The Big Dig

by Linda Barnes

  “Do you call him darling?”

  “I just say something like, ‘Harv, it’s me. It’s Liza.’”

  “Liza, not Liz?”

  “Liza. He likes Liza.”

  “Okay, I’m going to ask you one more time to take that phone outside.” The long-nosed man sounded sure of himself this time, and damn if he hadn’t found me a real live Boston cop, slightly overweight, out of breath, as though he’d come on the run.

  “Bless you, you’re a prince.” I leaned over and kissed the man in scrubs on the cheek.

  “What the heck’s going on here?” said the cop.

  I handed him the offending cell. “617-555-9572.”

  He stared at the phone and then at me. “But that’s—”

  “Lieutenant Detective Mooney. Tell him it’s urgent.”

  Chapter 41

  In Concord, less than fifteen miles northwest, patriots of a different stripe would be checking the hooks, eyes, and laces on period costumes. Minutemen in ragged gear would face off against British redcoats, and soon a parade would begin, a hundred marching units. Rebel troops would muster on Lexington Green and a visiting dignitary would be granted the honor of shouting Captain Parker’s words: “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon! But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!”

  The cop dropped me two blocks from the marketplace. I considered him—overweight, slow, a desk cop moved to the street to meet the Patriot’s Day demand; he’d do more harm than good in his conspicuous uniform. I reassured him that I’d scout the territory and wait for reinforcements, knowing I wouldn’t. O’Day was expecting Liz.

  What did he know? What did he know? Liz and Gerry hadn’t shown up for work. That might have alarmed him, put him on alert. He’d gotten a phone call, left the site. The caller could have advised him that the plan had gone awry, ordered him to make a quick getaway. He could be up in the flat packing a bag, getting ready to melt into the marketplace crowd and disappear. Or it could have been a different kind of call, the caller saying simply, “Do it now.” I considered the proximity of the crow’s nest to Faneuil Hall. O’Day could be poised over a timing device, a trigger. Plenty of time to detonate it while Mooney tried to touch base with the Feds and organize a response. Two small children passed by, bundled against the cold, their father holding their mittened hands, and it was all I could do not to yell stop, take cover.

  The feebs had taken Horgan’s 9-mm automatic, the gun with which I’d killed Walters, as evidence. Maybe they’d arrest me for using a stolen gun to shoot the bastard, but I wasn’t worried about that now. I was grateful I’d grabbed my .40, the weapon I’d tossed when Walters ordered me to disarm. I’d tucked it secretively into my boot. I leaned forward, made as if to adjust a sock, removed the gun, and wedged it into the waistband clip at the small of my back.

  If the FBI had already started flooding the tunnel, they’d try to make it look like some sudden sewer problem, a natural disaster. I checked for gas company trucks, fire trucks, anonymous paneled vans. There seemed to be fewer people than usual in the marketplace, and I wondered if they’d begun diverting trains from Government Center to the Haymarket. I strained my eyes. The Hall blocked my view of the City Hall staircase, but it wouldn’t block O’Day’s. If he was up there waiting for confirmation that the Feds were on to the plan, how long before he realized that the normally heavy foot traffic from the T-stop wasn’t materializing?

  The building Liz had described was old gray stone, tall and narrow, with three steps leading to a brick stoop. I’d been clutching her key so tightly it left an outline on my palm. I forced myself to relax, kept to the shadows, wary of binoculars. A kitchenware shop rented the first floor. A brass plate advertised a hair salon on two, a dentist on three. That left four and five for residential. I glanced at my watch. Interagency cooperation takes time; I was counting on that. The best chance to take O’Day without gunfire was through the Liz ruse. She’d said she’d be right over. It was time.

  The key worked and the door opened easily, noiselessly onto a dark vestibule. The stairs were steep, un-carpeted. My leg started to throb after the third floor. After the fourth, the staircase grew narrower and I moved more slowly. Liz Horgan had been okay on the phone, teasing, casual. He’d been reluctant to let her visit, but he hadn’t forbidden it, hadn’t sounded forced or unnatural. Maybe he wasn’t sure what was going on, maybe he thought things were still moving according to plan. I listened to Liz’s voice in my head, let myself breathe before knocking on the door labeled 5A, an ordinary door. Dark wood, old wood. No peephole. Two quick, two slow. My .40 felt heavy in my hand.

  I pitched my voice high, made it breathy. “Harv, it’s me, Liza.”

  If I’d been part of a team, one of us would have fronted the door, while the other kept out of sight, pressed against the wall. I lowered my weapon to my side, hid it behind my thigh, arranged my face in a smile. When he opened the door there would be a moment, a beat, while he soaked in the scene: a woman, but not the right woman. I heard the chain rattle and drop, the handle turn.

  He was barefoot, wearing nothing but low-slung boxers, and a welcoming smile that froze. He had a smear of shaving cream on his jaw. He made a noise that wasn’t a word, just an exclamation of surprise that was cut off when I raised the gun.

  “Hands where I can see them,” I said. “Take two big steps back. Now! Right now!”

  “What the fuck—” His hands were empty. He took the steps.

  “Turn around.” Usually I don’t bother with a two-fisted grip, but I was using it now, to impress the man as I backed him inside.

  His shoulders slumped and some of the tension left his body. Could be faking, I thought, gathering himself to spring.

  “Two more steps, quick!” I shouted. “On the floor, face down!”

  “What the fuck’s your problem, lady? Jesus. Carla? That’s your name, right? You crazy?” He took one step, not two, brought both legs together, flexing his knees slightly.

  “Goddam right, I’m crazy, so don’t mess with me! Down on the floor.”

  He turned to face me, grinned. One short step forward, testing like a goddam toddler. I thought, damn, I’m going to have to shoot him.

  “I’ve already killed Walters,” I said. “On three, I do your right kneecap. One—”

  “Shit, lady, let’s fucking talk this over.” He was watching my eyes, and I was watching his.

  “Two.”

  Watching my finger tighten.

  When he turned and lowered himself to the wooden floor, I could see the very top of the tattoo, tiny points that belonged to a flaming star.

  Chapter 42

  I met Happy Eddie on the second floor of Faneuil Hall just before noon the next day. The rectangular room was dark and hushed, the balconies swagged with tri-colored bunting, the small wooden stage flanked by the flag of the Commonwealth and the Stars and Stripes. The high-backed seats, more like church pews than auditorium chairs, were empty except for the one in which I sat. The noise of shoppers filtered up from below, the ching-ching of electronic cash registers.

  Outside, high puffs of cloud dotted the bright sky of a clear winter’s day. It hadn’t rained in the past twenty-four hours, but I’d skirted puddles on the pavement, the residue of the flooding operation. Icy water had erupted in such a sudden rush that even a suicidal attempt to detonate the explosives had failed. Two men in addition to Jason O’Meara aka Kendall Heywood had emerged, gasping and soaked, from the storage shed on the Horgan site to be taken into federal custody without a shot fired.

  I’d chained the door of the tiny apartment, hadn’t budged till Leonard Wells’s booming voice sounded the all-clear. I never took my eyes or my gun off the man on the floor until after he’d been surrounded and cuffed. When I finally realized I could lower my weapon and my guard, I thought Wells might have to oil my joints like Dorothy did for the Tin Man. Spent, I sank into a chair near the windows. The blinds were up, the faded curtains open. A seagull veered over a
panoramic view of the roofs of old and new Boston, church spires and weathervanes, clock towers and skyscrapers, the distant gleam of the ocean. High-powered binoculars rested on the sill.

  A brief search of the apartment yielded three rifles, two automatics, a box of grenades. I was grateful I hadn’t known about the grenades. O’Day stood at attention like a soldier, refusing even to give his name.

  A federal smoke screen quickly engulfed all proceedings. Yes, the FBI had taken several fugitives into custody. The MBTA offered sincere apologies for the derailment that had forced them to temporarily shut down Government Center Station. Jaded Bostonians were hardly surprised by the closing and shocked by the apology. Unexpected groundwater near Commercial Avenue and State Street would cause yet another delay in the Dig’s much-delayed schedule.

  Eddie looked his age and more, climbing the stairs slowly, wearing a rumpled charcoal suit. His eyebrows lifted when he saw me, but he didn’t speak till he’d seated himself, tugging at an imaginary crease in his pants.

  “Hey,” he said, “you okay?”

  “Yeah. Tired. I thought I’d sleep for a week, but I can’t seem to.” I kept having the same dream: First the fire was at my house, a copycat inferno from my last case, and then its location would shift in the magical way of dreams and the fire would be here, in this building, and I could see the blazing spire tilt from the window in O’Day’s flat, see people running, hear them scream.

  “Gerry’s clear,” Eddie said. “He didn’t shove the guy off the scaffold.”

  “O’Day confess, or Kendall Heywood?”

  “They found traces of blood in the storage shed that hid the tunnel entrance. Looks like Fournier never left the site the night he died.”

  “But somebody punched his time card.”

  “O’Day hasn’t admitted it yet, isn’t saying shit. But Gerry’s covered. Alibi, and a good one. Not that I’d a blamed him, what I know now. Makes me wonder what’s the good of the friggin’ hotline, what kinda creeps use it for what kinda reasons.”

  “You thought there was something fishy about the call from the get-go, Eddie. Give yourself credit.”

  He shifted on the seat. “You thought I was on the take.”

  “Eddie, I—”

  “Maybe I was, a little bit, not for money, ya know, but for friendship. Leo Horgan and I go back and I’d a hated to lose a friend over something like this. Hard to keep friends when you’re always looking at ’em, judging ’em.”

  Tell me about it, I thought. If Eddie hadn’t pushed me, I might have avoided seeing the change in Sam. I would have tried hard not to notice.

  “You’ll be ready for another assignment, say, Monday?”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  “Bridge?”

  “Lower, Eddie. Solid ground.”

  Dana Endicott had entered from the other side of the hall, looking small and lost. I’d been keeping an eye out for her. I waved and Eddie’s eyes followed.

  “You didn’t tell me you were working for somebody else,” he said, “but seems like it worked out.”

  A dog that didn’t come to the site anymore, a secretary worried she might have injured it, my little sister demanding a finder’s fee for landing me a client. Their plan could so easily have worked, a building shattered, people killed and maimed. I sucked in a deep breath. The dream was a dream, the wooden bench was solid.

  Dana wore a slim cranberry-colored skirt and matching jacket under her long black coat, mid-heeled pumps. She looked like a wealthy banker after a Wall Street crash, exhausted, depleted. She shook hands with Eddie, managing a weak smile until he excused himself and his footsteps faded on the stairs.

  “Veronica?” I asked.

  It had been touch and go all night, nine hours in the operating room, and afterward sudden bleeding that had required an immediate return to the operating theater, a second three-hour session. Walters’s bullet had missed her spine by less than three-eighths of an inch.

  “Alive,” she said. “I sit and talk to her when they let me. I know she probably can’t hear me but I keep talking, telling her Tandy’s okay, Krissi’s okay, Krissi’s dog is okay. And I hired a lawyer. Not the family lawyer. The man you suggested.”

  “Haggerty. He’s good.”

  “I’d rather hire a woman.”

  “Haggerty’s good.”

  “I can’t stay. They say she’ll pull through, but—I wanted to thank you, but I want to be there.”

  “I’ll drop by later.”

  “Do you think she’ll have to go to prison?”

  I shrugged. Once it gets to a jury you never know.

  “Would you testify? If it comes to that?”

  I could say she’d been a prisoner when I found her. I could describe the look in her eyes when Walters raised his rifle, her refusal to watch Krissi Horgan die. I nodded.

  When she stood to go, Dana shook my hand warmly.

  As far as the Feds knew, Walters’s dying words, belatedly understood, tipped me that O’Day was involved. After all, returning a kid to her parents, the best job a PI gets, is no good if the kid comes back to a broken home, and Gerry Horgan hadn’t impressed me as the kind to forgive and forget. I hoped Liz Horgan would get her kinks out, but I wasn’t about to detail them for the FBI. Nobody deserves that. And Walters wouldn’t deny the tale.

  I watched Dana disappear down the stairs to mingle with the shoppers and the sightseers and the working stiffs who had twenty minutes for lunch.

  In 1805, Charles Bulfinch, leading architect of his day, doubled the width and height of Faneuil Hall without changing its basic design, increasing the number of stalls from three to seven. The “Bulfinch interior,” installed on the second floor, has hardly changed since. The third floor holds the museum and armory of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts, an outfit dating back to 1638, their memorabilia, their charters, their weapons, mementoes of the rabble-rousing days when the oratory spread from the hall to the streets and fanned revolutionary flames.

  Due to the unfortunate groundwater backup, the Patriot’s Day forum had been postponed, rescheduled. I thought I might attend, occupy a dark wooden bench, listen for echoes of the ancient fire-breathing speeches.

  A group of schoolchildren, fourth-graders, maybe fifth, streamed in, unbuttoning their coats, dropping gloves and hats, giggling as their harried teacher ordered them to sit. A uniformed Park Ranger approached to begin the half-hourly historical talk, and I stood.

  “Hey, I don’t mean to chase you away.” The ranger, a gap-toothed twenty-year-old, smiled.

  “I’ll come back another time.”

  I had kind of a date. I’d been offered a tour of the still-draining tunnel by Leonard Wells, alias Leland Walsh. There were rats, he’d promised.

  Keep Reading for an Excerpt

  from Linda Barnes’s Next Mystery:

  Deep Pockets

  Coming Soon in Hardcover

  from St. Martin’s Minotaur!

  I hate running errands. I put them off and put them off, and then one morning the cat’s got no food, there are zero stamps on the roll, and I realize I own no underwear without holes. I understand some people actually like to shop for clothes, do it for pure pleasure and entertainment, but I count it as one more damned errand; I’m too cheap to enjoy spending money. When I can’t put it off any longer, I make a list and set forth to Harvard Square. I could go to a less pricey area, granted, but the Square has its own post office and is within spitting distance of my house.

  I waited in line at the post office till I thought I’d grow roots. I bought panties on sale at the Gap. I mourned the passing of Sage’s, where they always carried tons of my cat’s favorite Fancy Feast, bought a few cans of an off-price substitute at the CVS instead.

  I noticed him as I was waiting, along with thirty-five other assorted students, panhandlers, and shoppers, for the scramble light at the intersection of Brattle and Mass. Ave. His gaze lingered a moment too long and I wondered briefly whether
I’d met him at a party or exchanged small talk with the man at a bar. He wasn’t especially noticeable, a middle-aged, light-skinned black man in a well-cut tweed jacket and charcoal slacks. Didn’t hold a candle fashion-wise to the young guy nearby wearing buckskin fringe. Still, I had the feeling I’d seen him before, and I thought it might have been at the post office, behind me in line, or across the room at one of the writing tables, scribbling on the back of an envelope. Then the traffic light changed. The herd charged across the street and dispersed, some heading for the subway, some the shops, some disappearing through the gates to Harvard Yard. I stopped at the Out of Town News Stand, and gazed at the covers of foreign magazines. So did the black man.

  The next time I saw him, he was standing outside the Cambridgeport Savings Bank while I was considering a bite to eat at Finagle a Bagel. He’d added a tan raincoat and a battered hat to his attire, and if I had to describe what he was doing, I’d have to say he was doing zip, simply loitering, which made him stand out from the crush of hurrying pedestrians. When I walked past, he fell into step thirty paces behind me.

  Now, Cambridge is a crowded city, and Harvard Square is its hub. Teenagers cruise the streets, parading their finery, hoping someone will admire their most recent tattoo or pierced body part, but this guy hadn’t been a teen in twenty years easy. I crossed Mass. Ave. again, turned right, then left on Church Street. I hurried past the movie theater and the Globe Corner Bookstore, hung a quick left on Palmer, a glorified alley, slowed down, and kept watch in the plate glass windows of the Coop, purveyor of all things Harvard. Sure enough, there he came, hurtling around the corner, hurrying to catch up. I tried to get a better glimpse of his face, but it was shadowed under the brim of the hat. I feigned interest in the fine art posters displayed in the front window, then sauntered on.

  I’d just finished working a case in which I’d managed to frustrate a bunch of survivalists cum terrorists. The Feebies, no less, had warned me to be on the lookout for revenge-crazed looneytunes. But the group supposedly out for my blood was the sort that wouldn’t associate with black people, much less admit them as prized members and give them the choice assignment of taking out the half-Jewish bitch who’d foiled their finest scheme.