The Soul Collectors

25

Darby stood on the stoop of her building. The steady pulse of blue and whites flashing from the rooftops of the two Boston squad cars lit up the corner of her street. She could see the SUV. It was a Chevy Tahoe. The passenger's-side door was hanging open. The interior light was on but nobody was inside.

Two men dressed in suits, their jackets buttoned, stood outside. Feds, she thought. The first guy was white and middle aged, and had sandy-blond hair and a crooked nose. He stood on the kerb with his hands on top of his head, arguing with a patrolman pointing a nine at him. There was lots of shouting but she couldn't hear what was being said, their words lost behind the wind and busy traffic on Cambridge Street.

The second guy was Italian or Greek, a Tony Soprano type with thinning black hair that had been combed back over his bald spot. He was taller than his partner, maybe six feet, and fatter. He leaned forward with his hands splayed across the front hood, the buttons of his suit jacket straining against the swell of his gut. He was being frisked. He wasn't speaking and he ignored the scene happening around him, his gaze locked on her building. On her.

Darby didn't recognize him or the blond man. Was confident she had never seen either man before. She did recognize the patrolman shining his flashlight on the SUV's interior seats: Jimmy Murphy, an old flatfoot leftover from an era when the Irish made up the majority of the Boston police force. He was thick and jowly and had a fine network of spider veins covering his nose and cheeks from a lifetime of hard drinking. Darby headed down her front steps, making a mental note to give Jimmy a call sometime later that night or the next day, see if she could get the names of the two feds so she could pay them a visit.

Fat Tony kept eyeing her. She held his gaze for a moment, giving away nothing, and as she crossed the street, heading for the alley between the college and the oldest brick townhouse on the block, she saw Fat Soprano make a move for the car door. The patrolman frisking him pushed him hard against the hood. Lots of shouting and another patrolman pressed his nine closer to Tony Soprano's head. She caught the worried expression on Fat Tony's face just before she ducked into the alley.

Darby emerged on Hanover Street and then went through another alley and walked on to Joy. The one-way streets, jam-packed with parked cars, were dark and quiet. A few people were out, walking home or to one of the bars or restaurants that lined Cambridge. As she walked to the best place to pick up a cab — the corner of Cambridge and Charles Street, on the other side of Beacon Hill — she thought about Fat Tony's worried look.

The man's cover was blown. He was going to get his ass chewed out by his superiors. There'd be demerits, maybe even a possible relocation to some federal outpost. A natural reaction. She would have bought off on it if he hadn't first tried to go for the door. Like he needed to call someone and let this person know where she was heading.

Why? They had installed a tracking device in her jacket. It was now sitting in her jeans pocket and it was broadcasting a signal. Fat Tony shouldn't be worried. But he had made a move for the door, like he was afraid of losing sight of her. Like he had to radio for help or back-up.

Darby emerged on the end of Charles Street, looking for a cab. As she waited, she thought about the tracking device. The design was something the feds probably used — very high-tech, sent a wireless signal to a nearby computer — but the installation had been sloppy. The feds, generally speaking, weren't sloppy. They planned and prepared and executed their surveillance ops with an admirable efficiency. If the feds were behind this, they would have come inside her condo, taken pictures, made sure everything was put back together properly. They wouldn't have left the broken stitching in her jacket.

Maybe the feds weren't responsible for this sloppy work. Maybe someone else was, like one of the men she had encountered inside the Rizzo home. Men who knew she was alive and wanted to see where she would go, what she would do.