Boston Cream

CHAPTER 21

By the time we got to the hotel, parked, installed Ryan in Jenn’s room and had lunch, he was pretty caught up on the David Fine case, from my visit to Ron Fine’s house Wednesday morning to Sean Daggett’s cruel exit with Jenn’s hair wrapped roughly around his hand.

“This dickhead hurts her,” he said, “he’s a dead man.”

I didn’t argue with that. “Your supplier ready to receive us?”

“Yeah. Listen, I had some U.S. hundreds stashed away at home, in case you need any.”

“That’s great. I can only get five hundred a day out of the machine.”

“So I got to say something about this organ thing: do you honestly think there’s anything to it? ’Cause it sounds like one of these urban myths, you know, the bum or the business traveller who wakes up in a bathtub full of ice with a scar he can’t explain. Christ, Law amp; Order did it back when Lennie was on.”

“These aren’t bums or businessmen,” I said. “They’re people who gave blood samples at Sinai Hospital and were specifically recruited because they matched people on a list. The better the match, the fewer drugs the person has to take after. The better the outcome. Jenn looked all of this up before she-fuck.”

“It’s all right. I mean, it’s not all right now, but it will be. Soon. We’ll get her back unharmed, I promise that, okay? So what’s our next move?”

“We go see a thin mousy chick who looks like a lab rat. Jenn and I interviewed her once already and she was jumping at her own shadow.”

“If she was scared of you,” Ryan said, “she’s going to love me.”

Back on the road to meet his gun dealer, Ryan said, “How’s your head these days?”

“Why? Did I miss an exit? You said South Boston, right?”

“No, no, you’re good. I meant in general, because …”

“Because why?”

“Last time I spoke to you-before today, I mean, you remember the last time we spoke?”

I said, “Yes,” mainly to buy time while I fired up the memory and searched backwards to think of when that might have been. It hadn’t been in the last two months. It was back in the foggy time around Christmas, when I was at my worst. Had we wished each other well for the holidays?

“You don’t remember.”

“I-”

“It was December 31, late afternoon,” Ryan said. “I know it ain’t your people’s new year but I was in the restaurant getting ready for the big night, Cara and Carlo were home alone, and I was feeling a little blue so I called to wish you a happy one and you didn’t exactly sound razor sharp.”

“That’s nice you thought of calling me.”

“But you don’t remember it?”

“It was two months ago, Ryan, I’m better now. My doctor cleared me and everything.”

“For gunplay?”

“I can watch my own back. And yours.”

“Great.”

“That wasn’t convincing.”

“Neither were you.”

“Daggett only got Jenn because he was armed and I wasn’t.”

“We’ll fix that.”

“Otherwise I would have kicked the shit out of him.”

“I know you would.”

The gun guy’s name was John Lugo. He lived in a walk-up apartment near Chinatown, where the streets smelled of sour milk and fish water. He was around Ryan’s age, late thirties, heavy enough to stretch out a black Adidas track suit to its max. His thinning black hair was wet from a shower and pulled back in a ponytail. The air was stale with cigarette smoke and fried food. Lugo had the unhealthy pallor of someone who spent too much time under artificial light.

He said, “You guys need anything? There’s coffee ain’t too old, there’s beer if it ain’t too early.”

“We’re good,” Ryan said.

“All right. So Angelo explained the deal to you, right? All sales are final, cash, and every piece comes with a box of shells. And no obscene state taxes, of course. I start around five bills for a basic nine and I can go as high as you can.”

“You have suppressors?”

“Not for every model, but I can cover most of the mainstream stuff.”

He led us into a spare bedroom that had a pine armoire against one wall. There was also a gym mat and weights in one corner. The mat had a fine layer of dust on it. Lugo unlocked the armoire and swung both doors open wide. Handguns hung on pegs on the insides of the doors. He slid out a shelf where a TV might rest and there were more guns lying flat on that.

“That’s the basic collection there. Once you choose your weapons, I’ll match up the suppressors. If you want machine guns, rifles or shotguns, I have to take a trip to a storage unit I got out of state. Fucking Massachusetts gun laws.”

“We’ll see what’s here first,” Ryan said. “We’re hoping we can get by without heavy artillery.”

“A couple of cocky optimists,” Lugo said. “I like that.”

Ryan said, “Show me a Beretta for my friend. The 92 army model.”

“No problem. I got the ten-round version or the seventeen. Takes nine-mil rounds or the Smith and Wesson.40-calibres, which I happen to prefer. Blows a hole just that much bigger in your target. I can do these for seven apiece, six-fifty if you buy two, and no haggling please. It gets me upset.”

“And the suppressors?”

“Four apiece, which is a break, ’cause I could ask four-fifty, five each. But you’re a friend of Angelo’s so …”

“Show him the seventeen-shot model,” Ryan said. “The less he has to reload, the better.”

“I’m in the room,” I said.

“And he will take.40-calibre rounds.”

Lugo slipped a pistol off its peg and handed it to me. It weighed about the same as the model I’d carried in the Israeli army.

“You can dry-fire it,” Lugo said. “It ain’t loaded.”

I adopted a shooting stance and squeezed the trigger until the hammer snapped down. I looked at Ryan and shrugged. “This is fine.”

“And for me …,” he said. He looked up one side of each cupboard door and down the other. He ran his hand over every gun in the sliding shelf until he stopped at one with a flat black polymer body. “Is this the new Glock 17?”

“That’s it,” Lugo said. “The fourth-generation G17. I was at the SHOT show in Vegas when Glock unveiled it. Great piece. I also have the G22, very similar gun but takes the.40-calibres. Only downside is it carries fifteen rounds, not seventeen. I also got the compact versions of both, the G19 and G23.”

“Nice selection.”

“Thanks. You a lefty?”

“No.”

“ ’Cause the magazine release catches on both models are reversible.”

“I’m left-handed,” I said.

“Yeah? You want one of these instead of the Beretta? Only that’s gonna run you a grand, not including the suppressor.”

“Don’t confuse him,” Ryan said. “He should have something with a safety.”

“So one Beretta and one G17?” Lugo asked.

“Make mine the one that blows bigger holes,” Ryan said.

“One Beretta and one G22.”

“I also need an ankle gun. Does that Baby Eagle there take the same.40 ammo?”

“But of course.”

“All right,” Ryan said. “Add it up.”

“Boys going off to play,” Lugo said. “Warms my heart. Can I interest you in holsters?”

“Three. A shoulder and an ankle for me. You?” Ryan asked me. “Shoulder or hip?”

I imagined drawing a gun, wondering which would be quicker. I opted for hip, since that was how I’d carried my Beretta in the army.

“You can throw in the ankle holster,” Ryan said, counting out hundreds from a half-inch stack. “And I don’t like haggling either.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Lugo said.