Innocence (17 page)

She saw him re-enter the bar, and she stifled a laugh at how out of place he looked. All the other men there were cleaned and pressed and seemed so polished they glowed. Physically, the majority of them fit into two basic categories: the fat and the effete. Here and there an ostentatious bulge of gym-fed muscle stood out, but it was painfully fake. There was nothing fake about Kozlowski’s physique, and she found charm in the brown wool blazer she thought might be back in style in a few years if it held together that long. He might have been handsome in the heavy-browed style of 1940s Hollywood if not for the thick scar that split the right side of his face from the corner of his eye to the bottom of his ear. Even that, though, she felt gave him character and sex appeal.

In all, she was certain he was the most attractive man in the place.

He moved through the crowd, bumping several self-absorbed men out of the way, drawing disgruntled looks. But even those who were clearly annoyed kept their mouths shut after a brief evaluation.

At last he made it to their table and settled into his chair across from her. He picked up his own drink and took a sip. “Sorry about that.”

“About what?”

He shrugged. “Leaving you?”

“To go to the bathroom?” She laughed. “What were the options?”

“I know, I just—”

“I didn’t seem to wilt,” she assured him.

“No chance of that, I guess,” he conceded. “You seem like a survivor.”

“I guess. I’ve certainly survived worse than being abandoned in the Ritz. Anyway, what is it they say, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?” She raised her glass. “So here’s to getting stronger.”

He raised his own glass and touched it to hers. “To getting stronger.”

They both sipped their drinks, looking at each other across the table. She leaned back in her chair again and surveyed the room once more. “So, tell me something, Koz,” she began.

“What?”

“Do you come here often?”

He turned in his chair to take a look around the bar himself as he considered the question. “I suppose that depends on how you define ‘often,’” he replied.

“How about ever?”

He looked back at her. “Oh. Okay, if you define it like that, then no, I don’t come here often. You?”

“A few times,” she admitted. “But I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed it as much as I have tonight. One more question?”

“Okay.”

“Does anyone ever call you anything other than Koz?”

“Sure. I’m usually called much worse.”

“You know what I mean.”

He looked down at his hands. “I had a sister once. When I was a kid. She was a couple years older than me. She called me Tom.”

“Not anymore?”

“She died.”

“Oh, shit. I’m sorry.” Lissa wanted to bite off her tongue. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was a long time ago. Car accident. She was sixteen. She was just crossing the street, and some guy came around a corner too fast. They say she didn’t suffer.”

“Oh. I feel like an asshole now.”

“Don’t.”

“They ever catch the guy?”

“Yeah, but it wasn’t much of a catch. He stopped. Young guy—early thirties—driving home to three kids and a wife. Maybe he’d had a drink or two after work. Not enough to make a difference, and this was before people looked too closely at the drinking-and-driving thing. He walked.”

Lissa shook her head. “I don’t know if I could’ve lived with him walking. I mean, I’ve never had any brothers or sisters—or any decent family to speak of—but if I did, and I cared about them, I don’t know what I would have done.”

“It was an accident,” Kozlowski disagreed. “Sometimes these days we forget that accidents do happen. Besides, the guy did a pretty good job of punishing himself. He was a wreck over it—lost his job, got divorced. I lost track of him years ago, but it wasn’t pretty. I wonder about him every once in a while. I hope he didn’t eat a gun; it wasn’t really his fault.”

She considered this. “You’re not exactly normal, are you?”

He smiled at her. “What tipped you off?”

She looked at him without answering. Then she tossed back the last of her drink. “Pay the bill, okay?”

He looked disappointed as he glanced at his watch. “I suppose you’re right. We should probably both be getting home. I had a good time, though. Thanks.”

“Too bad I’m not sleepy. I live a few blocks from here; I was kinda hoping you’d come up for a quick nightcap. Seems like the least I can do after you picked up the tab.” She watched him go white. It amused her.

“You sure?” he asked.

She folded her arms in mock indignation. “That’s the first time anyone’s ever questioned my sincerity following an invitation to my apartment.”

“No, no, no,” he stammered. “I’m not questioning. It’s just that . . . Are you sure?”

“Koz, do me a favor, okay? Pay the bill and shut the fuck up.” She stood up and took his hand as he tossed a handful of cash on the table, more than enough to cover the bill. Then the two of them walked hand in hand out into the street.

z

Vincente Salazar sat in his cell after lights-out. His mind was racing. There were too many variables in play, and he felt powerless sitting in the dark with no way of evaluating the risks as they unfolded. He needed a way to stay informed so the mistakes with Dobson wouldn’t be repeated.

He glanced at his watch. Ten thirty. He looked up just as the guard passed by his cell. Consistency was one of the few comforts of the prison environment. Schedules were set, and schedules were kept. Like the trains in Nazi Germany: no variation, no exception. There were occasional outbursts of mayhem—fights, murders, rapes—but they happened relatively infrequently, and they were dealt with as internal matters, for the most part, with swift and brutal punishment meted out by the prison administration: no trials, no appeals. Beyond those circumstances, though, life was regimented. For eighteen hours a day, they were in lockdown. If you could survive the other six, doing time was mainly an exercise in keeping your sanity in the face of mind-numbing boredom. Salazar was strong enough to deal with the boredom.

He looked at his watch again. Ten thirty-five. He heard the guard’s footsteps as he passed the cell again, heading back to his station. It would be two more hours before another guard would patrol the area.

Salazar reached under his mattress and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in a T-shirt. He untied the shirt and pulled out a disposable cell phone. Cellular technology had become a staple of prison contraband, ranking with heroin and sex as marquee items in the currency of the underground jailhouse economy. He seldom used his phone, but he kept it for emergencies. This qualified.

Dialing, he still wasn’t sure what should be done.

“Hello?” the voice came from the other end of the line.

“It’s Vincente,” he said.

“Vincente! How are you? Is everything okay?”

“Fine. I have to talk quickly. The other lawyer—Finn—he’s going to stay on the case.”

“Even after Dobson was killed?”

“Yes.”

“Brave man. Stupid, but brave.”

“Yes,” Salazar agreed. “We need to watch him.”

“By ‘we,’ I assume you mean me.”

“Given the circumstances—”

“It will be difficult.”

“I know,” Salazar conceded. “But we must. There are too many risks. I want you to take care of it yourself.”

It took a moment for the voice to answer. “I will.”

“Thank you.” Salazar hung up the phone. He wouldn’t sleep that night; there were still too many things that could go wrong—too much that was out of his control. Now, at least, he would have eyes on the outside.

z

Kozlowski had a good notion that Lissa Krantz had some money. She exhibited subtle telltale signs. Her clothes were always the latest styles; she drove an expensive car; her nails and hair were always perfectly kept. That kind of maintenance took cash, and Finn wasn’t paying her enough to keep her in that kind of lifestyle, so she had to have some other money elsewhere.

Nothing had prepared him for her apartment, though, and once he saw it, he realized that he’d vastly underestimated her financial resources. It took up the entire top floor of one of the grand town houses on Beacon Street overlooking the Charles River—prime real estate in one of the world’s most expensive cities. There were two bedrooms and an office that was overrun with boxes and papers and mess. The rest of the place was immaculate, and he guessed that someone other than Lissa came in to keep it that way. It was expensively decorated, and a wide carved staircase swept up from the center of the living room to a sizable roof house opening onto a private deck that had to be over a thousand square feet. That was where they were, out on the roof in the freezing cold, when he poured the expensive bottle of Chablis she’d given him to open.

He put the bottle down on the snow-covered Italian wrought-iron table and tipped his glass to her. She returned the gesture. Neither of them drank.

He walked around the perimeter of the deck, the icy crust of the snow crunching beneath his feet. It was a spectacular panoramic view. To the north, he could look out over the esplanade, across the river to the Cambridge shore. To the south, he could look down past the Public Garden to the Common. To the west, an endless string of similarly privileged roof decks stretched out toward the Fens.

He returned to her and leaned against the wall of the roof house. “Nice spot,” he commented.

“Thanks.”

“You’ll warn me if a helicopter is about to land, right?”

“You’d hear it coming.” She walked over to him, standing close enough to start his heart racing.

“Seriously, what’s a place like this go for? Three million? More?”

“Does it matter?” She moved even closer, placing her wineglass on top of a planter that hung off the house. She took his glass from him, putting it down next to hers.

“It’s gotta matter to someone, otherwise places like this wouldn’t exist.” He was back on his heels, leaning his head farther and farther away, the closer she came. He looked over her shoulder, avoiding eye contact.

She moved her head to the side, into his line of vision, and he ducked back the other way. She bobbed and weaved with him to force him to look at her. “What the fuck is it?” she asked. “Is it the apartment?”

“There’s no way around the fact that we’re used to different things,” he said.

“I could sell it.”

“No doubt. And make a killing, I’m sure.”

“What do you want me to say? My father was a very wealthy man before he died. That’s most of what I know about him, for all he was around to deal with me before he died. My mother and I don’t speak. I’m not this goddamned apartment, and this goddamned apartment isn’t me. You think I wouldn’t trade this to have grown up differently?”

“It’s not the apartment,” he said, still avoiding her eyes.

“What is it, then?” she asked, leaning in even farther. Her voice was quiet now, raspy and breathless. “Is it me?”

He shrugged, avoiding her touch.

“What is it?”

He looked at her finally. “You could do better.”

She continued moving in. “I’ve done worse.” She kissed him on the cheek, and he sucked in a chest full of frozen air.

“You may kill me, you know that?”

She smiled. “Maybe.” She was up on her toes, and her lips slid across his cheek toward his mouth. Her hands were on his chest. “I don’t think so, though.” She kissed him. His defenses were crumbling, but he still couldn’t bring himself to kiss her back. Maybe he was afraid of hurting her, he thought. In his heart, he knew that wasn’t it.

Gradually, his muscles relaxed as she continued to kiss him. Whatever fight had been in his body ebbed away, and he drew her in closer to him. Her legs straddled his knee, and he could feel her moving against him. He broke away from her kiss with one final effort and looked deep into her eyes. Then he smiled. “You will kill me,” he assured her.

“I’ll take my chances,” she replied, looking back at him. It was the most erotic look he’d ever seen, full of longing, and desire, and need. She leaned in close and kissed his cheek again. Then she whispered into his ear, “Besides, whatever doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger.”

z

Mac walked from the kitchen to the living room in his little house in Quincy off Wollaston Beach. Most of the lights were off; his path was illuminated by the blue flickering of the television. It was tuned to a recording of the Celtics pregame from earlier that evening. He was wearing a dirty T-shirt and his boxer shorts and was carrying a pizza box heavy with a meat lover’s special from the local Italian joint on the strip. He hadn’t bothered to pull the shades; fuck his neighbors. If they wanted to look in, they could see what they could see. What did he care?

Sad to say, this was now his idea of a perfect evening: a pizza, his recliner, and his beloved Celts. To be sure, the team was a shadow of its former greatness. Back in the day, it had been a team of champions that an old-timer like Mac could be proud of. Bird, McHale, Ainge. In a league overrun with ghetto blasters, the Celtics had proved that a bunch of old white guys could still dominate by playing the game the way it was meant to be played—as a team. They didn’t need flash to win. Show up, do your work, get the job done. To Mac, that was what the Celtics had been about. And the epic battles between the Celtics were about more than Boston versus L.A., more even than east versus west. They were about old versus new; work time versus showtime; white versus black. And the Celtics won more often than not. Those were the days, he thought with a pang of longing.

Now the Celtics were just another team. For Mac’s money, the decline had started when they put their future in the hands of a coke addict who took his signing bonus right out onto the street and blew his heart open in an overdose. Served them right, really. You get away from your roots, and God will smack you in the head, remind you who’s boss. No big surprise there—that’s the way Mac saw it. He still loved the team, but it wasn’t the same. It would never be the same.

And so it was with a sense of resignation that he plopped himself down with the pizza balanced on what little lap remained in the ongoing battle with his bulging midriff. The tip-off had just taken place, and he’d just taken his first bite, when the phone rang.