.”

“How many guys would we go up against?”

“Not sure. Around six.”

He thought about that a moment as though weighing odds, then asked, “How heavily armed?”

We’d asked Stayner about that, but he had never seen the guards holding shotguns or rifles of any kind, and if they wore pistols it was with discretion. “Also not sure.”

“Who does your intel,” Victor asked, “Helen Keller?”

Frank ignored him. “Are they expecting us?”

Victor said, “Let me guess. Not sure.”

“Do I have to send you out of the room?” Frank said. Then to Ryan: “What are you guys packing?”

“Three pistols between us,” Ryan said.

“Someone lose one?” Victor asked.

Ryan ignored him. “We also have some party guns you might like. A Mossberg and an Uzi.”

“No Tec-9s?” Victor asked.

Ryan said, “Christ.”

“And what exactly would we be attacking in Wellington Hill?” Frank asked.

“A mortuary,” I said.

“A mortuary. Packed with a bunch of Irish dicks who might outnumber us, might outgun us, all to save your partner.”

“And pay off a debt,” Ryan said. “Put you in the good graces of the man who makes your world go round.”

“That too. So what do you know about this place?” he asked.

“We have sketches, front and back,” I said.

“Sketches?” Victor said. “That’s it?”

“We can go look at it now.”

“What are you driving?” Frank asked.

“A Dodge Caliber.”

“Not big enough for me. I like a little leg room.”

“Can we take your car?”

“You fucked in the head? It’s a brand new Lexus. I ain’t driving it anywhere near Wellington Hill. Fucking animals down there would strip it before I put it in park.” He wiped his hands and face with a napkin and said, “Victor, do me a favour, go steal us something nice while the boys here settle the bill.”

The moon gleamed coldly off the white hoarding around Halladay’s and the fence that closed off the main entrance. We saw a security camera over the front door and had to assume there were more around the building. There was only one car parked in front, a silver Buick Century. We were in a new Ford Explorer that Victor had boosted. Big enough to seat about a dozen, each of whom could watch their own movie.

“You think she’s in there now?” Frank asked.

“Either that or she’ll be brought here tomorrow night.”

“Only one car parked there. So how many could they have in there now, two, three guys?”

“Maybe.”

“There’s four of us here right now, plenty of guns between us. We could storm the shit out of the place. Bust in, get the girl, bust out. Try not to kill too many Irishmen.”

“We go in there blind, we’ll probably get her killed,” I said.

“You have a plan?”

“It’s in development.”

On the right side of Halladay’s was a place that rented tools and construction vehicles: Bobcats, backhoes and other machines sitting silently on their treads. On the left side was a store whose windows were papered over. The last business there had apparently been a souvenir shop. I wondered what souvenir was right for Wellington Hill: a bullet from a drive-by or a bouquet of flowers left at a sidewalk vigil.

“They’ve got hoarding, fencing, cameras and guns,” I said. “They control the only way in. We have to come up with a way to surprise them.”

“Why don’t you ring the bell and run away,” Victor said.

Frank punched his shoulder and said, “Don’t make me push you out in the street and let the locals take care of you. Jesus Christ,” he said, “kid brothers.”

“You two are related?” I asked.

“Half-brothers,” Frank said. “That’s all I’m admitting is half.”

Another kid brother shown up by the older son. Did any of us escape the shadow they cast?

“They must order food in during the day,” Ryan said. “One of us could take the delivery guy’s place, get in, take a look around.”

“No one would believe a white delivery guy around here,” Frank said.

“Just tell me if you guys are in,” I said. “If you are, we’ll come up with a plan that works.”

Frank and Victor looked at each other and then Frank said, “What the hell. It’s got guns. It’s got a girl. It’s got a deserted house of death. I’d say all we’re missing is 3D.”

A
s soon as we got back to the hotel, we started packing everything we had, including Jenn’s clothes and all of David Fine’s papers. I wanted to be out and in a different hotel first thing the next morning in case Gianelli or the Boston PD came looking for me.

“So what do you think?” I asked Ryan.

“About what?”

“Frank and Victor. They strike you as any good?”

“Victor I could take in my sleep. Plus he has lousy taste in guns. You believe he wanted us to get him a Tec-9? They’re bigger and heavier than Uzis, poorly made and very picky about ammo. Plus law enforcement loves to make examples of people who carry them.”

“What about Frank?”

“Frank’s okay,” he said. “Solid. I could get along with him. Do a job with him. See how he wanted the Mossberg? That’s solid too. Two of him, I’d feel a little better, but this is what we got.”

After Ryan went to bed I got on the Internet and found an inexpensive hotel across the street from the Christian Science Plaza reflecting pool on Huntingdon. I phoned and reserved a room for the following night, wishing I needed another one for Jenn, and asked for an early check-in.

I’d been on the run all day, running after Jenn, running from the images of David’s murder, from the exhaustion of failure, of guilt. Now, at rest, it caught up to me. I was trailing ruined lives behind me like cans tied to a newlyweds’ car. Since I had come to Boston to find David, at least four people had been murdered—McCudden, Walsh, Carol-Ann and David himself. The rabbi and his lovely daughter were probably cursing the moment we’d met. Lesley McConnell might well die if her transplant didn’t go through.

For those of you at home keeping score, how the fuck was I doing?

I thought so. Nice job, Geller. The kid brother does it again.

I woke up the next morning with a dull headache creeping through my skull. And I hadn’t even had any wine. I’d dreamed that Jenn was being chased down a dark urban street by a pack of feral dogs slashing at her legs, trying to bring her down, while people stood by and did nothing to help.

Even if she were still alive, as Stayner thought, there was nothing to say Daggett wasn’t mistreating her.

I phoned next door and got Ryan up, and we met outside a few minutes later and stowed all our gear in the Caliber.

“You look like shit,” Ryan said.

“Thanks.”

“I’ve seen albinos with better colour.”

“I’m fine.”

“You going to hold up your end?”

“Yes.”

“I want more than Frank and Victor watching my back.”

“All I need is coffee,” I said.

Early Monday morning, it took just a few minutes to get to the new hotel. We checked in using a credit card Ryan had under the name Robert Bernardi. The clerk gave us a tag for
each piece of luggage and stowed it in a room behind the desk. We tipped him ten bucks and said we’d be back later. Probably a lot later. He gave us directions to the nearest Starbucks, where we picked up the largest containers of the darkest coffee they had, and headed out to the airport. It was time to switch cars too: Daggett would know the Dodge Caliber on sight, plus it was undersized and hamster-powered.

The man at the rental place looked at the damaged rear end in dismay. I told him it was the result of a hit and run. “You should have reported this to the police right away.”

“It must have happened in the dark,” I said. “I didn’t see it until this morning. And it’s insured to the hilt, right?”

“You’re still going to have to fill out a police report.”

“That would be inconvenient,” Ryan said.

“Nevertheless.”

“For you, I meant.”

Twenty minutes later, we left in a midnight-blue Dodge Charger. “It’s hard to believe these two cars are made by the same company,” Ryan said.

“Do you love it?” I asked.

“Yes, I love it. Why wouldn’t I love it, it’s gorgeous. A throwback to the Charger of the sixties. Just a shame it didn’t come with the hemi.”

“No car-rental place is going to have a hemi-V8. We’re lucky it has a radio.”

We took the Mass Pike back into the city, back to Blue Hill Avenue, along a strip of liquor stores, hair treatment places, smoke shops and fast-food places. More trash blowing down the street than people. We turned down Wellington Hill toward Halladay’s, where more shops were boarded up, as if a great storm were coming. In their case, it had come and gone and they had missed whatever hobo train they were supposed to have jumped to ride off bound for glory.

“If we could get into one of those neighbouring buildings,” I said, “get up on their roof. We could get a better look past the hoarding. Get the full picture.”

“White prowlers in Wellington. How many seconds you give us?”

“What we need is a friend in the African-American community.”

“You know where to find one?”

“I do.”

“Where?”

“You ever see
Marathon Man
?”

There was fuck all going on today for DeMaurice Simms. He and his boys had taken off a load of Blu-Ray players and iPods the day before, but the stores were selling that shit so cheap now there wasn’t enough profit to be made. Fifty here, fifty there, and you’re back out the next day on the stoop outside your mom’s, trying to think up something new. The hustle was getting tired, man, getting old fast. DeMaurice was not even twenty yet and feeling the drag, the toll of having to provide for himself and Tanika and their boy DeMarco. Some thieving, some dealing, the thieving part not so bad, but the dealing a tough go, with everybody so hard up for cash these days, doing thieving of their own to come up with the hundred a day they needed for their pipe.

But just a second. One fucking second. Drifting down the street toward him like it was coming out of a mirage: was that a brand new Charger? A dark navy blue but gleaming in the early light. Easing along at no great speed. Too nice to be a cop car. Maybe God was heeding his call, sending him some white boy in his daddy’s car looking to buy weed for him and his buddies. The car slowing now, the window sliding down. DeMaurice scratched his abdomen lazily, grinning, thinking what a brand new Charger was worth. Now that’s what he needed. That was
a score he could bring home to Tanika, tell her to go out and buy whatever she and DeMarco needed.

As the window came down, he saw that yes indeed, the driver was white. No boy, though. In his late thirties, say. Dark curly hair like an Italian or Jew.

DeMaurice’s piece was a Beretta clone called a Taurus in the pouch of his Patriots hoodie. He put both hands in there as he sauntered over to the car, the right slipping around the gun butt.

“Before you get too frisky with your hands,” the driver said, “let us introduce ourselves.” DeMaurice could see a Beretta in the man’s right hand, a couple of models up from his own. The passenger was also white, maybe forty. Definitely Italian, with a shotgun in his lap.

“I’m Mr. Franklin,” the driver said, showing a folded hundred-dollar bill in his left hand, up near the open window, almost close enough to snatch. “And my friend is Mr. Mossberg. Who do you want to do business with?”

DeMaurice left his hands where they were and asked what business.

“It’s actually more of a mission,” the driver said. “Reconnaissance.”

“Say what?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“Where?”

The man pointed at a digital camera on the console and said, “I need the best pictures you can get of Halladay’s Funeral Home.”