“About what?”
“We tried to grab him. Please.”
“Then what?”
“Let go my leg!”
“Then what?”
“Aargh! He got away, like you said.”
“Where?”
“Fuck!”
“Just tell me where.”
“Down those steps. Down that path. I don’t know what the fuck it’s called. He ran down them and we couldn’t find him with the van.”
I nodded at Jenn and we took just enough weight off the door to keep his leg pinned without pressure.
“Who hired you?”
“He did,” Walsh panted, pointing to his driver’s seat. “He said we had a job to do, didn’t say who hired him. Didn’t say why.”
I looked at Jenn. “Do you believe him?” He saw the look in my eyes and tried to pull his leg inside the car but Jenn was too fast. She threw herself against it again and he screamed as it trapped his leg, lower this time, closer to the ankle.
“Christ!”
“Who wanted him? Who wanted David!”
“No fucking way,” he said. “Break my leg, go ahead. I ain’t saying fuck all.”
I could tell he was too scared to talk, whether I broke his leg or not, and one of these shitheads had to drive the other one out of that alley. I picked up the GPS and went back to our car, got the digital camera and took shots of both pretty boys. I also took close-ups of both drivers’ licences and the van. I banged the mud off the front plate and shot that as well. Then I helped Walsh swing his limp partner into the back seat so he could drive them both to a hospital, if they so chose. I figured they would head for Sinai. If they’d been following us for any amount of time, they knew where it was.
We had a message from Colin MacAdam when we got up to my room. Karl Thompson had cracked David’s password and had sent us a link to a ghost drive where we could look at his email and Internet history. Jenn started on that while I booted up my laptop, uploaded the pictures I had taken of our assailants and called Mike Gianelli in Brookline.
“How would you like to see a photo of the guys who tried to abduct David Fine?”
“You serious?”
“Give me an email address, you’ll have them in a second.”
“All right, Geller,” he said, and gave it to me. “I’ll circulate them here and with some of my old guys in Boston. We come up with something, I’ll call you. Jesus Christ,” he said, “maybe turning you loose wasn’t such a bad idea.”
When I called Adath Israel and asked to speak to the rabbi, the woman who answered said they didn’t have one. “We will, shortly,” she said. “Certainly for the High Holidays. Our search committee is almost done. Are you thinking of joining?”
“No, I’m from out of town,” I said. “I was hoping to ask the rabbi about a member named David Fine. I was told they’re close.”
“Oh, you want Rabbi Ed,” she said. “Ed Lerner. Yes, he and David were close, I’d say. But he’s not with our congregation anymore. He stepped down last month.”
“Can I ask why?”
There was a pause and then she said, “Personal reasons. That’s all I can say.”
“Could you put me in touch with him?”
“His number is unlisted,” she said. “So, no.”
“It’s very important,” I said. “David is missing and his family has hired me to find him.”
“Missing?”
“More than two weeks.”
“But he’s such a lovely young man,” she said, as if that were some kind of shield against trouble. “No wonder he hasn’t been at services lately. All right, you leave your number with me,” she said. “I’ll get Rabbi Ed to call you. And you didn’t hear it from me, but his daughter might be in the book under S for Sandra.”
“She’d be listed?”
“She’s single, I heard. She’d be crazy not to.”
“David is here on a very limited visa, right?” Jenn asked.
“Yeah, a J1.”
“Can’t work anywhere, can’t moonlight.”
“No.”
“So he probably can’t vote, right?”
“No. No way.”
“So why did he spend so much time checking the website of Marc McConnell, congressman from the Eighth District?”
“Which is where?”
“Let me check. There’s a map on McConnell’s site. Hmmm. Mostly downtown Boston, Cambridge, parts of Brookline—but not where David lived. Curves right around it.”
“The same city line that kept the Boston PD out.”
“Right.”
“So someone who can’t vote and can’t even ask for a favour because he’d be asking the wrong guy … how much time was he on the site?”
“In hours or minutes, I don’t know, but he visited it more than once. Bookmarked a number of pages. And searched McConnell on Google.”
“We should do the same.”
“Wait. He also emailed him a few times.”
“Saying what?”
“Slow down there, hombre. Let me get this open. Okay, he wrote February 23, asking for a meeting with McConnell.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. But he does say it’s urgent.”
I crowded in over her shoulder and read along with her.
“Any reply?”
She checked and found a formulaic response from someone named Tim Fitzpatrick, an adviser to McConnell, who thanked David for his interest in the congressman’s work and asked if he wanted to be on his mailing list. “Okay, then two days later, David emails again, saying—”
“ ‘I really need to meet with Mr. McConnell,’ ” I read. “ ‘It is in both our interests that we meet immediately.’ ”
“Dated February 26.”
“And two days after that he’s gone. Is this hotel in his district, by any chance?”
“This block of Commonwealth?” She glanced at the screen. “Smack in the middle,” she said.
“Then we’re constituents,” I said. “Let’s get ourselves an audience.”
CHAPTER 12
Sean Daggett and Kieran Clarke were having drinks in leather chairs facing each other across a glass coffee table. Something Kieran had found, a smooth Irish whiskey called Redbreast they were having over ice, one cube each.
“Tell me about McCudden and Walsh,” Sean said. “Are they total fuck-ups or can they not catch a break? First they lose the Jew they’re supposed to grab, now they get beaten up by Canadians. One of them a girl. That makes them 0 for 2.”
Kieran was Sean’s oldest friend from Russell Street, and his best friend left. He had the size Sean lacked, a little over six-two and 20 pounds heavier than when he’d played football—call it 240 now, but still all brick, no mortar. “Walsh says they got suckered. Says the guy rammed them in an alley.”
“What does McCudden say?”
“He ain’t talking yet. Still doped up. Took two pretty good shots.”
“From a Canadian.”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” Sean said, shaking his head. “What have I been saying since I started this, Kieran? What’s the one thing I repeated over and fucking over?”
“We need the right guys …”
“Thank you. The right guys. Not a lot of guys. I don’t need an army. Just pros. That’s all I need to get on top of this thing and stay there is solid pros. No showboats. Strong silent types. Last names don’t count, where you came from don’t count. Look at the Italians, they’re all softies coasting on family names. Classic third-generation business failures. But we Irish, Kieran, we’ve got the same fierce genes we always had, we’re still bred for the street in our little packs. We’re still fucking desperate. I know the right guys are out there.”
“They are. McCudden and Walsh are exceptions.”
“No,” Sean said, “they’re examples. Bad luck, trouble, they brought it all. Take care of it, man.”
“Got it.”
“And I want them found.”
“They didn’t talk, so leave their tongues alone.”
“Okay.”
“What says fuck-up best?” Sean asked.
“Two in the head?”
“A classic,” Sean said. “Nice call. Now about these Canadians, what do we know?”
“I’m told they’re PIs from Toronto.”
“And they take out two guys from Southie? Christ. We got names?”
“Jonah Geller and Jenn Raudsepp.”
“What kind of names are those?”
“Raudsepp, who knows. Swedish? She’s tall and blonde, Walsh said.”
“And Jonah Geller?”
“Sounds Jewish to me.”
“Another Jew? What am I, surrounded all of a sudden? Is it National Hebe Week?”
“My mother used to say one of them’s a cheat, two makes a con.”
“Where they’re staying?”
“The Sam Adams.”
“Who have they talked to?”
“The Brookline cops.”
“Who know dick. Who else?”
“They been to the hospital a couple of times. And Geller went out to Somerville.”
“Somerville? Fuck. I’ll show them Somerville. Show them my fucking garage.”
“You serious? You want me to pick them up?”
Sean thought for a moment, swirling around the ice in his drink, and said, “Not yet. We still have our wandering Jew out there. If these PIs are so good they can take out two of our guys, no sweat, maybe they’ll find him for us.”
“We got eyes on them.”
“Good. One last thing now, then I’m out of here. I want to sleep at home with my wife tonight. I spoke to the congressman in the Eighth District, McConnell. He’s all set.”
“He met your price?”
“They all meet my price.”
“Jesus, half a mil. And you don’t leave the house.”
“That’s the beauty of it. The other guy, the Greek. Is he confirmed?”
“He’s in.”
“He’s sure?”
“He’s sure.”
“He can’t not show.”
“He’ll show. He’s eager. He’s a degenerate fucking gambler, needs money like we need air.”
“I told you this thing was going to pan out.”
“You did.”
“We’ll clear over five million the first year. We got no competition, controllable expenses. Very little risk across the board.”
“You did it, pal.”
“I’m not fishing for compliments. I’m saying no more fuck-ups. I want Walsh and McCudden gone. And as soon as these PIs find their fellow Jew, I want them gone. No one left standing.”
“And if they don’t find him?”
“Kill them.”
“Any message there?”
“No. Just make them disappear.”
“Same way as the others?”
“Sure,” Sean said. “Go with what you know.”
CHAPTER 13
Americans like two things in their politicians: height and hair. Marc McConnell had both. In the photos posted on his website, he generally looked two or three inches taller than the other men around him. His hair was thick and smartly combed, grey at the temples, the rest dark brown with strands of grey threaded through like filigree.
According to his biography, he was forty-two, born and raised in Boston. A triple eagle, having gone to Boston College High School, Boston College itself and then BC law school in Newton.
“What kind of lawyer?” I asked Jenn.
“Human rights and international justice.”
“Let’s hope we don’t need him. What else does it say?”
“Married his high school sweetheart, the former Lesley Austin-Smith, fifteen years ago.”
“Just once, I’d like to read about a politician who married a slut he picked up in a bar.”
“Oh, and look, she’s an heiress too. Lucky girl, her father was—honest to God, they use this phrase—a shipping magnate. They still have magnates?”
“I think George Steinbrenner was one.”
“Wait,” Jenn said. “Maybe not so lucky.”
“Why?”
“I just Googled her separately and this one old article … one sec. Oh God.”
“What?”
“Cystic fibrosis. It runs in her family. Two out of three kids got it, she and her sister. The brother didn’t for some reason. The sister died at twenty. But Lesley was four years younger and as she was getting critical, medicine had advanced to the point where she could get a double-lung transplant. She was nineteen years old.”
“So if they were high school sweethearts, he was with her through all that.”
“Yes. She was only the third to survive the procedure in Massachusetts, it says.”
“You live in Boston, you have the money, you’re bound to get the best care. How long ago was this?”
“She’s forty now, so twenty-one years, which is amazing. It defies a lot of the stats I read. Not that many are still alive fifteen years after transplant.”
“The new organs give out?”
“No, the organs are fine. They get cancer from all the drugs they have to take.”
“Do the McConnells have any kids?”
“Doesn’t say.”
“Which means no, because politicians always flaunt their kids. They’re photo ops from birth.”
“Maybe the drugs affect fertility too.”
“If they do, I’m sure you’ll find out. You’ve been doing amazing research.”
“I’ve had plenty of time while you’ve been out.”
“Was there a pout behind that?”
“Not at all. You should get to see Boston.”
“See if McConnell has any events coming up. We can both get out.”
She moved her wireless mouse and clicked. “Aha. The congressman and the missus are both planning to attend Slow Art Day at the Institute of Contemporary Art between eleven and two tomorrow.”
“Slow Art Day?”
She moved and clicked again. “It is, and I quote, a global grassroots movement that encourages people to look at art in a new way, by spending a few minutes looking at each piece, really taking it in and making a connection with it, instead of rushing through. It says here the average person spends eight seconds looking at each object or exhibit when they’re not regular museum-goers. They wind up taking in too much info and they get tired and grumpy.”
“It says that? Tired and grumpy?”
“It does. And not inclined to visit again. They want people to take their time, just see one part of the museum instead of the whole thing, and see the rest another time.”
“In other words, it’s not a global grassroots movement, it’s a membership drive. Does it give the name of McConnell’s PR person?”
“It lists the museum’s and—yes, here’s the congressman’s too. Tim Fitzpatrick, communications adviser. You want to try the Globe and Mail bit again?”
“Not on a political operative. He’d check it before he returned the call. Let’s just go. Come up and shake the congressman’s hand. Ask why David wanted to meet him. See the look on his face.”
“And check out what an heiress wears on Sunday,” Jenn said.
Rubin’s Kosher Deli was on Harvard Street in Brookline, in the middle of the stretch of Jewish shops we had canvassed. A plain place with red vinyl booths and tabletops sticky with rings from soda glasses and coffee cups.
I walked in and looked for a burly bearded man in his fifties, which is how Rabbi Ed Lerner had described himself on the phone when he’d returned my call. “Look for me in a window seat,” he had said, but there was no one fitting his description at any of the booths at the front. I took a seat at one, assured the waitress that I was meeting someone and ordered coffee to start with. It had just arrived when a heavy man with a salt-and-pepper beard came in the door, breathing heavily. He looked around, saw me and raised his eyebrows.
I got up and extended my hand. “Thanks for coming.”
“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I ran into someone outside who absolutely, positively needed to know why I left Adath Israel. It’s no one’s business but in this community, it’s everyone’s.”
He was about five-eight and easily 200 pounds, maybe 220. Early fifties, a mop of curly hair under a skullcap that looked more African than Jewish, brightly coloured and raised up on a circular brim. His eyes were a shade between green and blue.
“You going to eat,” he said, “or just have coffee?”
“I could eat.”
“And I, as you probably guessed, can always eat. I should stay out of places like this but what can I say? There is no better food in the world than deli. A soup, a sandwich, a pickle on the side. This is how man was meant to eat. This man, anyway. And everything’s kosher, by the way, in case you observe.”
He waved the waitress over and she greeted him with a big smile. “Hello, Rabbi. I thought maybe you weren’t coming in today.”
“Did the world end and I missed it? I was just held up outside.”
“You need a menu?”
“Nope. I’m going to start with a matzo ball soup,” he said. Then he looked at me: “You like a good matzo ball soup? Yes? No insult to any of your family members but you won’t find better than here. And if you promise not to tell my daughter,” he said to the waitress, “I’ll have a pastrami on rye and an order of latkes.”
“What size sandwich?”
“Regular.”
“And you, sir?” she asked me.
“Have a sandwich,” the rabbi said. “Don’t make me look bad.”
I told the waitress I’d have the same thing as Rabbi Ed and she said she’d be back in a few minutes.
“If my daughter had her way, I’d be eating poached salmon on mixed greens,” he said. “Granted, I could lose a few pounds, but we all have our vices. Pastrami is mine.”
“There are worse.”
“I know. I heard them all in my years as a rabbi.”
I could see why people would confide in him. He seemed warm, hearty, down to earth. A sizable man with a rumbling baritone.
“So,” he said. “This is terrible news about David Fine. For him to drop out of sight is totally out of character.”
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