Boston Cream

CHAPTER 36

The Bay State Hotel was a find Jenn would have been proud of, right across from the great reflecting pool of the Christian Science complex. As her face came into mind, I felt a hot surge of rage through my body. Helpless at not being able to get her right now, this minute, to see her unharmed and throw my arms around her and carry her to safety like a damsel. Instead my visions were of her tied up, twisting to get free of her bonds, maybe being questioned by Daggett, being slapped or punched if he didn’t like her answers. I got out of the car clenching and unclenching my own fists, trying to breathe the coiled tension out of my body. Some of it went. Most stayed.

The hotel was a two-storey ell set back in a parking lot, with a small pool and a few shaded tables in a fenced-off area. Our room was in the wing that faced the great dome of the Mother Church. It was a small, very basic space that hadn’t been designed with two grown men with big guns in mind. We put most of the gear in the closet and sat across from each other across a small marble-topped table, where I uploaded all the photos DeMaurice Simms had taken to my laptop so we could zoom in on every entrance, window and alarm junction. We pored over the landscape, noting the best places to try to get in, whether through the hoarding, over it or via the trunk of a car.

I called Stayner to get a description of his assistant, James Reimer: a tall man, mid-forties, wore wire-framed glasses, balding but trying to hide it with plugs.

“Beard? Facial hair?” I asked.

“No, he’s clean shaven.”

“When you say tall …”

“About six-one, I guess. A good few inches taller than me, at any rate, and I’m five-nine.”

“Okay, I’m six feet. If I had glasses on, and a cap and mask, could I fool someone?”

“Maybe for a minute, if they didn’t look too close. He doesn’t carry himself like you do. He’s not athletic at all. He stoops a bit.”

I asked Stayner if his key fob would work from inside the trunk.

“How on earth would I know that?”

“Test it.”

“You expect me to get inside?”

“You have a second set of keys?”

“Of course.”

“Then have your wife stand by to let you out if it doesn’t work.”

“If I do this, any of this, you have to promise you’ll get Daggett.”

“I already have promised,” I said.

“To whom?”

“Me.”

“It’s early yet,” Ryan said. “Not even dark. We could mount up right now and hit him at home.”

“Daggett?”

“Someone has to know where he lives. The four of us could crash his house.”

“He has a wife and kids.”

“Makes him all the more vulnerable. Bust in and put guns on anything that moves. Make him give up Jenn.”

“We haven’t scouted it,” I said. “We don’t know what security he’s got.”

“You don’t like the idea?”

I loved Jenn so much. There was no one closer to me now. But to train shotguns and automatics on a woman and children who had nothing to do with Daggett’s depraved business … I could see Victor squeezing the trigger of his Uzi too tightly and ripping fire across one of the kids.

“We can’t,” I said. “Kids have no place in this.”

“Even though it’s Jenn?”

“Yes.”

“All right. I had to ask.”

“Would you do it?”

“You didn’t call,” he said. “You don’t get to see my hand.”

We went back to planning: reviewing the sketches and notes from Stayner. The make of each car that was due to arrive. We put all the photos on slideshow and played a game, seeing who could identify the view first as each photo came up.

“South-side entrance!”

“East-side camera!”

“Coal chute door!”

We crammed like students before a big exam, quizzing each other, no notes, challenging each other to come up with something new, just one more thing we hadn’t thought of yet.

The plan we finally drafted went like this. Frank would arrive a little earlier than expected, around eight-thirty, posing as the donor, George Riklitis, saying things were crazy at his house, he needed to relax before the procedure, get his head around it. He’d stash his gun in the operating room and, if possible, do a walk-through and see if he could find Jenn. If anyone recognized him, he’d have to shoot his way out. This, we hoped, was a light percentage.

The anesthesiologist would arrive first. He also drove the biggest car, a Navigator. When the gate was opened for him, Victor would slip in behind his car and hit the ground along the hoarding, work his way along it toward the rear.

That left Ryan and me. The nurses were coming in a Mazda 3, too small to get in behind, so we decided Ryan would pry back the hoarding in the southwest corner, farthest from any camera, and slip through there. I would get in the trunk of Stayner’s car. Ryan had made me get into the trunk of a car once before, so technically it was his turn, but he insisted, as only he can, that there was no point breaking in someone new.

Once we were all inside the compound, we’d wait for Frank to advise the surgical team of what was happening. Stayner would send Jim Reimer out on a phantom errand, say to pick up some crucial piece of equipment that had been left behind. No surgeon would ever do that because they’d no longer be sterile but we doubted anyone inside would know that. I’d be waiting in the trunk, in a surgical outfit identical to Reimer’s. Reimer and I would switch places. I’d let Ryan and Victor into the loading area. Inside, in the improvised operating room, Frank would be reaching for his gun.

We would take down anyone in our path, find Jenn and bust out in Reimer’s SUV.

That was the plan; that was my promise to Jenn, sure and silent in my heart.

Jews say that when man plans, God laughs. Even though I’m an atheist, I kept an ear cocked for the sound of faraway laughter.

Kieran was driving Sean crazy. He had slept all day, drugged to the tits, but now he was awake and restless and up Sean’s ass. He couldn’t pace because of his leg, so he sat on a stool at the kitchen island, swivelling it this way and that to keep Sean in his field of vision as Sean moved back and forth trying to get dinner together for the kids. Bev was upstairs getting ready for a night of cosmetic sales with a dozen fortysomething women, something she did to make her own spending money, or at the very least get all this high-end facial shit for free. Unbelievably expensive little tubes and jars full of Dead Sea mud.

Sean was putting salmon fillets in the oven, rinsing lettuce for their salad, setting out juice and cut-up celery and carrots. He didn’t want his kids eating junk and getting fat like some of their friends, barely into their teens and already out of shape, out of breath, with the same prison pallor as guys at Cedar Junction. He wanted them strong and straight. No one, especially Michael, would ever go near his business. They’d go to school and find their own lives and careers.

“Can’t these kids feed themselves?” Kieran said. “Christ, when we were their age, we were getting drunk and stealing cars.”

“I told you when we’re leaving, okay? Be patient. You’ll have plenty of time-four, five hours till they’re ready for her. Jesus, how much do you think she can take?”

“We’ll find out.”

“We who? This is your thing, pal, not mine.”

“Like you’ve never taken anyone out to the garage, tuned them up until they would talk or deal.”

“Not for fun, I didn’t. And never a woman.”

“She destroyed my fucking leg. If it was a guy who done it, believe me, he’d have the same shit coming. Worse. Except I wouldn’t plan to fuck him. She looked real nice, what I saw.”

“She’s even better up close. A real honey.”

“Now that’s unfair, man. You’re teasing me.”

Daggett sighed. “Okay, we can go in fifteen minutes.”

“How long to get there?”

“Half an hour.”

“And how long till she’s clear-headed?”

“Also half an hour.”

“Then call Freddie now, tell him to take her off the drip. I want her up before we get there. Wanna call her on the phone and tell her what she’s in for.”

Damn it. Sean had called Freddie from the road and told him they were on their way. Take her off the drip, Sean had said, even though the girl wasn’t scheduled to go under the knife for another few hours. Freddie knew why. Kieran was pissed about his leg and wanted to take it out on her. Freddie could understand that, sympathize with it, but it still pissed him off. The girl’s body was fucking magnificent. Playboy material. And now he had to put the catheter back in so Sean wouldn’t know he’d been into the goods. Wipe her up. Work the gown back over her limbs.

What a waste, he thought. A first-class piece of ass she was, even asleep and unresponsive. But when Kieran got through with her, pieces was all she would be. He took one more long look at her, wishing he had a better camera than the one in his phone. He took a few more snaps.

Look at her.

If he stopped the drip right now, she’d still stay out for at least fifteen minutes or more. And Sean and Kieran would take at least that long to get there from Framingham. He decided he had enough time to play one more game, nothing long and drawn out, just a quick little sketch that was forming in his mind.

Freddie and the Maiden, part three.