The Patriots' Club

21

Thomas Bolden sat in the back of the taxi, his cheek pressed to the cold metal door frame. Traffic moved in fits and spurts. The sky had hardened to a steely gray, the clouds fused into a solid, darkening wall. The taxi came to a halt. Pedestrians hurried along the wet sidewalks, one eye for the sky wondering when the hesitant snowflakes would yield to the real McCoy.

Bolden glanced at his lap. His right hand trembled as if palsied. Stop, he ordered it silently, but the shaking didn’t lessen. He took a breath and placed his left hand on top of it, then stared back out the window.

Until now, it had all been a terrible mistake. The mugging, his abduction and interrogation, the botched attempt to kill him. He’d been willing to consign all of it to the trash. Guilfoyle had the wrong man. It was that simple. Yet, as they drove up Fifth Avenue, his eyes aching in their sockets, his trousers stained with cooking grease and yesterday’s veal piccata, he realized that he’d been wrong. It didn’t matter if he could forgive and forget. They would not.

“They” had followed him into his workplace.

“They” had gotten to Diana Chambers.

“They” had killed Sol Weiss.

It didn’t matter that he had no knowledge of “Crown” or a man named Bobby Stillman. The fact that he knew of them was enough.

“They” would not go away. Not now, Bolden told himself. Not ever.

He thought of Jenny.

If Diana Chambers was fair game, she might be next.

“Driver,” he said, tapping his knuckles on the Plexiglas screen that divided the cab. “Take me to Fourteenth Street and Broadway. The Kraft School. There’s a twenty in it if you can make it in ten minutes.”