by Ray Daniel
Lucy reached across Walt and touched my hand. “And he’s handsome and good in bed.”
Walt looked back and forth between us. “Jesus, you guys are
in love.”
Lucy pulled her hand back and I looked into my beer.
Walt continued, “Don’t deny it, Tucker. Did you tell her you love her?”
This had to end. “Walt, does this have to do with the money that you owe to Hugh Graxton?”
Walt glared at me and shot down his Jack Daniels. He tipped his glass to the bartender. “Another.”
“How much do you owe the guy?”
“It’s none of your goddamn business.” The drink arrived. Walt shot it down. “Another.”
I caught the bartender’s eye and shook my head. Made a writing motion it the air. Check, please.
Walt caught my movement and said, “No. One more, one for the road.”
“Walt, I think you’re done. If you drink any more, I’ll have to take your car keys.”
Walt stood, stumbled back a step, gave Lucy a sidelong glance. Now you’re scoping out my girlfriend?
Lucy caught the glance and said, “I think it’s too late. You should take his keys.”
Walt leaned on the bar and rummaged in his pants. Pulled out a big black key fob and slammed it on the bar. “You want my fucking keys? Go ahead. Take ’em. Take the whole fucking truck, and the payments.”
“Jesus,” I said. “I don’t want your truck.”
Lucy said, “I think you should take his keys anyway.”
“Walt, c’mon. It can’t be that bad. How much do you owe? Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t wancha goddamn help.”
Damn it. The slurring had started. I took the keys. Walt would have to spend the night on my couch.
The check came. I signed for it.
“Whacha doin’?” demanded Walt. “This was supposed to be my treat. It’s my fucking party.”
“C’mon, big fella.” I said. “Let’s get you to my house.”
“I gotta take a leak.”
Walt broke away and stumbled around, looking for something.
I pointed at the staircase. “Bathrooms are downstairs.”
Walt teetered off.
Lucy said, “Shouldn’t you help him?”
“Help him walk down the stairs and take a leak? It’ll just aggravate him. I suspect he’s got practice doing this.”
Lucy pulled me close. Her blue eyes bore into mine. “I had a
fun day.”
“Me too,” I said. “Sorry it ended this way.”
“There will be more fun days.” Lucy gave me a white wine kiss that lasted until Walt slammed his hand on my back. My front tooth clicked against Lucy’s. We both said, “Ow!” and put our hands to our mouths.
“Let’s roll,” said Walt.
Fifty-Four
We got Uncle Walt up the steps and out onto Temple Place. It was going to be a long walk back to his car. We led him up Temple toward the Boston Common.
“Where did you park?” I asked.
“Underground. In the garage.”
The Boston Common Garage has three exits. I needed a hint. “Where did you come up?”
“Near the baseball field.”
We reached the corner of Temple and Tremont. Walt fumbled at the walk button until he got it.
Lucy watched Walt’s attempts to operate the walk button. “Why do guys drink like that?”
I shrugged. “It makes us sexy.”
Walt leaned against the pole, burped, spit into the gutter, and let out a heavy sigh.
Lucy said, “I see what you mean.”
We crossed Tremont Street. I tugged Walt down the street. “The ballfield is this way.”
A circular plaza held the visitor’s information center, some benches, and a few statues. Walt stopped at the Statue of Learning. It featured a boy reading a book and sitting astride the globe as if it were a Hippity Hop. Walt pointed at the statue. “What the hell is that?”
I said, “It’s a kid reading a book. C’mon, we have to get you to your car.”
We led him into the Boston Common. The Common is the oldest city park in the country (take that, New York). It was originally used to graze cattle and hang Quakers. Now it provides a communal lawn for apartment dwellers.
Walt pulled back. “I’m not going in there.”
“In where?”
“The Boston Common at night. You’re gonna get us killed!”
Lucy and I made eye contact behind Walt and rolled our eyes. I said, “For God’s sake. It’s a lawn. It’s fine. Besides, there’s three of us.”
“No!” Walt pulled his arm out of my grasp and stumbled toward the Hippity Hop boy. “I’m not going. It’s not safe!”
He tripped and fell against the statue. For a man so worried about crime, he was close to getting himself arrested. I grabbed Uncle Walt’s arm again to steady him. “We need to get your car, Walt.”
“I’m not going!”
I led Walt over to a low stone bench near Tremont Street and said, “Sit. I’ll go get the car. What level is it on?”
Walt said, “The bottom.” Then he listed to the right, fell over, lay on his back, and started snoring. Lucy and I stood over him.
I said, “Just so you know, he’s not a blood relative. I don’t have his DNA.”
Lucy said, “I wonder if he’s got any DNA left.”
Walt snored. I pulled his wallet out of his jeans and found the ticket for the parking garage. I considered handing the wallet to Lucy but decided that it was important to keep the package in one piece, and shoved the wallet back into Walt’s pocket. He brushed at my hand in feeble protest. More snoring.
“I’ll go into the garage and find his car. It should be easy with the key fob.” I pressed the button a few times. “Could you stay with him so he doesn’t get arrested?”
“Sure,” said Lucy.
“Thanks! You’re a trouper.”
“I know.”
I set off across the Common. Uncle Walt’s ravings had put me on edge. I peered around the park, looking behind trees and inspecting bushes. Nobody in the shrubbery. Nobody behind a tree. Lampposts dotted the wide path. I walked past a couple strolling down the path, the woman holding the man’s arm, her head tucked in against his shoulder. Lucy had walked with me the same way as we went to Stoddard’s. The posture was unmistakable: a woman in love.
I walked on, reminiscing about my afternoon with Lucy and fending off Jael’s warnings about her. I could not imagine that Lucy was a threat, at least not in the way that Jael suggested. The threat from Lucy didn’t come from anything that she would do to me. It came from the way she looked into my eyes as we rocked together. She had been so happy, so content to be in my arms and intertwined with me. She had not been having sex with me. She had been making love to me. My stomach warmed at the thought.
An entrance to the garage loomed out of the lawn. The Common Garage featured three such entrances, each a small building that protected a payment kiosk, an elevator, and a staircase. I looked through the glass doorway—empty. I entered and pushed the elevator button. The elevator whirred as I slid the parking pass into the kiosk. It asked for money. I paid for Walt’s parking.
The elevator door yawned open. My hands twitched as adrenaline trickled through them. Jael was out there somewhere, hopefully watching Lucy. I entered and pressed the button for the bottom level. Gravity faded then returned as the elevator descended. It slid down the shaft, stopped at the bottom. The doors slid open. I peeked out. There was nobody near the elevator.
I stepped out into the garage, pausing at the little handrail that kept people from running out into the roadway. I pressed the key fob and Uncle Walt’s pickup truck responded with a beep from second row over. I looked down the rows of cars, couldn�
��t see anyone. It was late.
I moved down the wheelchair ramp and beeped the truck again. It responded. My ears triangulated the sound. The truck wasn’t in the second row of cars. It was in the third. I looked around again. My sneakers squeaked over the concrete. Somewhere a car clicked and cooled.
As I passed the second row of cars, one of them started. It pulled out and headed down the garage toward me. It didn’t accelerate, and the driver didn’t seem to notice me. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances. I stepped between two parked cars and walked into the third row, keeping an eye on the windows of the moving car. If one of them started to open, I would dive. The car glided down the row, turned, and followed the exit signs.
I slid between the parked cars and emerged onto the third row, beeping Uncle Walt’s truck. It was halfway down the row. As I headed for the truck, another person turned into the row heading toward me, a woman pushing a stroller.
I don’t know what made me suspicious. It was probably the baby stroller. She was a short woman. As I got closer, more of her features revealed themselves in the dim light: short, brown hair, an oval moon face, dark eyes. She moved easily, pushing the stroller with a confident gait, looking at the cars as if finding the one she had left behind. A big, pink, poofy diaper bag hung over her shoulder.
That was another clue that something was wrong. How did she not know where her car was? If she didn’t, wouldn’t she just beep the car with her fob? Then again, the stroller held a sleeping toddler, a girl—judging by the pink outfit. Maybe she didn’t want to wake the baby.
Intuition is cursed to be the Cassandra of mental faculties, especially in men, and particularly in me. My intuition was screaming that something was wrong with this woman, pushing her baby through a parking garage late at night, looking for a car that she must be able to recognize, and timing her walk to meet me at Uncle Walt’s truck.
But the logical part of my brain, and especially my ego, wouldn’t listen. What was I supposed to do? Run away? Why did you run, Tucker? There was a woman. A woman with a baby stroller. It was horrible! The presence of the child protected me. Who would shoot me in front of a kid? I was clearly paranoid.
When we were ten feet from each other, the woman made eye contact. I stood by the truck and called out to her. “Hi! Can I help you?”
The woman said, “No. I’m fine.” She reached into her diaper bag and pulled out a gun, aiming it at me in one fluid motion.
The intuition I had ignored had served at least one purpose. It kept me from being surprised at the sight of the gun and had caused me to make a plan in case I saw one.
I thought, My God. She did have a gun, and hurled the key fob right at her solar plexus. Adrenaline caused my throw to sail a little high. Instead of hitting her in the stomach, Uncle Walt’s key fob, shaped like a heavy little brick, hit her right between the eyes.
“Bastard!” she screeched as she fired the gun. The gun’s explosive boom reverberated off the concrete ceilings and floors. It was the loudest thing I had ever heard. It woke the toddler, who started to wail. I turned and ran for the garage door.
“Goddamn you!” the woman called and took another shot. The bullet whizzed by me and hit the back wall of the garage. I had put an extra twenty feet between me and the woman and risked a look over my shoulder, figuring that she would stay with the stroller. Instead, I saw her shove the stroller next to the truck and run after me.
I ran down the row toward the back of the garage while the woman began slipping between the parked cars. She was going to cut me off at the door. I needed to cut the corner. I ran between two cars, but got hung up on the mirrors between the cars and lost ground.
We were in the second row of cars. The baby’s crying echoed in the empty garage.
The woman called out, “Momma’s right here, honey!”
The gun boomed as she took another shot at me. The bullet burned across my back like a match being struck.
I ran away from her, dodging as I went. Another booming roar from the gun, and then the whizzing sound of the bullet. The baby cried, and the woman swore, “Fuck!” I bolted across the last row of cars. Her next shot slammed into the wall by me as I hit the door to the staircase that led to the surface. I crashed through the door.
As I started climbing the steps, I slowed. I thought there was no way she’d leave her baby in the parking garage. I was wrong. I heard the door open behind me.
She called out, “Goddamn you! I’m going to shoot your balls off!”
“You’ll have to catch me, you psycho bitch!”
“You are a fucking dead man!”
I think I hit a nerve with psycho bitch.
I didn’t think she’d shoot at me with her baby in the stroller, and I didn’t think she’d chase me, and I didn’t think she’d come up the stairs. Now I didn’t think she’d follow me out into the Common, but I had lost confidence in my ability to predict her actions. I kept charging up the stairs. I had an advantage on her. I could take the stairs two at a time. Still, it wasn’t much.
Her gun roared in the stairwell. The bullet ricocheted off a railing and clipped me on the head. Lights flashed across my vision. Blood poured into my eyes and the staircase tilted beneath me. I began taking the stairs one at a time. I could hear her behind me, but I was almost to the top.
I turned a corner on the stairs and saw another woman in front of me. She also had a gun, and she had it aimed right between my eyes.
“Get down,” said Jael.
I dropped and she fired.
Jael called, “If you come any closer, I will kill you.”
There was silence. The woman below called, “Jael, is that you?”
“Monica needs you, Lyla,” Jael answered. “Go to her.”
Lyla said, “Oh, shit!” Her footsteps clattered down the stairs and the door opened to the sound of the baby crying in the garage. The sound disappeared as darkness closed in.
Fifty-Five
I’ve had all sorts of hangovers: little hangovers from sampling fifteen different types of beer at the Sunset Cafe; big hangovers from a night that started in beerworld, traveled through whiskeyland, and ended in tequilaville; and vomity hangovers from drinking a bottle of triple sec on a dare. All these hangovers came with a headache, and none of those headaches were as bad as the one that I had right now in a hospital bed at Mass General.
My eyes fluttered open.
Somewhere Lieutenant Lee said, “He’s awake.”
I said, “Water,” and Jael handed me a cup with a bendy straw. The water tasted like plastic, but it washed away the cotton in my mouth.
Bobby’s face loomed before me. “Holy crap, Tucker. I hope you feel better than you look.”
“I don’t.”
“That’s too bad, because you look like shit.”
“Thanks.” I reached up and touched a bandage across the back of my head. The hair around the bandage was gone.
“Stitches?” I asked.
Bobby said, “Yeah. Seven or eight. You were bleeding all over the place when they brought you in.”
“Where’s Lucy and Uncle Walt?”
Lee said, “You were alone.”
“No, I left them on a bench. I was getting Uncle Walt’s car because he was so drunk.”
Jael said, “I went to the bench after the ambulance arrived. They were gone.”
Lee said, “Jael tells us that Lyla Black tried to kill you.”
“Lyla Black?”
“A suspected professional killer,” said Lee. “She’s thought to work for the Rizzos.”
A spike of pain shot through my head. I winced and said, “What?”
Lee said, “This Lyla woman has been known to work for the Rizzos. Sal Rizzo tried to have you killed.”
Bobby said, “C’mon, Lee, that’s a stretch.”
Lee asked, “You haven’t seen the pat
tern here?”
“Which pattern?”
“Someone has been killing his family—”
Bobby said, “Shut up, Lee.”
Lee said, “One by one. I don’t think it’s an outsider.”
A blast of pain in my head squeezed my eyes shut and forced a groan out of me. Someone said, “You all have to leave. Mr. Tucker is spending the night.”
Fifty-Six
I woke in the middle of the night, needing to use the bathroom and wondering where I was. Right. I was in the hospital. Light from the hallway streamed into the dark room. I found my way to the bathroom. When I came out, I saw a head outlined against my window.
“Are you feeling better?” asked Jael.
I didn’t have the energy to be startled. “Yeah. My head has stopped hurting.”
“They gave you something for the pain. You should go back to sleep.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and drank some warm plastic water from a cup. “Have you heard from Lucy?”
“I haven’t been looking for her. She was with Walt when I followed you into the park. I’m sure she went home.”
I lay back on the bed, eyes wide open. Sleep was unreachable.
“I need to get out of here.”
Jael said, “You are safe here. There is no need to hurry back into danger.”
“I can’t just lie here.”
Jael rose and walked toward the door. “Then come with me. Bring your camera.”
I grabbed my Droid and followed her out of the room, past the nurses’ station. Jael nodded to the nurses, who nodded back.
I asked, “How long have you been here?”
“I did not leave. There was a low chance that you would be found here, but I wanted to be sure. This is a secure floor.” Jael pointed to the entry doors and said, “Visitors must be buzzed in. If somebody had asked for you, I would be notified.”
There was a waiting room at the end of the hallway. We entered and I stopped, gaping at the view of the city. The secure door made sense now. I turned around and looked at the hospital floor with new eyes. Rich mahogany doorways with tasteful woodwork frames graced each hospital room. The medical dread that permeates hospitals had been attenuated by opulence.