Boston Cream

CHAPTER 14

“Sounds like a fix-up to me,” Jenn said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You and the rabbi’s daughter. Didn’t he mention she was single?”

“Yes.”

“Just dropped it into the conversation.”

“In the context of David Fine. He wanted to fix David up, not me.”

“Oh, Jonah,” she sighed. “How naive can you be?”

“Why would he fix his daughter up with a guy who’s only in town on a job?”

“Because you’re so darn eligible?”

“I don’t think I’m rabbi’s daughter material.”

“Pshaw. That’s not Yiddish, I suppose? Pshaw? It could be. It’s one of those spitting sounds you make when you explain the food.”

I had come back to the hotel stuffed to the gills. The sandwiches at Rubin’s were huge. “They come in two sizes,” Rabbi Lerner had told me with a wink. “Large and larger.” Luckily I had only ordered the large. After the soup, I had barely finished half and brought the mountainous remains back for Jenn, who was eating it as I filled her in on the rabbi.

“So you think David went to his house the night he disappeared,” she said.

“We know he got off the trolley at Washington Square. The rabbi lives just up the street from there.”

“And he wouldn’t tell you anything more?”

“He didn’t even tell me that.”

“What makes you think it’ll be any different tonight?”

“He said he’d think it over. Maybe some text or other will convince him it’s the right thing to do.”

“Man, that was good,” she said, as she balled up the wrapper of her sandwich. “And he ate a whole one?”

“And quickly. Plus soup and a side of latkes.”

“A man of appetite.”

“Big one.”

“So you’ll eat well tonight.”

“I guess.”

“While I languish here in the hotel.”

“You don’t have to. You could come with me.”

“And crowd your style? I think not. Anyway, I’m still waiting for a callback from Tim Fitzpatrick. Maybe the congressman and his sweetheart wife will invite me to dinner.”

My cellphone showed an incoming call from Hard Driver. I put it on speaker so Jenn could hear.

“Karl,” I said. “How’s it going?”

“Aw, dude, can you believe it?” he rasped. His voice is low and gravelly from years of shouting over the roar of engines; his great passion other than hacking is restoring and racing vintage motorcycles. “I broke my damn foot, man. I’m stuck behind my desk.”

“So you’re working on our stuff.”

“Fuck you, man. I’m in pain. And if Rosa finds out how I did it, I will be in such shit. Just because she’s pregnant.”

“How did you do it?” Jenn asked.

“Racing up at Mosport. My bike rolled over on me. And we’d had a pretty good relationship up to that point.”

“You okay otherwise?” I asked.

“Yeah, yeah. They make you wear a helmet at these things.”

“Make you?” Jenn said. “You’d race without one?”

“Do you wear a helmet every time you get on your bicycle?”

“Yes!”

“Even to the video store?”

“Okay, no, but-”

“See? It’s all about degree. Personal risk and personal choice. To me, cyberspace is fast, that’s where I live most of the time, but ground speed, man-when that is fast, it is something else entirely.”

“You’re going to be a father!” Jenn said.

“Not for three more months.”

“Jenn,” I said, “let Karl grow up on his own time. He probably phoned about something important, like David’s computer?”

“Right. The poker. Now that took a while, dude-the site he played on had major security. Major.”

“But you got past it.”

“That hurts,” he said. “That hint of doubt in your voice. Yes, I got past it, this is me here. I found his ID, I’ve seen all his transactions and I know his current balance. I’m just saying it took some time. For which you’re going to have to compensate me in full at the usual rate.”

“Done.”

“Doesn’t have to be the eighteen-year-old,” he said. “I don’t want to break you guys. The twelve will do.”

The Macallan that cost a hundred instead of two-fifty. “You’re a gentleman.”

“C’est moi. Okay, you saw the man’s credit card charges. Three fifty-dollar charges to allinpoker, all one word, dot com, fifty being the minimum buy-in. The first was last September, the next a week later, the third and final one a month after that. Conclusion?”

“He was a quick study.”

“Correct, sir. Each fifty-dollar payment lasted longer than the previous and he hasn’t had to re-buy since the third, so either he stopped playing or he figured out what he was doing. And the answer is, the latter. His account shows activity until a couple of days before he vanished.”

“When did he have time to play poker?” Jenn said.

“The early morning hours,” Karl said. “Usually between one and three.”

“Didn’t he need sleep?”

“Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he couldn’t. I can’t half the time. Anyway, he started off playing five-dollar tournaments and got bounced pretty fast in most of them so he scaled back to one- and two-dollar entries and did better. Started winning the odd one. When he earned house points, he used them to play in free rolls. Learning his game. Eventually he started moving back up to the five-dollar games. Winning those too. And then, finally, starting maybe a month ago, ten-dollar games. That’s as high as he ever went. But the payoffs are good: ninety if you win, forty-five for second, twenty-seven for third.”

“He’d love that,” I said. “Ninety is five times eighteen, which spells life in Hebrew. What kind of player was he, can you tell?”

“I couldn’t see what he played in any particular game-you know, what he went all in with, what he folded-but I can tell from his player stats, the percentage of flops he saw, that he was a cautious type. The kind of player you never hear from until he has a hand for real, then he knocks you out with kings or aces. What we enthusiasts call TAG, for tight-aggressive.”

“Fits everything else about him,” Jenn said.

“What’s his current balance?” I asked.

“Almost eight-fifty.”

“Eight hundred and fifty?”

“Yes.”

“Wow.”

“I know,” Jenn said. “It’s nothing.”

“I wasn’t being sarcastic. I mean wow. That’s almost twenty times his original stake. That can’t be easy to do.”

“Trust me,” Karl said.

“But he never charged back any winnings to his credit card. So as impressed as I am by his learning curve, there’s still no evidence he played for or won large amounts. Imagine if he’d had an actual stake.”

“Maybe he did,” Jenn said. “We’ve been thinking that money in his closet might be winnings from poker. Maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was a stake he was planning to use and never got to.”

“Someone would have to have given it to him. Someone who knew he was good and wanted to use him to win. And where do you go to play big games?”

“There any casinos there?” Karl asked.

“There must be,” Jenn said. “We’ll check.”

“Is it just me or does this all sound really far-fetched?” I said. “Isn’t it possible that he was just what he was, an overworked, overtired physician in training who needed to do something at night when he couldn’t sleep? It’s too big a leap from what he was doing, this five- and ten-dollar stuff, to gambling for thousands of dollars.”

“I know,” Jenn said. “It’s a stretch.”

“You want a stretch?” Karl said. “You should hear what I told Rosa about my foot.”

Next time the phone rang, it was Mike Gianelli. “That picture you sent me,” he said. “Of the guy you think tried to grab David? I got something for you.”

“Shoot.”

“Not over the phone,” he said. “Come in and see me.”

“Man, I just got back from Brookline.”

“Sorry,” he said. “I only got the call now.”

So back I went to Brookline, whence I had come. Considering I had never heard of it three days ago, I seemed to be wearing a rut in its direction.

The same big side of beef, W. Kennedy, was on the desk. He looked at me like he’d never seen me before when I said I was there to see Gianelli. At least he didn’t hold up his finger to shush me. Just gave me a flat blue look, then picked up the phone, punched in four digits, waited, said, “He’s here. Okay,” then said to me without looking up, “He’ll be down.” And that was all the energy he had to expend on me that day.

Gianelli came down more quickly this time and led me through a secure door behind Kennedy’s counter to an interrogation room. There were four chairs around a round table. He pointed to the one facing the door. “Sorry we can’t use my office right now, but we’re lucky this one’s free. You want a coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

“Bottle of water?”

“Sure.”

“Okay. While I’m going, can I see that licence of yours again?”

I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him.

“Won’t be a minute.”

And he wasn’t. He was more like four or five, during which time I wondered if there was anyone behind the mirror in the wall to my left. There was a video recorder on a tripod in the far right corner, but no red light showed.

When Gianelli came back, he had my water but not my licence.

“Remember what I said about the Boston PD? They’re ready for you now.”