by Ray Daniel
A fat cop hoisted himself out of his car and moved alongside the SUV, his hand resting on his revolver. Jael rolled down her window.
“Please step out of the car,” he said.
Twenty
Blue jeans are, perhaps, the worst invention in the history of winter. My jeans proved the point as they greedily sucked up every drop of ice water on the curbstone. Jael’s pants appeared to be waterproof.
The cop looked into the car windows and went to try the door. I reached for the key fob in Jael’s hand and pressed the locking button. The car blooped.
“Miss, would you unlock this door?” asked the cop.
“We do not consent to searches,” I said.
“Why not?”
“It’s against the law.”
“What law?”
“My law. You want to search the car, get a warrant.”
The cop retreated from the car and stood in front of us. His belly loomed overhead. I had a better view of his crotch than he’d had in ten years.
“What are you?” he asked. “A lawyer?”
“I’m just a guy with a wet ass who’s getting a little cranky.”
“Really,” said the cop. “You’ll be a little more cranky in a second. Get on your feet.”
I stood.
The cop pulled out his baton, pointed it at Jael. “Please stay there, Miss.”
Jael looked him in the eye and ignored him at the same time.
“Okay, you,” the cop said. “Over here. Put your palms on the car, lean forward, spread your legs.”
As I leaned on the car, another police car pulled up next to us. Lieutenant Lee climbed out and waved the car away.
The cop said, “We have a troublemaker here, Detective.”
“What’s the problem”—Lee looked at the guy’s nameplate—“Officer Denton?”
“He thinks he’s a lawyer. Won’t let me search the car.”
“Did anyone ask you to search the car?”
“Um, no.”
“Why is Ms. Navas sitting on the curbstone?”
“Safety, sir.”
“Whose safety?”
“My safety.”
“Your safety?” Lee smiled. “You do realize that the only reason you’re still standing is that Ms. Navas is a gentle soul.”
“You know her?”
“Of course I know her.”
Lee stepped around me and extended a hand to Jael, who took it and stood.
“Perhaps we should ask Pistol Salvucci?” Lee said to Jael. “Would Pistol be able to enlighten Officer Denton, Ms. Navas?”
Jael brushed off her backside. Said nothing.
I was still stuck in the position I had assumed. “Mind if I stop leaning on this car?”
Lee said, “Not at all, Tucker.”
I stood. Tried to brush the snow off my butt, but it had melted into the cotton.
“Officer Denton,” said Lee, “thank you for your help. You can go.”
“But there was a BOLO out on this car,” said Denton.
“Yes, I know,” said Lee. “I issued it. Good-bye now.”
Denton muttered his way back to his car, threw it in gear, and left.
Lieutenant Lee said, “Would you two mind giving me a ride to police headquarters? It’s down the street.”
“Certainly,” Jael said.
We negotiated the game of oh-no-you-sit-in-front until Jael was driving, I was sitting next to her, and Lee was sitting behind us.
Lee said, “Jael, I heard that you had a run-in with Pistol Salvucci.”
“Where did you hear that?” I asked.
“Agent Cantrell.”
Jael said, “He touched me.”
“He also called her a bitch,” I said.
“Whether the rock touches the pot or the pot touches the rock, it always goes badly for the pot,” Lee said.
I twisted in my seat to face Lee. “Pistol is the pot, right?”
“Yes, Tucker, Pistol would be the pot.”
“Good.”
“Still, I don’t see how touching Jael justifies a broken elbow.”
“And a crushed nut sack.”
“Oh,” said Lee. “I hadn’t heard about that.”
“Are we under arrest?” asked Jael.
“Oh, no,” Lee said. “I wouldn’t bother to arrest you for beating up Pistol Salvucci. I believe Pistol gets beaten up at least once a year, and deserves it every time.”
“Huh,” I said.
“Of course,” continued Lee, “he is one of Sal’s most loyal soldiers.”
“I got that impression,” I said.
“Really? I have to wonder why one of Sal’s most loyal soldiers would try to attack Sal’s cousin.”
The police station had literally been down the street from us. Jael pulled into the driveway. She said, “Pistol was convinced that Tucker had turned on Sal.”
“Why would he think that?” asked Lee.
Now that the car had stopped moving, I turned to face Lee. He held a gun.
“A gun?” I said. “I thought you weren’t arresting us.”
Lee said, “It slid out from under the seat.”
“Please put it back,” Jael said.
“Certainly,” said Lee as he put the gun away. “I am not worried about you, Ms. Navas.”
Jael looked at Lee through the rearview mirror.
“On the other hand, Tucker, you worry me,” Lee continued.
“Why should I worry you?”
Lee opened his car door, stepping out into a long shadow from the setting sun. He tapped on my window. I lowered it. Lee flipped open a little spiral-bound notepad. “Let me just run some facts by you, Tucker.”
“Okay.”
“You had Maria to the park at the same time as her mother was being murdered, yes?”
“But I didn’t—”
Lee held up his hand. “Please, just humor me with yes/no answers.”
“Yes.”
Lee made a check mark in his book. “You called Agent Miller because you possessed a ransom note.”
“Someone drop—”
Lee held up his hand again.
“Yes.”
Another check mark. “The ransom note showed you where to find Maria.”
“Yes.”
Check mark. “You were the first person to enter the apartment, having failed to call Agent Miller?”
“My phone—”
The hand again.
“Yes.”
Check. “And Joey Pupo was murdered just moments before Miller arrived.”
“Yes.”
Check. “And you did consulting work for a company called PassHack.”
“Yes. Wait. What?”
Big check mark. Lee said, “I thought as much.”
“What does PassHack have to do with this?”
Lee closed his book. “Could it be that Pistol Salvucci is smarter than he looks?”
“I don’t thi—”
The hand. “Just a rhetorical question, Tucker.” Lee pulled his overcoat closed. “Do me a favor.”
“What?”
“Don’t leave town. I’d hate to have to chase you around when I’m ready with a warrant.” He headed into police headquarters, leaving Jael and me sitting in the car.
I raised the window. “Well so much for me visiting a warmer climate.”
Jael watched Lee enter the building and said nothing.
I said, “Didn’t you tell me that Sal would be a dead man if we left him in jail?”
“Yes,” she said.
“How long do you think I would last?”
“Not as long as Sal.”
“So you’re telling me that I’m a dead man if I’m in jail and if I’
m out of jail.”
Jael said nothing.
“Those are pretty much my only two options.”
“We have no allies,” said Jael.
She had let the we slip out. I let it linger in the air.
“We have one,” I said. “But he’s locked up.”
“Essentially no allies. Turn on your phone’s GPS.”
I touched the app, turned on my GPS signal for Jael, and thought of Bobby. “So that would make two of you tracking me.”
“Who is the other one?”
“The FBI.”
“Good.”
“Maybe. If they convinced a judge that I was a suspect.”
“Better to be a suspect than to be dead.”
I fiddled with my phone. “We could make Sal a more useful ally. Cantrell offered us a deal.”
“Do you think Sal will take the deal?”
I started dialing Sal’s lawyer, Caroline Quinn. “There’s only one way to find out.”
Twenty-One
Caroline Quinn’s black business suit, with its deep, cleavagy V, added life to the FBI conference room. Sal, sitting at the round conference table in prison scrubs, did not. Sal’s beard had grown since yesterday, deepening the gray and black across his face. His eyes had sunk another notch into their sockets. His dry lips were flaked despite his tongue’s unconscious attempts to keep them moist. A bruise darkened his eye.
“What happened to your eye?” I asked.
“Nothing,” said Sal.
“A fight?”
“Nothing happened. What do you want?”
“I want to get you out of here,” I said. “They’re going to kill you.”
“So they kill me. So what?” Sal said.
“So what?” I said. “You’ve got a daughter, that’s what.”
“She’d be better off without me.”
Caroline said, “Let’s cut the fucking drama.”
Sal turned. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.”
“You work for me.”
“Not for long.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m not going to sit here and listen to this ‘poor me’ crap. I play to win. If you want to sit here and play baby boo-boo, then you need to get someone else to represent you.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?” I asked.
“Oh, great,” Caroline said. “Another quarter heard from.”
“I mean, Sal just lost Sophia. On top of that, Maria’s missing.”
“I know that, Tucker. And I know you’re trying to help, but self-pity will get him nowhere. We’re going to be in the fight of our lives here, and I need Sal to have some spunk in him. Which brings me—” Caroline leaned forward as she scolded me, her jacket falling open a notch.
Despite the circumstances, my focus drifted to the bare skin of Caroline’s chest, the line of her neck.
Caroline snapped her fingers. “Well?” she asked, still leaning forward.
“Well what?”
“Why are we here?”
“Um,” I said.
Caroline sat back. “You know, you’re looking pretty bad yourself. You okay?”
I ran through several possible responses. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’m just here to get Sal out of jail.”
“You have any ideas on how to do that?”
“Frank Cantrell told me—”
“Why the fuck are you talking to Cantrell?” Sal asked.
“He was getting an ambulance for Pistol.”
“An ambulance? Why did Pistol need an ambulance?”
“Because Jael broke his arm.”
“What?”
“He was going to beat me up, and he went to push—”
“Why was Pistol going to beat you up?”
“Because he says I turned on you.”
“Why would he say that?”
“He saw me with Hugh Graxton in Cafe Vittoria?”
“Graxton’s in my spot? What the fuck is going on out there?”
“That’s the point, Sal. It’s all going to hell. They’re fighting over your turf. Half of them think that I’m with you, so they want to kill me. The other half think that I’m against you, so they want to kill me too. Lieutenant Lee just wants to arrest me.”
“Arrest you?” Caroline asked. “What for?”
Sal said, “You mind not finding new work while I’m paying you?”
“I’m not finding new work,” Caroline said. “I just want to know why Lee would arrest Tucker.”
“He thinks I’ve got something to do with Sophia’s murder.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It’s got something to do with the work I did for PassHack.”
“PassHack?” Sal said.
Something in the room changed, became poisonous.
“Um—yeah,” I said. “PassHack. It was a startup.”
Sal said, “I know it was a fucking startup. You didn’t think to mention to me that you worked there?”
“Why would I tell you? Computer stuff bores you.”
“Sal, what’s this about PassHack?” Caroline asked.
Sal ignored her. “So you’re buddies with David Anderson?”
“I don’t know any David Anderson,” I said. “I just know that Cantrell mentioned him.”
Sal pounded the table. “Again with fucking Cantrell! Why are you hanging around with Cantrell talking about David Anderson? What did Frank tell you?”
“He told me that you and Anderson had a problem getting along.”
“What kind of problem?”
I glanced at Caroline. She sat with her arms crossed, staring at the table, clearly bullshit at being ignored.
“A ten-thousand-dollar problem,” I said.
Sal stood over me and pointed. “You worked for a guy who stole from me and killed Sophia?”
I would not be loomed over. I stood. “I didn’t work for anybody.”
“You took his fucking money.”
“I was a consultant. How do I know where that money came from?”
“You think David Anderson killed Sophia?” Caroline asked Sal.
“He wouldn’t do it himself,” Sal said. “He’d have help.” Sal looked me straight in the eye. “He’d have someone get Maria out of the house, then—”
I don’t know how the brain works: how sounds enter the ear, get converted to thoughts, and processed into insights. I don’t know how those insights mix with the vagaries of personality and puddles of neurosis to create a conclusion, nor do I know how that conclusion converts itself into action or how the nerve impulses travel down the spinal column, out to the arm, and into the hand. I don’t know why the hand chooses to form itself into a club, nor how the eyes coordinate with it to aim the strike.
I just know that I saw my fist, balled up and pale, smashing itself into Sal’s bruised eye, scraping its knuckles across his brow while his eyes squinted shut and his head snapped to the side. Sal, my big older cousin, the man whose size and violence always scared me, rocked back, tripped on his chair, and sat.
Next, I was standing over Sal and chewing my sore knuckles as something close to a sob ground its way up my chest.
I’d lied to Caroline. I was not fine.
Sal rubbed his cheek. “Get out, you Judas,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I managed as I turned for the door. I needed to get out before Sal could see the tears. I was out the door and down the hall when I heard my name.
“Tucker!” Caroline called.
I stopped in the empty hallway. Caroline followed, limping slightly on her baroque metallic leg.
I pointed past her down the hall. “I’m done with that asshole.”
Caroline said, “He doesn
’t mean it.”
I focused on suppressing the sob, but my eyes started leaking. Aw, shit.
“Maria is out there,” I said. The sob broke through, and then another. “Aw, Jesus, I’m sorry.”
Caroline reached out, wrapped her arms around me, pulled me close. “Shhh.”
I breathed in Caroline’s perfume, felt her body against mine, reached back and pulled her toward me.
Caroline said, “You’re a good man.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“Sal told me.”
The hug worked. Distracted by Caroline’s perfume, wool suit, and body beneath the suit, my emotions stabilized. I loosened my hug. She gave me an extra squeeze and let me go. Took a step back.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re not so tough after all.”
“Sal needs me to be tough,” Caroline said.
“And me?”
“You just needed a hug.”
“I need more than a hug. I need a miracle and a bazooka.”
Caroline smiled and rested her hand on my chest. “You’ll find her.”
I covered her hand with mine. “Checking my heart rate?”
“No,” said Caroline. “I just wanted to know how your chest felt.”
“And?”
Caroline never answered because my new Droid interrupted us.
“You’d better take that,” Caroline said. She turned and went back down the hallway to the conference room.
I made a mental note not to mess with Caroline and looked at my phone. The number wasn’t one I recognized. “Hello?”
“Tucker, it’s me—Angie. I’m shopping in Back Bay. You want to get dinner?”
Angie. Huh.
“Sure,” I said. “Meet me in front of the Capital Grille in an hour.”
Angie made a happy squealing noise and hung up.
I was suddenly awash in women.
Twenty-Two
It was nearly six o’clock. Midwinter night squatted over City Hall Plaza. Rush hour was in full swing as office workers scuttled from warm offices to a warm train to a warm house, minimizing their time in the cold. I pulled my coat tight around me, dodged across Cambridge Street, and mashed myself into the crowd jamming Government Center Station.
I ran across the platform at the bottom of the escalators and wormed my way into a waiting Green Line train, achieving a toehold in the stairwell leading to the door. I squeezed in as the door folded shut. Unable to achieve the top of the steps, I got my head crushed against some guy’s ass. They say people in Boston are rude because they ignore each other, but when your head is crammed into some guy’s ass, the only polite response is for you and he to ignore each other. I took a selfie and tweeted: