They sat there drinking their beer quietly for a little while, each looking for a way back into the current conversation. Corrigan was about to gamble and ask her about work when he caught something across the room. A good twenty feet away from them, at the bar, was a guy who was about to drop an entire beer down the front of another guy. It’d be an accident, but since the second guy was wearing an expensive suit, Corrigan did not see things going well from there.
“You got a rubber band in that hair of yours?” he asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Give it to me.”
She did. Then she took out the clips on the side of her head, allowing her whole mane to swing loose, which was momentarily distracting in an arousing sort of way. Boy has it been a while, he thought.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“One second.”
Taking careful aim, he fired the hair band at the side of the head of the guy who was about to be wearing lager. The band glanced off the man’s ear. It was not an easy shot, but Corrigan resisted the urge to brag.
“Ow!” the target exclaimed, grabbing his ear and looking toward the guilty booth. He couldn’t really tell for certain what hit him or where whatever it was had come from, but Corrigan and Maggie were a pretty good bet in the latter regard. More importantly—for the sake of his suit—he’d stopped where he was. Just then the guy at the bar turned around with his full pint and watched in great distress as it slipped from his grasp and landed on the floor with a loud crash. The target in the suit jumped back. He got splashed on the legs, which was enough to make him forget all about the unexplained impact on his earlobe but not enough to give up on the whole suit, from a dry cleaning perspective.
Maggie knew better than to turn around. “Did you just lose my rubber band?”
“ ‘Fraid so,” Corrigan said. “But I saved a suit that was a lot more expensive. That’s a decent tradeoff, yeah?”
“Sure. But now you owe me another beer.”
* * *
After an hour of small talk, dinner, and minor beer maintenance, Maggie and Corrigan had managed to avoid enough former relationship land mines to have an enjoyable time with one another. It was odd. For Corrigan, it felt like sliding into an old pair of pants and finding they still fit snugly even when he knew they really shouldn’t.
“Hey, you’re drifting,” Maggie snapped. She’d been complaining about her boss—an agent named Hicks that neither of them cared for—while Corrigan had been staring at a girl across the room that was about to break a heel and twist her knee.
“Sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right, I understand,” she said, following his gaze. “It’s getting busy, isn’t it?”
Simply put—although it was really fairly complex—the more people there were, the more likely it was that Corrigan would drift entirely out of the present and start pre-reacting to things. At best, this could be embarrassing, and at worst it could cause a scene that had people pointing and screaming. Maggie recognized the signs well enough.
Concentrating mightily to get his head back into the present, he asked, “So tell me; did you get off work early today, or do you usually get to drink while on duty?”
“Actually? I’m on a fact-finding mission,” she said with a sly smile. “You know, if it were anyone else I’d call it a coincidence, but since it’s you . . .”
“What?”
“Honest to God, Corrigan, when I walked downstairs I was on my way to find you.”
“Really,” he said, just to respect the kismet that, for most people, might be considered extraordinary. This sort of thing happened to him all the time.
“I figured I’d surprise you at home, but there was your bike. So, I just waited.”
“And you wanted to see me because . . . of a case?” A guess for most, he discerned this by cheating and looking ahead.
“Yeah. It’s about a case. We’re stumped.”
“But how can I possibly help?”
“Not here,” she said. She patted the side of her messenger bag, implying that all answers lay within. “It’s going to take some time to explain.”
Corrigan did his best to hide his disappointment, as he thought he was in the midst of a romantic encounter. Now it sounded like this was the preamble of a business meeting instead.
“Upstairs, then,” he said, referring to the FBI offices.
“God, no,” she said. “Are you kidding? How about your place?”
He grinned. Business meeting and romantic encounter, then. He could do that.
The notion of bringing her back to his condo was so appealing that any lingering questions he had quickly departed—such as why Maggie was asking him for help with anything at all. She’d never done it before, and he couldn’t fathom any situation in which she might. Sure, he’d asked her for help once, but that was different, and it had been a long time ago.
“Place is a mess.”
“Like I care,” she said with a smile.
He nodded. “Well all right, then. Let’s get going.”
Chapter Two
Twelve years past
The lobby was intimidating all by itself. It had a small sitting area with a coffee table, a number of six-month-old magazines, and a couple of plastic plants, all of which seemed to have come directly from the Big Book of Dental Office Decor and could have been a waiting room just about anywhere. But beyond that there was the velvet rope partitioning the front of the room, the double-pane bulletproof glass, and the impressive legend on the wall beyond the glass, which read BOSTON FBI HEADQUARTERS. Below the headline were three portraits: the local FBI director, the national FBI director, and the President. These were positioned in such a way that one who didn’t know who was who might come to the conclusion that the President was the lowest ranking person on display. Sitting at a desk inside the glass-encased area was a fifty-year-old woman wearing pince-nez glasses who was inordinately preoccupied with whatever was displayed on her computer. Either that, or she was ignoring him with practiced skill.
The woman—identified by nameplate as Mrs. Angela Hotchkiss—had in her possession all of Corrigan’s loose change, his key chain, pocketknife, and sunglasses. This was thanks to the metal detector one had to pass through just to get to Mrs. Hotchkiss in the first place and the alarming signs posted in several places warning visitors just exactly what would happen if one were foolish enough to contemplate bringing a firearm into the office area. Corrigan imagined Mrs. Hotchkiss had a fully automatic submachine gun taped to the underside of the desk, or failing that, a SWAT team.
She also had his driver’s license. It was sitting on the counter right next to her as she tapped away at her computer, possibly reviewing his arrest record—there was none—and his driving history, which was not good. Or, she was just playing Minesweeper.
Corrigan had plenty of time to ponder because he’d been waiting nearly three hours for someone to find room in their busy day for him. Since he didn’t have any appointments until later in the afternoon, this was not the worst fate imaginable, but still, he expected them to be more efficient.
Finally, the door to the right of Mrs. Hotchkiss’s booth—the only door in the lobby other than the one Corrigan had come in through—opened, and out came a nondescript agent who introduced himself as Hicks. Hicks had a pile of folders under one arm and the butt of a gun conspicuously poking out from under his jacket. He sized up his guest.
“Corrigan Bain, is it?” he asked. Corrigan had gone through the trouble to make himself presentable—he had on a tie, even—and thought he’d done a pretty good job of looking like a normal, non-threatening local citizen, which was important when visiting with the FBI. Certainly his standard biker-chic style wouldn’t fly.
“That’s me,” he said, standing and extending his hand, which agent Hicks neglected to take.
“Interesting name,” he said. Having apparently decided Corrigan was not a serious threat, he nodded toward the door behind him. “Come on back.”
He led Corrigan through a big open space that could have been an office just about anywhere. They ended up at a small cubicle with a large PC and a huge pile of folders covering every inch of surface space, prompting one to wonder, as Corrigan did at that moment, what precisely the computer was there for if not to retain data. Paperweight, perhaps.
Hicks sat at the desk and bade his guest to sit on a folding chair set up for the occasion.
“It’s the last names of my parents by blood,” Corrigan said.
“What?”
“My name. My mother’s last name is Bain. She met a soldier named Corrigan, and here I am.”
“Oh,” Hicks said, absently placing the files under his arm atop another set of files on the desk. “Why not his first name?”
“She didn’t know his first name. Just the name that was on his uniform: Corrigan.”
“Right.” Hicks looked as if it was a bad idea to have ever brought it up. Corrigan was never all that embarrassed by his mother’s youthful indiscretions—especially not the one that ended up with his being born, which he was somewhat happy about—but he usually neglected to consider that his listener might be embarrassed by the tale. He had first heard the story when he was four and had thus never equated it with anything like shame.
“So,” Hicks continued, “what brought you to see us today?”
“I came in because something pretty bad’s gonna happen,” Corrigan said, getting right to the point, “And I think I’m going to need some help.”
Hicks’s reaction to this news could only have been measured by the most precise of instruments. “Something bad,” he said neutrally. “Like what?”
“I don’t know yet. I usually don’t have a clear idea until right before it happens. But I can tell you it’ll be at 2:47 tomorrow afternoon at twenty-nine State Street.”
Hicks blinked—for him the equivalent of a loud shriek. “That’s awfully precise information. Isn’t that a bank?”
“That’s why I’m here. I mean, I’m gonna be there either way, but I figured if maybe you and few other guys were down there, we could stop whatever it is. You know, before lots of people end up dead.”
Hicks broke eye contact and rubbed his face, a gesture of exasperation Corrigan was about to become very familiar with. “Mr. Bain, do I have this right? Are you threatening to do something in the bank tomorrow afternoon?”
“No!” He laughed. “No, no, I’m going to be there to try and stop it from happening.”
“But you don’t know what it is.”
“Not yet.”
“And you don’t know who’s going to do it.”
“No idea. Might not be anybody. Could be it’s just a natural disaster or a gas main or something. You know, I went to this house one time to save this family, and it took me nearly an hour to figure out the problem was carbon monoxide. New heating system, see—”
“I wonder,” Hicks said loudly. “I wonder if you could go back to the beginning.”
“Sorry. I explained some of it to the woman at reception and figured she’d spoken to you.”
“She said you were a repairman.”
Corrigan smiled. “I told her I was a fixer. I may be the only one, so that’s probably what’s confusing.”
“So you fix things,” Hicks said. “Does this have to do with a numbers racket? Something mob-related?”
All at once the depth and breadth of Corrigan’s naiveté in his handling of this interview struck him like so many anvils. I sound crazy.
He had told people what he did before, but only after he’d already saved them, and they were considerably more likely to believe he could see the future insofar as he’d just proven it to them. Now, here he was talking about it as if everybody knew what a fixer was.
Corrigan Bain is going insane.
“No, that’s not it. I . . . keep people out of trouble. Say somebody is about to have an accident or something, right? What I do is keep them from having that accident.”
“And how do you know when someone’s about to have an ‘accident’?” He made little quotation marks with his fingers to clarify that he felt perhaps they were speaking metaphorically. Corrigan didn’t need to see into the future to recognize that this conversation was not going to be visiting a happy place.
“I just know,” he said.
“How?”
“I just do. Usually I get a heads up the day before. Sometimes if it’s something really big I might get an extra day or two. That’s what this is; something big.”
“Somebody calls you?” Hicks suggested.
“No, it’s not like that.”
“You’re a psychic.”
“No, goddammit, I’m not a psychic. I told you. I’m a fixer.”
Hicks was rubbing his face so hard Corrigan thought there was a chance he’d draw blood. “O-kay,” he said. “Why don’t . . . why don’t you give me everything you know about what’s going to happen tomorrow?”
“Not much more than I already told you. Something bad and I think a lot of people are going to die as a result.”
“Like a bank robbery?”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Corrigan said, glad they were finally moving ahead with this. “Except it’s probably something more than that.”
“Why?”
“This’ll sound weird . . .”
“No kidding.”
“Thing is, I’m not so good with out-and-out homicide. Someone robs a bank and starts shooting up the place, it’s usually as big a surprise to me as to anybody else. I’m really more of an expert on accidental death and dismemberment. It could be a bank robbery, sure, but it could be something else.”
“Something with a high body count.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Right.” Hicks fell silent for a moment, as if he was deciding on something. Then he asked, “Can you excuse me for a minute?”
“Sure thing.”
Corrigan imagined Hicks was leaving to grab a superior, but that was just wishful thinking as the agent returned a few minutes later with three other coworkers and a deck of cards.
“All right, let’s try something,” he said. He plopped the deck down on top of a file on his desk.
“What is this?” Corrigan asked.
“Just bear with me,” Hicks said. He gestured to the others. “Don’t mind them; they’re just curious.” He drew a card. “Can you tell me what card I’m holding?”
Corrigan sighed heavily. It was going to be like that, then. “No, I can’t, wise ass.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not going to show it to me after I guess, that’s why. Look, do we really have time for this?”
Hicks frowned. “I have to show it to you for you to guess?” Behind him, Corrigan could practically hear the smirks on the faces of the other agents.
“After. After I’ve . . .”
“I’m just trying to establish your bona fides here. You can’t expect me to take you seriously without—”
“All right, you want to play this for real?”
“There’s no need to get hostile, Mr. Bain.”
“There’s a lot of reasons to be hostile right now. But if you want to do this, fine, we’ll do this. I’ll guess your card, and then you count to three and show it to me. Got it?”
Hicks looked around at the others, wondering if maybe he was going a little crazy. “Strange rules,” he said.
“That’s the only way it’s gonna work.”
Hicks appeared to be deeply disappointed that Corrigan wasn’t going to end up being a more entertaining whacko. Uncertain as to how to proceed from there, he elected to hold up a card.
“Three of spades,” Corrigan said. Hicks turned it over and showed it, then tried another one. “Ten of diamonds.”
“That’s impressive,” Hick admitted, turning the card over.
“It’s a trick,” said someone behind Corrigan.
“Yeah, a reflection or something,” said someone else.
“Yeah, yeah,” Hicks agreed. “Must be some kind of trick.”
The third agent—a cute redhead—piped up. “You’re the one who pulled out the cards, Randy.”
“Look,” Corrigan said to Hicks, “I think I’ve been very patient with you. This isn’t a parlor trick, this isn’t a game, and I’m not kidding. I gave you the time and the place. I’m going to be there to try and save who I can, but I could really use the help, so maybe once you’ve stopped playing with cards you can do something good with your time. Now do I need one of you to escort me out or can I do it on my own?”
There was a long and uncomfortable silence until the redhead spoke up. “I’ll walk you out, Mr. Bain.”
“Thank you,” he said. He got to his feet and shoved his way out of the cubicle, hard on the heels of the most attractive fed he’d ever expect to see. And he was almost angry enough not to appreciate that fact.
“It’s this way,” she said, pointing him in a direction other than the lobby, which he found odd. She stopped them in a small vestibule.
“So . . . was it a trick?” she asked.
“Do I look like the kind of guy who pops into the FBI to play magic tricks?”
“No. No, you don’t. A little angry, maybe.”
“I get that way. Don’t much like it when people assume I’m nuts. It’s kind of a sore spot.” This was an understatement.
“Yeah . . .” she said, trailing off. She was looking him over, sizing him up, trying to make a decision. “Twenty-nine State Street. 2:47. Right?”
“That’s right,” he said, surprised. Either she was in the next cubicle over from Hicks or sound traveled well in that office.
“I can’t offer you full backup,” she said, smiling. “But I’ll be there.”
Corrigan smiled back and enjoyed, for a moment, the whole smiling-at-each-other thing. “What’s your name?”
“Maggie Trent,” she said, extending her hand. “At your service.”
“I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, Agent Maggie Trent,” he answered, shaking her hand. “Don’t be late. Because whatever’s going down, it won’t wait for either of us.”
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