Bubba chuckled. “You wanna talk uncomfortable? Just wait till we visit Cody.”
Karen Nichols looked at Bubba and for just a moment she seemed to pity Cody Falk.
In my office, I placed a call to my attorney, Cheswick Hartman.
Karen Nichols had driven off in her boyfriend’s VW. I’d instructed her to drive straight to her insurance company and drop off a replacement check. When she said they wouldn’t honor the claim, I assured her they would by the time she got there. She wondered aloud if she could pay my fee and I told her if she could afford one day, she’d be fine, because that’s all this would take.
“One day?”
“One day,” I said.
“But what about Cody?”
“You’ll never hear from Cody again.” I closed her car door, and she drove off, giving me a little wave as she reached the first traffic light.
“Look up ‘cute’ in the dictionary,” I said to Bubba as we sat in my office. “See if Karen Nichols’s picture is beside the definition.”
Bubba looked at the small stack of books on my windowsill. “How do I tell which one’s the dictionary?”
Cheswick came on the line and I told him about Karen Nichols’s trouble with her insurance claim.
“No missed payments?”
“Never.”
“No problem. You said it’s a Corolla?”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s that, a twenty-five-thousand-dollar car?”
“More like fourteen.”
Cheswick chuckled. “Cars really go that cheap?” Cheswick owned a Bentley, a Mercedes V10, and two Range Rovers that I knew of. When he wanted to be one with the common folk, he drove a Lexus.
“They’ll pay the claim,” he said.
“They said they wouldn’t,” I said, just to get a rise out of him.
“And go up against me? I hang up the phone without satisfaction, they’ll know they’re already fifty thousand in the hole. They’ll pay,” he repeated.
When I hung up, Bubba said, “What’d he say?”
“He said they’ll pay.”
He nodded. “So will Cody, dude. So will Cody.”
Bubba went back to his warehouse for a while to clear up some business, and I called Devin Amronklin, a homicide cop who’s one of the few cops left in this city who will talk to me anymore.
“Homicide.”
“Say it like you mean it, baby.”
“Hey-hey. If it ain’t numero uno persona non grata with the Boston Police Department. Been pulled over recently?”
“Nope.”
“Don’t. You’d be amazed what some guys here want to find in your trunk.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. Being at the top of the police department’s shit list was not where I’d planned to be at this point in my life.
“You can’t be too popular,” I said. “You’re the one who put the cuffs on a fellow cop.”
“Nobody’s ever liked me,” Devin said, “but most of them are scared of me, so that’s just as good. You, on the other hand, are a renowned cream puff.”
“Renowned, huh?”
“What’s up?”
“I need a check on a Cody Falk. Priors, anything to do with stalking.”
“And I get what for this?”
“Permanent friendship?”
“One of my nieces,” he said, “wants the entire Beanie Babies collection for her birthday.”
“And you don’t want to go into a toy store.”
“And I’m still paying serious child support for a kid who won’t talk to me.”
“So you want me to purchase said Beanie Babies, as well.”
“Ten should do.”
“Ten?” I said. “You’ve gotta be—”
“Falk with an ‘F’?”
“As in flimflam,” I said and hung up.
Devin called back in an hour and told me to bring the Beanie Babies by his apartment the next night.
“Cody Falk, age thirty-three. No convictions.”
“However…”
“However,” Devin said, “arrested once for violating a restraining order against one Bronwyn Blythe. Charges dropped. Arrested for assault of Sara Little. Charges dropped when Miss Little refused to testify and moved out of state. Named as a suspect in the rape of one Anne Bernstein, brought in for questioning. Charges never filed because Miss Bernstein refused to swear out a complaint, submit to a rape examination, or identify her attacker.”
“Nice guy,” I said.
“Sounds like a peach, yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“Except that he has a juvenile record, but it’s been sealed.”
“Of course.”
“He bothering somebody again?”
“Maybe,” I said carefully.
“Wear gloves,” Devin said and hung up.
2
Cody Falk drove a pearl-gray Audi Quattro, and at nine-thirty that night, we watched him exit the Mount Auburn Club, his hair freshly combed and still wet, the butt of a tennis racket sticking out of his gym bag. He wore a soft black leather jacket over a cream linen vest, a white shirt buttoned at the throat, and faded jeans. He was very tan. He moved like he expected things to get out of his way.
“I really hate this guy,” I said to Bubba. “And I don’t even know him.”
“Hate’s cool,” Bubba said. “Don’t cost nothing.”
Cody’s Audi beeped twice as he used the remote attached to his key chain to disengage the alarm and pop the trunk.
“If you’d just let me,” Bubba said, “he would have blown up about now.”
Bubba had wanted to strap some C-4 to the engine block and wire the charge to the Audi’s alarm transmitter. C-4. Take out half of Watertown, blow the Mount Auburn Club to somewhere over Rhode Island. Bubba couldn’t see why this wasn’t a good idea.
“You don’t kill a guy for trashing a woman’s car.”
“Yeah?” Bubba said. “Where’s that written?”
I have to admit he had me there.
“Plus,” Bubba said, “you know, he gets the chance he’ll rape her.”
I nodded.
“I hate rape-os,” Bubba said.
“Me, too.”
“It’d be cool if he never did it again.”
I turned in my seat. “We’re not killing him.”
Bubba shrugged.
Cody Falk closed his trunk and stood by it a moment, his strong chin tilted up as he looked at the tennis courts fronting the parking lot. He looked like he was posing for something, a portrait maybe, and with his rich, dark hair and chiseled features, his carefully sculpted torso and soft, expensive clothes, he could have easily passed for a model. He seemed aware that he was being watched, but not by us; he seemed the kind of guy who always thought he was being watched, with either admiration or envy. It was Cody Falk’s world, we were just living in it.
Cody pulled out of the parking lot and took a right, and we followed him through Watertown and around the edge of Cambridge. He took a left on Concord Street and headed into Belmont, one of the tonier of our tony suburbs.
“How come you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway?” Bubba yawned into his fist, looked out the window.
“I have no idea.”
“You said that the last time I asked you.”
“And?”
“And I just wish someone would give me a good answer. It pisses me off.”
We left the main road and followed Cody Falk into a smoke-brown neighborhood of tall oaks and chocolate Tudors, the fallen sun having left a haze of deep bronze in its wake that gave the late winter streets an autumn glow, an air of rarefied ease, inherited wealth, stained-glass private libraries full of dark teak and delicate tapestries.
“Glad we took the Porsche,” Bubba said.
“You don’t think the Crown Vic would have fit in?”
My Porsche is a ’63 Roadster. I bought the shell and little else ten years ago and spent the next five purchasing parts and restor
ing it. I don’t love it, per se, but I have to admit that when I’m behind the wheel, I do feel like the coolest guy in Boston. Maybe the world. Angie used to say that’s because I still have a lot of growing up to do. Angie was probably right, but then, until very recently, she drove a station wagon.
Cody Falk pulled into a small driveway beside a large stucco colonial and I cut my headlights and pulled in behind him as the garage door rolled up with a whir. Even with his windows closed, I could hear the bass thumping from his car speakers, and we rolled right up the driveway behind him without his hearing a thing. I cut the engine just before we would have followed him into the garage. He got out of the Audi and we left the Porsche as the garage door began to close. He popped his trunk, and Bubba and I stepped under the door and in there with him.
He jumped back when he saw me, and shoved his hands out in front of him as if warding off a horde. Then his eyes began to narrow. I’m not a particularly big guy and Cody looked fit and tall and well muscled. His fear of a stranger in his garage was already giving way to calculation as he sized me up, saw I had no weapon.
Then Bubba shut the trunk that had blocked him from Cody’s view, and Cody gasped. Bubba has that effect on people. He has the face of a deranged two-year-old—as if the features softened and stopped maturing around the same time his brain and conscience did—and it sits atop a body that reminds me of a steel boxcar with limbs.
“Who the hell—”
Bubba had taken Cody’s tennis racket from his bag, and he twirled it lightly in his hand. “How come you park in driveways, but drive on parkways?” he asked Cody.
I looked at Bubba and rolled my eyes.
“What? How the fuck do I know?”
Bubba shrugged. Then he smashed the tennis racket down onto the Audi’s trunk, drove a gouge in the center that was about nine inches long.
“Cody,” I said as the garage door slammed closed behind me, “you don’t say a word unless I ask you a direct question. We clear?”
He stared at me.
“That was a direct question, Cody.”
“Uh, yeah, we’re clear.” Cody glanced at Bubba, seemed to shrink into himself.
Bubba removed the tennis racket cover and dropped it on the floor.
“Please don’t hit the car again,” Cody said.
Bubba held up a comforting hand. He nodded. Then he sliced a pretty fluid backhand through the air and connected with the Audi’s rear window. The glass made a loud popping noise before it dropped all over Cody’s backseat.
“Jesus!”
“What did I say about talking, Cody?”
“But he just smashed my—”
Bubba flung the tennis racket like a tomahawk and it hit Cody Falk in the center of the forehead, knocked him back into the garage wall. He crumpled to the floor and blood streamed from the gash over his right eyebrow and he looked like he was going to cry.
I picked him up by his hair and slammed his back into the driver’s door.
“What do you do for a living, Cody?”
“I…What?”
“What do you do?”
“I’m a restaurateur.”
“A what?” Bubba said.
I looked back over my shoulder at him. “He owns restaurants.”
“Oh.”
“Which ones?” I asked Cody.
“The Boatyard in Nahant. I own the Flagstaff downtown, and part of Tremont Street Grill, the Fours in Brookline. I…I—”
“Sshh,” I said. “Anyone in the house?”
“What?” He looked around wildly. “No. No. I’m single.”
I pulled Cody to his feet. “Cody, you like to harass women. Maybe even rape them sometimes, knock them around when they don’t play ball?”
Cody’s eyes darkened as a thick drop of blood began its descent down the bridge of his nose. “No, I don’t. Who—”
I backhanded the wound on his forehead and he yelped.
“Quiet, Cody. Quiet. If you ever bother a woman again—any woman—we’ll burn down your restaurants and put you in a wheelchair for life. Do you understand?”
Something about women brought out the stupid in Cody. Maybe it was the telling him he couldn’t have them in the manner he’d come to enjoy. Whatever the case, he shook his head. He tightened his jaw. A predatory amusement crept into his eyes as if he believed he’d found my Achilles’ heel: a concern for the “weaker” sex.
Cody said, “Well. Yes, well. I don’t think I can do that.”
I stepped aside as Bubba came around the car, pulled a .22 from his trench coat, screwed on the silencer, pointed it at the center of Cody Falk’s face and pulled the trigger.
The hammer dropped on an empty chamber, but Cody didn’t seem to realize that at first. He closed his eyes and screamed, “No!” and fell on his ass.
We stood over him as he opened his eyes. He touched his nose with his fingers, surprised to realize it was still there.
“What happened?” I asked Bubba.
“Dunno. I loaded it.”
“Try again.”
“Sure.”
Cody’s hands shot out in front of him. “Wait!”
Bubba pointed the muzzle at Cody’s chest and pulled the trigger again.
Another dry click.
Cody flopped on the floor, his eyes screwed shut again, his face contorted into a puttylike mask of horror. Tears sprouted from under his lids and the sharp smell of urine rose from a burgeoning stain along his left pant leg.
“Damn,” Bubba said. He raised the gun to his face, scowled at it, and pointed down again just as Cody opened one eye.
Cody clamped the eye closed as Bubba pulled the trigger a third time, hit another empty chamber.
“You buy that thing at a yard sale?” I asked.
“Shut up. It’ll work.” Bubba flicked his wrist and the cylinder snapped open. One golden eye of a slug stared up at us, disrupting an otherwise unbroken circle of small black holes. “See? There’s one in there.”
“One,” I said.
“One’ll do.”
Cody suddenly vaulted up off the floor toward us.
I raised my foot, stepped on his chest, and knocked him back down.
Bubba flicked the cylinder closed and pointed the gun. He dry-fired once and Cody screamed. He dry-fired a second time, and Cody made this weird laughing-crying sound.
He placed his hands over his eyes and said, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,” then did that laughing-crying thing again.
“Sixth time’s the charm,” Bubba said.
Cody looked up at the suppressor muzzle and ground the back of his head into the floor. His mouth was wide open, as if he were screaming, but all that came out was a soft, high-pitched “Na, na, na.”
I squatted down by him, yanked his right ear up to my mouth.
“I hate people who victimize women, Cody. Fucking hate ’em. I always find myself thinking, What if that woman was my sister? My mother? You see?”
Cody tried to twist his ear from my grip, but I held on tight. His eyes rolled back into his head and his cheeks puffed in and out.
“Look at me.”
Cody wrenched his eyes back to focus and looked up into my face.
“If the insurance doesn’t pay for her car, Cody, we’re coming back with the bill.”
The panic in his eyes ebbed as clarity replaced it. “I never touched that bitch’s car.”
“Bubba.”
Bubba took aim at Cody’s head.
“No! Listen, listen, listen. I…I…Karen Nichols, right?”
I held up a hand to Bubba.
“Okay, I, whatever you call it, I stalked her a bit. Just a game. Just a game. But not her car. I never—”
I brought my fist down on his stomach. The air blew out of his lungs and his mouth repeatedly chomped open and shut trying to get some oxygen.
“Okay, Cody. It’s a game. And this is the last inning. Understand this: I hear a woman—any woman—is being stalked in this city? Gets raped in th
is city? Has a bad fucking hair day in this city, Cody, and I’m just going to assume it’s you who did it. And we’ll come back.”
“And paralyze your dumb fucking ass,” Bubba said.
A burst of air exploded from Cody Falk’s lungs as he got them working again.
“Say you understand, Cody.”
“I understand,” Cody managed.
I looked at Bubba. He shrugged. I nodded.
Bubba unscrewed the silencer from the .22. He placed the gun in one pocket of his trench coat, the suppressor in the other. He walked over to the wall and picked up the tennis racket. He walked back and stood over Cody Falk.
I said, “You need to know how serious we are, Cody.”
“I know! I know!” Shrieking now.
“You think he knows?” I asked Bubba.
“I think he knows,” Bubba said.
A guttural sigh of relief escaped Cody’s lips and he looked up into Bubba’s face with a gratitude that was almost embarrassing to witness.
Bubba smiled and smashed the tennis racket down into Cody Falk’s groin.
Cody sat up like the base of his spine was on fire. The world’s loudest hiccup burst from his mouth, and he wrapped his arms around his stomach and puked in his own lap.
Bubba said, “You can never be too sure, though, can ya?” and tossed the tennis racket over the hood of the car.
I watched Cody struggle with the bolts of pain shooting up his body, seizing his intestines, his chest cavity, his lungs. Sweat poured down his face like a summer shower.
Bubba opened the small wooden door that led out of the garage.
Cody eventually turned his head toward mine and the grimace on his face reminded me of a skeleton’s smile.
I watched his eyes to see if the fear would turn to rage, if the vulnerability would be replaced by that casual superiority of the born predator. I waited to see that look Karen Nichols had seen in the parking lot, the same one I’d glimpsed just before Bubba pulled the .22’s trigger that first time.
I waited some more.
The pain began to subside and the grimace relaxed on Cody Falk’s face; the skin loosened up by his hairline, and his breathing returned to a semiregular rhythm. But the fear stayed. It was dug in deep, and I knew it would be several nights before he slept more than an hour or two, a month at least before he could shut the garage door behind him while he was still inside. For a long, long time, he would, at least once a day, look over his shoulder for Bubba and me. Cody Falk, I was almost certain, would spend the rest of his life in a state of fear.
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