by Ray Daniel
“Why would I know anything?”
“Oh, c’mon, Tucker,” Frank said. “You’re right in the middle of all of this. You’re a hacker. He was a hacker. Your cousin was mad at him. You worked for him. Why wouldn’t we ask you some questions about him?”
“Why blame Sal for this?”
Bobby said, “We’re not blaming Sal, but we’re sure interested in Sal.”
“Sal had issues with Jarrod Cooper,” Frank said.
“Sal had issues with a lot of people,” I said. “Did they all wind up in the harbor?”
Bobby said, “We don’t know where they wound up.”
I knew where they wound up: a shipping container someplace in Asia. I looked down at Jarrod floating in the water. Guys in black wetsuits were wrapping a rope around his chest, getting ready to hoist him onto shore. I didn’t want to see that.
I said to Jael, “We should be going.”
She nodded and we turned from the harbor. Walked back toward the Impala.
Bobby followed. “Where are you going?”
“Why wasn’t there any blood?” I asked.
“Blood? Where?”
“On the ice. Why wasn’t there any blood?”
“Bodies don’t bleed when they’re dead, and Jarrod had been dead for a while.”
“You think he died instantly, or do you think he drowned?”
“Depends where he was shot. We’ll know when we get him out of the water.”
We reached the Impala.
I looked over Bobby’s shoulder. Frank Cantrell had stopped watching the body retrieval and was striding toward us.
“Cantrell is dirty,” I said. “What will it take to convince you?”
Bobby said, “A lot more than just your word.”
“I’m telling you that he’s going to get you killed.”
“Smearing Frank Cantrell is not going to help Sal.”
“I’m not trying—”
Frank caught up. “Hey Tucker,” he said, “you’d better watch your ass. Looks like it’s open season on hackers.”
“What are you talking about, Frank?” I asked.
“I’m just saying that hackers like Jarrod over there, guys who can steal passwords, think they’re real smart until they get caught up in something that’s bigger than them.”
“Is that what happened here?”
“You tell me. Why would someone kill Jarrod?”
“Shit, I don’t know, Frank. If you’re so smart, why don’t you tell me?”
Cantrell stepped close. “I think Jarrod pissed off the wrong guy.”
“Who? You?”
Cantrell shoved me. I bounced off the car hood. “I’ve had enough of your shit, Tucker.”
Bobby stepped between us. “C’mon, guys, this is ridiculous. Frank, go direct things over there.”
Frank said, “This asshole is pissing me off.”
“Yeah, he’s pissing me off too, but I still want you to let me handle him.”
Cantrell gave me the finger and stalked off.
I called after him, “Happy New Year to you too, Frank.”
“Will you just shut up for once?” Bobby asked.
“You’ve gotta start listening to me.”
“Yeah, well, not today.”
“Fine. Whatever. C’mon, Jael, let’s go.” I started walking.
“Where are you going?” called Bobby.
I ignored Bobby, dialed my phone instead. Sal picked up. “Can I come over?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
Jael and I walked down Commercial toward Salutation and Sal’s place. I tried to formulate a plan as we went, because I was pretty certain of what had happened to Jarrod Cooper. I needed to make Bobby see it.
Sixty-Four
I knocked on Sal’s door, expecting to be blown away by the combined odors of stale food, pine needles, and prison sweat. I was wrong.
Sal opened the door onto a pristine apartment.
“C’mon in,” he said.
The Christmas tree was gone, its place of honor taken by an easel holding a large, framed photo of Sal and Sophia on their wedding day. Sal’s hair had been jet black before it took on today’s silver highlights. Sophia sat in Sal’s tuxedoed lap, wearing a tight wedding dress whose strapless décolletage raised questions about whether the laws of physics applied to boobs.
The dining room stood empty, its holiday table having been stored wherever dining room tables went after the holidays. Maria’s room had been straightened to within an inch of its life. The closet and drawers were shut tight, the bed made, the floor cleared down to the hardwood.
“Holy crap, Sal, did you do all this?” I asked.
“Yeah. It was time to get my shit together.”
“There might have been evidence,” said Jael.
“Fuck that,” said Sal. “The cops took all the evidence they wanted when they were trying to prove that I stran—was the one.”
Jael said, “I meant evidence for finding Maria.”
“There’s nothing here that’s gonna help,” said Sal. “I believe Tucker now. I think Maria’s still in the North End.”
“Why would you think that?”
In answer, Sal pressed the button on an old answering machine.
Maria said, “Daddy. I don’t want you to worry. I’m hiding with Angie—”
“Wow,” I said.
Sal held up his hand. Maria wasn’t finished. “—so Tucker won’t get me.”
“What?” I said.
“So you won’t get her?” Sal said. “What the fuck is that about? Did you say something?”
I had played and replayed the day of sledding on the Common. Well, not so much replayed it as reconstructed it. There’s little more repetitive than watching a kid go up and down a hill on a sled. All our conversations were the same.
I would say, “Are you cold yet?” Because I was cold.
Maria would say, “I want to go again.” She would go again, and I would stand at the top of the hill and do jumping jacks trying to generate heat.
“No idea,” I told Sal. “You were there at the end.”
“How about you?” Sal asked Jael. “Any idea why Maria should be afraid of Tucker?”
“No,” said Jael.
“It explains why she ran when she heard your voice,” said Sal.
I said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t explain why she’s afraid of me.”
“Where did she call from?” Jael asked.
“I don’t know,” said Sal. “I couldn’t hear anything in the background.”
“Do you have caller ID?” I asked.
“No,” said Sal. “I never bought the box.”
“Do you have star sixty-nine?”
“What’s that?”
“You dial star sixty-nine and it calls back someone who just called you.”
Sal picked up the phone, dialed *69. My phone rang.
Sal said, “Look at that. It works. You’re a genius.”
“Well, how was I supposed to know you had another call?” I asked.
“This does not help,” said Jael.
Sal asked, “Tucker, did you talk to Joey Pupo?”
“I had never heard of Joey Pupo until that day.”
“Then how did he know to go to the Common to get Maria?”
“Well, how did you know?”
“I knew because Frank Cantrell called me. He said that he’d heard some, you know, chatter or something, about someone kidnapping Maria. Told me to get over there.”
Jael said, “The police were waiting for you there.”
“Yeah,” said Sal. “Now that you mention it, they were.”
“Do you think it was just a ploy to get you out into the open?” I asked.
Jael said, “If it wer
e only a ploy, nobody would have taken Maria.”
“Oh, Jesus,” I said. “It’s worse than I thought.”
“What?” asked Sal.
“Think about it. Somebody set things up so that you, Sophia, and Maria were all separated.”
Jael said, “A coordinated attack.”
“Exactly. Maria gets taken at the same time that Sal gets arrested and Sophia gets—”
“Murdered,” Sal said.
“Yeah,” I said. “At the same time that Sophia gets murdered.”
Jael said, “There is a connecting thread.”
“Right. Frank Cantrell set it all in motion with his phone calls.”
“And he wasn’t there when I got arrested,” Sal said.
“Right.”
“So he killed Sophia? Why would he do that?”
I said, “It made no sense to me until just now. Jarrod Cooper’s murder pulled it together.”
“Jarrod Cooper got murdered?” Sal asked. “The PassHack guy?”
“His body is over by Columbus Park. Cantrell says you shot him.”
“I got nothing to do with that.”
“No, of course not.”
Jael said, “David Anderson is cleaning up loose ends.”
“Jarrod Cooper was floating facedown in freezing water,” I said to Jael. “Did you see any sign of how he died?”
“No,” said Jael. “There were no wounds.”
“So then, how did Frank Cantrell know that Jarrod Cooper had been shot?”
The answer was finally obvious. The pieces: Sal getting arrested just as Maria was kidnapped, Sal arriving at the Common just in time for the kidnapping, Joey Pupo being an informant, the ransom note appearing at my apartment. Cantrell had done it all. Shit, he even showed up at the scene of the crime when he pulled me away from Lieutenant Lee.
“Ah, shit,” I said. “We should have seen it at the start.”
“Frank Cantrell did it all,” Jael said.
“He’s been working for David Anderson.”
“And he put this whole thing in motion because Anderson wanted to make a lesson of you.”
“Fucking Frank,” said Sal.
“I tried to tell Bobby that Frank was dirty, but he won’t listen to me,” I said.
“So how do we get him to see it?”
“I know how to do it.” I outlined my plan.
Sal and Jael looked at each other, said nothing.
“It’ll be okay,” I said.
Famous last words.
Sixty-Five
There are uninhabited places in this world, places where one can be sure that nobody will see you, places where you can get away with murder. A cornfield in Kansas will do. Death Valley affords solitude. The backwoods of Maine swallow screams and gunshots.
None of these places were within easy driving distance of Boston, so Jael, Sal, and I stood at the base of a high seawall on Revere Beach, in the winter, at eleven o’clock at night. Nobody was out on the water. Nobody was on the beach. Nobody was peeking over the concrete seawall. We could do what we needed to do unseen.
Jael said, “This could go very badly.”
The silent ocean lay at the edge of a hundred feet of tidal flat. Low tide. Chunks of ice clung to the breakers where the salt water had congealed in the cold. A wet ocean breeze froze my face and found the chinks in my jacket.
I shivered. “Do we have a better plan?” I asked.
“Now you ask?” Sal said. “This was your fucking idea.”
“I know, but I can’t think of anything else.”
Jael said, “Bobby is my friend.”
“Mine too,” I said.
“This is wrong.”
“We’re doing it for the right reasons.”
Sal said, “Why don’t you two shut up?”
The seawall towered ten feet behind us, but the beach farther down rose to meet the wall, making it only two feet high for most of its length. A hundred yards away, a solitary figure climbed over the seawall and jumped onto the snow-covered sand. The figure put hand to forehead, peering around the beach, a useless gesture with no sun to block. He couldn’t see us anyway. We stood in shadow. The figure shrugged and trudged toward us. We stood among rocks on wet sand that had been scrubbed clean of snow by the ocean. Barnacles clung to the rocks like frost, waiting for the tide to rise and feed them.
The figure crunched through the snow, then over the wet sand. It was Frank Cantrell, right on schedule. Cantrell saw us against the seawall and veered to join the group.
“What the hell, Sal?” Cantrell said. “Why meet here?”
Sal said, “It’s private here.”
“Guy could get killed on these rocks.”
“Guy could get killed a lot of ways.”
Cantrell unbuttoned his coat. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
I asked, “Where did you learn to use PGP encryption, Frank?”
Cantrell said, “What are you talking about?”
“You sent David Anderson encrypted emails. What was that about?”
Sal said, “You turning on me, Frank? You playing both sides?”
Jael edged behind Cantrell. He turned to keep her in view. “That’s plenty far,” he told her.
“I want to know,” said Sal. “You throw in with Anderson now?”
“How did you see that email?” Cantrell asked me.
“Elves,” I said. “I’ve got magic email elves.”
“Don’t fuck with me, you hacker son of a bitch.”
Sal said, “Fuck with you? He’s not fucking with you. You’re fucking with me. I paid you twenty thousand this month and got nothing for it. Now I hear you’re buddies with Anderson?”
“I’m not buddies with Anderson,” said Cantrell. “I’m investigating. I gotta ask him some questions.”
“That’s bullshit,” I said. “You weren’t using an FBI account.”
Jael slid closer to me. She stood next to me and I stood next to Sal. Cantrell faced the three of us, his back to the footprints he had left in the snow. A hundred yards away, another figure jumped down from the seawall.
“Of course I wasn’t using an FBI account,” said Cantrell. “It’s a back channel thing.”
The figure, large and round, found Cantrell’s footsteps, started following them.
Sal said, “What do you mean, back channel?”
The figure was Bobby Miller, still more than half a football field away. I focused on Cantrell’s face.
Cantrell said, “I’m trying to gain his trust. To gather data.”
“By killing Sophia?” I asked.
“What? I didn’t kill Sophia. I don’t know who killed her.”
“How about Jarrod Cooper?”
A pause. “What are you talking about? You saying I shot Jarrod?”
“How did you know he was shot?”
“Listen—”
“Cut the shit, you two. Frank, if you’re switching sides, tell me to my face,” said Sal.
“I’m not switching sides,” said Cantrell.
“He would not tell you if he were,” said Jael.
“Don’t believe him,” I said.
Cantrell said, “Don’t listen to this hacker, Sal. We’ve been friends for years. I’m your guy.”
Bobby had fifty yards to go.
Sal said to me, “He did get me out on bail.”
Cantrell said, “Yeah, I made that deal with Caroline Quinn. Got you out.”
I shook my head. “That would have happened anyway.”
“He will tell you what you want to hear,” said Jael.
“I swear that I’m telling the truth, Sal.”
Twenty-five yards.
Sal asked, “You’re my guy?”
Cantrell said, “Absolute
ly.”
“Okay,” said Sal. “Prove it.”
Behind Cantrell, Bobby Miller said, “Aloysius Tucker, Jael Navas, and Sal Rizzo, you are under arrest.”
Sixty-Six
Cantrell whirled. Saw Bobby Miller standing behind him. Bobby nodded at Cantrell.
“Good job, Frank,” Bobby said as he stood next to Cantrell.
“What are you doing here?”
“Got a tip.”
I said, “This is bullshit, Bobby.”
“No,” said Bobby. “What was bullshit was you hiding Hanover Street from me.”
“I wasn’t on Hanover Street,” said Sal.
“Shut up, Sal,” Bobby said. “The three of you. On your knees.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” I said. “I’m not getting on my knees. It’s freezing here.”
Bobby unbuttoned his coat. “Don’t make me draw on you, Tucker. You were my friend.”
“Were?”
Jael said, “You were my friend too, Agent Miller.” She drew her gun and pointed it between Bobby’s eyes.
Bobby flinched. Raised his hands in front of his face, as if to catch the bullet before it killed him. “Jesus, Jael. What the hell?”
Cantrell said, “Cut that shit out.”
Jael said, “On your knees, Agent Miller.”
Bobby dropped onto the wet sand. Sal drew his gun. Cantrell remained standing.
“What are you doing?” asked Bobby.
“I am not going to your American prison,” said Jael. “Hands behind your head.”
Bobby slid his hands behind his head, interlocking the fingers. “Don’t shoot me, Jael. Please, God!”
Cold water glittered in the tidal pools. The seawall rose above us, concrete and implacable, hiding evidence of the civilized world. Sweat gleamed on Bobby’s bald head despite the cold. Sal and Jael stood, weapons drawn, pointing them at Bobby. Both had the same blank stare, mouths set in an impartial line, their souls turning inward to hide from what had to be done. I envied them. I looked at Bobby kneeling in the sand, tried to snuff out the notion that he was my friend.
I said to Jael, “What about Cantrell?”
Jael said, “We will have to kill him too, unless he proves himself.”
Cantrell asked, “What the fuck is this, Sal?”