The Nominee

Twenty

TIRED DOESN’T COME NEAR to describing how I felt as we pulled into the gravel lot above Long Wharf, Kevin and Gerry, the two Boston cops, in the front of their unmarked cruiser, and me and Hank Sweeney in the back.

Exhaustion. Complete and total mental and physical incapacitation. I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to move. The walk from the car down the docks to theThe Emancipation loomed in my mind like a journey across Death Valley on foot. If my protectors had wanted to carry me like a bride over a threshold, I would have said fine, but no offer was proffered, so I opened the rear passenger door and struggled to my aching feet.

The first thing I saw was my own convertible, sitting in a different spot from where I usually parked it, the sight of it triggering the recollection that my ex-girlfriend had brought it back to my seaworthy abode. She might be waiting for me inside. Elizabeth, hi, you met Hank earlier. Hank, yeah, this is Elizabeth.

Oh boy.

The next thing I saw was another, unfamiliar car, a gold Lexus, parked a few spots away, closer to us. The rectangular lot was usually empty at night, because even in April, I was the only fool desperate enough to be sleeping on a boat. Perhaps someone had come back north for the season. Or perhaps someone was as desperate as me for a place to call home.

As we walked by the Lexus, the quiet creaks and taps of its cooling engine penetrated the haze surrounding my brain with some larger meaning, but what that was, I wasn’t quite sure. I only know that I grew agitated, and suddenly more aware. I brushed my hand across the hood of the car, which was warm, which only made me more tense.

“I wouldn’t mind catching a Red Sox game while I’m up here,” Sweeney was saying, his comments directed as much to Kevin and Gerry, who were walking alongside us. “I saw them in spring training this year, and they looked a little rough up the middle.”

I hastened my pace, moving several steps ahead of them. My eyes cut through the dark toward the boat, where a dim light was shining from below deck. As I walked by Nathan’s shanty, I noticed another light reflecting from one of his windows. It was about midnight, late for him to be up.

When I hit the long, wooden dock, my legs were moving so fast that I was nearly running, though if anyone asked me why, which I think my police cohorts were about to do, I couldn’t have provided a proper explanation. Nervous, easily excitable, suspicious, maybe paranoid. Probably all of that and more. But I couldn’t stop. I heard the guys behind me start to move at a similarly fast pace.

When I rounded the last turn and got within about twenty yards of the boat, with the dock creaking and heaving beneath me and the bracing salt air slapping my face, I thought I saw something move on deck, some shadowy object pass briefly in front of a ray of light. Maybe it was an insect or an illusion or simply a shade blowing in the breeze. But now I was in a full-out run.

At ten yards away, my focus grew sharper and I saw the object move again, this time in a darkened crevice of the deck. He or she or it was hunched low to the ground, and moved slowly, deliberately, as if it were trying to hide.

“Freeze,” I screamed, my voice thundering through the night air before evaporating over the vast harbor. My legs were hammering toward the boat.

At five yards, my eyes deciphered a human form — a dark jacket, a black ski mask, a stout pair of eyes staring back at me, the eyes darting from me to the three men stampeding from the rear. Then he — or she — turned from me and, in one quick, short motion, jumped overboard and into the sea. I barely saw a splash, and asked myself, is this some sort of exhaustion-induced mirage?

Time to find out. I leaped from the dock onto the boat without ever breaking stride. When I got to the aft side, I stared into the water, saw a murky form briefly surface about ten feet away, and dove in.

It’s probably appropriate to note right about now that I don’t think Flipper spent as much time performing daredevil water acts as I had in the last few days — no small irony considering that I barely know how to swim. I’ll also point out that it was April in Boston, meaning the water wasn’t so much cold as frigid, almost frozen, a fact I hadn’t considered until my head broke through the surface and I was met with the sudden assumption that I was probably going to die.

Cold? Picture the dead of winter in Glacier National Park in the northernmost point of Montana, with a Dairy Queen Mr. Misty in your hand and your feet in a puddle of slush. Picture being soaking wet and stuck in the freezer case of your local supermarket, your clothes adhered to your purple skin. I wasn’t in the water but thirty seconds when my limbs began going numb and my vision blurred because my head hurt so much. Mark Spitz I was not, but screw him because this wasn’t any Olympic-style pool.

I treaded water, lifting my head as high as I could in search of the intruder, but saw nothing.

Shouts suddenly filled the air, and I turned toward the boat and saw the massive form of Hank Sweeney at the edge, yelling, “Son, I’m with you.” With that, he jumped through the air and cannonballed into the black sea, the resulting waves splashing over my head. Maybe we could get a job as the comic warm-up act at Sea World.

“This way,” I cried back, and began thrashing toward shore, figuring that was the direction that the intruder was headed, and also assuming that if we didn’t get to shore quickly, we would all suffer from hypothermia.

The moon cast a yellowish glow over the water, and in the dull light, I thought I made out a splashing form about twenty paces ahead. I tried yelling out “In front of me,” but the words barely came out, and as they did, they for some reason sounded like “Enema.” Go figure.

I swam harder, my arms ripping through the freezing water and my exhausted legs, weighed down by my shoes, thrashing behind me. I was gaining, but not enough, mostly because I paused a couple of times to make sure Sweeney was all right behind me. The cops onboard had thrown him a life preserver and were trying to pull him to safety, which meant they weren’t waiting on shore where I really needed them.

I picked up the pace and appeared to be gaining on him. Icy water splashed into my mouth. My private parts felt as if they were eternally numb. I plodded onward, suddenly angry that in my childhood swimming lessons at Carson Beach, the recalcitrant instructors declined to graduate me to anything beyond the level of Minnow. If my Dolphin friends could only see me now.

And then I thought of Elizabeth. Was she on the boat, or had she simply dropped my car off and gone home? If it was the former, did I scare off the intruder before he harmed her, or after? Could he have thought Elizabeth was me and shot her, Elizabeth the innocent victim of a mistaken identity, or was he waiting on deck to ambush me when I came home?

I felt sick over the possibilities. Together, apart, lifelong lovers, mortal enemies — didn’t matter. I began pulsing through the water even harder, the intruder still about a dozen paces ahead, but the gap closing.

In Boston Harbor, shore isn’t anything so pleasant or easy as a sandy beach, such that I could step from the water and give simple chase to the man or woman who wanted to be my executioner, which is not to be confused with my executor, though maybe I’d soon need one of those as well.

Rather, there are tall, concrete seawalls built to protect the streets and seaside parks from the occasional nor’ easter that sends mammoth waves catapulting toward land. I bring this up as I pulled close to shore and saw just such a wall looming over me. I also saw my intruder, up on his feet, lurching across the few feet of litter-strewn, rock-covered dry land between the wall and the water. I stood in the harbor, realized I was only waist deep, and pushed toward land.

When I hit terra firma, my lungs were desperate for air. My extremities were so cold they felt like they might just crack and clunk on the ground (loudly, I might add). I stumbled and fell hard onto the rocks, picked myself up, and staggered toward the wall. That’s when a rock, moving at no slow velocity, grazed my head. I never saw it coming, but felt its impact on my temple. I crumbled to the ground yet again, summoned every bit of strength I had, and pulled myself back to my feet.

I gazed upward and saw the intruder scaling the top of the ten-foot wall. He was no longer wearing the mask. He looked down at me as I looked at him, and I was sure, one hundred percent positive, that it was the same guy I had seen in Florida and on the basketball court in the North End. As I made my first move to climb the wall, I looked up and saw him from behind sprinting off into the night.

As I put my hands on the wall, getting ready to climb, the next thing I saw was a floodlight descend from the sky. The pulsing sound of a helicopter filled the air. A man on a megaphone hollered, “State Police. Move away from the wall and lie flat on the beach.” So I did, I did, spreading myself out face down on the ground with my arms above my head and my legs a few feet apart, relief overcoming frustration, but fear still coursing through my brain. What I feared was the unknown, and what I didn’t know was whether Elizabeth was still alive.

And then it was bedlam. The helicopter landed on the street above the seawall with a blast of noise and a gust of wind. The urgent wail of police sirens filled the air, the lights from the cruisers flashing red and blue in every conceivable direction. As I lay on the ground, soaking wet, quaking uncontrollably from the relentless cold, a floodlight focused on me and a cop yelled from the top of the wall, “Massachusetts State Police. One move and you’re dead.”

Great. You tell me how to stop shivering. One more minute in this cold and I was dead anyway.

Someone flung a rope ladder down the wall and I watched from the ground as two uniformed troopers quickly descended it. Then I heard another voice from the top of the wall, a familiar voice, that of Gerry, one of my bodyguards, call out, “Hold any fire. That’s Jack Flynn. He’s okay. He’s okay.”

Was I?

Was Elizabeth alive?

The troopers, on the rocky ground now, still approached me warily. They had me roll over, felt for a weapon, pulled my newspaper ID from my front pocket, and helped me to my feet. One of them yelled, and I’m not lying about this, “Medics!” It felt like we were on the set of a movie, only I wish my contract provided for a stuntman to play these action scenes.

Within minutes, there was a stretcher, which I refused to lie on. A youngish man in a jumpsuit wrapped me in what looked like an aluminum foil floor-length coat, and, beneath that, helped me pull off my soaking wet clothes. Normally I wouldn’t allow a man to disrobe me, but right about now I would have let anyone do anything they wanted, provided it would help me get warm and dry.

A second paramedic, his face just inches from mine, yelled, as if I had suffered ear or brain damage during my nautical exploits, “Can you climb this ladder?”

I replied in a regular tone, at normal volume, “Yes.”

As I walked to the wall, a uniformed trooper came alongside me and asked if I saw which way the intruder — killer? — had escaped.

“He went that-a-way,” I said, pointing to the peak of the concrete wall. I don’t know why I thought that was funny, but I did. The officer didn’t.

When I hit the top of the wall I again declined to lie on the rolling gurney — what is it with paramedics and their stretchers? — and searched the crowd for Gerry, the bodyguard. There were a dozen State Police and Boston Police cruisers parked at every possible angle, all their lights flashing and pulsing. Police radios cackled in the night. Floodlights were aimed every which way. Another chopper, I think with a television station, hovered overhead. I saw Gerry about ten yards away gesticulating wildly to an older man in a suit.

As I walked through the crowd toward them, wrapped in my faux spacesuit and flanked by nervous paramedics, I saw exactly what I didn’t want to see: The State Medical Examiner’s van lumbering around a corner and slowly pulling across the gravel lot of Long Wharf.

Elizabeth.

My head became so light that I thought I might pass out. My stomach began churning so hard that I had to crouch down for a moment, my hands on my knees, thinking I might vomit all over my bare feet.

“Get the gurney,” one of the paramedics shouted.

“Fuck the gurney,” I said to no one in particular. I straightened up and headed toward Gerry in a jog, pushing my way through various groups of cops.

“You’re alright?” he said to me, his look urgent, as I approached.

“Who’s dead?”

“Are you feeling okay?”

“Gerry, who the fuck is dead?”

He said, “Come here,” and he put his arm on my shoulder and led me away from the group. This scene had a familiarity about it that I didn’t like one bit, mostly because I knew only too well where it was leading.

As we walked, my eyes were fixed on the M.E. van in the distance, the two kids in jumpsuits flicking open the rear doors and mindlessly pulling the rolling stretcher out and dropping it on the ground with a little bounce — another night, another victim, life in the big city.

Then I saw what could have been a hypothermia-induced hallucination, or maybe an apparition, something so good I didn’t dare believe it to be true. It was Elizabeth, or at least someone who moved in that elegant way that Elizabeth does, someone who looked like Elizabeth, walking across the parking lot toward the bedlam.

Without explanation, I broke away from Gerry and began drifting toward her, bobbing and weaving around clusters of investigators with my two paramedics lagging behind — until I noticed who she was with. She was walking beside Luke Travers. Actually, let me be more specific. She was virtually huddled against Luke Travers, who had his arm draped over her shoulder. She had a nervous look on her face as she scanned the crowd — maybe looking for me, maybe not — and he was playing the opportunistic role of the comforter.

My relief, my joy, flashed into anger, causing too many of those horrible memories to gush into my brain like salt water over cold skin. A moment ago I was euphoric. Now I was furious, not to mention embarrassed. The word schmuck came to mind.

And suddenly I was exhausted, cold, and weak. I turned away before she could see me and walked back toward Gerry, grabbed his shirt and seethed, “Tell me who the fuck is dead.”

He looked surprised, but answered. “An old guy who lives in the shack at the top of the dock. His driver’s license says Nathan Bowe.”

Reflexively, I put my hands up to my eyes and rubbed them until I saw stars and white lines.

Gerry asked, “Did you know him?”

I nodded my head without speaking or moving my hands.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He paused and added, “We found him when we were doing a quick search of the area. His light was on in his cottage, so one of the uniforms knocked on his door. When he didn’t answer, the uniform pushed it open. It was unlocked. And right inside, on the floor, was Mr. Bowe.”

Another pause, then, “He was shot in the forehead, twice.” He didn’t point it out because he didn’t have to point it out, but the modus operandi was nearly the same as in Paul Ellis’s death. “It appears that he was shot outside, then dragged inside the shack. It also looks as if he might have skin under his fingernails, meaning he might have been shot after he tried to attack the assailant.”

Poor Nathan was trying to protect Elizabeth from an intruder and ended up coming face to face with a guy who would seemingly stop at nothing to kill me.

I watched Elizabeth walking by. Travers wasn’t in his usual dark suit, but rather a pair of jeans and a windbreaker with the words “Boston Police” emblazoned across the back. She was also in jeans, meaning she had gone home to change after leaving the restaurant. And she had a matching “Boston Police” windbreaker on that Travers had no doubt given her to help her keep warm. Isn’t that cute. Isn’t that valiant. Doesn’t that make you just want to kill him?

No, I mean it. I really and truly wanted to kill him, but there was too much death going on around me already.

Elizabeth spied me and veered in my direction, breaking free of Travers’s grip. At that moment, one of the medics told me in a whiney voice, “We really have to get you to the hospital to perform some tests.”

As Elizabeth was coming up on me, calling out my name, the memories, the bad memories, ricocheted around in my mind — the confusion, the loneliness, the indecision, the feelings of complete and total inadequacy that draped me like a hood every day and every night for all those weeks and months afterward.

She came up and hugged me, but I acted frozen — a word I don’t use lightly anymore.

“Jack, thank God you’re alright,” she said, holding me tight.

Of course, she sensed the lack of emotion on my end and immediately pulled back. “What’s the matter?” she asked, her expression one of hurt.

“My boys here want to get me to the hospital to run some quick tests.”

“I’ll go with you.”

I said, “No, you stay here. The detectives will need you.” And if that wasn’t an obvious enough jab, I said, “And I’m sure you’re in good hands.”

As I turned and walked away, I heard her cry out, “Goddammit, Jack, you’re wrong. Don’t be an asshole.”

Well, maybe she was right, but at that point, I didn’t particularly care. Suddenly, I was pulling myself up into the back of the ambulance. Paul’s dead. Nathan’s dead. I’m apparently next. I couldn’t feel my toes, but that’s okay, because at that precise moment, I couldn’t feel my heart, either.

Schmuck.