Boston Cream

CHAPTER 32

Ryan had had a good time shopping at Lugo’s. On the bed in his room were two shotguns, which he said were Mossbergs, and an Uzi, which I recognized right away. “And this is for you,” he said, lifting an assault rifle with a pistol grip and long banana clip. “That cut-down M-16 you told me about, the one you carried in Israel?”

“The Mikutzrar.”

“This was the closest thing he had to it. A Colt M4. Thirty inches long, a little shorter with the stock retracted, and weighs five and a half pounds empty. Muzzle velocity is over twenty-six hundred feet per second. A few bursts out of this will cut a guy in half.”

“He provide ammunition for all of these?”

“Gave me everything but a duck decoy.”

Frank was the bigger of the two men who came to meet us at a cafe near the hotel. Solidly built, near fifty, with some old acne scars and a receding hairline. Victor was younger by a decade or more, with brown hair he wore long enough to tuck behind his ears. A lot thinner too, with a nervous energy that burned around him like he was a hot filament. Ryan introduced us all, first names only, and he and I took some mild shit over the uselessness of Toronto’s sports teams compared with Boston’s while the waiter brought water and bread. We scanned the menus and ordered various combinations of appetizers and a bottle of red wine, three glasses. I stuck with water.

“So,” Frank said. “I’ll speak for me and Victor to keep it short on our end. The man we work for, he says he owes you. He’d like to pay that debt. On the other hand, he tells us this is strictly voluntary. We’re here to listen to your situation and your proposed solution, and only go ahead if we like it. So. Are we going to like it?”

I said, “We need to free a hostage.”

“Where?”

“Wellington Hill.”

“By blacks?”

“No. An Irish guy named Sean Daggett.”

“In Wellington Hill? Christ, some days this town makes no sense. Who’s the hostage?”

“My partner.”

“How many guys would we go up against?”

“Not sure. Around six.”

He thought about that a moment as though weighing odds, then asked, “How heavily armed?”

We’d asked Stayner about that, but he had never seen the guards holding shotguns or rifles of any kind, and if they wore pistols it was with discretion. “Also not sure.”

“Who does your intel,” Victor asked, “Helen Keller?”

Frank ignored him. “Are they expecting us?”

Victor said, “Let me guess. Not sure.”

“Do I have to send you out of the room?” Frank said. Then to Ryan: “What are you guys packing?”

“Three pistols between us,” Ryan said.

“Someone lose one?” Victor asked.

Ryan ignored him. “We also have some party guns you might like. A Mossberg and an Uzi.”

“No Tec-9s?” Victor asked.

Ryan said, “Christ.”

“And what exactly would we be attacking in Wellington Hill?” Frank asked.

“A mortuary,” I said.

“A mortuary. Packed with a bunch of Irish dicks who might outnumber us, might outgun us, all to save your partner.”

“And pay off a debt,” Ryan said. “Put you in the good graces of the man who makes your world go round.”

“That too. So what do you know about this place?” he asked.

“We have sketches, front and back,” I said.

“Sketches?” Victor said. “That’s it?”

“We can go look at it now.”

“What are you driving?” Frank asked.

“A Dodge Caliber.”

“Not big enough for me. I like a little leg room.”

“Can we take your car?”

“You fucked in the head? It’s a brand new Lexus. I ain’t driving it anywhere near Wellington Hill. Fucking animals down there would strip it before I put it in park.” He wiped his hands and face with a napkin and said, “Victor, do me a favour, go steal us something nice while the boys here settle the bill.”

The moon gleamed coldly off the white hoarding around Halladay’s and the fence that closed off the main entrance. We saw a security camera over the front door and had to assume there were more around the building. There was only one car parked in front, a silver Buick Century. We were in a new Ford Explorer that Victor had boosted. Big enough to seat about a dozen, each of whom could watch their own movie.

“You think she’s in there now?” Frank asked.

“Either that or she’ll be brought here tomorrow night.”

“Only one car parked there. So how many could they have in there now, two, three guys?”

“Maybe.”

“There’s four of us here right now, plenty of guns between us. We could storm the shit out of the place. Bust in, get the girl, bust out. Try not to kill too many Irishmen.”

“We go in there blind, we’ll probably get her killed,” I said.

“You have a plan?”

“It’s in development.”

On the right side of Halladay’s was a place that rented tools and construction vehicles: Bobcats, backhoes and other machines sitting silently on their treads. On the left side was a store whose windows were papered over. The last business there had apparently been a souvenir shop. I wondered what souvenir was right for Wellington Hill: a bullet from a drive-by or a bouquet of flowers left at a sidewalk vigil.

“They’ve got hoarding, fencing, cameras and guns,” I said. “They control the only way in. We have to come up with a way to surprise them.”

“Why don’t you ring the bell and run away,” Victor said.

Frank punched his shoulder and said, “Don’t make me push you out in the street and let the locals take care of you. Jesus Christ,” he said, “kid brothers.”

“You two are related?” I asked.

“Half-brothers,” Frank said. “That’s all I’m admitting is half.”

Another kid brother shown up by the older son. Did any of us escape the shadow they cast?

“They must order food in during the day,” Ryan said. “One of us could take the delivery guy’s place, get in, take a look around.”

“No one would believe a white delivery guy around here,” Frank said.

“Just tell me if you guys are in,” I said. “If you are, we’ll come up with a plan that works.”

Frank and Victor looked at each other and then Frank said, “What the hell. It’s got guns. It’s got a girl. It’s got a deserted house of death. I’d say all we’re missing is 3D.”

CHAPTER 33

As soon as we got back to the hotel, we started packing everything we had, including Jenn’s clothes and all of David Fine’s papers. I wanted to be out and in a different hotel first thing the next morning in case Gianelli or the Boston PD came looking for me.

“So what do you think?” I asked Ryan.

“About what?”

“Frank and Victor. They strike you as any good?”

“Victor I could take in my sleep. Plus he has lousy taste in guns. You believe he wanted us to get him a Tec-9? They’re bigger and heavier than Uzis, poorly made and very picky about ammo. Plus law enforcement loves to make examples of people who carry them.”

“What about Frank?”

“Frank’s okay,” he said. “Solid. I could get along with him. Do a job with him. See how he wanted the Mossberg? That’s solid too. Two of him, I’d feel a little better, but this is what we got.”

After Ryan went to bed I got on the Internet and found an inexpensive hotel across the street from the Christian Science Plaza reflecting pool on Huntingdon. I phoned and reserved a room for the following night, wishing I needed another one for Jenn, and asked for an early check-in.

I’d been on the run all day, running after Jenn, running from the images of David’s murder, from the exhaustion of failure, of guilt. Now, at rest, it caught up to me. I was trailing ruined lives behind me like cans tied to a newlyweds’ car. Since I had come to Boston to find David, at least four people had been murdered-McCudden, Walsh, Carol-Ann and David himself. The rabbi and his lovely daughter were probably cursing the moment we’d met. Lesley McConnell might well die if her transplant didn’t go through.

For those of you at home keeping score, how the fuck was I doing?

I thought so. Nice job, Geller. The kid brother does it again.

I woke up the next morning with a dull headache creeping through my skull. And I hadn’t even had any wine. I’d dreamed that Jenn was being chased down a dark urban street by a pack of feral dogs slashing at her legs, trying to bring her down, while people stood by and did nothing to help.

Even if she were still alive, as Stayner thought, there was nothing to say Daggett wasn’t mistreating her.

I phoned next door and got Ryan up, and we met outside a few minutes later and stowed all our gear in the Caliber.

“You look like shit,” Ryan said.

“Thanks.”

“I’ve seen albinos with better colour.”

“I’m fine.”

“You going to hold up your end?”

“Yes.”

“I want more than Frank and Victor watching my back.”

“All I need is coffee,” I said.

Early Monday morning, it took just a few minutes to get to the new hotel. We checked in using a credit card Ryan had under the name Robert Bernardi. The clerk gave us a tag for each piece of luggage and stowed it in a room behind the desk. We tipped him ten bucks and said we’d be back later. Probably a lot later. He gave us directions to the nearest Starbucks, where we picked up the largest containers of the darkest coffee they had, and headed out to the airport. It was time to switch cars too: Daggett would know the Dodge Caliber on sight, plus it was undersized and hamster-powered.

The man at the rental place looked at the damaged rear end in dismay. I told him it was the result of a hit and run. “You should have reported this to the police right away.”

“It must have happened in the dark,” I said. “I didn’t see it until this morning. And it’s insured to the hilt, right?”

“You’re still going to have to fill out a police report.”

“That would be inconvenient,” Ryan said.

“Nevertheless.”

“For you, I meant.”

Twenty minutes later, we left in a midnight-blue Dodge Charger. “It’s hard to believe these two cars are made by the same company,” Ryan said.

“Do you love it?” I asked.

“Yes, I love it. Why wouldn’t I love it, it’s gorgeous. A throwback to the Charger of the sixties. Just a shame it didn’t come with the hemi.”

“No car-rental place is going to have a hemi-V8. We’re lucky it has a radio.”

We took the Mass Pike back into the city, back to Blue Hill Avenue, along a strip of liquor stores, hair treatment places, smoke shops and fast-food places. More trash blowing down the street than people. We turned down Wellington Hill toward Halladay’s, where more shops were boarded up, as if a great storm were coming. In their case, it had come and gone and they had missed whatever hobo train they were supposed to have jumped to ride off bound for glory.

“If we could get into one of those neighbouring buildings,” I said, “get up on their roof. We could get a better look past the hoarding. Get the full picture.”

“White prowlers in Wellington. How many seconds you give us?”

“What we need is a friend in the African-American community.”

“You know where to find one?”

“I do.”

“Where?”

“You ever see Marathon Man?”

There was fuck all going on today for DeMaurice Simms. He and his boys had taken off a load of Blu-Ray players and iPods the day before, but the stores were selling that shit so cheap now there wasn’t enough profit to be made. Fifty here, fifty there, and you’re back out the next day on the stoop outside your mom’s, trying to think up something new. The hustle was getting tired, man, getting old fast. DeMaurice was not even twenty yet and feeling the drag, the toll of having to provide for himself and Tanika and their boy DeMarco. Some thieving, some dealing, the thieving part not so bad, but the dealing a tough go, with everybody so hard up for cash these days, doing thieving of their own to come up with the hundred a day they needed for their pipe.

But just a second. One fucking second. Drifting down the street toward him like it was coming out of a mirage: was that a brand new Charger? A dark navy blue but gleaming in the early light. Easing along at no great speed. Too nice to be a cop car. Maybe God was heeding his call, sending him some white boy in his daddy’s car looking to buy weed for him and his buddies. The car slowing now, the window sliding down. DeMaurice scratched his abdomen lazily, grinning, thinking what a brand new Charger was worth. Now that’s what he needed. That was a score he could bring home to Tanika, tell her to go out and buy whatever she and DeMarco needed.

As the window came down, he saw that yes indeed, the driver was white. No boy, though. In his late thirties, say. Dark curly hair like an Italian or Jew.

DeMaurice’s piece was a Beretta clone called a Taurus in the pouch of his Patriots hoodie. He put both hands in there as he sauntered over to the car, the right slipping around the gun butt.

“Before you get too frisky with your hands,” the driver said, “let us introduce ourselves.” DeMaurice could see a Beretta in the man’s right hand, a couple of models up from his own. The passenger was also white, maybe forty. Definitely Italian, with a shotgun in his lap.

“I’m Mr. Franklin,” the driver said, showing a folded hundred-dollar bill in his left hand, up near the open window, almost close enough to snatch. “And my friend is Mr. Mossberg. Who do you want to do business with?”

DeMaurice left his hands where they were and asked what business.

“It’s actually more of a mission,” the driver said. “Reconnaissance.”

“Say what?”

“Breaking and entering.”

“Where?”

The man pointed at a digital camera on the console and said, “I need the best pictures you can get of Halladay’s Funeral Home.”

“Ain’t that place closed? What you going to steal out of a closed-down fucked-up funeral home?”

“I need both sides and the rear. All doors, windows, security cameras, close-up of wires of any kind.”

“From where?”

“The rooftops of whatever buildings you break into.”

“How do you know I won’t just take the camera?”

“Mr. Mossberg won’t like it,” the passenger said.

“Say I got a friend named Mossberg too.”

“We’ll pay you three hundred,” the driver said. “Which is more than that camera is worth.”

“Make it four.”

“I knew you’d prefer dealing with Mr. Franklin,” the man said.

CHAPTER 34

“See?” I said to Ryan. “I make friends wherever I go.”

We had found a diner that had its own parking lot and two police cruisers parked in it and had breakfast and coffee refills while we waited for Simms to call back and tell us he was done.

“Sure,” he said. “With your personality and my money. So that’s how Hoffman does it in the movie?”

“Not exactly. He already knows the guys on his street, they’re his neighbours and they razz him because he’s a runner and a misfit. And he doesn’t pay them cash, he tells them they can burgle his apartment and take his stereo. All he wants is his clothes and his gun.”

“Well, we’re paying this guy cash, so he better deliver some decent pictures. Probably wind up with thirty shots of his thumb.”

“I showed him how to use it.”

“He strike you as a fast learner?”

“If he doesn’t get the pictures, we won’t pay.”

“Got that right. Turn things over to Mossberg.”

“He’ll come through.” My phone rang then; too soon for it to be Simms. The display said it was the Brookline police calling. I let it go to voice mail, gave it a minute, then listened.

“Geller, this is Mike Gianelli calling, nine-fifteen Monday morning. I didn’t want to tell you this in a message but I called a couple times earlier and your phone was off. I also tried your hotel and they told me you checked out, so I don’t know what’s going on with you, if you’re leaving Boston or what. Anyway, I-look, David Fine is dead. He was shot to death yesterday morning on a beach about an hour north of town. I really need to talk to you, Geller. I want to know as much as I can before I notify his parents. Call me the minute you get this, all right?”

I didn’t call him back. We waited another hour, drinking coffee neither of us really wanted, until Simms called. Then we drove back down Wellington Hill.

When we got to his door, the stoop was deserted. I stopped the Charger and left the engine running, the transmission in drive, my foot light on the brake. Ryan kept the shotgun close to his body. I could tell he didn’t like it and I didn’t either. If anyone opened fire, we were sitting ducks in the car. Simms and some friends might have figured they could ambush us here in the street and take everything we had: the car, the cash, our weapons, even the damn camera.

Some movement in the rearview caught my eye. Simms was coming alone up the sidewalk toward the car, his hands hidden in his pouch. I elbowed Ryan, who lay the shotgun down and pulled his Glock out of its shoulder holster. “If his hand comes out with anything but your camera,” he said, “roll out your door.”

He unlatched his door, turned sideways and kicked it open just as Simms reached the car. Simms had to jump back to avoid the arc of the door, and his hands instinctively came out of the pouch, with neither his gun nor my camera in sight.

“Fuck y’all doin’?” he yelled. “Playin’ some Starsky and Hutch thing, pointing a gun at me on my own block? I’ll fuckin’ Starsky your ass, man.”

“Cool down,” Ryan said. “You came up a little fast for my taste.”

“I am fast,” he said. “Always moving like the wind. Showing up where people don’t expect me to be.”

“That’s not the key to a long life, kid.”

“Like I got one anyway. Know what this neighbourhood is surrounded by? Huh? Cemeteries, man, like five of them. Calvary, New Calvary, St. Mary’s, Forest Hills, and one more I always forget. Not another hills but a mountain … Mount Hope, that’s it. Five cemeteries round this neighbourhood, man, all doin’ good business, so don’t talk to me about no long life.”

The pictures he had taken were better than fine. A quick scan confirmed the images were sharp and showed what we’d asked: all sides of the building, all doors and windows, in longer, middle and close-up perspectives.

We drove back toward midtown with Ryan reviewing the images one by one. “He did good,” he said. “He actually paid attention.”

“Not all is lost with the youth of America.”

“The north side has a door that opens from the inside only. No handle on the outside.”

“Probably an emergency exit with a crash bar.”

“Yeah. The windows are all too high off the ground to be of any use to us. Okay, coming around to the rear, there’s the bay where a hearse can back in. The doors are closed in the shot. There’s an entrance next to it, which is where everyone will go in tonight. More cameras there.”

“What about the south side?”

“Getting to it. He shot a lot of frames. Okay, same deal. One door, only this one does have a handle. It’s an alternate entrance, maybe for the employees.”

“Or the families of the deceased.”

“Hey,” Ryan said, “here’s one I like.”

As soon as I stopped at the next red light, he handed me the camera. The screen showed the side of the building where the alternate entrance was. The door was partway open in one frame, all the way open the next, and a heavy guy in his thirties was leaning out and lighting a cigarette.

“A guard who goes out for smoke breaks,” Ryan said. “That could prove harmful to his health.”

When Sean got back from dropping the kids at school, Bev was still in the shower, so he made their breakfast: an omelette with ham, cheese, mushrooms and onion, multigrain toast and fresh coffee. The two of them ate at stools around the kitchen island, the sports pages of the Herald for him and the front section of the Globe for Bev, who gave more of a shit about the outside world than he did.

He started with the baseball coverage. With spring training underway, reserves of hope were already building among the Red Sox Nation, and the baseball writers were getting poetic about the thrill of the grass, the sweet sound of round bats driving round balls toward the aching blue Florida skies, all kinds of shit along those lines.

He heard a car pull into their driveway. He wasn’t expecting company this morning and was still in a T-shirt and sweatpants, his lazy morning cooking clothes, the closest gun upstairs.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Bev said. She had gone to the front entrance and was looking out of the slim glass panel next to the door, with a grin that was more wry than amused. Then there was some kind of clumping on the walk outside. Bev turned the key in the deadlock and opened the door.

Jesus Murphy, it was Kieran Clarke himself, standing there in his long coat, aluminum crutches under his arms and the wild glaze of some mood-altering drug in his eyes. Sean asked Bev to finish the paper in their den and helped Kieran to a stool at the island, poured them both a cup of coffee.

“Fucking hell, man, they put a plate in your leg. You’re supposed to be in traction.”

“Did you get the bitch who did this to me?” Kieran asked. “I’m sure I remember you grabbing her by the hair and sticking a gun in her ear, but then I think maybe I dreamed it.”

“You didn’t dream it. I have her.”

Kieran’s smile almost split his face in half. “Where?”

“Halladay’s.”

“You had any fun with her?”

“Jesus, no. I’ve been keeping her on the drip like the others.”

“What are you going to do with her?”

“Make a small fortune.”

“Not until I pay her back for what she did to me. Take me down there, man. Take her off the drip. Let me play with her till you need her.”

“Can’t right now,” Sean said. “I got things to arrange. I’ve had a guy in Framingham pleading for a kidney for months. He has multi-fucking-millions he’s not going to live long enough to spend. And Blondie, it turns out, is a good enough match. Not out-of-the-park good but good. Plus she’s healthy as a racehorse. I’m going to squeeze him for a million, Kieran. Of which I have to spend nothing, because the surgical team will be there anyway. Between that and what McConnell is paying, it’s gonna be my best night ever.”

He poured them more coffee, leaving room for a splash of Jameson from a bottle in a sideboard locked with a key placed too high for Michael to reach. “This is why I’m out of drugs and why I’ll never go back. Leave it to the fucking crazies down in their jungle. You see any crazies involved in this operation? Anyone I have to battle block by block for the right to live and work? No.”

“What about the bitch’s partner?”

“The detective?”

“Yeah. He’s a wild card. Still out there.”

“Not for long.”

“He coming tonight?”

“He thinks he is.”

“Gonna rescue the golden girl, huh? Him and his friend?”

“No. I’m gonna get him first.”

“Put me in a car with a shotgun in my lap,” Kieran said. “I owe that guy, too, for my leg. And I can see if I close one eye like this.” He tilted his head down toward his left shoulder and squinted.

Like Sean was going to let him anywhere near a gun. Playing with the girl was one thing, he’d earned that. But give him a gun, he’d shoot the back off someone’s head while fumbling for a crutch. “We got it covered,” he said.

“When can I see the girl then?”

“Soon.”

“Can I borrow a knife?” He looked at the wooden knife holder, the one with the stone inside that sharpened each blade as it was pushed in and pulled out.

“What’d I just tell you? Those kidneys are worth a ton. You want to slap her around, fine. You want to fuck her, that’s fine too. But no knives.”

“I meant later, when you’re ready.”

“Much later,” Sean said. “ ’Cause I got to tell you, you look ripped out of your mind right now.”

“I’m fine.”

“Can I ask what exactly you’re on?”

“I don’t know, man, I just grabbed some pills from the nightstand where I found the crutches. They’re good, too. Feel like Tylenol fucking Twelves.”

“Why don’t you lie down awhile in the guest room there. Take the weight off your leg. Let me make the calls I have to make. You need ice or anything?”

“Fuck the ice. When will you take me to Halladay’s?”

“When I’m done my business. Don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of time with her. It’s a long operation.”

“Freddie handling her drip?”

“Yeah.”

“Fucking little creep. Promise you’ll call him when we’re leaving,” Kieran said. “Tell him to take her off. I want her ready and waiting when we get there.”

“Don’t worry,” Sean said. “Propofol is a tidy drug, Freddie says. Once you cut the supply, they wake up pretty fast. Clear-headed too.”

“A few minutes with me,” Kieran said, “she’ll be wishing she was back asleep.”