by Ray Daniel
“I saw your email, you know.”
“What email?”
“The one to Jack. ‘Rest assured. If he gets out of line, I’ll fire him immediately.’ You were true to your word there.”
“How did you read that?”
“I have mad skills.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I mean, that was why you hired me. Because of my mad skills. That is, until my wife cried in your office and the political wind started blowing. Then you called me into the office and ripped my life away.”
“Don’t blame me for that, Tucker. I’m not the one who killed Carol.”
“And yet it happened just as I was in your office. Nice alibi.”
Oh shit. My shields were down and everything that ran through my head was running out of my mouth. I’d never had that go well for me. Not once.
Nate leaned in and asked, “What are you saying?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I was—”
“Are you saying that I had something to do with Carol’s murder?”
“I wasn’t saying anything. I’m sorry. I’m upset.”
“Why would you say something like that? To me, of all people.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. It just slipped out.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
The cut in my side burned. I put my head in my hand, and my thumb brushed the stitches. I squeezed my other hand into a tight fist that blanched to white as I forced the blood out of it.
Nate grabbed my fist and held it. “Tucker. What is going on with you? Talk to me.”
I was about to do it. I was about to tell Nate everything about Rosetta and the FBI and the Russian and my garrote mark and the knife cut in my side. I opened my mouth to tell him and then closed it again because I saw someone leave the elevator, walk to the center of the lobby, and make eye contact with me. He crooked his finger at me. Come here.
He was 175 centimeters tall. He was wearing a blue striped shirt, black suit pants, and good shoes. He had short, dark hair. He was a little bit fat. It was the guy who had pushed me down the staircase. He smiled when he saw that he had caught my attention.
I stood up. I was going to end this.
forty-five
When you confront a bloodthirsty killer, it’s important to have a plan.
I know that now.
I left Nate at the table and stalked across the empty Boylston Suites Lobby. There was no direct path. I had to wind my way around koi ponds and over bridges. The Russian also began working his way through the lobby. We met on a little bridge in the middle, far away from everyone. The Russian had a bemused this-should-be-good expression as he approached me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, poking him in the chest. He ignored my poke.
He said, “I want to talk to you. I thought I would have to chase you because you would hide like a rabbit from a wolf. But now I see you are a very stupid rabbit.” His accent was so thick that it was like talking to Boris Badenov. Moose picks up bomb, bomb explodes, moose is dead. Then we shoot squirrel.
“Fuck you, Boris.”
The Russian looked puzzled. “Boris? I am Dmitri. Who is Boris?”
“Your mother. What do you want?”
Dmitri reached into his left pocket and pulled out a black package of cigarettes and a gold lighter. He flipped the package open, took out a cigarette with a gold filter, and lit it, holding the cigarette between his first two fingers. Then he put the cigarettes and lighter in his pocket and took a deep drag.
I said, “There’s no smoking in here.”
Dmitri blew a cloud of smoke into my face. I coughed. He said, “Go home, Mr. Tucker.”
“What?”
“Go home. Go back to your little house and stay there. On Friday I will be gone and you will be safe.”
“I am safe.”
“You think so? Then you are stupid or naive.” Dmitri appraised me as he took another drag on his cigarette. Then he said, “Naive. You are naive. But now I have warned you. So now you are stupid. Soon you will be dead.”
I said, “You could have killed me today, but you chickened out. Got a case of conscience?”
Dmitri laughed and said, “My partner thinks you may be useful.”
“Partner? What partner? Who?”
“You would like to know, eh? Stop interfering, Mr. Tucker.”
“Interfering with what? What are you doing?”
Dmitri took a step closer and said in a quiet voice, “I am making money. I am making more money than I ever made before, and my partner thinks you could help.” Dmitri took another drag on the cigarette and threw it into the koi pond. A fish inhaled it, then spit it out.
I took a step closer to Dmitri, got in his face. I loomed over him. He did not step back. My looming didn’t seem to be a problem for him. I said, “I’m never helping you make a fucking dime.”
He looked into my eyes and nodded slowly. “I know. You are an idiot.”
“And you are a sick fuck.”
I could barely hear the next words as they hissed out of Dmitri’s tobacco-stained lips. He said, “You are right. I am, as you say, a sick fuck. If you are lucky, I will shoot you. If you are not lucky, I will tie you to a tree and skin you like a deer.” He smiled and said, “Why don’t you just go away.”
I whispered, “Because you killed my wife.”
Dmitri glanced over my shoulder, then looked me in the eye. He plucked the front of my black T-shirt, pulled me even closer, and breathed, “Do you know what I liked about your wife, Mr. Tucker?”
Liked about my wife? I shook my head as Dmitri spoke. I could smell the stink of the cigarette as his warm breath puffed against my face.
Dmitri said, “Her tits were real.”
The demons in the back of my mind sprang out of their cages. I pushed Dmitri away and tried to punch his ugly Russian face. I missed. He had moved.
He was holding a switchblade. He snicked it open.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen! There’s no need for this.” Nate interposed himself between Dmitri and me. Nate said, “I’m sure this is all just a misunderstanding.”
Dmitri sneered at me. His lip curled in an ugly crescent. Nate stood between us. Dmitri showed us the knife and said, “Listen to my warning, Mr. Tucker, or I will skin you with your wife’s favorite knife.”
“I’ll kill you, you bastard!” I launched myself at Dmitri again, but Nate was in the way. He was old, but he was in good shape. He grabbed me and stood his ground. Dmitri laughed, folded the knife, and walked out of the hotel.
Nate watched Dmitri leave. He let go and said, “Who—?”
My cell phone rang. It was Jael, and she wanted to see me.
Great.
forty-six
Leif Erikson’s nipples glinted in the afternoon sun as his shapely thighs poked out from under a flowing skirt. I stood at the base of his statue and looked up his skirt while waiting for Jael. She had wanted to meet somewhere far away from the convention center, and no place was better than the base of Leif Erikson’s statue on Commonwealth Ave.
The monument was the brainchild of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who, along with Protestant Brahmin society, preferred to believe that a Norseman had discovered the new world rather than an Italian. They built the statue because the immigrant Catholics were growing in power, and Boston’s elite wanted to give the Irish immigrants a poke in the eye.
Leif Erikson had to be rolling in his grave. The statue made him look like a hairdresser trying to find his partner at a costume party. It was so gaudy that it was a useful landmark. I had told Jael, “Go to the end of the Commonwealth Ave mall and meet me under the brown statue of a guy with pointy nipples and great legs.” She had found it easily.
Jael crossed her arms and said, “I need to know if you intend to commit suicide.”
“Suicide?” I said. “Absolutely not.”
“It would be possible. You are very upset about the loss of your wife.”
“What? No! I’m not going to commit suicide over losing my wife.”
Jael leaned against the flower garden at the base of the statue with her long legs straight out in front of her and her handbag over her shoulder. She wore black sunglasses. I could see the empty sky over the Charles River reflected in them.
She said, “So you are like David? You expect God to save you?”
“What?”
“David stripped off his armor and faced Goliath alone because he expected God to bring him victory. I imagine you expect the same.”
I was stunned. I said, “God never crossed my mind.”
“Then,” asked Jael, “what were you planning when you walked up to a killer and presented your neck?”
I didn’t answer. I was starting to feel like a little kid getting scolded. My hands shook. That bastard had killed Carol, cut her throat in her own kitchen, and stood in the middle of a hotel lobby as if he were the fucking mayor.
“I see,” Jael continued. “You didn’t have a plan.”
I knew then why I didn’t have a plan. The right plan would have involved putting a bullet into Dmitri’s twisted brain. I wanted to kill him, but I had been impotent. My lower lip started taking on a life of its own. I couldn’t believe this was happening.
Jael said, “You simply wanted to see what would happen.”
“That bastard killed my wife!” I cried. Hot tears fell down my face. “I couldn’t just let him stand there.”
Jael grabbed me by the upper arm and said, “Walk.” She led me down Charlesgate toward the river, then pulled me into a little stand of trees next to the road. Nobody came to this park. Even the homeless had deserted it. Once she had me hidden by the trees, she slapped me across the face. Hard. My lip rammed into my teeth and began to bleed.
“Ow! Jesus, what are you doing?” I said.
“Jesus has nothing to do with this.”
“I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
Jael said, “You are interfering with the business of a mobster who has killed an FBI agent.”
“I know.”
“This is not therapy, and I am not a therapist. You cannot do stupid things. If you must be stupid, then I will not work with you. I do not want to die because of your emotions.”
I said nothing. I was ashamed of myself. I looked at the ground where city grass struggled to grow through the packed earth.
Jael put her hand on my shoulder and said, “There will come a time, soon, when you will be in danger, and where you will have to do brave things. I will help you as I can, but I cannot help you if you are suicidal.”
“Why are you helping me at all?” I asked. “You said yourself this is dangerous. It’s not your fight.”
Jael took her hand off my shoulder and said, “It is an obligation.”
“To who?”
“To God. You are trying to mend the world. I must help.”
“What?”
Jael took off her mirrored sunglasses. She looked at me with her gray eyes, as if she wanted to see me clearly before speaking again.
“The world is a broken place,” she said. “You are trying to mend it, to put the pieces back together, to create justice. That is why I am helping you.”
I had nothing to say to that. I didn’t think of myself as fixing the world, but I was grateful nonetheless. I wanted to hug Jael, but that was a bad idea. I put out my hand and said, “Thank you.”
Jael shook it awkwardly, a concession to my Americanism, and said, “You are welcome.”
We stood that way for a moment, looking at each other. I had never trusted anyone as deeply as I trusted this strange friend of Bobby Miller’s. She was hard, and she was unyielding, but she would do what she promised. I felt at peace.
My cell phone beeped. It was a text message from a strange phone number. I read the message and said, “Shit.”
The text message was from Huey. He needed my help.
forty-seven
The MantaSoft marketing people had crammed Huey into the largest pair of eighteenth-century breeches they could find, but it was no good. While the pants covered most of his backside, they weren’t up to the job, and Huey looked like a Revolutionary plumber. He slouched in front of a computer, in a triangle hat, trying to give a demo.
Jael was hidden somewhere again, but she was worried that Dmitri would strike now that I had uncovered him. She had made me call Bobby Miller before she’d let me enter the hall. Bobby and I were standing behind Huey’s customer, listening to Huey’s slick sales pitch.
“Well, this menu here is called Reports, and it makes reports. You can pull down on it with the mouse and see the different reports …”
The customer yawned, pretended that he had gotten a cell call, thanked Huey, and fled.
I clapped Huey on the back, pointed at his backside, and said, “Hey, buddy. Just say no to crack.”
Huey jumped. “Oh God, Tucker, it’s awful. Roland was so mad at me for talking to you that he threw my phone in the fountain and then told me come down here to work the booth. They weren’t going to put me in a uniform, but Roland made them. I had to borrow a phone to text you.”
A customer came by, tapped Huey on the shoulder, and said, “Can you give me a demo?”
Bobby said, “He’s with us.” He made it sound like as if the guy had asked to dance with our dates. The guy shrank back and left.
Huey pointed at Bobby and asked me, “Who’s that?”
Bobby flipped open his badge. “Special Agent Bobby Miller, FBI.”
Huey blanched.
I said to Huey, “It’s OK, dude, he’s trying to figure out who killed Alice.”
Huey pulled me close and whispered in my ear, “But that’s what I was going to talk to you about before, you know, the fight.”
I answered in a normal voice.“Well, tell Bobby too. He needs to hear it.”
Huey whispered in my ear again, “But he might arrest me.”
I whispered back, “Did you kill Alice?”
“No …”
“Then don’t worry about it.”
Bobby said, “Are you girls done whispering?”
“Huey has something to tell us about Alice,” I said.
Huey’s face went from white to red. Something was definitely wrong. He said, “It’s on the Internet.”
“Can you bring it up on this machine?” said Bobby, pointing to the demo PC.
“Oh no, we can’t use this one. We need my tablet.”
Huey led us to the back of the MantaSoft booth. The booth had a desk in front of a large sign that said MantaSoft. Behind the desk and sign was a cubby that served as storage for the booth workers. Huey squeezed himself into this cubby. We followed. He fished through the computer bags, his plumber-like pants causing me to avert my eyes, and pulled out a black Android tablet.
He turned and squatted among the backpacks, looking like a bear in a den. After fiddling around and bringing up a webpage, he pointed at Bobby and said, “Does he have to be here? I’d like to just show this to you.”
“Why?”
Huey looked at his computer screen, then back toward me. He wouldn’t make eye contact. I could hardly hear him when he said, “It’s embarrassing.”
Bobby said, “Look …” He prompted me for help with the name.
I said, “Huey.”
“Look, Huey, Alice Barton died alone and afraid because of some douchebag. That guy’s gonna kill someone else, probably at this show. It’s probably going to be one of your friends. So cut the crap and show me what you got.”
Huey cringed and shrank inward.
I looked at Bobby and shook my head. Nice going. Like many engineers, Hu
ey would rather die than engage in open conflict. When the going gets tough, they close like clams. Bobby had just made this much harder.
I squatted in front of Huey, who looked at his tablet and slid his finger around it aimlessly. A background picture of Captain Picard from Star Trek looked out at us. Picard was pointing his finger in his classic “Make it so” pose.
I said, “Bobby can be an asshole, but he’s right. You’ve got to know that nobody’s judging you here. We just need to figure out who killed Alice and Carol.”
Huey said, “But Carol wasn’t killed … that way.”
“No. But they’re connected somehow.”
“I liked Carol,” said Huey.
“I loved her.”
“Really? You never said that. You guys were always fighting.”
“Oh shit, dude, we were married, you know? I sucked at being a husband, and I’d give anything to go back and do it right.”
“It stank, what happened to you guys. I always felt bad for you both.”
“Thanks. Now all I want to do is catch the guy who killed her.”
“You think this will help?”
“Yeah.”
Huey tapped the browser icon and started to type in an address. “You’ve gotta keep this a secret. I don’t want anyone to know that I go to this site.”
“We’ll keep it a secret, right, Bobby?”
Bobby said nothing, and Huey and I turned to look at him and Bobby said, “Right. Right. Secret.”
Huey gave him a look and then typed the address into the browser. It was a long address that ended in the extension .ru. The webpage came up. Big white letters on a black background promised, “The girl next door, forced to fuck for you.” It had a picture of a girl tied to a table, her arms above her head, her legs spread, a strategically placed star covering her crotch.
Bobby said, “Fucking Russians.”
I said, “Or Russians fucking.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
Good question.
Huey took a deep breath and tapped in a username and password. He was a subscriber. His hands shook. He mistyped his password several times. This was costing him. Huey was exposing a side of himself nobody could have suspected. The shame came off him in waves.