The Big Dig (24 page)

I hate running errands. I
put them off and put them off, and then one morning the cat's got no food, there are zero stamps on the roll, and I realize I own no underwear without holes. I understand some people actually like to shop for clothes, do it for pure pleasure and entertainment, but I count it as one more damned errand; I'm too cheap to enjoy spending money. When I can't put it off any longer, I make a list and set forth to Harvard Square. I could go to a less pricey area, granted, but the Square has its own post office and is within spitting distance of my house.

I waited in line at the post office till I thought I'd grow roots. I bought panties on sale at the Gap. I mourned the passing of Sage's, where they always carried tons of my cat's favorite Fancy Feast, bought a few cans of an off-price substitute at the CVS instead.

I noticed him as I was waiting, along with thirty-five other assorted students, panhandlers, and shoppers, for the scramble light at the intersection of Brattle and Mass. Ave. His gaze lingered a moment too long and I wondered briefly whether I'd met him at a party or exchanged small talk with the man at a bar. He wasn't especially noticeable, a middle-aged, light-skinned black man in a well-cut tweed jacket and charcoal slacks. Didn't hold a candle fashion-wise to the young guy nearby wearing buckskin fringe. Still, I had the feeling I'd seen him before, and I thought it might have been at the post office, behind me in line, or across the room at one of the writing tables, scribbling on the back of an envelope. Then the traffic light changed. The herd charged across the street and dispersed, some heading for the subway, some the shops, some disappearing through the gates to Harvard Yard. I stopped at the Out of Town News Stand, and gazed at the covers of foreign magazines. So did the black man.

The next time I saw him, he was standing outside the Cambridgeport Savings Bank while I was considering a bite to eat at Finagle a Bagel. He'd added a tan raincoat and a battered hat to his attire, and if I had to describe what he was doing, I'd have to say he was doing zip, simply loitering, which made him stand out from the crush of hurrying pedestrians. When I walked past, he fell into step thirty paces behind me.

Now, Cambridge is a crowded city, and Harvard Square is its hub. Teenagers cruise the streets, parading their finery, hoping someone will admire their most recent tattoo or pierced body part, but this guy hadn't been a teen in twenty years easy. I crossed Mass. Ave. again, turned right, then left on Church Street. I hurried past the movie theater and the Globe Corner Bookstore, hung a quick left on Palmer, a glorified alley, slowed down, and kept watch in the plate glass windows of the Coop, purveyor of all things Harvard. Sure enough, there he came, hurtling around the corner, hurrying to catch up. I tried to get a better glimpse of his face, but it was shadowed under the brim of the hat. I feigned interest in the fine art posters displayed in the front window, then sauntered on.

I'd just finished working a case in which I'd managed to frustrate a bunch of survivalists cum terrorists. The Feebies, no less, had warned me to be on the lookout for revenge-crazed looneytunes. But the group supposedly out for my blood was the sort that wouldn't associate with black people, much less admit them as prized members and give them the choice assignment of taking out the half-Jewish bitch who'd foiled their finest scheme.

I used to be a cop, across the river in Boston. I worked Major Crimes and I worked Homicide, and there are no doubt former and future felons who hold a grudge. But I was pretty sure most of them would do a better job of shadowing. Truly, this guy was not good at his work. If he was an accomplished felon, I was Queen of the Junior Prom.

He stayed too close, and then he stayed too far. He didn't know the basics, like walking on the opposite side of the street. He didn't use a shiner, a small mirror, so when he wanted to check where I was he had to turn, risk a full stare, and look straight at me. He was strictly an amateur but bird-dog stubborn, and extremely patient while I visited HMV and sorted through stacks of bargain CDs.

The gent also looked prosperous. If I'd sent him away and he'd come out of jail dressing the way he did, he owed me thanks. I considered strolling over to a beat cop, informing him that the elegant black man was tailing me, but I knew too many Cambridge cops to relish the horselaugh that would follow. Plus, I take pride in handling my own problems. My shadow didn't seem like much of a threat so far, but I wasn't about to lead him home or walk solo down some dark alley where he'd feel free to pull a gun if such was his intent. I could have lost him easily, could have hailed a cab or jumped a bus. Instead, I marched him around the Square while considering my options, then entered the Coop at the Mass. Ave. door, quickly stepped to the right into an open elevator, and pressed the button for the third floor.

As the doors narrowed, I saw my man rush inside and take note of the departing elevator. I figured he'd wait for the next trip, and wait a while, too, since there's only the single car. I had plenty of time to turn left twice and secrete myself in an alcove surrounded by books on medicine and a handy fire extinguisher. Hidden from view, I stuffed my parcels into my backpack, turned my reversible jacket inside-out, blue to gray, and yanked a knitted cap over my red hair. I try to be prepared. Me and the Boy Scouts. It took him four minutes to elbow his way off the elevator and start tracking me down.

I stayed behind him, veering from extreme left to far right, shielded by high bookcases, feeling like a crafty fox who'd turned the table on the hounds. The guy was tenacious, I'll give him that. He didn't approach the information desk or ask any Coop shoppers if they'd seen me. Instead, he walked to the back of the store, glanced down the curving staircase, decided I hadn't taken it, and charged across the third-floor pedestrian bridge, past the restrooms and the phones into the connected Palmer Street Coop. There, he checked out the aisles of the textbook department, then worked his way down the floors of the Palmer Street building. Dorm furnishings, greeting cards, Harvard insignia bears and chairs, sweatshirts and baby booties.

He took the seven steps down into the Brattle Street building, exited, did a brief survey of pedestrian traffic before stopping to consult a Rastafarian street musician who commanded a view of the door. I stayed put behind a circular rack of crimson insignia bathrobes. The guitar player shook his head slowly, dreadlocks wriggling like snakes, and accepted a cash donation. The black man re-entered the Coop, passing within ten feet of my hiding place. I followed him back up the stairs, across Palmer Street, and into the Mass. Ave. building again, where he took the elevator to the third floor and started working his way down through the huge bookstore, philosophy to periodicals to fiction.

He'd reached non-fiction before I grew impatient and approached. When he saw me, a look of relief washed over his face and crinkled the corners of his dark eyes. Then, when he realized I was walking straight towards him, the relief was replaced by panic. He grabbed a book off a pile and buried his nose in it. He was holding
The New Joy of Sex
upside down.

Maybe if he'd picked another book, or if a crease of anxiety hadn't furrowed his brow, or if he hadn't been quite so good-looking, I'd have shoved him against a wall, demanded ID, and threatened him with the cops. As it was, I made do with a firm hand on his arm.

“Store Security,” I said. “Come along—”

“
You are not
.” His low voice was indignant.

“
Gotcha
. How do you know?”

He pursed his lips and thought about fleeing. He was my height, maybe an inch shorter. Six feet, narrow frame. With the shoes he had on, I didn't think he could outrun me.

“Miss Carlyle,” he said. “May I buy you a drink?”

“Isn't it a little early?” I didn't return his smile. He knew my name and I didn't know his, which upset my sense of balance.

“Coffee? Tea?”

“If following me around is your idea of a cool pickup ploy—”

“This is, um, a professional matter.” His fingers discovered he was still clasping the book and replaced it automatically on the table. “It's just I'd rather no one—I'd rather not be seen at the places I usually—places where I'm known—”

The Square is always crowded, the tables in the cafés jammed too close for private conversation. I considered and rejected several convenient spots.
A professional matter
. My home doubles as my office, but like I said before, I wasn't about to guide a stalker, even an inadequate amateur, to my front door. It was chilly for early May, the hard winter refusing to release its grip, but warm enough to camp on a park bench or stroll by the river. I discarded both venues. If the man didn't want to risk being seen with me, neither fit the bill.

I considered simply walking away. Curiosity won out. “Come with me,” I said.

Passim is a music club on Palmer Street, the alley-like stretch between Church and Brattle. It's famous as the reincarnation of the old Club 47, where Dylan and Baez used to play, even though the actual club was in a storefront on Mount Auburn. It's open for lunch, but secluded and sparsely populated in the afternoon. The small stage and tightly packed basement tables are approached by an outside staircase. The staff knows me, because I'm a semi-regular. I can leave the folky stuff alone, but if somebody's playing the blues, especially the old Delta blues, I'm usually in the audience. They don't sell alcohol or let you smoke, but where else can you hear the Nields one night, Paul Rishell and Little Annie Raines the next?

Skinny Sharon, on the desk, gave me a nod. I huddled with her briefly, and then my pursuer and I zigzagged past the kitchen, down the narrow hall near the bathrooms, and turned right into the back room where the talent hangs between sets. I've used it before; it's nothing much—a couch, a couple of chairs, yellowed posters on the walls. Two hard-shell guitar cases were propped haphazardly against the sofa and the place smelled of cigarettes and stale beer, indicating that the talent indulged in vices forbidden to the audience.

I flipped on the overhead light and blinked in the harsh glare. “You want coffee?”

He gave his surroundings a careful once-over. “Actually, no. You?”

“I don't know your name.”

He gazed around the small room like he was searching for the hidden videocam. “Can we leave it like that for a while?”

“A short while.”

I lowered myself into a folding chair and he did the same, both of us avoiding the enforced intimacy of the sprung sofa. The room was so tiny that our knees almost touched. If you could wipe some of the worry off his face, he'd be better than good-looking, I thought. His face was narrow, his forehead high, his nose broad. Angular cheekbones and a strong chin. I'd deliberately brushed against him in the narrow hallway, to ensure that he wasn't carrying in a clip at his waist. He smelled of spicy after-shave, and his tailor hadn't allowed room for a shoulder holster.

“Something I can do for you?” I asked.

He took a deep breath, the kind a man might take before plunging over a cliff into a cold lake of uncertain depth. “Before I say anything, please tell me about your ties to Harvard.”

My eyebrows rose. “You've been tailing the wrong person.”

“Seriously, you don't have
any
?”

More than one local newspaper columnist snidely refers to Harvard as “WGU,” the “World's Greatest University.” Some tourists seem to think Harvard and Cambridge are interchangeable, one and the same, with MIT tossed in as a bonus. The students certainly think they own the place, and the Harvard Corporation actually does own a considerable chunk of the city to which I pay property taxes. Red-brick buildings and ivy-covered walls line both the narrow streets and the major thoroughfares. A constant influx of students keeps the stores humming, the rents astronomical, and the foreign language bookstores in business.

“I walk on their sidewalks. I cross the quadrangle, so I guess I walk on their grass, too. I've used a book or two from Widener, but I swear I returned them.”

“You didn't go there?”

I'd worked nights as a cabbie to afford down-scale UMass–Boston. “Nope.”

“What about your house? Harvard owns property all over that area.”

Bastard knows where I live
. He must have picked me up there this morning. I didn't like that. I'd seen him for the first time at the post office.

“Not
my
property,” I said.

“Ever do any work for them? Ever take a class there?”

I run a one-person private eye outfit, and I doubt Harvard has taken notice even though I'm perched in their back yard. I don't have a sign on my front door. The neighbors would never approve of such a thing, some of them having graduated from the hallowed halls of the WGU.

The extent of my Harvard connection … Let's see; I used to park illegally behind the Ed School before they put in the raised-arm sentry system. I figured he didn't need to know that, so I simply shook my head no.

“Good. Excellent. Next, I need to know about confidentiality. I've never consulted a private investigator before, and I need to know to what degree I can be frank about my requirements.”

“I'm a private citizen, not an officer of the court. If I'm working for an attorney, then his privileges can extend to cover me as well.”

I wasn't sure what this guy did for a living, but whatever it was it paid. His understated clothes were expensive, his hands well kept, the fingernails manicured. His hands were ringless and very pale, the palms paler than my own.

I've been going out with an African-American, an FBI agent temporarily on assignment in Boston, and the paleness of Leon's palms was nowhere near as pronounced.

My stalker bit his lip. “Therefore you could be compelled to testify in a court of law.”