Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 53, No. 12, December 2008

Haven’t Seen You Since the Funeral by Ernest B. and Alice A. Brown

I’d jogged an easy warm-up pace past all the wharves converted into condos along Atlantic Ave, eased into a full run as I rounded the south end of Columbus Park, and was pounding back up Atlantic to my loft on Jackson when my cell phone rang.

“Dymond here.”

“Valerie, is that you?” A man’s voice. Hushed. Almost a whisper. “You sound so gruff.”

Caller ID on the screen said: UNKNOWN NUMBER — UNKNOWN NAME. I slowed my pace and strained to recognize the voice. “Who is this?”

“Oh, don’t slow down, Val,” he said in the same hushed whisper. “You were just reaching your stride.”

I did a quick check of the pedestrians around me. Back at Long Wharf, the seven fifteen from Quincy had just docked, and commuters were streaming through Columbus Park and pouring out across Atlantic Avenue. And almost all of them, it seemed, had a cell phone jammed against their head or tucked into their shoulder. But none of them showed any interest in me.

I picked up my pace again and spoke into the phone. “Okay, who is this? What’s the gag?”

“No gag, Valerie. Been away for a while, just got back. Thought I’d give you a call. You look fantastic, by the way. I haven’t seen you since the funeral.”

Despite the warmth of the morning sun, a tingling dread at the nape of my neck turned cold and crawled down my spine. My father’s funeral was the last one I’d attended, and that had been two years ago.

For half a minute there was silence on the line, then he spoke so softly I could hardly hear him. “Why so quiet, Val? I know you’re there. I can see you’re still holding the phone. And I can hear you breathing.”

“This is getting kind of old,” I said. “I don’t hear a name in the next three seconds, I’m signing off. One...”

“Now, Val, there’s no need to get so testy. That lawyer must be working you too hard. Maybe you should have stayed on the police force.”

“Two...”

“All right, Val, if that’s the way you want it, bye-bye for now, but I’ll be seeing you.”

The way he whispered, “I’ll be seeing you,” sent another shiver down my spine. If the creep was trying to give me goose bumps, he’d succeeded. And I could still feel him out there somewhere, watching.

I snapped my head around to scan the buildings across the street, but all the windows were a blinding gold reflection of the early morning sun.

What the hell’s the matter with you, girl? Getting spooked by some whispering weirdo on the phone who knows your name. I shook my head, picked up my pace, and concentrated on my breathing.

I got my rhythm back and started thinking. I had just cleared Columbus Park when he said he hadn’t seen me since the funeral. And by the time he told me that he could see I still had the phone in my hand and could hear my breathing, I was almost back to Battery Wharf. To keep me in sight for that distance, he had to be running along behind me.

Or following in a car.

I spun around, running backwards, and checked the street behind me. No one, running or otherwise, was there. But I caught a glimpse of the tail end of an electric blue Dodge Neon as it turned off Atlantic Ave at Hanover and disappeared around the corner.

Fed up with the politics, the good-old-boy network, and the testosterone-laden air, I’d quit the Boston Police Department six years ago and gone to work as a part-time investigator, full-time secretary/receptionist, and all-around runner of errands for an ambulance-chasing attorney on State Street. And in three short years — along with more insight into sue-an’-settle litigation than you’d ever get in law school — I’d satisfied the State’s requirement of “not less than three years as an investigator” and applied for my own license. That was also the year my dad retired from the police department.

He took early retirement eleven months after Sebastian Cass, a small-time drug dealer he had arrested, got shanked by another prisoner in county lockup while awaiting trial. With his sobbing wife Maria, who swore he was innocent, his sixteen-year-old son Angelo, who screamed police brutality, and a three-network media contingency at his side, Sebastian Cass died a week later.

There had been two other police-related deaths that summer — bungled arrests that ended with the suspects being shot — and the mayor, the media, and all five gubernatorial hopefuls in that year’s election were pointing fingers and hollering reform.

For Dad, the incidents themselves were bad enough, but the daily hounding on TV and in the papers was more than he could stand. Disheartened, he retired.

Being on the job had always been Dad’s reason for getting out of bed each day. And when he quit the force, he lost his sense of purpose and sank into depression. He caught a cold he couldn’t shake that winter and wound up in Mass General with pneumonia. And not quite thirteen months into his retirement, Dad died.

I didn’t give my whispering weirdo much thought again until late the next afternoon on my way to a strip club with the subtle name of Bottoms Up. I had a subpoena tucked in my bag for a no-show witness named Ezekiel Jones, and I’d spent the better part of an increasingly overcast day trudging in and out of a dozen dingy strip joints looking for him.

The way he whispered, “I’ll be seeing you,” sent a shiver down my spine.

I’d picked up a tip that Ezekiel liked to spend a lot of time watching the ladies undress, so I’d gone online and put together a list of all the titty bars and strip joints I could find in the Greater Boston area. Bottoms Up was the last one on my list. It shared space with a cut-rate package store in an other-wise abandoned shopping mall tucked into a corner somewhere near the border of Everett, Revere, and Chelsea.

I’d crossed high over the Mystic River on the Tobin Bridge, and as I descended into Chelsea, I looked out across the rooftops down a line of stubby chimneys sprouting from the tar-and-gravel roofs like a row of tombstones, and remembered where I’d first served papers on the elusive Ezekiel Jones.

I try to go through the Globe and the Herald front to back every day, and I’d thought I was one sharp lady P.I. the morning I’d spotted Ezekiel’s name as the sole surviving son in his father’s obituary. On the day of the service, I parked outside the funeral parlor, followed the procession to the cemetery, and bagged Ezekiel as he and his mother were leaving.

But Zeke’s mother proved pretty sharp herself. She had found out where I lived and was waiting for me outside my door the next morning breathing fire.

“My son had nothin’ to do with that guy gettin’ shot—” throwing the balled-up subpoena in my face “—an’ no way am I gonna let you get him killed.” She had the husky voice of a heavy smoker and the withering glare of an avenging angel. “He won’t be showin’ his face in no courtroom.”

And I didn’t have any better luck with the criminal defense attorney who’d hired me when I told him what had happened, either. He’d needed Ezekiel as the key witness for the defense in a murder trial and had hired me to find him.

“Were there any witnesses besides his mother when you served him?” he asked.

“No. No witnesses. I thought it might be just a tad insensitive to barge into the cemetery and slap the paper on him as they were lowering his father’s casket into the ground. I waited outside until the service was over and grabbed him as he and his mother were leaving.”

“But nobody actually saw you hand him the papers?”

“Just his mother.”

“So, when he swears he wasn’t served, it’s only your word against his?”

“Yeah, I guess, but—”

“Then you’re gonna have to serve him again.”

I’d not only lost the ensuing argument about why I had to serve the subpoena a second time, I’d failed to convince him he should pay me twice if I did.

And that’s how come — putting in a long day for short money chasing down Ezekiel Jones for the second time — I happened to remember my weirdo on the phone again.

Down a ramp off the bridge into Chelsea. A row of chimneys like tombstones—

...been away for a while, just got back...

Caught up with Ezekiel the first time outside a cemetery in Jamaica Plain—

...thought I’d give you a call...

Came out of hiding to bury his father—

...you look fantastic, by the way... haven’t seen you since the funeral.

I pushed through the doorway, stopped as it swished closed behind me, and let my eyes adjust to the gloomy interior. Along the wall to my right, a handful of guys sat drinking bottled beer with their backs against the bar. They, and the dozen or so patrons at a scattering of tables, were paying rapt attention to a small stage where a nearly naked redhead was making apathetic love to the ubiquitous brass pole. I headed for the bar.

Wearing khakis, a muscle shirt, and tattoos up both arms, the guy slinging beer at this end of the bar obviously spent a lot of his time pumping iron. Probably popping steroids too. But I’d have bet the farm he couldn’t spell it. Without a doubt he doubled as the bouncer.

The other bartender — khaki cut-offs, a cropped white tank top, and a ton of makeup — looked every bit as bored as the redhead who worked the pole. I made my way down the bar and climbed up on a stool in front of her. The nametag pinned over one of her more than ample breasts read MICKIE.

She gave me a blank look. “What’ll it be?”

“Beer’s good.”

“Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite, or Coors?”

“I’ll take a Miller Lite.”

She pulled a Miller Lite from a chest beneath the bar, popped the top, and set the bottle down in front of me. No napkin, no glass. “That’ll be nine bucks.”

I’d done this so many times today that I had it down pat. I had stacked a twenty dollar bill, my P.I. license, and Ezekiel’s picture together in my bag. I slipped the little bundle out and laid it on the bar with the twenty on top.

I was the only female patron in the place, and from the other end of the bar, Mr. Muscles was watching me with a snarl on his face that said dyke. I leaned forward, put my arm on the bar so he couldn’t see what I was doing, and with my little finger slid the twenty sideways so Mickie could see my license. She leaned forward, squinted at my picture on the license, then looked up at me and scowled. I slid my license sideways and tapped Ezekiel’s picture a couple of times. When she looked down at his picture, I nudged the twenty toward her and said, “What d’ya say, Mickie, seen him around?”

She looked up and nodded.

“Today?” I said.

Another nod.

“When?”

She smiled, scooped up the twenty, and tipped her head toward the back of the room. “Dipshit’s in the john right now.”

I jammed Zeke’s picture and my license back in my bag and hopped off the stool.

So, the cheapskate who’d hired me wanted witnesses. Okay. I grabbed a chair from an empty table and dragged it to the men’s room. I yanked the door wide open, slamming it against the wall, and propped it open with the chair.

From behind the bar, a scowling Mr. Muscles jabbed a finger at me and yelled, “Hey!” But he couldn’t seem to make what he was looking at compute. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open, poking holes in the air with his finger.

“Well, if it isn’t Ezekiel Jones,” I said as I walked into the men’s room.

He jumped and turned away from the urinal, saw me standing there with the door propped open, and bent almost double getting tucked away. I stepped up to him, rolling the subpoena up lengthways, and jammed it down into his unzipped trousers. “Consider yourself served, Zeke,” I said. “And the spooky phone call? Not convincing. Laid it on way too thick.”

He stood there gaping at me with a puzzled frown.

I shook my head and turned to leave. “Careful you don’t rip anything zipping up,” I said.

When I walked out, Mickie was sipping from my Miller Lite and doing everything she could to keep from laughing. As I walked by, she pumped her fist and mouthed, “Yes.”

I gave her a wink, shot Mr. Muscles with my finger, and walked out the door.

And even though gray streaks of cloud were trying hard to block the sun, by the time I hit the parking lot I felt like singing. I had located Ezekiel Jones and served him — within twenty-four hours this time — and thought I’d solved the mystery of my whispering weirdo.

I climbed into my aging Honda, coaxed the engine to life, and was adjusting the rearview mirror when I caught a glimpse of an electric blue Neon pulling out of a space a couple of rows behind me. I buckled up, backed out of my space, and took off after the Neon with my heart thumping in my throat. But by the time I made it to the exit, the Neon was gone. I sat there shaking with my jaw clenched so tightly my teeth hurt and pounded on the steering wheel.

I’d put in a hard five working the streets of Boston in a P.D. blue-and-white, another three tracking down witnesses and cherry-picking testimony for a trip-and-fall attorney, then the last three on my own ticket doing messy little odd jobs for lawyers who didn’t want to get mud on their Guccis or muss up their hair. I thought I was capable of remaining reasonably cool, relatively calm, and fairly well collected. So why was I letting this weirdo push all my buttons?

I had crossed back over the Tobin Bridge into Charlestown, swung around up onto Rutherford Ave, rattled out over the upper end of the Inner Harbor on the antiquated Charlestown Bridge, and was sitting there stuck in traffic in the shadow of the soaring concrete spires and splayed cable-stays of the Lenny Zakim Bridge when my phone rang. I plucked it out of the cup holder without thinking.

“Yeah, Dymond here.”

For a couple of seconds, only the hiss of electronic white noise... then the soft voice, “Val, you always sound so angry.”

And in that instant, in one of those intuitive flashes, I knew what was causing my anger and why. The hushed voice, not being able to see him or know who he was, had touched on something primal, some primitive foreboding of unseen things that prowl in the dark. I wasn’t really pissed off at myself or the creep on the phone. The anger was nothing more than a blind reaction to fear. And I’m not that easily frightened, either. But I’d let that hushed, disembodied voice on the phone get to me. Time to turn this thing around.

“Hey, Skippy,” I said. “How’s it going?”

Silence... then, “Don’t call me that, Val.”

“What do you mean, don’t call you Skippy?”

More silence.

“Okay, so what do you want me to call you?”

“Come on, Val, I know you know who I am.”

“Probably do, if I wanted to bother taking the time to think about it, which I don’t. So why don’t you give me a clue.”

“I’m hurt you don’t remember, Val. It’s only been four years.”

“Look, Skip, I’ve had a busy day and I’m tired, so get to the point. Did you call to play guessing games, or did you just get tired of pulling the wings off of flies?”

The couple of seconds of dead air that followed felt more like a couple of years. And when he came back on the line, the hushed whisper had taken on a nasty hiss. “You shouldn’t speak to me that way, bitch.”

“Bitch? Oh, Skippy, now you’ve gone and hurt my feelings. I mean, really. What happened to that nice throaty ‘Vaahl’?”

The hiss became a snarl. “You will regret that; you will regret mocking me.”

“Now, you’re not threatening me here, are you, Skippy?”

“To disregard the pain of others is callous,” he said, “but to inflict pain is evil. And evil must be punished.”

“What evil? I have to tell you, Skippy, you’re starting to sound like an old Vincent Price movie, here. But let me give you—”

“Evil is spawned by evil,” he cut in, “and you are—”

“Hey, Skip, give it a rest and listen up, okay? Making annoying phone calls, as long as it isn’t deemed to be stalking, is only a misdemeanor. But threatening bodily harm over the phone is a felony. And if you think just ‘cause you’re whispering into some throwaway phone I can’t find you, Skippy, you’re dreaming. Finding losers like you is what I do for a living.”

“Oh don’t worry, Val,” he whispered, “you won’t have to find me. When it’s time, I’ll find you.”

Despite my bravado, I could taste adrenaline at the back of my throat and feel the fine hair stand up on my arms. I’d had him pegged as a slightly warped weirdo, but he was starting to sound totally bent.

I scanned the cars in the traffic jam around me. He had to be somewhere close by. I could feel it.

I was looking from one side mirror to the other and back again when the guy in the cab over box truck behind me leaned on his horn. The traffic in front of me had started to move.

I hit my left directional, pulled into the outside lane for my turn onto Commercial Street, and sat waiting for a break in the oncoming traffic. The box truck rumbled by on my right headed up Washington Street. And there it was, a couple of car lengths behind him, the electric blue Neon. He was stuck in the middle lane between the line of cars behind me waiting to turn left, and the line on the other side of him waiting to turn right. He had nowhere to go but straight ahead.

He punched the gas, shot out into the intersection, but had to jump on the brakes to avoid slamming into the rear end of the slow-moving box truck. He pulled out to the left to get by the truck. No room. Just a blaring of horns from oncoming traffic. He swerved all the way back to the right, flew up the handicap cut in the curb at the corner, bounced up onto the sidewalk, and barreled past the box truck in a cloud of sparks and red brick dust gouged off the buildings on his right.

On the sidewalk halfway down the block, a bag lady in a tattered, gray, ankle-length dress and black high-tops let go of her shopping cart and threw both arms up in front of her face. With barely ten feet to go before hitting her, the Neon cut left, plowed over a parking meter that exploded and spewed a fountain of coins in the air, bounced down over the curb in front of the box truck, and hightailed it up Washington Street toward Haymarket Square.

Instead of turning left, I drove straight ahead through the intersection and pulled over by the remains of the parking meter. I dug out a notepad and pen, and while the bag lady scurried around on her hands and knees scooping up quarters and cackling with glee, I jotted down the first four digits I’d gotten off the Neon’s license plate.

I flipped open my cell, scrolled down through CONTACTS to LENIHAN, and hit SEND.

I’d met Sergeant Detective Lenihan a few months back when he had been the primary on what had started as an incident of shoplifting, but ended with the manager of the shop dead on the floor. Unfortunately, the manager had been one of three Newbury Street merchants who had hired me to protect them from shoplifters. With a little help from me and a lot of luck, Lenihan had closed the case in less than twenty-four hours. And me? No, I didn’t get any shoplifters. I got canned.

I had to work my way through three or four variations of “Homicide”... “Who?”... “Oh, Lenihan, yeah, he’s here somewhere, hang on, I’ll get him,” before he finally came on the line and growled, “Lenihan here.”

“You ever had the bianco pizza at Nicolai’s?” I said.

“What?... what’s that?”

“Caramelized onion, prosciutto, and parmesan cream.”

He only missed a couple of beats, then he let out a long sigh. “Ah yes, Valerie Dymond, my favorite lady gumshoe.”

“Wow. You remembered me? I’m flattered.”

All I got for an answer on that was, “Umm.”

“But favorite, you say, huh? How many lady gumshoes do you know, anyhow? And that should really be woman gumshoe, by the way. Nobody uses lady as a modifier anymore.”

“ ‘Lady as a modifier?’ And you wonder how come I remember you? But you are the only one I know, Val. And one of you is more than enough. So what d’ya want?”

“What makes you think I want something? Maybe I just wanted to know how you’ve been, see if you’d like to shoot out after work for pizza and a couple a cold ones.”

“Not buyin’ that. Some snazzylookin’ young, ahh, woman P.I. calls askin’ a worn-out old cop like me out for pizza, I know it ain’t my company she’s lookin’ for.”

“Young and snazzylooking? You silver-tongued devil, you. But I’m not that young, Lenihan. And for that matter, you’re not that old.”

He paused just long enough before he answered to make me wonder what he was thinking. And to wonder why the hell I’d even said it.

“What I have,” I said, hoping the flush on my face didn’t show in my voice, “is a partial plate number. What I need is a list of possibles.”

“Jesus, Val, you know I can’t do that. You been readin’ too much Parker.”

“Okay, okay, scrub the bianco pizza. You ever had their pasta primavera?”

“You trying to bribe a police officer?”

“Absolutely, yes.”

“Look, Val, you’re not on the job anymore, and you—”

“Come on, Lenihan, you know I wouldn’t be bugging you with this if it wasn’t something heavy. Some sicko’s been harassing me with anonymous phone calls and following me around in his car. And this afternoon I finally got the first four digits off his plate.”

Silence. Another deep sigh, then, “Okay, give me what you got.”

“It’s an electric blue Dodge Neon, no more than two years old, Mass plate, first four digits: 2-R-T-4.”

He repeated the make, year, color, and partial plate.

“That’s it,” I said. “How long will it take to put together a list of possibles?”

“It’ll take longer to get through to someone at the Registry of Motor Vehicles than it’ll take their computer to spit out the list. Call me back in a half an hour.”

“No, I meant it about the pizza and a couple of cold ones. You working the eight-to-four?”

“Yeah, supposedly.”

I glanced at my watch. It was almost five o’clock. “So why don’t you sign out as soon as the list comes through and bring it over to Nicolai’s.”

I could hear him tapping on the desk as he thought it over. “We talking Nicolai’s on Prince Street?”

“Yes,” I said, “and I’m buying.”

“Okay, but I need at least another hour here to wrap up a couple of things. See you there about seven.”

I was sipping a Sam Adams at the far end of the bar — one eye on the second inning of a Sox and Yankees night game at Fenway on the forty-two-inch plasma and one eye on the front door — when Lenihan walked in.

Despite sloping shoulders and a tendency to slouch, weighing in at two-fifty and topping six and a half feet, he’s a commanding presence anywhere short of an NFL locker room. His fashion presence, however, is something else again. Decked out tonight in a shapeless tweed sport coat with leather-patched elbows, faded blue jeans, and scuff-toed brown loafers, there wasn’t a chance he was going to make this year’s list of the ten best-dressed men in Boston. But all that aside, there was some little-boy-inside-a-grizzly-bear-suit thing about him I found disconcertingly arousing.

Without breaking stride, he gave the place that casual once-over that all but screams badge, shot me a quick smile that made his slate blue eyes crinkle at the outside edges, and ambled down along the bar in my direction.

He looked down at me and ran a huge hand through his iron gray hair. “How’s it goin’, Slim?”

“Hey, Lenihan.” I got up and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and even with my height, I had to stand on tiptoe.

He reddened a little, covered by running a hand through his hair again while he slid out a barstool.

As we sat down, the two silk-suited wannabes who’d been eyeballing me from the other end of the bar developed a sudden interest in the ballgame on TV.

The bartender came over and Lenihan pointed to my Sam and said, “Another one for Slim here, and the same thing for me.”

“And a couple of menus,” I said.

Lenihan looked up at the TV. “How they doin’?”

“Four zip Yankees, and it’s only the second inning.”

The bartender, menus tucked under his arm, brought two bottles of Sam and a tall frosted pint glass for Lenihan.

“So, I said, “what’d RMV come up with when they ran the partial plate?”

Lenihan filled his glass. “Well, there’s good news and bad news.”

“That always means it’s mostly bad news,” I said as Lenihan held up his glass and I clinked it with mine, “but here’s to whatever good news you’ve got.”

“Well, the good news is, we know your electric blue Neon is registered to an outfit called Inter City Rental out of New York. They have rental fleets at most of the major East Coast airports. I got hold of one of their managers here in Boston, and he told me the ‘2’ on the plate means it’s a two-door compact. The ‘RT’ stands for rental, it’s on all their plates, and the ‘4’ means it’s a Dodge Neon. But without the last two digits, it could be any one of the twenty-seven Neons in their Boston fleet.”

“That was the good news?” I said. “Not sure I want to hear the bad news.”

He held up his hand. “Hold on a minute, I’m still on the good news. Out of the twenty-seven Neons, thirteen are that color blue. And out of those, only seven are currently rented.”

“Seven,” I said, “not bad. I was expecting something the size of the list of registered Democrats in Cambridge.”

Lenihan took a healthy hit on his beer and cleared his throat. “Now the bad news.”

“No list?” I said.

“No list. They said no way were they going to violate the privacy of seven of their customers without a court order.”

The bartender came down and asked if we were ready to order.

“What did you call that pizza?” Lenihan asked me, “with, what was it, caramelized onion and parmesan something-or-other?”

“Pizza bianco,” I said. “Caramelized onion, prosciutto, and parmesan cream.”

The bartender gave us an apologetic frown. “Sorry folks, we stop serving pizza at four.”

Lenihan twisted around on his stool to face me, which exposed the worn butt of the ancient.38 revolver he carries cross-draw on his left hip and the gold shield pinned to his belt. “No pizza,” he said, shaking his head. “Do you know what the penalty is for purposefully giving a police officer false information?”

I held both hands out to Lenihan, wrists touching. “I guess you’ll just have to arrest me.”

The bartender was looking down at the gun and the badge on Lenihan’s belt. “Maybe you’re in luck, though,” he said. “I think the guy that does the pizza is still here.” He gave Lenihan a wink. “If he hasn’t shut down the oven yet, I think we can make an exception, Chief.”

Lenihan told him it would be great if he could, and to make it two pizza biancos.

When the bartender left I said, “Okay, so what are the odds on getting a court order for Inter City’s paperwork on the seven electric blue Neons?”

“Pretty good. The probable cause threshold for stalking is a lot lower now than it used to be. We may not have to go that route, though. I got a buddy who’s a state cop, a sergeant over at the Logan International substation. I gave him a call. He says the Staties are forever bending the RESTRICTED AREA-NO PARKING rules at the airport for the rental companies. Says he’ll go have a talk with this guy, see what he can come up with. In the meantime, fill me in on the details, the whole thing, right from the top.”

I laid it all out for Lenihan, starting with the first phone call yesterday morning, and was describing the bag lady’s narrow escape when the bartender slid two steaming pizza biancos across the bar. And the sweet smell of caramelized onion reminded me I’d eaten nothing since my corn muffin and coffee that morning.

Three quick slices later, Lenihan came up for air, dabbed at his mouth with a napkin, signaled the barkeep for another pair of Sams, and said, “So you got no idea who it is doin’ this?”

“Not a clue. Earlier today, when I remembered I’d served Ezekiel Jones the first time at his father’s funeral, I thought maybe all that ‘haven’t seen you since the funeral’ stuff and the Neon following me around was Zeke trying to scare me off. Then I catch up with him this afternoon at Bottoms Up, tuck a subpoena down the front of his trousers, walk out the door, and there’s the electric blue Neon pulling out of the parking lot. So no way was it Zeke.”

Lenihan stopped with the glass halfway to his mouth. “Yeah, but who says it had to be Zeke? Coulda been someone he’s got helping him. Seems like a lot of hassle, though, doesn’t it? Just to keep from testifying.”

“Maybe,” I said, “maybe not. The lawyer who hired me to find Zeke says it was a drive-by, some gang thing that he witnessed. Says Zeke’s testimony will clear his client. If that is true, Zeke knows the shooter and his bunch, if they could find him, would give him a Dorchester facial just to keep him from testifying, and would whack him, his sister, his mother, and his dog if he did. But after getting a glimpse of the Neon leaving the lot at Bottoms Up when I knew Zeke was still inside in the men’s room, I’m beginning to wonder if he had anything at all to do with the phone calls.”

“Yeah,” Lenihan said around a mouthful of pizza, “and all that ‘spawn of evil must be punished’ crap sounds more like a twenty-four carat crazy than some Dorchester homie.”

“Sure does,” I said. “And now I think about it, the implied threat in ‘when it’s time, I’ll find you’ doesn’t really feel like Zeke, either. Or, for that matter, fit a witness-in-hiding scenario.”

“Wait a minute—” Lenihan spun around on his stool to face me. “—how about your father’s?”

“My father’s what?”

“Funeral. Maybe your phone-freak’s somebody hasn’t seen you since your father’s funeral.”

“God, Dad’s funeral was two years ago, I don’t remember much of anything about it. It was such a blur. Bagpipes and the overwhelming smell of flowers, cops in dress blues everywhere, and relatives I don’t remember ever meeting mumbling words of sympathy I couldn’t seem to hear. I don’t know, I don’t think I could tell you who was there or who wasn’t.”

Lenihan looked down at his hands and nodded. “Yeah, know how that goes.”

I wondered what he meant by that, but I didn’t ask.

He tipped his glass high and drained it. “What about that pusher your father bagged a couple of years back? What was his name, the one someone stuck a shiv into over at County?”

“Cass,” I said, “his name was Sebastian Cass.”

“Yeah,” he said, “Cass, that’s the guy. The stink the press raised over that one, you’da thought some head of state got offed. But I don’t suppose you went to that funeral.”

“No, I didn’t. But I do remember driving through the mob scene at the church.”

“You were there?”

“I was dropping off Dad. He went to the church service. Cass getting murdered in lockup really tore Dad up badly. That and the media circus it started was why he retired.”

It was getting late. We had polished off both pizzas and downed the last of our beer. On the forty-two-inch plasma, two post-game commentators were analyzing Boston’s four-nothing loss to New York. The bartender came down and waggled a finger at our empty glasses. “Two more?”

Lenihan glanced at his watch. “I’m good, how about you, Slim?”

“No, I’m all set. Didn’t mean to keep you out so late. Hope I haven’t gotten you in trouble.”

Lenihan was reaching for his wallet. He stopped and looked at me and arched an eyebrow. “In trouble with who?”

His left hand was resting on the bar. I laid my right hand on top of it and tapped his wedding ring with my middle finger.

“Oh.” He looked down at the ring. “No, she’s been, ah—” He busied himself with his wallet. “—gone for three years, now.”

Knowing how common it was among cops, I said, “Divorce?”

He shook his head. “Breast cancer.”

“Aw shit,” I said, “sorry. Someday I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.”

“It’s okay, no sweat. Like I said, it’s been three years.”

I pointed at his wallet. “Put that away. I told you, this one’s on me.”

The bartender, who had discreetly turned his attention to the TV screen when I did the bit with Lenihan’s ring, turned back to Lenihan and held up his hand. “Uh-uh, Chief,” he said. “Compliments of the house.”

I slipped a folded twenty from my bag and gave the bartender a sugar handshake. “Thanks,” I said. “Appreciate the after-hours pizza.”

We headed for the door and Lenihan asked, “Did you drive or walk?”

“Drove.”

“Where d’ya park?”

“Over on North Street.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

A heavy mist haloed the streetlights, and the air was pregnant with the smell of the harbor and the promise of rain. Side by side. Not quite touching. Our footsteps muffled in the heavy mist. I was acutely aware of his nearness.

When we got to my car he said, “I’m gonna give you my cell number.”

I must have looked surprised.

“You see the Neon or hear from this guy again, I want you to call me.”

I beeped the lock, opened the driver’s side door, and, in the glow of the overhead light, thumbed the number he gave me into my phone. He held the door open as I slid in under the wheel.

He leaned down, one hand still holding the top of the door, and put his other hand on my shoulder and gently shook it. “I mean it, Slim,” he said looking down into my eyes, “you hear from this wacko again or see him call my cell right away. Okay?”

My pulse quickened when he touched my shoulder, and my breath felt hot in my throat. I managed a hoarsely whispered, “Okay.”

He stepped back and closed the door.

I pulled away from the curb and headed home.

Jackson Ave shows up on most street maps of Boston, but it’s not really a street. It’s a wide brick walkway that rambles up from Commercial Street down on the waterfront to Charter Street up on Copp’s Hill. It’s fronted on one side by a row of three-story, ancient brick houses and bordered on the other by the low walls of a hillside park called Copp’s Hill Terraces. My loft occupies the third floor, front to back, of one of the narrow old houses halfway up Jackson.

Parking spaces are scarce down on Commercial and nonexistent up on Charter, so, for not a lot less than the monthly mortgage payment on a small house in the suburbs, I lease a parking space in a lot just west of Jackson Ave. on Commercial.

The heavy mist had turned to rain. I was drifting along in the late evening traffic on Commercial Street, windshield wipers ticking away, recalling the look in Lenihan’s eyes and the way his hand felt on my shoulder, smiling at the warm glow I got thinking about it.

But somewhere, way back there in my erotically blurred brain cells, something was screaming at me. Jumping up and down to be remembered. Something the weirdo had said on the phone. Something about the ballgame on TV. I knew it was back there. But between all the beer and pizza and my libido working overtime, I was having trouble doing any heavy thinking.

I drove past the lower end of the stairway up to Copp’s Hill Terraces, signaled for the left turn into my parking lot, glanced up at the rearview mirror, and spotted the Neon as it passed under a streetlight two cars behind me. The sudden jolt of seeing him behind me threw a bucketful of water on my fuzzyheaded musings.

And I remembered.

The ballgame. The score. Four-nothing. Four, Val, you scatterbrain, four.

He had told me, when I’d asked him what he wanted me to call him, “I’m hurt you don’t remember, Val, it’s only been four years.”

I zipped into the lot, skidded into a U-turn around the attendant’s shack, swiped my pass-card through the slot at the exit gate, banged a right back out on Commercial, and passed the Neon coming the other way. In the mirror I saw the Neon’s brake lights flash red and its rear end slither sideways on the rain-slicked roadway.

I pulled over and double-parked at the foot of the long stairway up to Copp’s Hill Terraces. I grabbed my handbag, hopped out of the car, and made a dash for the stairs. Halfway up I looked over my shoulder and saw the Neon skid to a stop behind my car. Someone leaped out of the Neon and headed for the stairway. I pulled out my phone, hit my new entry for Lenihan, and took the rest of the stairs two at a time.

I ran out into the park just far enough so whoever was coming up the stairs below could no longer see me, squatted down and duck-walked back into the shadow of the low wall at the head of the stairs, and was unzipping the side compartment of my handbag when Lenihan finally answered his phone.

“I’m up on Copp’s Hill Terraces,” I whispered into the phone, “and the wacko in the Neon is coming up the stairs after me. Get some cops over here, like now.”

Lenihan was yelling something I couldn’t hear as I closed the phone, dropped it into my pocket, and slid the compact Beretta out of the side compartment of my bag.

Above the hiss of the rain, I could now hear the heavy clomp of footsteps coming up the stairs. A dark figure barged through the opening in the wall, slid to a stop on the wet paving, and stood there staring into the empty corners of the park.

With the gun held down by the side of my leg, I stepped up behind him and said, “Looking for me?”

He jumped and spun around to face me.

It had only been four years since a grieving sixteen-year-old boy had watched me as I dropped my father off at his father’s funeral. But wild eyed and seething, rain matting his hair and running down his face, Angelo Cass now looked a hundred years older. He had a knife in his hand.

“I told you you’d regret mocking me.” He waved the knife in my face. “You are the spawn of evil, and evil must be—”

I slammed my left forearm up into his wrist, pushing the knife out of my face, and rammed the gun up under his nose.

“In case you don’t recognize it,” I said, “what you’re smelling is gun oil.”

His eyes crossed and watered as he tried to look down at the gun pressed up under his nose.

“Nine millimeter,” I said, “Ten rounds—” I thumbed off the safety. “—and just a twitch of my finger and it’s gonna go bang.”

His eyes bulged and he strained his head back away from the gun.

I leaned into him and kept the muzzle jammed up into his nose. “So unless you want that dysfunctional brain of yours scattered all over the park, I would suggest you drop the knife.”

He stretched both arms out to the side, still looking down cross-eyed at the gun under his nose, and opened his hand. The knife slipped from his fingers and fell to the ground.

I had Angelo on his face — legs spread-eagled, fingers laced at the back of his neck — when all hell broke loose.

Up above on Charter Street, a BPD cruiser, light bar pulsing blue and white, gave the siren a couple of whelps and screeched to a stop. And Lenihan’s unmarked, detachable bubble flashing red on the roof, screamed into a U-turn down on Commercial. Two uniforms, guns drawn, came charging down the steps from Charter as Lenihan bolted up the steps from below. And within fifteen minutes, there were cruisers clogging both streets and enough cops in the park for a St. Paddy’s Day parade.

Working the scene under battery-powered halogens, a pair of CSU techs had bagged the knife, while two detectives from the A-1 hooked up Cass, read him his rights, and hauled him off. They had wanted me to come back to the station, but Lenihan convinced them they’d be busy enough getting Cass booked and bedded for the night. Said he’d bring me by first thing in the morning to make a full statement.

One after another, the cops and the crime scene techs climbed into their cruisers and vans and pulled out, leaving the streets clear and the park empty. Lenihan and I were sitting over on the Jackson Ave side of the wall across the walkway from the door to my building. It had stopped raining.

“So,” I said, “your buddy the statie over at Logan came up with the list?”

“Yup. Said the night guy on the desk at Inter City Rental gave it to him off the computer.”

“Just like that, no problem?”

“Nope. No problem. Just a matter of knowing who to ask, how to ask, and when.”

“Sure,” I said, “also helps to be wearing a state police uniform and a badge that says SERGEANT when you’re doing the asking.”

“Can’t hurt,” he said. “Anyhow, said he’d fax over the seven names, addresses, and plate numbers, but I had him read me the seven names over the phone. And one of them was Angelo Cass. The ‘Angelo’ part didn’t sound right to me — I didn’t know about the son then. But Cass? Too much of a coincidence. So I called in and had one of our guys run it through the mill.”

“And?”

“And it seems young Angelo started racking up a record shortly after his father got whacked. Punched out one of his teachers — no formal charges, but that got him expelled. Then a couple of disorderlies — no finding — a disturbing the peace — a year’s probation on that one — then he gets into it with a cop in Downtown Crossing, takes a swing at him, gets arrested, calls the judge an f’ing pig at his prelim, and tries to go over the rail after him — in handcuffs, yet. That earned him a broken nose and a three-to-five at M.C.I. Cedar Junction. And guess what? They turned him loose just last week.”

“Aha,” I said, “so that’s why he said something about the lawyer working me too hard the first time he called me, said I should have stayed on the police force.”

“Yup. He was inside when you got your license and set up shop. He thought you were still working for that lawyer over on State Street. Anyhow, all that’s what I was trying to tell you when you called for the troops then hung up the phone.”

“Sorry about that, but I was kind of busy.”

“Yeah, I’d say. But you already had it worked out it was him, huh?”

“A little late, but yes, I finally got it. My dad’s funeral was two years ago, and Zeke’s father’s was the week before last. So the only funeral he could have seen me at four years ago was his father’s. And if I hadn’t been working so hard trying to prove to him how tough I was, I’d have gotten it as soon as he said it.”

“Don’t beat yourself up, Slim, that was a lot of spooky stuff, all that spawn of evil must be punished crap.”

“And that’s another thing I should have picked up on right away. I should have known he was referring to my father when he said I was the spawn of evil, and Angelo has to be the only person I can think of who ever would have had a reason to think of Dad as being evil.”

Lenihan stood up and paced back and forth in front of me. “I guess I can see him thinkin’ the only reason his father winds up getting killed in jail is because your father arrested him, and I can understand him redirecting his grief over the loss of his father into hate for your father. But what I don’t get is how he gets from there to goin’ after you.”

I shrugged. “Not sure. Probably some sort of perversion of what the shrinks call transference.”

“Translation, please, for those of us dummies who majored in Criminal Justice.”

“Hey, easy on the ‘dummies’ stuff, I’m doing CJ nights at UMass myself. What I meant was, he knew I’d been a cop, too, so when the object of his hate died, he just transferred his hate from my father to me.”

“Hmm—” He cocked his head to one side and shrugged. “—makes sense, I guess.”

“What do you think will happen to Cass?” I said. “He never really got around to hurting anybody.”

“Hard to say, but he’ll get a preliminary hearing sometime in the next twenty-four hours, at which time, if I had to guess, the judge will send him down to Bridgewater for a series of psych evals. Whether he stands trial for stalking and assault with a deadly weapon or just gets institutionalized for a couple years will probably depend on whether or not the dome-doctors find him non compos mentis.”

“So, what’s your guess? Think he’ll wind up doing the hard time?”

He shook his head. “Who knows. Even if they find him mentally competent to stand trial, between overcrowded prisons, overburdened courts, and some of the over-the-top judges in this state, it’s anybody’s guess. But either way, it’s better than even money he’ll be back out on the street in a couple a years.”

“Now there’s something to look forward to,” I said.

A crescent-shaped slice of new moon had climbed out of the clouds and rode high above the harbor like a lopsided smile.

Lenihan looked down at his feet, glanced up at me, then turned and stared out at the harbor. He stuck his hands in his pockets, took a deep breath, and held it.

“Okay, Lenihan,” I said, “what’s the problem?”

He looked back at me and blew the breath he’d been holding out the side of his mouth. “No problem,” he said. “It’s just that it’s been so goddamned long that I, ah... I don’t know, I guess I don’t remember how to, ah...”

“Don’t remember how to what?” I said.

He shrugged it off and tried a smile. “Never mind, forget it. So what’s a guy gotta do to get a beer around here this time a night, anyhow?”

“Come on,” I said. I hooked my arm in his and walked him toward my door. I looked up at him and grinned. “As this old cop I know once told me,” I said, handing him my key, “ ‘Just a matter of knowing who to ask, how to ask, and when.’ ”

Copyright ©2008 Ernest B. & Alice A. Brown