The Fixer

23

He took Mass Ave straight through Boston and into Cambridge, and by early evening he’d returned to the Eustace House and lucked out, finding a parking space on Mass Ave right in front. As he backed into the space, he glanced at the passing traffic and noticed a hulking black SUV pass by, then pull over fifty feet or so ahead.

It was an Escalade. From a distance, and in the darkness, he couldn’t tell whether its windows were tinted like the Escalade he’d seen earlier in the day, outside the donut shop. The odds of it being the same vehicle were small, he realized.

But if it was… He didn’t want to be tailed to the B &B. Best not to take a chance. Forget about parking. He had to make sure he hadn’t been followed.

He pulled out of the space, passed the Escalade, then signaled right. When he looked in his rearview he saw the Escalade moving back into traffic, behind him, and signaling right, too.

As if it were following him.

He turned right, and looked in his rearview, and the Escalade seemed to hang back. He caught part of its license plate: CYK-something. Then the vehicle made a right turn as well, and then Rick felt a prickle of anxiety.

He turned right again at the next block-and the Escalade didn’t, and for a moment, Rick relaxed. He’d probably just been paranoid. He completed the circle around the block, this time passing the Eustace House without stopping.

Then, as he kept going down Mass Ave, the realization settled on him that maybe he wasn’t in the clear at all. Maybe the Escalade had pulled away because its driver decided he’d been detected.

And as his stomach clenched, he tried to figure out how they’d found him, but he couldn’t. He’d rented a car to avoid being tracked, and he’d been careful when renting the car not to be spotted. Or so he thought.

The fact was, Rick was an amateur, and he was dealing with professionals. He was dealing with relentless, possibly cold-blooded people. People who threatened him with dismemberment, threats that seemed all too plausible.

He thought he’d lost them at the Charles, and he was wrong. Somehow they’d found him again.

He had to take more extensive measures. He had to make sure.

He drove straight through East Cambridge to a shopping mall, the CambridgeSide Galleria. It was a perfectly ordinary, semi-high-end mall with a J.Crew and an Old Navy, an Abercrombie & Fitch and a Body Shop and a California Pizza Kitchen.

And a Zipcar office.

He parked on the second level, got out, went into Macy’s and came right back out. He went down to the Apple Store and pretended to study the iPads. He went abruptly into Newbury Comics, where he acted as if he was browsing the DVD selections. He was anxious and trying hard not to let it show. No one seemed to be following him, but again, he couldn’t be sure. There was no way to know. He went into Best Buy on one level, bought a flashlight, and exited on another level.

After forty-five minutes of this he felt jittery and paranoid and still not one hundred percent sure he wasn’t being followed.

Then he rented another car at Zipcar. From the old car, he retrieved the file carton he’d taken from Joan Breslin’s basement. Then, leaving the old rental car in the parking mall garage, he drove the new car out of the mall and across the Mass Ave Bridge near MIT into Boston. He found a bed-and-breakfast on Beacon Street in Kenmore Square that he’d seen a few times before, on his way to or from watching the Red Sox play at Fenway Park, and paid for a night in advance. He called Hertz to let them know where he’d left the Ford Focus. There would be stiff penalties for failing to return the car to a Hertz desk, but money was one thing he was no longer short of.

He wondered whether he was indeed safe. There was no way to know.

And then he realized he had to go back to the house on Clayton Street. And soon.