But in Boston I would have to.
“Jonah?” Colin said. “Jenn’s on line 2.”
I guessed that meant she wasn’t saying goodbye in person. I picked up the closest extension. “Good morning.”
“And to you. Listen, I’m going to have to go straight to the deposition from home. I still have a few things to review and it’s closer to my house than the office.”
“I know. So wish me luck in Boston.”
“I really do. Take care of yourself, all right? No banging your head against anything.”
“No way.”
“Once I’m done with the deposition, I’ll be free to help you with any research you need. We’ll touch base every day.”
“Good enough.”
It wasn’t really. I wished she were coming with me. Jenn is smart, easy to be with, generally optimistic. Same height as me, a six-foot blonde beauty, fresh-faced and athletic. People find her sunny, open and easy to talk to. It’s one of her greatest assets as an investigator. She fixes her blue eyes on people and nods as they speak, murmurs supportively, and their stories spill like rose petals. She’s also a lot tougher than she looks, with a strength true to her farm roots and a growing knowledge of Krav Maga, a very fast, practical self-defence system.
As senior partner, I could have told her to come; as a friend, I could have asked, but I had done neither. She had the deposition and other follow-up work to do. We had agreed that if the Fine case became more complex and needed both of us to work it, she’d fly down in a couple of days.
By the time I got to the airport, I felt my mood sinking. The temperature had gone up, but the sky had clouded over, like a wet grey army blanket being wrung out on the city, and the lowering barometric pressure was teasing out another headache.
What were my real prospects of finding David? In my town, I’d know where to start looking for a missing person. Their friends, their place of employment, their extended family would all be available. Their new girlfriends, their exes. Their pasts. I had one or two relationships in the police service that might help. I knew people who knew people. What did I know about Boston? It was supposed to be the cradle of U.S. civilization, the Athens of America, the shining city on a hill, as its founders called it. One of the world’s great academic centres, which meant if you were assailed there, it might be by someone who knew what assail means. But I knew no one there. I had been there precisely once, many years before, when the Blue Jays were still contenders-that tells you how long ago it was-and a bunch of us went down to watch them play the Sox at Fenway. They lost three straight to fall out of the race and we drowned our sorrows at a place in the shadow of the CITGO sign.
There were too many bad things David’s disappearance could mean. Everyone has to drop out sometimes. He might have fallen in love and been swept away to some romantic B amp;B overlooking the ocean on Cape Cod. Or cracked under the strain of being a post-doctoral fellow in the competitive medical hub of America. His genius might have morphed into madness. It happens. He could have looked at someone the wrong way, or walked down the wrong street at the wrong time. That happens too. But very few people simply vanish for two weeks without a word to their loved ones, unless they turn up in a refrigerated drawer.
Hence the mood as I entered the Porter Airlines terminal. They give you good coffee and plenty of space to spread out, use a computer, read complimentary newspapers and otherwise chill. My edge softened a bit as I sipped an espresso and picked up the arts section of the Globe and Mail. It had a fiendishly hard cryptic crossword I could try on the flight.
I heard the rumble of suitcase wheels on the floor, and a woman asked, “Is zis seat taken?” A husky voice with a faint accent, something middle European.
There were so many empty seats around that she didn’t really need to pick the one next to me, but she had, so I said, “No,” and shifted my knapsack to the floor.
She parked her suitcase next to her, remained standing and said, “Sank you, sir.”
I looked up at her. It was Jenn, holding a boarding pass and sporting one of her evil grins. Wearing jeans and a black sweater over a white T-shirt that showed off a figure burlap sacks couldn’t fail to flatter.
She said, “You can close your jaw now.”
“What are you doing here? The deposition. The phone call.”
“The deposition was postponed till next month.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“And you played me?”
“Yes. You who considers himself the office player.”
“And Colin went along.”
“Don’t blame him.”
“He can’t lie to me. I’m his boss.”
“Shows you who he’s more afraid of. Which you can delve into further on your own time. Now are you going to stand up and hug me or what?”
I jumped out of my chair and we had a long, warm hug. My friend, my partner, my backup was with me. We stood there melded to each other and I whispered, “You don’t know how glad I am to see you.”
She rubbed my head and said, “I didn’t want you going alone. Get your head knocked around.”
“Did my mother put you up to this? She doesn’t want me going to the store by myself.”
“Can I not care about you on my own?”
“Knock yourself out.”
They called our flight and we got our knapsacks on, lined our suitcases up behind us and settled into stride together, our team of two.
Jenn knew Boston better than I did. When she was in her early twenties, a woman she was dating was accepted at the Berklee College of Music and she spent a semester in Boston studying drama and improv, which was then her thing. We spent most of the flight browsing city maps on Jenn’s laptop, noting where our hotel was in relation to David’s home and workplace. We read background material on the hospital where David worked, its transplant program and its department head, Dr. E. Charles Stayner. We looked at research papers David had co-authored. I understood a few words, like and or but. The rest was incomprehensible.
When we landed at Logan, we argued briefly over whether to pay an extra ten bucks a day for a GPS. Jenn didn’t think we needed one. I did. Or at least I would if we split up, which we often did during cases to cover more ground, and I had to drive myself around. Plus the guy at the car-rental counter sold me when he switched the demo’s flat American accent to that of a posh British gal. I wanted to use it right away but Jenn said, “I’m telling you I know the way to the hotel from here.”
“Not in that accent.”
“You can use it when I’m not in the car. For now, get out the map that’s in the rental package. If I need it, I’ll let you know.”
I stored the GPS in a backpack, as advised by our rental guy, to minimize the likelihood of getting our window smashed. A grand ambassador for his city, he was. Then Jenn navigated her way out of the airport complex and onto the 1A without help. We took the Sumner Tunnel under Boston Harbor and came out near what Jenn told me was the Government Center. It was empty of people other than those hurrying through it. Nowhere to sit. No trees. Just trash riding the March wind. It could have been built by Kim Jong-Il.
“You told me the architecture here was beautiful.”
“It is. Just not this.”
“It’s like they wanted to keep people away.”
“It’s the Government Center, so they probably did. Don’t worry, there’s plenty to see. And once we get to Commonwealth Avenue, you’ll think we’re in Paris.”
She was right, of course. Commonwealth was a magnificent boulevard, as grand as any in any great city. A couple of hundred feet across at least. Both sides of the streets were lined with three-storey townhouses made of reddish stone, most of them restored to noble Belle Epoque grandeur. “Beautiful,” I said.
“The GPS wouldn’t have taken you this way. It would have taken you on Storrow Drive, where you’d still be stuck in traffic with six idiots behind you blowing their horns.”
I lowered my
window and breathed in the air. It was a brinier smell than home. Toronto is on a freshwater lake: whatever smell its waterfront has comes from the boats and their loads, from garbage and dead fish bobbing on the surface. This was ocean air. If the wind died down, it would be a fine enough March afternoon.
“Did you ever go missing?” I asked Jenn.
“You mean run away?”
“Yes.”
“I took off a few times in my teens. Growing up gay in farm country, there weren’t too many people like me. Or to put it another way, there were too many people with an opinion about me. So I came to Toronto a few times to see what gays who were out looked like. One time a friend and I went to New York, drove there on the spur of the moment. But I never exactly went missing. I usually left a note or a voice mail saying when I’d be back. What about you?”
I had spent most of my teens and twenties running from something. From myself. Working construction in western resort towns, working on a kibbutz in the north of Israel, a life-changing stint in the army there, in an IDF infantry troop. “I was never really missing,” I told her. “But I was always gone.”
CHAPTER 4
Jenn had booked two rooms on the sixth floor of the Sam Adams House, a boutique hotel in the 500 block of Commonwealth. “My other choice was the Liberty,” she said. “It was once the county jail, which I thought would appeal to you, but this is a better location. It’s a straight shot out to Brookline and we can walk from here to the hospital.”
We set up my room as the office because I wouldn’t mind the mess and she would. We got our laptops plugged in, arranged for wi-fi in both rooms, checked in with Colin and found out that David Fine’s roommate, Sheldon, could meet us at twenty past noon for precisely twenty minutes if we emailed a confirmation to his BlackBerry by eleven.
Which we did.
That gave us nearly an hour to lavish on ourselves, half of which we spent on a late breakfast in the hotel cafe, and half on trying to make an appointment with David’s mentor at the hospital, Dr. Stayner.
The receptionist said she could give me an appointment in six to eight months.
“I was thinking more today.”
“Today!” The way she sputtered it over the phone, I hoped she hadn’t had a mouthful of coffee at the time.
“Can you tell him I’m a detective investigating the disappearance of David Fine?”
“The same one that was here before? From Brookline, was it?”
“No. I’m here from Toronto on behalf of his family.”
“Oh. Poor David. Everyone has been quite upset about it. Especially Dr. Stayner.”
“Really?”
“Oh, everyone knows David is the best assistant he’s ever had.”
“Will you ask him please? Whatever time works for him. I’ll come in my pyjamas if I have to.”
“You might.”
By twelve we were turning off Commonwealth onto Beacon. Down its middle was a boulevard where grass grew over what looked like disused rails. They turned out to be very much in use as a trolley came rumbling up the grassy strip. The T, Jenn called it. The Green Line.
When we passed Harvard Street, Jenn said, “One thing you need to know about Boston-which the GPS would not have told you-is there are something like six or seven different Harvard streets, avenues and squares in the city. There are Harvards in Cambridge, Boston, Brookline, even Dorchester. And it’s the same thing with a lot of other names, so it’s easy to get lost. If you ask the GPS to find an address, be precise.”
“My gal won’t let me down.”
She pointed out my window and said, “Up that way is the Jewish part of Brookline. It’s like Eglinton West. Nice shops, everything kosher.”
“That’s where he would have shopped,” I said. “Let’s canvass there on our way back. Put up some of our flyers.”
“Right. Okay, Summit Avenue should be one of the next two or three.”
Summit, when she turned onto it two blocks later, was a steep hill lined on both sides by solid middle-class houses. Mostly two-storey, plus a few of what Jenn told me were classic Boston triple-deckers, houses with turrets or bay windows or both.
David’s house was near the crest of the hill on the right, a two-storey white frame house with a black door and black shutters flanking the windows. We found a parking spot right where the hill levelled off. There was a playground on the left side of the road; on the right, a small park where people sat on a stone bench taking in a view of the city.
We walked back and rang the bell at the house David never came home to that night.
Sheldon Paull was a beanpole, about six-three and 160 pounds, with a head of curly brown hair fit for nesting gulls. He wore a blue shirt with a thin pink stripe, tan pants and brown loafers-and didn’t seem thrilled to see us. He opened the door, turned without comment and led us up a flight of stairs marked by its own mezuzah.
“Thanks for taking this time,” I said.
“I told your assistant I have to be on my way no later than twenty to one. If I’m late for rounds, Dr. Figueroa will give me his death stare the rest of the day. As it is, I’m going to have to eat my lunch on the T.” He had a nasal voice that betrayed New York roots and bony hands that waved as he spoke, as though he were tapping invisible keys.
The upstairs door opened onto a living room/dining room combo, not unlike my own apartment. There was a small galley kitchen piled high with unwashed dishes and takeout containers. “Sorry about the mess,” he said. “With everything going on, who has time to clean?”
“You a surgeon too?” Jenn asked.
“I’m an anesthesiology resident. Final year.”
I asked how long they’d been roommates.
“Just since August. Before that he was with another guy closer to the medical school, but the roommate wanted to buy the place and David couldn’t.”
“And who lives downstairs?”
“A family named Weinstein. Neil and Heather and their daughter, Hannah. I don’t think they know David at all, and they were in Orlando when he went missing.”
“Are you close?”
“With David? I certainly like him. In some way, he’s the ideal roommate. He’s cleaner than me, quieter than me, probably more considerate than me and watches zero TV, which leaves it open to me. He doesn’t really care what I do, as long as I leave his food and dishes alone. He never has people over, never does any damage, never gets drunk or stupid or does much of anything. My way of dealing with work is usually to come home and veg in front of a ball game. His is to come home and do more work. He’s still at his desk when I crash most nights.”
“He ever talk about problems he’s having?” Jenn asked.
“Like what?”
“Work, girls, money.”
“I just told you, work isn’t a problem for him,” Sheldon said. “He loves what he does and he is good at it. Better than good. Everyone who gets through Harvard Medical is smart, but David is smart.”
“What about money problems?” I asked.
“We both have those, for sure. Whether you’re a resident or a fellow, the salary isn’t just low, it’s an insult. A maintenance man at the hospital makes more than us. Way more. Plus they get paid for overtime, which we don’t.”
“How low is the salary?”
“High thirties, low forties. And Boston, as you may know, is sickeningly expensive. So David has been feeling the pressure. More than me because I’m American.”
“What difference does that make?”
“I can moonlight in clinics or cover other people’s shifts.”
“And David can’t?”
“Not on a visa. The only work he can do legally is at the hospital, nothing else. So I know he worries a lot. One of the few things he does talk about is how badly he wants to pay his parents back. But that wouldn’t drive him to disappear. Because with his talent and his area of expertise, there’s going to be no shortage of money once he’s in practice.”
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