Boston Cream

CHAPTER 19

I tell myself I am not a violent man. Yes, I have committed acts of violence in my life. I have killed three people but I don’t think of myself as a killer. I have hurt other people but I don’t think of myself as a thug or a bully. But the thoughts racing through my head as I got into the car were the darkest, bloodiest kind. I wasn’t seeing red-it was solid black. If Sean Daggett killed Jenn, I would kill him. I would do it with my hands and feet, a blunt instrument, a knife or a gun-whatever I could find. I would shatter his skull, choke him on his own teeth. Crush his throat. Explode his heart. Set him on fire and watch him burn and not even piss on him until he was a smouldering ruin. Even if he didn’t kill her: if he caused her any pain at all, just a bump or bruise, he would die. If he killed or hurt David Fine, he would die. I would do it on my own if I had to. But I didn’t.

When my hands stopped shaking, I took out my phone and tried to remember the number of a certain Italian restaurant in Toronto. I used to know it by heart. But since the concussion, my memory has been a little less sharp. I knew the area code and that it started with the same exchange as my brother’s downtown office. It was the last four numbers I wasn’t sure of. I punched in the first six, then added my best guess for the final four. I heard it engage, waited while it rang three times and sighed with relief when a woman said, “Giulio’s.”

“Hi, Monica,” I said. She was the daytime manager and nighttime hostess. “It’s Jonah.”

“Hi, hon,” she said. “I hope you don’t want to come in tonight, we got problems.”

“What happened? Is Dante there?”

“Yeah,” she said. “And up to his knees in water. A dishwasher hose broke last night and leaked through to the basement, which is presently flooded.”

“Tell him I need him.”

“All right. But his mood is trending shitty. It’s looking like the story of Jonah down there anyway. Hey, maybe that’ll get him to crack a smile. It would be the first of the day.”

My friendship with Dante Ryan is by far the weirdest in my life. Impossible to explain to anyone else because when I met him the year before, he was still killing people for a living and was considered by several police agencies and his peers to be one of the best around. A future Hall of Famer in his trade. Our paths crossed when he was given a contract he couldn’t bring himself to fulfill because it included killing a boy the same age as his son, Carlo, then turning five. He sought out my help and we saved a few lives, lost a few, took away a few between us. But we did it all together and it forged a strong, mostly unspoken bond between us.

He doesn’t mingle with any of my other friends, except Jenn. I have been to his house to meet his wife and son just once, and most of our meetings take place at Giulio’s, his restaurant on John Street in Toronto’s Entertainment District, still named after its corpulent former owner. The food is authentic southern Italian, and I drink and eat there free because Ryan says he would have none of it if not for me. It’s true so I take it.

“Hey,” he said into the phone. “You’re lucky you’re not the dead man who closed up and left last night before the dishwasher stopped. I was about to jump through the phone line and throttle you. Listen, can I call you back in a bit?”

“No, you can’t,” I said. “I need you.”

“Jonah, if you could see-”

“It’s Jenn,” I said. “She’s in trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“She’s been abducted.”

“What! Where are you? My car’s right out back. I’ll be-”

“Ryan, we’re in Boston.”

“What!” Ryan and Jenn got to know each other pretty well during our trip to Chicago, and while he may not be up on all the latest nuances of dealing with a lesbian he finds attractive, his affection for her is clear.

“Boston. That’s where I am-where she was taken.”

“You know who by?”

“An Irish thug named Sean Daggett.”

“How long ago?”

“A few minutes.”

“Okay. Now think about this before you answer. Should I grab a cab to the island airport, which is like ten minutes away, and be there in under four hours? Or do you want me to drive, which gets me there more like midnight.”

If he drove, he meant, he could bring guns across the border in his metal photographer’s case, lined with foam cutouts for each pistol and its matching suppressor. His gear would never make it through any level of airport security.

“If you flew,” I said, “could you pick up that equipment here?”

“Of course,” he said. “It’s readily available in most big cities, for a price. I’d just have to contact my local supplier for a name there.”

“Then fly,” I said. “I’ll pay whatever it costs. Call me when you land. I’ll be out near the airport anyway.”

CHAPTER 20

The Institute of Contemporary Art was stunning. Most of the great buildings we had seen driving around Boston the last two days were brick or stone. This was a great expanse of glass and steel thrusting out over the harbour, almost like a giant private box in a stadium grandstand.

The lobby was a large glassed-in atrium filled with people attending Slow Art Day. Volunteers stood near the entrance handing out pamphlets and museum maps. I saw no sign that Congressman McConnell was in the room.

An elderly woman with tightly curled hair approached me. “Are you familiar with Slow Art Day?” she asked.

“A bit.”

She offered me a pamphlet and a map of the museum, which I declined. I wanted to keep my hands free in case I had to throttle the congressman. “We encourage you to take your time as you go through,” she said. “Really enjoy every wonderful piece you see.”

“I will.”

“And don’t forget there’s a picnic lunch at one o’clock where everyone is free to eat and talk about the work they saw. It comes with your admission.”

“Great. Do you know, by any chance, when Congressman McConnell will arrive?”

“No, I don’t. Maybe someone at the service desk would. But I’m looking forward to seeing him too,” she said. “I’m a bit of a fan. I don’t even live in his district, but there’s something about him. I would have compared him to a Kennedy at one time, but nowadays it’s not such a compliment.”

Yes, there was something about him. And I’d get it out of him if I had to pull it out of his sternum. I thanked the volunteer and went to the service desk. No one there knew exactly when McConnell would arrive either, only that it would be after eleven-thirty, when the public viewing began. I stopped at the first work of art past admissions that gave me a good view of the front entrance. It was a giant metal spider that could have crawled out of an early science fiction movie about a Martian invasion. The metal looked flimsy and crimped, scraped here and there, unsteady. More of an invader in retreat. I walked around it slowly, taking in its every detail, its meaning, weighing it in the context of everything I knew. Or pretending to while eyeballing the entrance. I’d been circling it for twenty minutes when the noise level rose and a large group of people surged into the lobby, including a few media folk who started setting up video cameras near a podium that had been positioned against a wall.

Congressman Marc McConnell of the historic Eighth District was in the building. He stopped inside the entrance to shake hands with well-dressed men and women who looked like they represented the museum. Someone’s aide grouped them together for a photo. McConnell wore a navy blazer and tan slacks, as opposed to the dark suit in his website photo. I guess a day at the museum, especially a contemporary art museum, called for something less formal.

His wife was a dark-haired woman, about five-foot-five and slim, with a pretty face that had more makeup than a woman of forty needed, wearing a trench coat over a dark pantsuit and white top cut just low enough for a string of pearls to sit against her skin. Very toned down and classic. Jenn would have been disappointed.

On McConnell’s other side was a young man carrying a BlackBerry in one hand and a black leather briefcase in the other. This, I guessed, was Tim Fitzpatrick, McConnell’s advisor. He wore a light grey suit, shirt and tie, perhaps having failed to get the memo about the casual dress code. The little bit of hair he had was shaved down to stubble; the top of his head gleamed in the overhead lights. He consulted the BlackBerry, thumbed out some text, then slipped it into his pocket and opened the briefcase. He passed McConnell a sheet of typing-an agenda or speaking notes-which the congressman scanned, then folded and slipped into his breast pocket.

If I approached McConnell after his remarks, he could brush me off more easily than if I could get to him now, when he couldn’t just walk out on his public. I started making my way across the lobby. Fitzpatrick was introducing McConnell to one of the journalists, who began asking questions, holding up a mini-recorder. I held back while he spoke. He seemed at ease, as if he were talking to a good friend in a place he visited often. When she was done, she switched off the recorder and took a photo of him and his wife, his arm around her waist. When she slipped her arm around him, the sleeve of her trench coat rose and I saw two lumps like golf balls under the skin of her forearm.

Fistulas, they were called.

The original plan had been for Jenn and me to go to the museum together, mingle, ask his assistant for a word after, question him about David and gauge his response. But seeing his wife up close, realizing what the fistulas and the heavy makeup meant, sent me reeling like a top bouncing off baseboards. I needed to think it through before I confronted him. I left the museum and made the short drive to the airport talking it out to myself, like there was someone else in the car or at the other end of a line. McConnell’s wife was in need of an organ, presumably a kidney. Yes, the fistulas were related to dialysis. Long-term use of anti-rejection drugs could cause cancer, and possibly infertility. Why not kidney failure?

Christ, I wished Jenn were with me. She’d probably have looked this up already.

One thing we knew about Lesley, she had the money to jump the line. Half a million for a kidney? She could probably find that much under the pillows of Daddy’s couch.

Then another thought came to me: Marc McConnell knows Rabbi Ed Lerner. The rabbi knows David. McConnell’s wife needs an organ. Did Lerner try to help David out of this? Or did he help rope him into it in the first place?

I dialled the rabbi’s home number. It went to voice mail. Of course it would: he wouldn’t answer it on the Sabbath. I left a message explaining what had happened and that if there was anything, anything at all either of them knew that they hadn’t told before, now was the time to call, day or night. I stressed the life-or-death nature of it and I didn’t need to embellish it in any way. It came from the deepest part of me that feared for Jenn’s life.

Not long after I hung up, I heard Dante Ryan say, “Hey,” and turned around. He let his suitcase fall and grabbed me and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll get her back. And we’ll sort out the guy who took her.”

A passenger making his way around Ryan’s luggage glared at him and paled at the response he got. He turned away and hustled off, banging his rolling case against his heels. Ryan hadn’t even said anything to the man, just let his killer’s face out.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said. ‘Your hotel far?”

“Maybe twenty minutes.”

“Then let me grab a smoke before we get in the car.”

We stood outside, the sun overhead and the day growing warmer. Pleasant on the outside.

“I made some calls before takeoff,” he said after he’d lit up and had his first two hits of nicotine. “I have a supplier here lined up can fix me up with equipment.”

“Fix me up too,” I said.

Ryan almost dropped his cigarette. “For real?”

“Yes.”

He took a few more deep draws, then ground the butt under his heel and said, “Okay. Hotel first. Drop off this shit. Maybe grab a quick bite and a drink. Then we go pick up what we need. Meanwhile you fill me in on everything that’s happened so far. From what got you down here to when Jenn got grabbed.”