It was a brick townhouse building, four units in all, one on each floor, with big bay windows and a tiny front yard filled with beautiful flowers tended to by the elderly woman downstairs. I walked up the three steps to the door buzzers and rang Hank’s. Again, no answer. The more resourceful types would have devised a way to use a credit card to slip through the lock, or shy of that, scale up the side of the house, jimmy up the window and tumble onto his living room floor.
The most resourceful of all would have planned for such an occasion long ago and swapped house keys with Hank. They would have taken that key, plunged it into the keyhole, and walked into the apartment. This, thank you very much, is exactly what I did.
“Hello,” I yelled in his entryway. “Hello?”
No answer.
I’ll admit, I was slightly uneasy, due to two things. First, Sweeney’s a retired cop, meaning he probably still has a gun or two secreted somewhere around his apartment. Second, he might still be on that bender of the night before. Liquor and firearms don’t mix, though the NRA and the National Distillery Association would no doubt deny such an outrageous claim.
So I yelled one more time, “Hank? Hank, it’s Jack.” I pulled the door shut behind me.
I stepped into his living room and saw no signs of life. Fortunately, I saw no signs of death, either. The apartment came furnished, with stuff that looked straight out of the catalogue of Crate and Barrel, right down to the too-perfect knickknacks on the marble mantel and the silver picture frames that Hank had filled with photographs of his late wife. It seemed more like a showroom than someone’s home.
The place had an almost unnaturally empty feel to it. It was oddly still. All the windows were shut tight. The heater was off. There was nothing so much as a ticking clock or the occasional sound of running water from one of the apartments above.
I walked toward the back of the apartment and into the kitchen, where a dirty coffee cup sat on the counter, next to a glass with a little water in the bottom and an empty bottle of Excedrin. My good friend Hank probably woke up in a whole world of hurt.
It was brighter back here, and made me feel a little better. There was nothing suspicious thus far gleaned from this unsanctioned tour. I was starting to feel guilty about taking it, but told myself that I was checking on Hank’s health and well-being.
From there, I walked into the bedroom, where I stopped short at what I saw. An empty suitcase sat atop his carefully made bed, and some articles of clothing—a couple of shirts, a pair of khaki pants, and a pair of socks—were tossed on the bedspread next to the luggage. A couple of questions rose immediately to mind, the first one being: Who has a bedspread anymore? The second, more important query was: Had Hank just fled town?
This is a guess. This is only a guess. But it appeared that he might have pulled out a large piece of luggage, packed it with clothes, then decided to pare down to something smaller, maybe a carry-on bag. I poked around the bedroom looking for any other signs of his departure, but none came immediately to sight.
So I walked back into the kitchen, picked up the portable phone, and pressed the redial button. An abnormally long series of tones sounded, the phone rang twice, and a recording came on that said, “Welcome to American Airlines. Press 1 for—”
I hung up. Unless you could press 2 for help solving a murder that you think you might have caused, or press 3 to decide whether to savage the mayor’s reputation on the front pages of a newspaper for information that doesn’t make you feel entirely confident, the recording had very little more to offer. It already told me this: Hank Sweeney, you could bet, was getting out of town.
But why? Where? When?
I stuck my finger into the bottom of the empty coffee cup and the residue still had a hint of warmth. I walked over to the coffeemaker on a nearby counter, a simple Mr. Coffee machine, and pressed my palm gently against the carafe, which was warmer than a little warm. I’m no thermal engineer or whatever they might be called, but my bet is that he had shut this thing off within the last half hour. So I bolted for the front door.
Chapter Thirty
I got to Logan Airport in a new record time, which I reminded myself to call into the newspapers for my appropriate award. I parked, and bolted into Terminal B, where American Airlines is located. I checked the monitors to see what was leaving in the next thirty minutes or so—flights to Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, San Juan, and then I saw it: West Palm Beach, the nearest airport to his old retirement house.
I tried walking through security but was nearly arrested, hog-tied, and strip-searched because I didn’t have a ticket. “Looking for a friend,” I explained, and was told, in no uncertain terms, to take a flying leap, just not on one of their planes.
So I ran up to the counter, which was gloriously free of people, and told the nice middle-aged woman that I needed a one-way ticket.
“Where?”
Straight to hell. But with no time for any of my asides, I said, “West Palm Beach.”
“Everything’s full on that flight but first class.”
“I’ll take it.” Peter Martin would think this was absolutely hilarious.
She ticketed me with a jarring amount of efficiency and I was off. My good friends at security weren’t exactly thrilled to see me coming through. I had to remove my shoes and my belt, then flap my arms like a falcon. I think they were about to make me recite the first two paragraphs of the Gettysburg Address when their supervisor showed up on the scene and they abruptly let me go.
I was jogging down the concourse, past the food court with the standard Cinnabon and Sbarro shops, when I heard the announcement over the public address system: “This is the pre-boarding call for American Airlines Flight 528 for West Palm Beach, first-class passengers and Advantage Gold, Advantage Platinum and Advantage Executive Platinum are invited to board at this time.”
The good news is that I could get on the plane if I wanted. The bad news is, I wasn’t going anywhere, even though there was probably never a better time to try to escape this nightmare that had become my life. It occurred to me during my trot that less than a week ago, when Elizabeth was leaving, I probably should have been doing the same thing, running down the concourse, begging her not to leave. The problem was, I really didn’t want to stop her and she didn’t want to be stopped. So there you go.
As I approached the waiting lounge for the Palm Beach flight, I slowed down to a walk and took a hard look around. A small line had formed at the door, and the several dozen people in the seats were putting away newspapers and magazines, slipping belongings back into their duffel bags, and checking seat assignments on their boarding passes. A quick survey didn’t reveal Hank Sweeney, a tough guy to miss.
I walked through the heart of the lounge, up and down the little rows that separated the attached seats, peering, searching, hoping, praying. Still nothing.
The public address announcer said, “We’ll start by boarding from the rear of the plane. Anyone sitting in rows 25 and higher—25 and higher.”
That’s when it occurred to me that I could have this all wrong. Maybe he was flying somewhere else, to Chicago or on vacation to Puerto Rico or maybe out to see a distant cousin on the West Coast. Maybe Sweeney wasn’t leaving at all. Maybe he was picking someone up, and was standing back at security waiting. Or maybe he wasn’t going or meeting or waiting or avoiding. Maybe this was all a giant mind-fucking, for me, by me.
No time to assess the psychological morass that was allegedly my mind. I started walking briskly farther down the concourse, to check other flights, hopefully to find Sweeney lounging in a chair with his face in the sports section of the morning Record wondering how it was that the Red Sox folded up like tin foil for the upteenth season in a row.
And that’s when I saw him. He came lumbering out of a men’s room with that bearlike gait of his, one side of his body pushing forward, then the other, his head down, his barrel chest out, enormous, not fat. He was heading right for me along the wide, car
peted hallway, a small duffel bag over his shoulder and a magazine—a Sports Illustrated, I believe—in his left hand. I stopped and stood in his path, something he wouldn’t have noticed because he never looked ahead, not when he was walking, anyway.
When he was on me, he sensed me, stopped short and mumbled, “Excuse me.”
“You’re not excused.”
He looked up, his big brown eyes tired but surprised. “Jesus, son, what the hell are you doing here?”
Always calling me son, ever since I sat with him on his cheap plastic furniture on his overheated patio in Marshton, Florida, a couple of years before, and he helped me about as much as anyone has ever helped me, putting his pension on the line, his reputation, eventually his life.
It’s a cliché to say it, but I did anyway: “I was wondering the same thing about you, Hank.”
We stood face-to-face in the busy concourse, with businessmen lugging briefcases and tourists with knapsacks and rolling luggage swarming past us in each direction, places to be, people to see, while both Hank and I were inextricably stuck in a moment that neither of us wanted or probably fully understood.
He recovered some from his state of startle, and said in that softer, whiskeyed voice of his, “Ah, just heading down to Marshton to spend a little time at home and do some maintenance on the house. Make sure everything’s okay, you know?”
No, I didn’t, actually. “Home’s here, Hank. Always has been, always will be. You know that, and so do I.”
He averted his eyes, looking down, and shuffled his feet like a little boy.
“Rows 10 and higher,” the public address announcer said from behind me, the voice echoing through the hall, “10 and higher to West Palm Beach.”
“I’m row 16,” Hank said, and he let those words hang out there, meaningless and meaningful at the same time.
“Why are you leaving?”
He shuffled his feet some more, like a pitcher waiting for the manager to walk from the dugout to the mound to pull him out of the game. He kept his gaze downward and said, “Son, I’m old. I thought I could make a comeback, in my career, in my life.”
He paused, still looking at the old sneakers that he wore on his feet, or maybe at the bluish commercial carpet that adorned the floor.
“But history catches up to you. Time catches up to you. You can’t escape the past, even if you don’t think the past was really all that bad.”
Another pause. The announcement sounded, “All rows. All rows on American Airlines Flight 528 to West Palm Beach.”
“So it’s time for me to go back to where I belong, sitting in a lounge chair, listening to baseball games on a transistor radio, tending a garden. Maybe I’ll take up golf.”
He paused again. His face got tight around his jaw. His voice, already uncharacteristically narrow, grew almost reedy. He added, “Son, it’s time for me to go.”
This wasn’t much of an answer, so I asked again, “Why are you leaving?”
This time, he looked me square in the eye and said without hesitation, “To preserve my dignity. To not lose the respect of people I like. To save myself and every other thing that I worked for.”
I sighed heavily. A plane must have just pulled in from some distant place, because a fresh torrent of people were making their way past us on their way to baggage claim.
“This is the final boarding call for Flight 528 to West Palm Beach. All seats, all rows.”
He stood still, and so did I. I told him, “I need your help, Hank. I think I caused a woman to die.”
“It wasn’t your fault, son.”
“You know that?”
“I know it wasn’t your fault.” His voice grew softer, more familiar. As I’ve said, I’d only met Hank two years before, less even, but had the sense that I’d known him forever. He was dead serious in some endeavors, like solving murder cases, slightly comic in most others, one of these guys who knew that life was something of an unfolding gag, got the jokes, and wasn’t afraid to laugh at all the appropriate lines. There were times when you wanted to hug him rather than shake his hand, he was that kind of guy, times when you could just sit with him in the front seat of a car on a stakeout that would probably lead to nowhere and talk about nothing for two hours, and somehow, some way, the time would seem to fly.
People who I’ve known for just a couple of years are people who I would never describe as friends. They’re acquaintances, maybe on the waiting list for friendship, if time bears our relationship out. My friends are people who have been around for the longer part of forever. Except Hank. He was a friend from the moment I first knocked on his screen door.
“Hank, tell me why you’re leaving.”
He readjusted the shoulder strap of his bag. He shook his head, slowly and sadly. “You’ll know in due time,” he said, staring down again.
“I need to know now.”
“I’ve got to go, son. I’ve really got to go.”
“Guy walks into a bar, Hank. It’s the first line of a joke, unless it’s you walking into Toby Harkins’s old place in Southie. Why’d you do that?”
“I’ve got to go.”
And he began walking, slowly, around me. I turned and kept pace.
“Hank, don’t do this.”
He looked at me as he walked and said, “Son, I’ll tell you this. Be very, very careful about who you trust, in life, but especially on this story.”
With that, he started walking faster. I looked ahead and saw that the door to the jetway was still open, a young man in one of those inevitably unflattering polyester uniforms standing in front of it. He glanced at his watch, the young man did, took a last look around the empty lounge, and began to shut the door. Hank yelled out, “One more.”
He headed toward the door. I thought about following him right through it, right down the plank and onto the plane, but then I’d be stuck in Florida while my life in Boston was coming apart at the seams. Actually, tell me what’s wrong with that scenario again?
So I stopped. Hank called over his shoulder, “Be very careful.” He handed the attendant his boarding pass and ambled through the door without ever looking back. I stood watching in a sad state of shock, watching as the young man flicked the door shut, watching as a foot appeared and the door bounced backward a little bit, watching as the figure of Hank reemerged. He told the persnickety little airline worker that he was sorry, he needed ten seconds, and he’d be right back.
He walked over to where I was standing and handed me a manila folder. “Here,” he said. “You’ll make better use of this than I did.” Then he turned and went back through the door.
I stood watching as he walked through the door and down the ramp. Hank Sweeney, friend and confidant, was inexplicably gone.
Chapter Thirty-one
I was reviewing a roll of the dead and the departed as I walked back up the concourse, past security, and down the escalators toward the parking garage. First and foremost was Baker, whose death weighed on my heart as heavy as one of those water-logged sticks he would drag from the Charles River. Elizabeth Riggs: gone. Hank Sweeney: gone. Vinny Mongillo: leaving. Peter Martin: no place else to go, which was good, so I’d have him for a while. I knew all too well that my world could be lonely. I had never realized it could actually be barren.
But what happened to Hank, my trusted friend? Why on God’s good earth did he feel the need to suddenly, cryptically escape? I thought back to him giving me the blow-by-blow analysis of the showdown between the Boston cops and the Feds in the front seat of my car. I thought of him delivering the videotapes from police headquarters that implicated the mayor. I suspect the folder he had just handed me might provide some valuable clues to the mystery of who killed Hilary Kane, so for that reason, I refrained from opening it in public and waited until I got into my car.
This was my mood as I headed through the garage. If they awarded a gold glove for catching bad breaks, I think I’d be a clear winner, which is how I knew that the apelike person in the ill-fitting black sui
t standing near my car was almost certainly waiting for me. He probably drew the assignment because I had a pair of one syllable names.
So instead of stopping, I walked on by, as the song goes. He looked at me funny, just standing there in the roadway smoking a cigarette from the side of his mouth as if he strived to be a cliché. I walked around the circle, concealed the folder in the back of my pants, and walked back toward my car. This, I knew, would be an absolute load of utterly joyous fun.
I walked silently past him, so close I could smell the Slim Jim on his breath, to the driver’s-side door and unlocked it. “Mr. Flynn?” he asked.
“Mister has an R in it,” I replied. A little Boston accent humor. Very little, apparently, because his forehead scrunched up in what I imagine was deep thought. “Huh?” he asked.
“You’re full of questions.”
I was obviously in no mood to accept anyone’s bullshit, despite the fact that everyone around seemed to think I was the ultimate receptacle, a veritable human Dumpster for all of life’s garbage.
Ape-man recovered somewhat, and said, “Somebody wants to speak to you.”
Well, I’ve got to admit, that’s always good news in the reporting business, usually anyway, but it didn’t seem such a surefire thing here. I replied, “Who might that be?”
I didn’t have the time or the patience for another one of these get-in-the-backseat-of-a-dark-sedan-and-we’ll-drive-you-to-where-you-need-to-be things. I wanted to get into my car and see what the hell it was that Hank Sweeney had given me. I had to get back to the newsroom and sit with Peter Martin and Vinny Mongillo and decide if we were going to take down the mayor on evidence that I thought was slightly south of solid. And if so, I would be directed to write the story, by deadline, and deadlines hadn’t been so good to me of late.
Dead Line Page 29