Dead Line

Chapter Thirty-one

I was reviewing a roll of the dead and the departed as I walked back up the concourse, past security, and down the escalators toward the parking garage. First and foremost was Baker, whose death weighed on my heart as heavy as one of those water-logged sticks he would drag from the Charles River. Elizabeth Riggs: gone. Hank Sweeney: gone. Vinny Mongillo: leaving. Peter Martin: no place else to go, which was good, so I’d have him for a while. I knew all too well that my world could be lonely. I had never realized it could actually be barren.

But what happened to Hank, my trusted friend? Why on God’s good earth did he feel the need to suddenly, cryptically escape? I thought back to him giving me the blow-by-blow analysis of the showdown between the Boston cops and the Feds in the front seat of my car. I thought of him delivering the videotapes from police headquarters that implicated the mayor. I suspect the folder he had just handed me might provide some valuable clues to the mystery of who killed Hilary Kane, so for that reason, I refrained from opening it in public and waited until I got into my car.

This was my mood as I headed through the garage. If they awarded a gold glove for catching bad breaks, I think I’d be a clear winner, which is how I knew that the apelike person in the ill-fitting black suit standing near my car was almost certainly waiting for me. He probably drew the assignment because I had a pair of one syllable names.

So instead of stopping, I walked on by, as the song goes. He looked at me funny, just standing there in the roadway smoking a cigarette from the side of his mouth as if he strived to be a cliché. I walked around the circle, concealed the folder in the back of my pants, and walked back toward my car. This, I knew, would be an absolute load of utterly joyous fun.

I walked silently past him, so close I could smell the Slim Jim on his breath, to the driver’s-side door and unlocked it. “Mr. Flynn?” he asked.

“Mister has an R in it,” I replied. A little Boston accent humor. Very little, apparently, because his forehead scrunched up in what I imagine was deep thought. “Huh?” he asked.

“You’re full of questions.”

I was obviously in no mood to accept anyone’s bullshit, despite the fact that everyone around seemed to think I was the ultimate receptacle, a veritable human Dumpster for all of life’s garbage.

Ape-man recovered somewhat, and said, “Somebody wants to speak to you.”

Well, I’ve got to admit, that’s always good news in the reporting business, usually anyway, but it didn’t seem such a surefire thing here. I replied, “Who might that be?”

I didn’t have the time or the patience for another one of these get-in-the-backseat-of-a-dark-sedan-and-we’ll-drive-you-to-where-you-need-to-be things. I wanted to get into my car and see what the hell it was that Hank Sweeney had given me. I had to get back to the newsroom and sit with Peter Martin and Vinny Mongillo and decide if we were going to take down the mayor on evidence that I thought was slightly south of solid. And if so, I would be directed to write the story, by deadline, and deadlines hadn’t been so good to me of late.

“He’ll tell you that.”

“I’m not going anywhere but in my car.”

He moved a step closer and said, “You don’t have to go anywhere. He’ll talk to you on the phone.” And with that, he pulled out one of those exceptionally little cell phones. When he punched out a number and put it up to his ear, the thing looked ridiculous set against his fat, whiskered face.

My car door was still open. The keys were in my hand. Sweeney’s folder was still shoved down the back of my pants. The occasional vehicle circled the lot in search of a space.

He handed me the phone.

I said, “Bob’s Shoe Repair Shop, where you’ll never get callous service.”

There was silence on the other end of the line, until a man’s hesitant voice said, “Is this Jack Flynn?” I tell you, these guys were far too easy.

“In the voice and flesh. What do you want?” I said this abruptly, impatiently, with not a whit of fakery. I was feeling abrupt and impatient.

The man on the phone said, “Hold the line, please.”

With that, there was a series of clicks and tones, as if a call were getting patched through to some faraway place using technology that I would never in a million years be able to understand. After a few seconds, another man’s voice came on the line, clear as a bell, all fresh and easy.

“Jack, that you?”

He talked as if he were steering his BMW along a windy country road on a Saturday afternoon on his way home from shooting a 78 at his private country club, this guy did, happy-go-lucky, loosey-goosey, entirely relaxed.

“It is. What can I do for you.”

“Jack, this is Toby Harkins calling. Listen, thanks an awful lot for taking a moment to chat. I appreciate that very much.”

I have sat in the Oval Office with presidents. I have dined with senators, quarreled with governors, reported from every one of our United States, traveled to six continents, all on the wings of a simple phrase: I’m a reporter for The Boston Record. But never, ever, in a career that suddenly seems prematurely long, have I been on the horn with the FBI’s most-wanted fugitive, a guy whose mug shot adorns the post offices in the biggest metropolises and the tiniest farming towns, arguably the most pursued criminal in the world.

So I said, “Toby, you never call, you never write. I’m really pissed off at you.”

He laughed — politely so, in almost a hail-fellow-well-met kind of way. I had never met Toby Harkins, never before talked to him, never even seen him, pictures aside. His reputation was that of someone who could turn on his charisma the way a beautiful woman can selectively, suddenly tantalize you with her good looks. He ruled, they say, with two parts fear and one part charm, captivating those he couldn’t make cower. And I could hear all the evidence of that in my few seconds on the phone with him so far.

“Hey, Jack”—always using my name, like we’re old friends—“I’ve got a little business proposition for you.”

He paused here, and I asked, “Is this one of those things I’m not going to be able to refuse?”

He laughed again, but not as much as before. I suspect that on my third attempt, funny as it would no doubt be, he wouldn’t be laughing at all, and the messenger monkey beside me would probably slug me in the head.

“You can do anything you want with it, but I hope you see it as in your best interest to accept it,” he said, still light, familiar, but with a subtext.

I didn’t reply — no need — so he added, “I hear there’s some interest in me back in Boston.”

He laughed a little. I didn’t.

He said, “I’ve got a story to tell,” he said. “I want to tell it to you. I want you to print it verbatim, your questions, my answers, like one of those Q and As that newspapers sometimes run. I’ve been keeping up with the papers, you know. I’ve read your stuff on me being a suspect in the Gardner heist.”

Now mind you, a couple of thoughts were occurring to me during this bizarre moment, the most prominent of which was, how did I know this was really Toby Harkins on the other end of the line? So I asked, “How do I know this is really Toby Harkins?” I mean, that’s what I do, I’m a reporter; reporters ask questions.

He replied, “Right now, you go on faith, then you agree to meet face-to-face; when you do, you’ll see it’s me.”

A car pulled up to where we were standing and the driver, an elderly balding man with what looked like his wife beside him, motored down his window and asked, “Are you gentlemen leaving?”

“Get the fuck out of here before I break your fucking face.” That was Ape-man, who didn’t quite seem ready for prime time yet.

Harkins said, “If you follow my conditions, if you meet with me, if you run my quotes as I say them, in their entirety, and if you hold off writing about my father until you and I get together, then I’ll make arrangements to have returned to you all the remaining artwork stolen from the Gardner Museum. It’s a pretty good position for you to be in. You get an exclusive story from the country’s most wanted fugitive, and you get credit for steering priceless paintings and drawings back to their rightful place.”

He made a good point, well articulated, clearly thought through. Problem is, I didn’t like someone, anyone, telling me how to do my job, what I could write, and more important, what I couldn’t. So I said, “Sounds interesting, but I think what you want is an ad, not a story. I can switch you over to the main line. When you get the recording, just press 2 for the advertising department.”

Of course, I couldn’t switch him over, and of course, I didn’t want to lose this exclusive. It would be my best chance to find out why Hilary Kane had died, and at whose hand. It was secondary, but I also didn’t want to forfeit the chance to bring all the stolen art back to the Gardner’s walls. But I didn’t want to seem like a pushover, an easy target.

Harkins said, “You don’t get it then, Jack.” This Jack thing was just starting to bug me, but I let it ride for now. “I have a hell of a story for you. You’re going to want to print my quotes as I say them, like when you guys run transcripts of speeches by the president or the governor.”

“Toby, you ain’t the president or the governor. You’re a killer who’s running for your life, and now you’re asking me to help you out.”

I have no idea why I was saying what I was saying. It was one of those times when your mouth gets ahead of your brain and fails to display any sort of restraint. There was a long pause on the other end of the line, before he finally said, aggravated now, “Jack, I guarantee it will be one of the biggest stories you’ll ever write. You get the art back. You get me in an exclusive. You’ll get the truth about my father’s involvement.”

A long pause, as I pretended to think things through. The only hitch was the deal with the mayor. Could this be a coordinated family attempt to get the story held just long enough so he could get his Senate appointment?

I said, “I can’t guarantee yet that I’m going to hold the story on your old man, but you’ll know by tomorrow if it runs or doesn’t run. If we get together, when?”

His voice was tight. He wasn’t used to people challenging him, casually refusing orders, telling him that his fate rested with somebody else. He said, obviously trying to control his anger, “Within the next twenty-four hours. My people will be in touch with you. We’ll do it at a secret, secure location, for obvious reasons. You’ll be thoroughly searched for any sort of transponder or locating device. If you’re carrying one, you’ll be killed. If you’re followed, you’ll be killed. If you alert authorities, you’ll be killed.”

“I’m sensing a theme here.”

“If you do everything right, you’ll be a hero.”

He hung up. The familiarity, the jocularity, was done and gone. He didn’t even say good-bye. I handed the phone back to the building-size man beside me, who, likewise, turned and walked away without a parting word.

“I wonder if they make that suit in your size,” I called out to him. I mean, the buttons on the damned jacket were so strained they were dangerous.

He just kept walking, never turning around. I got into my car, the most exhilarated I’d been since Hilary Kane’s death. The return of the artwork, yeah, that would be good, but far better than that was the educated hunch of mine that Toby Harkins would have something damned interesting to say.