Someone to Watch Over Me

by Ace Atkins

  I moved slow, gun in hand, down the steps. I waited for the man from Miami to pop up again. He didn’t.

  Hawk met me down on the track. The man was on his back, bleeding profusely from his shoulder, squirming and in a lot of pain.

  “Shame,” Hawk said. “Damn nice suit.”

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Put one in the head,” Hawk said. “Dumpster out back.”

  “Oh, God,” the man said. “Please.”

  “You get your rocks off picking on two little girls?” Hawk said. “And working for a child molester?”

  The man gritted his teeth, writhing in pain, the warm blood streaking across the rubberized track.

  “I’ll call Quirk.”

  “When the shit goes down,” Hawk said. “Ain’t nobody wants to be the last black man in Southie.”

  I pitched Hawk my keys and dialed Quirk’s number as I watched him leave. I told Quirk to send an ambulance, too.

  48

  “That was fun,” Mattie said.

  “Always a pleasure sitting around a crime scene in the hot sun.”

  I had popped two cold beers from the mini-fridge in my office. We drank them in the air-conditioning early that evening and discussed how little we’d learned from the man I’d shot.

  “You’d think he’d be more helpful,” Mattie said. “Bleeding on the ground like that.”

  “I know,” I said. “The nerve.”

  “What do we do next?”

  “Sit around and wait for the guy to confess,” I said. “Quirk will call to tell us Steiner and Poppy Palmer have been arrested and all will be right in the world.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Agreed,” I said.

  “Guys like that never talk,” she said. “They lawyer up. I don’t care how they dress or where they’re from. They’re the same as Jack Flynn and Gerry Broz. A bunch of bozos with guns.”

  “I like to consider myself a well-armed Emmett Kelly.”

  “And who is Emmett Kelly?”

  “The kind of guy who’d smash a peanut with a sledgehammer.”

  “And in this scenario, Steiner is the peanut?”

  “Listening to Susan theorize Steiner’s anatomical situation, most definitely.”

  Mattie drank a little beer. And I realized this was the first time we’d shared a beer together. It reminded me of when I’d first shared a beer with Paul Giacomin. That seemed a long time ago, and Susan and I both missed him. Since he’d gotten married and moved to San Francisco, we didn’t talk as much as we once did.

  I tried to make the beer go slowly. Somehow, no matter the substance, I drank all liquids at the same rate of speed. Be it brown liquor, cold beer, or ice-cold lemonade. It was my cross to bear.

  “Chloe is scared shitless.”

  “As she should be.”

  “And her mother is a bitch,” she said. “Calling her own daughter a whore. Who does that?”

  “How does she know her mom took a payoff?”

  “She saw those guys at her house and heard them talking,” Mattie said. “Wasn’t even a lot. It was like two thousand bucks. Rita said they were talking millions in a lawsuit.”

  “A bird in the hand.”

  “Now we’re down to Amelia Lynch, Maria Tran, Haley Lagrasso, and the Bennett sisters.”

  “And Carly Ly if we can find her,” I said. “Maybe Debbie Delgado?”

  “Not a chance,” Mattie said. “She’s Poppy’s pimp.”

  “Nice alliteration.”

  I drank some beer, trying to be conscious to conserve. I drank a little more, the patterns of light from the bay window diminishing across the office floor. A slash of light across my Vermeer print, the girl at the piano taking the lesson.

  “I’m sorry I ran out on Susan,” Mattie said. “I didn’t mean any disrespect.”

  “None taken,” I said. “But I’m glad you called me.”

  Mattie held her beer, touching the cold glass to her cheek. She seemed lost in thought, her Sox cap on the chair beside her, long red hair pulled back into a ponytail. Her pale freckled face fresh and eager but with much older and wiser green eyes.

  “What does it feel like?” she said.

  I waited. I drank some more beer and contemplated another. We had skipped lunch and by now nearly skipped dinner. It felt as if I’d been sitting around the stadium at Moakley Park for an eternity, taking questions from patrol officers and medics. At one point, some reporters arrived and set up their trucks and cameras. But they left soon after, disappointed there wasn’t a body under a sheet.

  “To shoot someone.”

  “If I were a carpenter, it would feel like swinging a hammer,” I said. “I don’t take pleasure in it. But I don’t brood on it, either.”

  “Because they would have killed you.”

  “And possibly you and Chloe.”

  “That’s desperate,” Mattie said. “Steiner is crapping his pants.”

  “It certainly appears that way,” I said. “He has much to lose. As do his many friends.”

  I finished the beer and retrieved another. Mattie hadn’t had but two sips of her first. She’d spoken to me in the past about her mother and her mother’s mother and how alcohol had consumed them. Mattie said she loved her mother but never wanted to be like her.

  The sunlight was gone. Berkeley Street was alive to unlucky folks just leaving their offices and lucky people headed out to dinner. I checked my watch, ready for us to drive back to Susan’s.

  The phone rang. Not my cell but the old-fashioned landline that I just couldn’t quit.

  “Where the hell have you been?” Rita said.

  “At the track.”

  “I’ve been calling you for the last two hours.”

  I checked my cell. The ringer was off, and Rita spoke the truth.

  “Maria Tran,” she said. “Remember her?”

  “Carly Ly’s friend.”

  “She showed up at my office,” she said. “I was in the middle of a major deposition. I guess she got bored and left. But she left me a note.”

  “And?”

  “She’s heard from Carly Ly,” Rita said.

  49

  Maria Tran worked at her parents’ nail salon in Chinatown but agreed to meet us at the Starbucks on Charles Street, just off the Common. Mattie and I walked from my office, watchful of anyone following us, through the Public Garden and over Beacon.

  Maria stood up as we entered and waved to us from a small back table. She looked even younger than when I’d first met her at Rita’s office. She wore no makeup, her straight black hair down across her shoulders, and had on a red summer dress overlaid with a white cardigan. She looked like she should be skipping through the forest with a picnic basket.

  We joined her at the table. She told us she didn’t have much time.

  “Carly emailed me,” she said. “She’s on that island, and they won’t let her leave.”

  “Holy Christ,” Mattie said. “Those assholes.”

  “Peter and Poppy are flying back there tomorrow,” Maria said. “She was told she had to stay and work at another party. She begged for them to let her leave, but they won’t.”

  “Did she call her father?” I said.

  “No,” Maria said. “Her phone doesn’t work there. I think she reached out to her sister, too. I’m scared for her. Do you think they’ll hurt her?”

  Mattie shook her head and said no, lying through her teeth. I did the same.

  “Can you tell the police?” Maria said.

  “Sure,” I said. “But they can’t do much. Boston police are pretty much limited to Boston.”

  “What about your friend in Miami?” Mattie said.

  “Pretty much limited to the U.S.,” I said. “The exact reason Steiner parties offshore.”


  “They can’t do that,” Maria said. “They can’t keep her locked up. Forcing her to work. I told her I would come for her. I’ve already checked in to flights. I can find her. I can help her get free.”

  “And then you’ll get stuck like Carly,” Mattie said. “Or worse.”

  Despite the conversation, it was still and pleasant inside the Beacon Hill Starbucks. They played Louis and Ella doing “I’ll Never Be Free.” I tapped my fingers on the small table, the flat top wobbly. I thought about the many limitations of American law enforcement and the many possibilities of being a hot dog freelancer.

  “But I can,” I said.

  Mattie shook her head. “This is what they want.”

  “I know.”

  “The Gray Man will be there, and he’ll try and kill you.”

  “Try being the operative word.”

  “It’s almost like you want to face him,” she said. “Like some kind of duel?”

  I thought about it. I nodded.

  “I want to go with you,” she said. “I can help.”

  “Not with this.”

  Mattie gritted her teeth and crossed her arms across her chest. “God.”

  “What exactly did Carly say?” I said.

  Maria pulled out her phone, tapped at the screen, and showed me the message. I read through it and scrolled through the thread. The thought did occur to me that she had been coerced like Chloe. You can take Spenser out of Boston, but not Boston out of Spenser.

  I tapped along with the song, like I was playing the piano. Ella hitting that last wonderful plaintive note. “Hmm,” I said.

  “They’re calling you out,” Mattie said. “Goddamn, don’t you see it?”

  “Toss me in the briar patch.”

  “Better not talk that way around Hawk.”

  “Why not?” I said. “He’s going with me.”

  “Thank you,” Maria said. “Thank you.”

  “Hawk knows people there,” I said.

  “Hawk knows people everywhere,” Mattie said.

  50

  I was packed, with tickets for me and Hawk on a morning flight to Miami and from Miami to Exuma International Airport in the Bahamas. I’d made arrangements with Quirk to have Cambridge PD watch Susan’s house while we were away. Earlier that night, I’d cooked filets and asparagus wrapped in bacon for Susan and Mattie. After Mattie had gone off to sleep with Pearl, Susan and I made love quietly but with no less intensity.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Back at you, cowboy,” Susan said.

  “I think you have that backward,” I said.

  “You know,” she said, “I think you’re right.”

  We were naked and under the sheets, the window cracked and letting in cool night air off Linnaean Street. It was past midnight, and I had to be up at five to meet Hawk at Logan.

  “What does Hawk think?” Susan said.

  “He believes he’s the perfect human specimen,” I said.

  “About this trip.”

  “Did you know he’s a frequent visitor to one of the outer islands?”

  “He never mentioned that before.”

  “There are many things Hawk hasn’t mentioned.”

  Susan was quiet. She turned to me and rested her head on her forearm. Her dark hair was wild and loose, splayed against her bare back. I reached to lift up the sheet for a better view, and she swatted my hand away.

  “Does he think it’s a setup?” she said.

  “All we know is that we don’t know.”

  “But it’s worth a try.”

  “I believe that Carly Ly is there,” I said. “I believe Peter Steiner and Poppy Palmer are there. And I believe there may be other girls he’s hoarding on his little island.”

  “Can you imagine?” she said. “Owning an island?”

  “I once bought a square foot of land in Ireland,” I said. “I was told it would make me a lord.”

  Susan was quiet again, and I reached over to brush the hair from her eyes. The overhead fan was on, and the sweat began to cool from our bodies.

  “I was thinking about that hill in Santa Barbara,” she said. “Where you and Hawk would go every day. You had to drag your leg up. I wasn’t sure if you’d ever make it to the top.”

  “But I did.”

  “You did.”

  “Hawk wouldn’t let you do this if he thought you were outmatched.”

  “Nope.”

  “He has friends there.”

  “It is home away from home.”

  “And where is his home in Boston?”

  “I have absolutely no idea,” I said.

  “You had to keep squeezing that rubber ball in your hand,” she said. “You had to weave back your nerve endings that were separated by the bullets.”

  “I was there,” I said. “I remember.”

  “Six months,” she said. “We nearly lost everything. My practice. You.”

  “I’ll bring you back a straw hat,” I said.

  “And what about the baby?”

  “Is she the baby now?” I said. “Again?”

  Susan didn’t answer. She tugged the sheet up to her chin, changing from exhibitionist to prude in a matter of minutes.

  “If something happens,” she said, “I will take care of her. I will love her. But be very angry at you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Because if you believe she’s Pearl, then she’s Pearl.”

  “I came to the same decision just the other day,” I said. “It’s what you shrinky types call an epiphany.”

  “It’s called love, dumb-dumb,” she said. “If you love her, I will, too.”

  “Even if it hurts to remind you of our other baby?”

  “Even then,” Susan said.

  I slowly peeled the cotton sheet from her nude body and surveyed the landscape. It was quite impressive. Susan didn’t try and stop me. She turned onto her side and held her head up with her hand. I traced over her thigh and hip and curved my fingers over her breast.

  “You have to be up early,” she said. “I don’t want to wear you out.”

  “Dear love, for nothing less than thee.”

  “Does that mean you’re not tired?”

  “My strength is the strength of ten.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Saddle up, Lord Spenser.”

  “Yee-haw.”

  51

  Hawk had taken the rental car to do whatever Hawk does. And I’d been left on Cat Island in a small bungalow facing a private beach. The house was small, stucco, with jalousie windows and exposed wooden beams. As promised, Hawk’s friend had left a key under a certain rock, and we made ourselves at home. I was delighted to learn the refrigerator was stocked with not only bread, eggs, and milk, but a six-pack of Kalik beer. I helped myself.

  We’d been traveling for most of the day and I didn’t unpack, as I wasn’t sure what the night or the next day would hold. Instead, I changed into a pair of swim trunks and walked the short distance from the back porch to the beach. I stood at the water’s edge, waves lapping on my feet, taking in the sunset. It might have been relaxing if we didn’t have an ugly job to perform.

  The island was narrow and unspoiled, without all-inclusive resorts and tacky mansions. No cruise ships or yachts, just small crafts, fishing boats, and cottages. A one-lane road encircled the entire island. There was a lot of pine and sea grape, and coconut trees swayed in the wind. Hawk told me he’d been on the island many times as a guest and had made certain friends. We hoped those friends might arrange transportation to Steiner’s private island across the channel and perhaps loan us some guns.

  We could show up on Steiner’s island with knives in our teeth, flying the Jolly Roger. But guns would get the message across much better.

  I walked north along the beach, seein
g similarly built houses and colorful cottages that looked as if they’d been there for years. On the flight in, the pilot told us the highest point in all of the Bahamas was on Cat Island and on top you’d find the relics of an old monastery.

  The beach was still and quiet. Farther north I watched the shadows of paddleboarders off the coast, a hard gold light shining off the water. There was the faintest ripple of wind across the surface.

  The three plane rides hadn’t been kind to me. I could feel every old break, bruise, and irregularity in my body. It had been eight years since I’d first met Mattie. Now she was a grown, successful person. And I was still doing what I do, none the wiser, not finding a better line of work. Maybe someday I’d retire to a place like this.

  The idea that Hawk found solace on this island and had returned many times wasn’t lost on me. Few get out of our livelihood by being politely asked. One day all the push-ups, wind sprints, and sparring wouldn’t save us. At this point in my life, I’d been doing this for many more years than I had not.

  I stretched my arms over my head and could feel where the Gray Man had shot me. I recalled some of that day. The pieces of ice floating in the river, the skies spitting snow, the way he coolly raised the gun and shot me three times. Lately I’d been revisiting that time way too often. Hawk pushing me up that hill, me dragging my leg, by mind willing but my body failing me.

  Somewhere, roughly forty miles away, was Steiner’s island, Bonnet’s Cut.

  We would need to plan, we would need to reconnoiter, and we would need to execute our plan faster than Speedy Gonzales after two espressos.

  “Something on your mind?” Hawk said.

  I hadn’t heard him. And I didn’t turn around.

  “Reconnoitering,” I said.

  “Anything else?”

  “That I like Bahamian beer,” I said.

  “Welcome to my home away from home.”

  “You told me,” I said. “Would’ve been easier back in Boston.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Hawk said. “Found us a boat. Maybe some guns.”

  “That fast?”

  “Place belongs to an old friend from my days in the Legion.”