The Society

CHAPTER 29

“What’d you say?”

The elderly black man, dapperly dressed in a sports coat, dress shirt, vest, tie, and plaid walking cap, had been ambling past a row of shops that were all secured with metal accordion gates. Now, in no apparent rush to get anyplace despite the inclement weather, he hunched down by the open window of the Jeep beneath his small black umbrella and squinted in at Will. It was already twenty minutes after eight. Dusk had come and gone, yielding to another in what seemed an unending string of raw, drizzly nights. The tangled, narrow streets of Roxbury, many dating to Colonial times, had completely overwhelmed Will’s tattered street guide-or at least his ability to read it.

“Dennis Street,” he said, in the exaggerated voice he had unfortunately developed over years of treating older patients in hospitals and nursing homes. “D-E-N-N-I-S. I’m looking for the corner of Spruce and Dennis. That’s Spruce right over there”-he pointed to the cross street behind him-“but I can’t find any Dennis off it or on my map.”

“Hey,” the man said, “no need to shout. Just because I been on this earth longer ’n most, don’t automatically mean I’m deaf.”

Will managed a grin at himself.

“Sorry, bad habit.”

“You sure these streets are in Roxbury?”

The man-maybe in his eighties-had a creaky, high-pitched voice that reminded Will of a child in a school play trying to portray an old man.

“That’s what the guy wrote. Roxbury. See, right here.”

Careful to cover up the part about bringing $500, Will showed the man the note, and he studied it for a time.

“You know what?” he cackled suddenly. “I think I know why you been havin’ trouble. I don’t think Dennis is a street at all. I think it’s like an alley-Dennis Way, it’s called-two blocks, maybe three, down Spruce that way. If there’s a sign, and as I recall, there usually is one, it’s nailed to one of the buildings, not on a pole.”

“Thanks, you’re great.”

Will moved to put the Jeep in gear, but the man stopped him with a raised hand.

“I don’t think the alley’s wide enough for a car,” he said, “especially this one. You’d best park someplace near and walk.”

“I’ll do that.”

“You know what would even be a better idea?”

“What?”

“Go on home and come back tomorrow during the day. Take it from ol’ Lionel. At night the-excuse me for cussin’-darn gangs own this part of the city. Cabs almost never come here. The cops only come ’round when they have to, and then they only stay long enough to say they did it. I never carry more’n a dollar with me when I go for my evening constitutional. The Cobras used to shake me down if they were particularly desperate for money, but now they’ve pretty much given up on me. You go walkin’ about these streets-especially back in there where Dennis Way is-an’ they’ll know you’re there quicker ’n you do. It’s doubtful that you’ll make it out with your wallet or maybe even your car, for that matter. Most of them’s pretty good boys, but they don’t have much in the way of parentin’, if you know what I mean.”

“I’ll be careful, Lionel.”

“Careful’s good,” Lionel said, “but it might help for you to be bulletproof, too.”

That does it, Will thought as he drove away from the man down the virtually deserted street and made a slow left onto Spruce, I am out of here.

With cars parked on both sides, Spruce was barely more than a lane wide. To either side, Will now noticed narrow alleys, each with a name bolted in some way to the brick facade of a tenement. Alley 114, one of them read, Wright’s Path, another. The fourth sign he saw was Dennis Way.

Will opened the passenger window and peered down the alley, which was illuminated by a single low-wattage, hooded lamp jutting out from a building halfway down to the next street. There were two small Dumpsters, several trash cans, and enough loose trash to fill a good portion of them. He reread the mysterious note. If he drove off now, would he ever get another chance to find out what Charles Newcomber had left for him? If he didn’t leave, would he still be alive in half an hour?

At that moment, as if by divine intervention, the lights on a parked car pierced the night two blocks ahead. Moments later, it pulled out and drove away. Will raced to the spot, although there was absolutely no competing car on the street. Silently, he promised himself that if the space was by a hydrant, he was out of there and on the way back to Fredrickston. He had mixed emotions that there was no hydrant and so no need to put the deal to a test. In less than a minute, after a brilliant job of parallel parking, he was standing on the sidewalk in a gloomy, windblown drizzle, peering uncertainly down a deserted street in one of the toughest, most dangerous neighborhoods in Boston.

Perhaps whoever had left the note had waited and was gone, he thought, confirming on his Casio that he was a full half an hour late. Again, he thought about leaving. Again, he talked himself out of it and headed cautiously back toward Dennis Way. Although both the street and the alley seemed deserted, he couldn’t shake the heavy feeling that he was being watched. He stopped at the mouth of the alley, zipped his windbreaker, and debated whether to stay where he was or move ahead. The note had instructed him to be at the corner of the alley, not down it. He was about to turn and leave when the muzzle of a gun was pressed tightly into the small of his back.

“Don’t turn around,” the youthful, almost certainly black, voice said. “You Grant?”

Will waited until his pulse rate had dropped back below a thousand.

“Yes,” he managed. “You don’t need that gun.”

“I’ll decide what I need and don’t need. Now jus’ head down that alley. All the way down. Eyes straight ahead.”

Will did as he was told, hesitating halfway down as a rat the size of a cat scurried across his path, less than a foot from the toes of his sneakers.

“No collar,” he said. “I wonder if it’s had all its shots.”

The response to his nervous humor was a sharp nudge from behind. They passed under the light and were almost at the far end of the alley when the gunman grabbed him by the jacket.

“Take this off,” he said.

He patted Will down from behind, lingering a beat, it seemed, by the front of his jeans. Then he pushed him out of the alley and onto the sidewalk of the street that seemed to run parallel to Spruce. Finally, he turned Will around and tossed his jacket back. He was, in fact, a teen, maybe sixteen-seventeen, tops-baggy chinos, pricey leather-sleeved jacket with Chris embroidered in script over the left breast, ornately stitched Rasta cap. His unlined, richly black face was equal parts pretty and handsome. His eyes, even in the dim light, were bright and intelligent enough, but they were way past being the eyes of a youth, and Will sensed the hard times they had seen. Cradled in the young man’s right hand was a snub-nosed revolver-a Saturday-night special. In his left was a large manila envelope, the sort used for transporting or mailing X-rays. The buildings at this point blocked most of the wind and rain, and Will noted with relief that, aside from a few drops, the envelope was dry.

“Did you bring the money?” the teen asked.

“I did. Believe it or not, it wasn’t so easy coming up with five hundred on such short notice, but I’ve got it.”

“I thought you were a doctor.”

“I’ve fallen on some hard times.”

“Too bad. Stick around here if you want to really learn what hard times are all about. Hand it over.”

“Let me see what you’ve got for me.”

“Hand it fucking over!”

There was no mistaking the edge in his voice. This was not the time for negotiation. Will did as he was told. The teen flipped through the stack of bills and then shoved them into his jacket pocket.

“That your name? Chris?”

“What if it is?”

“Chris, put that gun away. I’m no threat to you.”

“I’ll decide whether you’re a threat or not.”

“How did you know Newcomber was dead?”

“I. . I just knew.”

Will could tell he was lying. Despite the gun and the attitude, he began feeling sorry for Chris.

“You didn’t know, did you? Well, someone was in the process of torturing him, and he had a heart attack.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was about those X-rays.”

“Shit. He been callin’ me twice a day. Eight in the morning, eight at night. He said if he missed a call I was to get this envelope to you.”

His gun still leveled at Will’s midsection, Chris had already regained his swagger.

“The five hundred was your idea?” Will asked.

“What if it was? Like the man in the movies says, it’s all about the Benjamins.”

“How do you know Newcomber?”

For a second, it seemed to Will as if he was in for a flip answer, or none at all. Then a look that might have been sadness drifted across Chris’s face.

“Ol’ Charles liked me. I did things for him, he did things for me. You like to have things done for you?”

“I don’t think I like the kind of things you’re talking about.”

“Hey, don’t knock it if you ain’t tried it, and don’t go talkin’ like a smart-ass at someone with a gun pointin’ at you, neither.”

“Listen, Chris, why don’t you just let me have that envelope? You got your money. Now, how about giving me the envelope like Charles asked you to and let me go home?”

Chris hesitated, then passed it over. It was thick with X-rays, although in the gloom Will could tell nothing beyond that.

“Well,” he said, his pulse racing at the notion that in just a couple of minutes he would be behind the wheel of his Jeep heading out of Roxbury and back to his condo, “thanks for keeping your end of the deal. Charles would be very pleased with you.”

“Don’t mean shit to me whether a dead man is pleased with me or not,” Chris said, with forced bravado. “He’s gone, and there are plenty more like him out there anxious to take his place.”

“Is it okay for me to go now?”

“No, Grant, actually, it’s not.” The man’s voice came from the darkness along a brick wall just inside the alley. It was a voice familiar to Will, although he couldn’t at that instant figure out from where. “Drop the gun, Chris. Now!”

“You fucking bastard,” Chris hissed at Will.

“I didn’t-”

“The gun!” the voice snapped.

From the darkness, still looking like something of a bookworm despite the broad shoulders, narrow waist, and heavy pistol he held aimed directly at Chris’s chest, stepped Boyd Halliday’s executive assistant, Marshall Gold.

Will’s thoughts spun wildly as he tried to get his mind around what was happening and why. Nothing made sense.

“I have no beef with you, pal,” Gold said. “Just put your gun away in your pocket.”

Chris hesitated, then did as he was told.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“He’s the man who killed-”

Quick as a rattlesnake, Gold whipped the muzzle of his pistol across Will’s face, opening a gash on the side of his jaw and dropping him to one knee. Calmly, his cold eyes fixed on Will through his wire-rimmed glasses, Gold bent down and retrieved the X-ray envelope from the pavement.

“Okay, let’s go, hotshot,” he said.

He reached down, grabbed Will by the collar, and yanked him to his feet with little effort. Will felt blood dripping down his neck but refused even to touch his wound. He did use his tongue to probe the inside of his lip, which was cut, and his teeth, one of which seemed loose.

What in the hell is going on?

If Gold had killed Newcomber and left the two alphabet letters, then he was also the managed-care serial killer. It made no sense. Was he trying to mislead police by being a copycat?

“Listen, pal,” Chris said suddenly to Gold, “those X-rays are for sale to the highest bidder. How much you got on you?”

Gold laughed.

“I’ve got the gun and here you are shaking me down. You are a pile of balls, my little friend, a pile of brass balls. But here you go. Where I come from, having brass cojones gets rewarded.”

He pulled a money clip from his pocket and with one hand worked off what looked like a hundred-dollar bill. Then he flipped it in Chris’s direction. It blew a few feet away and fluttered to the sidewalk. The teen made no move to pick it up.

Instead, Chris folded his hands disdainfully across his chest.

“That ain’t nearly enough,” he said.

“Well, get used to it, because that’s all you’re getting. Come on, Grant, you and I have some business to attend to.”

“I don’t think that’s all our man Chris is gonna get from this dude,” a rich, bass voice said. “Do you, Rod?”

A man, clearly older and heavier than Chris, stood up from between two parked cars at the moment an even larger man moved out from somewhere in the shadows of the alley. Both held guns pointed at Gold, one of them some sort of submachine gun.

“I don’t think it’s nearly enough,” Rod said. “How ’bout you, Smitty? What you think?”

“No way it’s enough. I say Mr. Tough here is downright cheap. That’s what I say. How about you guys?”

A third man materialized from the night and slid out from behind Gold, pistol ready, then two more appeared from across the street.

“Seems like we never get visitors around here anymore, eh, Biggs?”

A wiry man in his early twenties emerged from a tenement doorway and moved in next to Chris.

“This is Biggs,” Chris said to the two white men. “He says, ‘Jump,’ you ask, ‘How high?’ ”

Biggs had narrow, close-set eyes, a broad, flat nose, and a thick, north-south scar that crossed his upper and lower lips just to the right of midline.

“Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” he said. “Now, Mr. Tough, why don’t you jus’ put that fine piece of hardware on the sidewalk and kick it over here.”

His eyes still all business, Gold complied. Will sensed that, despite the firepower fixed on them, he was actually evaluating his chances in a shoot-out.

“These X-rays belong to my company,” Gold said. “This man here killed to get them. I’m willing to pay you well to get them back.”

“That’s a lie,” Will said. “He’s the killer. He does it for a living.”

“How much more you got on you?” Biggs asked Will.

“Ten dollars.”

“Hand it over. I find you got any more, I’m gonna shoot off one of your fingers. You, how much?”

Moving with deliberate slowness, Gold slid the money clip from his pocket and tossed it over. Biggs counted the remaining bills, which Will thought might add up to as much as a thousand, and stuffed them in his deep pants pocket.

“You jus’ bought yourself some serious consideration, my man.”

“I’ll leave him and the X-rays here with you while I go and get some more,” Gold said. “Twice that much. Then I want them both.”

“I wonder what it is about you that I just don’t trust. What you all think, guys? You think we should let him just take off?”

“Bogus.”

“He sucks.”

“You can throw him farther ’n you can trust him.”

“We ain’t standin’ around here in the rain.”

“The will of the Cobras has spoken,” Biggs said. “We ain’t waitin’ around for you or anyone. You want this dude, Mr. Tough, you gotta catch him. Chris, will you feel you kept your part of the bargain if we give this hangdog, say, a minute’s head start?”

“A minute’d be fine, Biggs.”

“A minute it is, then. Give him that envelope, Mr. Tough.”

“You’re costing yourselves a lot of money.”

“We’ll decide what we’re costin’ ourselves. Now give it to him and lay down on your face.”

“But-”

“Down!. . Okay, now, hangdog, you got a minute. Ready, go!”

“Wait, I-”

“Fifty-five seconds. No, no, not back up that alley, down that way. Fifty seconds. Now get going. . Forty-five seconds.”

With Biggs’s voice echoing behind him, Will sprinted off down whatever street they were on, which he believed ran parallel to Spruce.

“Forty seconds!”

Frantically, he searched for an alley crossing over to Spruce. Instead, the street began sloping upward and curving to the left-away from where the Jeep was parked.

“Thirty seconds!”

Biggs’s voice still seemed to be coming from just a few feet behind him. Will’s legs felt as if they were moving through molasses. He looked in better shape than he was, and countless nights on call hadn’t helped matters. The muscles he needed for standing at the operating table or prowling the wards of the hospital were strong, but aerobically he wasn’t much of a specimen. Already he was breathing heavily, and a sharp stitch had formed in his side. Gold had perhaps five or six years on him, but he was also fit. With the X-rays tucked against his body, Will’s stride was choppy and unbalanced. In addition to the dagger in his side, every step sent a railroad spike hammering into his battered jaw.

A right turn. Where in the hell is a right turn?

Initially, he had been grateful they left him his car keys and certain he could make it to the Jeep before Gold caught him. Now he debated whether it was worth abandoning the notion of the Jeep and instead trying to find a place to hide-a Dumpster, perhaps, or a doorway into a building. His minute was over, he felt certain of that, but the bend in the road made it impossible to see if Gold was closing on him.

Ahead on the right he spotted a street sign fixed to the side of a building like the one for Dennis Way. Alley 122. A right here, then maybe two more rights and he might find Spruce. It seemed like a better bet than trying to hide someplace. Maybe just the turn would be enough to lose Gold. Still sprinting full bore, trying to ignore his mounting discomforts, he charged into the alley, which was cleaner and less cluttered than Dennis. Ten yards in, he caught his toe in a pothole and fell, sprawling face first onto the slick pavement. He cried out as skin tore off his knees and palms. Air exploded from his lungs. The envelope of films skidded out of his grasp. He glanced back as he retrieved it and scrambled to his feet. Nothing yet.

Ignoring pain in half a dozen different places, he sprinted ahead. He was nearing the end of the alley when he heard a gunshot from behind him. A piece of brick to his left shattered off. Silhouetted against the dim light at the far end of the alley, still a good distance away, Gold appeared to be on one knee, steadying himself for another shot. Will lurched to his left as the second shot ricocheted off a wall not far from his head. Damn! Biggs would never have given Gold back his gun. He must have had a second one hidden somewhere. No surprise. The man was a pro.

The end of the alley was just a few yards away. A car splashed past on what seemed a much wider street than Spruce. Right, then maybe another right, Will guessed, realizing at the same time that he might have gotten completely turned around. Even if he could put a little more distance between him and Gold, would he have a chance to reach the Jeep, jump in, and get it out of a tight parking space? Doubtful. Even if his sense of where he had parked was right on the money, it was extremely doubtful he could make it out in time. Still, however remote, there was a chance.

He pushed himself even harder, blocking out the aches and the hopelessness of his position. Charging around the corner, he narrowly avoided colliding with a man walking toward him. It was Lionel, still on his evening constitutional. Gasping for air, Will grabbed him by the arm and roughly pulled him into the shadow of a brick tenement.

“Lionel, Lionel, listen,” he heard his desperate voice plead, “I’m in big trouble. Here, take this and hold it for me. Wait in here until it seems safe, then go home. I’ll find you.”

“Who-”

Panicked beyond waiting for any reply or working through the potential consequences of what he was doing, Will thrust the envelope into the old man’s hands and pushed him into the rear of the unlit, recessed entryway to the building. Then, praying Gold wouldn’t realize that his initial move had been to the right, he hunched over as if he were a running back with a football and sprinted across the rain-swept street to the left. Another shot snapped off from the alley, then another. Both sounded much closer than had the previous ones. He was across the street now, pounding past a beauty parlor, then a tax office, trying to keep his speed up as pain in his hands, jaw, and knees and the horrific stitch in his side slowed him down. A block passed, then most of another.

“Grant! Give it up!” Gold called from behind. “Those were warning shots. I can kill you right now, but I won’t. Just give me the films!”

The killer was gaining rapidly now. Will knew that, barring the sudden appearance of a patrol car or police station, it was almost over for him. Ahead and to his right was the entrance to an old, unlit cemetery. From what he could tell, none of the headstones seemed large enough to offer a place to hide. Still, the route would take him even farther from Lionel, and if he made it through, maybe there was more activity on the other side.

With no plan other than to keep moving, he cut sharply to his right, between two shoulder-high granite steles and into the graveyard. He hadn’t gone more than twenty or thirty feet when he tripped over a low stone nearly obscured in the long grass and pitched forward, slamming shoulder first into a marker that looked to be centuries old. At that moment, part of him wanted to quit, to just roll over and wait. Instead, he scrambled to his feet and stumbled ahead. The far side of the small cemetery seemed to border a fairly busy street. Two cars sped past, then a third. If he could just make it there, he sensed he had a chance.

What little remained of his hope lasted only a few more seconds. Before he reached the low hedges marking the far border of the graveyard, he was tackled from behind with stunning force. His face narrowly missed a stone as he pitched forward into cold, wet mud with Gold’s full weight upon him. Another instant and he was on his back, his attacker straddling him, looking furiously about, his dirt-stained face a mask of rage. Squeezing Will’s cheeks inward until his mouth involuntarily opened, Gold thrust his pistol to the back of his throat.

“Okay, you son of a bitch,” he rasped, “where are the frigging films?”