by David Hosp
She held her breath. There was nothing else for her to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
‘It’s done,’ said Coale over the phone. His voice conveyed no satisfaction.
‘Was it clean?’ McDougal asked. Everything seemed to be falling into place; he couldn’t have any slip-ups now.
‘I said, it’s done. You don’t have to worry.’
‘I do have to worry,’ McDougal barked. ‘The lawyer made contact with Tesco. I need to know that there are no loose ends.’
‘It was clean,’ Coale said.
‘Good. Call me when you get back.’
McDougal hung up the phone and turned around. He sat heavily in his chair. Lemons into lemonade, he thought. That was the way he lived his life. Take the bad and make it good – or if not good precisely, at least turn it to your advantage. He closed his eyes. With luck it would be over soon, and when it was, he would be better off.
When he opened his eyes, he was looking straight ahead, his vision slightly blurred from the pressure to his ocular muscles. Something didn’t seem right, and he blinked several times to get his vision to clear. When it did, he frowned.
The door to the warehouse was open.
He stood and walked around the desk. His office was little more than a dry-walled cubby carved out of the main storage area. The door to the back was almost always closed. There was nothing of consequence or interest that he needed to get at, and the place had a damp musty stench to it that, while not unbearable, was unpleasant enough to make him keep the door closed.
He walked over to the door and poked his head through, flipping on the lights. The place was a mess of bric-à-brac, with tires, old mattresses, carpets, boxes of paper, and documents stacked up to the twenty-foot ceiling. It had become a convenient dumping ground for all those things accumulated in life and business that were no longer worth keeping, but seemed too substantial to be discarded.
Stepping into the damp, cavernous space, he strained to detect any sound. ‘Hello?’
He crept down the haphazard aisles created by the random stacks of junk. ‘Hello?’ he said again.
There was no answer, no sound at all, and after a few moments he headed back toward his office. When he got to the door, he turned and gave one last look back toward the warehouse, then shut the lights off and closed the door.
He stood there in his office, his hand still against the door, running through his afternoon, doing a mental check to recall whether he had opened the door that day. He didn’t think so.
As he stood there, the shadow in the space between the wall and the sofa caught his attention. It was the only place where someone could hide, and he turned his head slowly. He moved two steps to his left, pulled his gun out of his pocket. When he was level with the back of the sofa, he ducked down in one swift motion, the gun pointing into the space, and he yelled, ‘Don’t move!’
Nothing. There was no one there.
Feeling foolish, he shook his head and stood up. He walked over to the desk and picked up the file. He thought briefly about putting it back in the cabinet but reconsidered. He wanted to go over the information one more time. Things were moving in the right direction, but now was not the time to lose track of the details.
He tucked the file under his arm and headed back out to the front of the building.
Finn watched as McDougal exited the building. The waiting was worse than anything he could remember. He’d lost people he cared about before. People he’d called friends. People he’d called more than friends. Life on the street was a daily roll of the dice, and the street was where he’d spent his youth.
That was different, though. On the street, the rules were the rules and couldn’t be changed. If you played the game, you knew the risks; everyone was equal in that respect. Even when people in his crew had gone down, there was regret and anger, but no guilt. No shame at having been unable to change the rules by which they all lived their lives.
Now, as he crouched by the side of the building, gun in his hand, muscles tight and aching with the lactic acid building in them, he understood for the first time in his life what it was like to have someone depend on you for all they were and all they would become, and to fail them.
As soon as McDougal’s car pulled out of the driveway, Finn stood up and moved quickly to the front door. He wanted to break into a full run, but he knew better. There were still dangers. The more attention they drew to themselves, the more likely it was that they would all be in peril. He forced himself to walk.
Kozlowski was approaching from the other direction. ‘It’s a good sign,’ he said.
‘What is?’
‘He came out. Alone. If he’d found her, there would have been complications. There would have been activity. She’s okay. She made it.’
‘You seem sure.’
‘I am.’ Kozlowski pulled out his tools and began unscrewing the plastic case to the alarm keypad. ‘We want to be ready,’ he said as he went to work.
The office was still and dark for several minutes after McDougal left. Then slowly, silently, Sally slid her legs one at a time out from under the desk. She stood, shaking, her arms weak, afraid to move further. Holding her breath, she listened carefully for any sound, any sign that the man might be coming back.
She’d moved quickly as soon as she saw him walk through the door to the warehouse. The sofa provided marginal cover at best, and with the man’s suspicions aroused there seemed little doubt that she would be discovered as soon as he returned.
Under the desk was the only alternative. It was a calculated risk – if he sat down again, or even walked behind the desk, he would have seen her. She figured the odds were fifty-fifty. Still, she liked those odds better than staying behind the couch.
She let herself breathe again after a moment, in short shallow bursts, afraid the sound might be enough to bring the man back. Nothing happened, and soon she was breathing normally again. Another minute and she felt confident enough to begin moving toward the door. Finn and Kozlowski were still out there, waiting for her, she hoped.
The door at the other side of the office led out into a reception area. At least, that’s what it looked like in the dark. She couldn’t be sure. There were windows, but it was a moonless night, and only faint glimmers from distant streetlights made their way through. It was enough to make out shapes, but nothing more.
She moved through the room slowly, carefully, convinced at every step that someone was lying in wait. She made it to the door at the far side of the room. It felt like she’d been in the place for an hour, though it had probably been fewer than ten minutes. She knocked three times on the door. There was no response.
‘C’mon!’ she hissed into the darkness. ‘Don’t do this!’ She knocked three times again, this time hard enough to hurt her fists.
Then it came. A single knock from the other side of the door. She reached out to unlock the door and throw it open. Something in the back of her head stopped her, though. She ran through her memory, trying to recall what Kozlowski had said. She remembered him telling her to knock three times, and he would do the same. She waited, her hand on the knob, fighting every impulse she had to pull the door open.
It took another minute or two, but finally the knocks came again. This time there were three. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief, unlocked the door and pulled it open. Kozlowski and Finn slipped in, closing the door behind them. Kozlowski still had the flashlight, and he switched it on, pointing it at her.
‘You all right?’ Finn demanded. She could hear the tension in his voice.
‘Yeah,’ she said, as composed as possible. ‘What took you guys so long?’
They moved quickly through the filing cabinet. Picking the lock took less than thirty seconds, and there were only three drawers. It didn’t take long for them to realize that there was no information about Elizabeth Connor.
Finn said, under his breath, ‘It’s not here.’
‘Are you telling me I almost got myself killed for
nothing?’ Sally asked.
Kozlowski was still flipping through one of the files. ‘It’s gotta be here,’ he said. He gestured to the file with his flashlight. ‘He’s got files on everyone he’s ever dealt with. Jesus, it looks like Eamonn has a little insurance on everyone.’
Finn looked over his shoulder. ‘He must have taken my mother’s file with him.’
‘These files have an unbelievable amount of information,’ Kozlowski said. ‘Names, numbers, payoffs. There’s enough here to put half of Boston away. He’s even got tape recordings. Your mother’s file has got to be here.’
‘It’s not,’ Finn said. ‘We’ve been through the entire cabinet. He must have moved it.’
Kozlowski continued flipping through another file. ‘Would you look at this?’ He showed the file he had in his hands to Finn. ‘It’s unbelievable.’
Finn didn’t want to look at it; all he wanted was the information about Elizabeth Connor. He glanced over, however, and something on one of the sheets of paper caught his eye. He grabbed the file.
‘Hey, what are you doing?’ Kozlowski protested.
‘Give me that for a minute,’ Finn said. He read through the file, the gears in his mind turning. ‘This is it,’ he said. ‘This is the answer.’
‘What’s the question?’ Sally asked.
‘The question is: who murdered my mother?’ Finn said.
‘And the answer is here? In files that have nothing to do with her?’
‘Not the answer, but a way to get at the answer.’ Finn rifled through the rest of the folders and picked out three. ‘There’s a copier in the other room,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to copy these. I want to look through the tapes, too. Pick out a couple of those.’
‘What are you going to do with them?’ Kozlowski asked.
‘I’m going to turn them into answers,’ Finn said.
Long and Townsend were back at the station house, sitting in the captain’s office. They were staring at each other. ‘What an asshole,’ Townsend said.
‘Buchanan or his pit bull?’
‘Both. I was talking about Carleson, though.’
Long nodded. ‘I’d like to wipe the smug look off his face. Sitting there, looking at us like we’re powerless against him and his client. It pissed me off.’
‘That’s what he was trying to do,’ Townsend said. ‘He wants you mad; he wants you so mad that you’ll make a mistake. That’s how he thinks he’ll win.’
‘So what do we do?’
Townsend leaned back in his chair. ‘We need to be careful. We move forward and we build a case so solid it can’t be ignored. Can you do that?’
‘Yeah,’ Long said. ‘It may take a while, but there are too many people involved for them to keep it buttoned up. Every single one of Eamonn McDougal’s employees gave money to Buchanan. If we can find a few who will swear that they were paid by McDougal to do it, that’s the hook.’
‘How do you get them to talk?’
‘I lean on them. Some of these people must have pressure points we can exploit. We figure out where to push, they’ll give.’
Townsend looked skeptical. ‘If I were in their shoes, I’d be way more afraid of McDougal than I’d be of the cops. That’s the sad reality.’
‘Maybe. We’ll see.’
Townsend shot Long a look. ‘Don’t lean too hard, Long,’ he said. ‘You’re already being watched. People around here get a whiff of anything improper, you won’t last a day.’
Long put his hands up. ‘Don’t worry, Cap. I won’t cross the line.’
‘You’d better not.’ Townsend stared at Long for a few seconds. ‘What happened between you and Jimmy? For real.’
Long stood up. ‘It’s in my report,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing else to say that I didn’t put down on paper.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Coale pulled his black Mercedes into the garage shortly after ten o’clock that night. He was amazed at how tired he was. More tired than he could ever remember being in his life. Not the pure physical exhaustion that comes from exertion or lack of sleep, but the endless soul-searing weariness that saps the strength more completely. For the first time in his adult life, he craved sleep not just to recharge, but to escape.
The garage was two blocks away from the loft. It was a trek he’d made more than a thousand times, and yet tonight it seemed different. He noticed the stores, noticed the people. He’d taken note of them all before, to be sure. It was a requirement of his profession to be aware of everything around him. If necessary for a job, or if pressed, he probably could have rattled off a description of every single building, every single storefront on the route. He probably could have described all of the locals and given an accurate account of their general habits – their morning commuting schedules and their evening routines. But he’d never really noticed them before as anything more than pieces of his environment. Tonight, somehow, something was different. They seemed like actual living, breathing beings.
Halfway between the garage and his loft, he passed a bar and glanced through the window. There was nothing unusual or notable about it; it was just like a thousand establishments in Boston. Wooden booths, a long mahogany bar fronted with well-worn stools, four-fifths empty on a Monday night. And yet something about the place caught his attention. Perhaps it was the way the bartender propped himself against the cash register, so comfortable in his conversation with two of the regulars. Maybe it was the couple in the booth, leaning in toward each other as though it had been a year since they’d last seen each other, so desperate were they to drink in every last word. Whatever it was, he paused in front of the place, opened the door slowly, and stepped inside.
Everyone in the bar looked up when he walked in, and he could feel them all recoil. He was used to that. He had carefully cultivated an aura that inspired fear and kept people distant. Kept people from approaching him. Kept people from questioning him. He never would have survived for this long any other way.
He walked slowly over toward the bar. He didn’t sit; that would have been going too far. Instead, he put his hands on the counter and turned to look at the bartender, who abandoned the regular and walked over.
‘Help you?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ Coale said. ‘You got Scotch?’
‘It’s a bar,’ the bartender said. Coale gave him a look and the bartender shrugged apologetically. ‘What kind?’
‘Macallan still good?’
‘Top shelf.’
The man nodded. ‘Neat.’
The bartender retreated to pour the drink.
Coale could remember the last time he’d taken a drink. It was more than forty years before, on his eighteenth birthday. That was what people said you had to do on your birthday – get drunk. If his father had still been alive at the time, he would have taken the boy out. His father had liked his drink. He would sit in their bare garage apartment with a bottle, reading, the aroma from his glass the only texture to the place. As a boy Coale had loved that smell. He would have enjoyed a drink with his father on his birthday, but by the time it came his father had been six months in the ground.
At eighteen he was alone, homeless, penniless. The booze hadn’t made anything better, and he didn’t enjoy being out in public. Watching all the people around him swirl with their friends, their lovers, their lives, had only reinforced his loneliness. Soon after the hangover had worn off, he resolved to remove himself from all social contact. If he was to be alone, he wouldn’t torture himself with meaningless interaction. If he was to be alone, he was going to take advantage of the solitude. And so he made himself into the perfect sociopath. Divorced from all feeling, all empathy, all mercy. And that had made him powerful.
The bartender returned with the Scotch. ‘Twelve bucks,’ he said. Coale frowned at him, and the bartender shrugged again. ‘Top shelf,’ he said.
Coale reached into his pocket and pulled out a tight roll of bills. The smallest he had was a hundred. He peeled it off and
put it on the table. The bartender’s eyes widened ever so slightly as he watched. He picked it up and went to the register to make change.
Coale stared at the glass for what seemed a long time. The booze was golden brown and it danced and sparkled even in the dim, chalky light of the dive. He picked up the glass, breathed in the aroma. It was foreign, after all the years. Sharp and stinging and dangerous, and yet somehow warm and alive at the same time.
He raised the glass to his lips and took a sip. Not even a sip, really; just a taste. The liquid settled on his lips, crept only far enough into his mouth for the flavor to roll over on his tongue, no more. He sat there, closed his eyes for a brief moment, lost in the memory of the life he’d given up.
Then he pulled himself back and put the drink down. The bartender returned with the change. Coale looked at him, and once again saw only an object, not a person. He could easily have pulled out a gun and shot him in the forehead without thought or remorse. It would have meant nothing.
He looked at the change on the bar, looked at the drink.
Without another word, he backed away, turned, and headed out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Finn stood at the back of Courtroom D at the Roxbury District Courthouse. It was an arraignments session – a cattlecall of the accused, pulled from the holding pens filled from the previous evening and weekend. At the right of the courtroom, a Plexiglas box held the accused, who spoke only through a six-inch circular pattern of air holes at the front of the box. The holes were set low enough to allow the shortest defendants to respond, which meant that anyone of normal height had to stoop down to answer any questions. It wasn’t a huge imposition. Few answers were required. A ‘yes’ when asked whether they had met with their court-appointed attorney, a ‘not guilty’ when asked how they wanted to plead to the accusations against them. Then a schedule was set, and they were whisked away, replaced by the next defendant. It went on like this for hours.