Darkness, Take My Hand

by Dennis Lehane

  “Thanks for the tip.”

  I hung up, and an explosion of country music rocked the apartment through my open kitchen screen. Of course, if you’re hearing Waylon, it must be nine.

  I looked at my watch. Nine on the dot.

  I stepped out on my back porch. Lyle was working on the house closest to mine, and he turned the radio down when he saw me.

  “Hey, Patrick, how y’all doing, son?”

  “Lyle,” I said, “I got my girlfriend’s daughter sleeping over. Could we maybe keep it down a bit?”

  “Sure thing, son. Sure thing.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “We’ll be cutting out pretty soon, so you can turn it back up when we go.”

  He shrugged. “Only doing a third of a day here myself. Got me a bad tooth kept me up half the night.”

  “Dentist?” I said and winced.

  “Yeah,” he said morosely. “Hate paying those bastards, but I tried pulling the tooth myself last night with some pliers and the sumbitch only come out like so far and then it wouldn’t budge. Plus, them pliers got all slippery cause of all the blood and, well—”

  “Good luck at the dentist, Lyle.”

  “Thanks,” he said. “I’ll tell you, bastard ain’t using no Novocaine on me neither. Ol’ Lyle just about faints dead away he sees a needle. I’m some kind of coward, huh?”

  Sure, Lyle, I thought. A big fraidy cat. Go pull a few more of your teeth out with pliers, no one will be able to stop talking about what a wuss you are.

  I went back into the bedroom and Mae was gone.

  The comforter was crumpled by the foot of my bed and Miss Lilly, her doll, lay on the top of the daybed, staring up at me with her dead doll eyes.

  Then I heard the toilet flush and I stepped out into the hall as Mae stepped out of the bathroom rubbing her eyes.

  My heart jackhammered into my dust-dry mouth, and I wanted to drop to my knees under the weight of the relief that washed over my body.

  “I’m hungry, Patrick,” she said and walked into the kitchen in her Mickey Mouse pajamas with padded feet.

  “Apple Jacks or Sugar Pops?” I managed.

  “Sugar Pops.”

  “Sugar Pops it is.”

  While Mae was in the bathroom changing out of her pajamas and brushing her teeth, I called Angie.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “How you doing?”

  “I’m…okay. Still trying to convince myself there was nothing we could’ve done to keep Jason alive.”

  A silence hung between us because I was trying to convince myself of the same.

  “You find out anything about Eric?” I said.

  “A little. Five years ago, when Eric was still teaching part-time at U/Mass-Boston, a city councilor from Jamaica Plain named Paul Hobson filed suit against the school and Eric.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know. Everything pertaining to the case is sealed. Looks like an out-of-court settlement followed by gag orders all around. Eric left U/Mass, though.”

  “Anything else?”

  “So far, no, but I’m still digging.”

  I told her about my encounter with Kevin.

  “You shot out his car window, Patrick? Jesus.”

  “I was a tad perturbed.”

  “Yeah, but shooting out his car window?”

  “Angie,” I said, “he threatened Mae and Grace. He does anything that uncool next time I see him, maybe I’ll just forget the car and shoot him.”

  “There’s going to be a reprisal,” she said.

  “I’m aware of that.” I sighed, felt the weight behind my eyes, the stench of fear in my shirt. “Bolton’s ordered me down to the JFK Building.”

  “Me too?”

  “You weren’t mentioned.”

  “Good.”

  “I’ll have to take care of Mae somehow.”

  “I’ll take her,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I’d love it. Bring her by. I’ll take her to the playground across the street.”

  I called Grace and told her I’d gotten hung up. She thought Mae hanging out with Angie was a fine idea as long as Angie didn’t mind.

  “She’s looking forward to it, believe me.”

  “Great. You okay?”

  “Fine. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “There’s a tremor in your voice.”

  Guys like Kevin will do that, I thought.

  “I’m fine. I’ll see you soon.”

  Mae walked into the kitchen as I hung up.

  “Hey, pal,” I said, “want to go to the playground?”

  She smiled and it was her mother’s smile, guileless and open and without hesitation. “Playground? They got swings?”

  “Course they got swings. Wouldn’t be much of a playground without swings.”

  “They got a jungle gym?”

  “They got one of those too.”

  “They got roller coasters?”

  “Not yet,” I said, “but I’ll put in a suggestion to management.”

  She hoisted herself up on the chair across from me and put her untied sneakers on my chair. “Okay,” she said.

  “Mae,” I said as I tied her sneakers, “I have to go see a friend, though, and I can’t take you with me.”

  The momentary look of confusion and abandonment in her eyes broke my heart in quarters.

  “But,” I said hurriedly, “you know my friend Angie? She wants to play with you.”

  “How come?”

  “Because she likes you. And she likes playgrounds.”

  “She got pretty hair.”

  “Yeah, she does.”

  “It’s black and tangly and I like it.”

  “I’ll tell her you said so, Mae.”

  “Patrick, why we stopped?” Mae said.

  We were standing on the corner of Dorchester Ave. and Howes Street. If you looked directly across the avenue, you saw the Ryan Playground.

  If you looked horizontally down Howes Street, you saw Angie’s house.

  And, at this moment, Angie. Standing out front.

  Kissing her ex-husband Phil on the cheek.

  I felt something clench in the center of my chest and then just as suddenly unclench and fill with a gust of chilled air which seemed to hollow out my insides like the flick of a spade.

  “Angie!” Mae said.

  Angie turned, and so did Phil, and I felt like a voyeur. An angry voyeur with violence in my heart.

  They crossed the street and walked to the corner together. She looked, as usual, stupendous in a pair of blue jeans, purple T-shirt, black leather jacket slung over her shoulder. Her hair was wet and a single strand had come out from behind her ear and clung to her cheekbone. She tucked it back as she approached and waved her fingers at Mae.

  Phil, unfortunately, also looked good. Angie’d told me he’d quit drinking, and you could see the effects. He’d dropped at least twenty pounds since I’d last seen him, and his jawline was smooth and hard, his eyes devoid of the puffiness that had all but swallowed them over the last five years. He moved loosely in a white shirt and pleated charcoal trousers that matched the color of the hair swept off his forehead. He looked fifteen years younger and his pupils carried a spark I hadn’t seen since childhood.

  “Hey, Patrick,” he said.

  “Hi, Phil.”

  He paused at the curb and clutched a hand to his heart. “Is this her?” he said. “Is this the one? Is this the great, the unforgettable, the world-renowned Mae?”

  He squatted by her and she smiled broadly.

  “I’m Mae,” she said softly.

  “It is a pleasure, Mae,” he said and shook her hand formally. “I bet you turn frogs into princes in your spare time. You are definitely something to see.”

  She looked at me, curious and slightly confused, but I could see by the flush of her face and the charge in her pupils that Phil had already worked his magic.

  “I’m Mae,” she said again.

  “And I
’m Phillip,” he said. “This guy taking care of you all right?”

  “He’s my pal,” Mae said. “He’s Patrick.”

  “No greater pal to have,” Phil said.

  You didn’t have to know Phil when he was younger to recognize his ability with people, no matter what their age. Even when he was drinking too much and abusing his wife, it was still there. Phil, since he climbed out of the crib, had had this gift. It wasn’t cheap or vaudevillian or contrived or consciously manipulative. It was a simple but rare ability to make the person he talked to feel like he or she was the only person on the planet worthy of attention, as if his ears were placed on his head specifically so he could listen to what you had to say, as if his eyes existed only to see you, as if his sole reason for being was to have his encounter—whatever its nature—with you.

  I’d forgotten that until I saw him with Mae. It was so much easier to remember him as the drunken asshole who’d somehow managed to marry Angie.

  But Angie had remained married to him for twelve years. Even while he beat her. And there was a reason for that. No matter how unforgivable a monster Phil had become, he was still—somewhere inside of him—the Phil who made you glad you’d met him.

  That was the Phil who rose from his place by Mae as Angie said, “How you doing, pretty girl?”

  “I’m great.” Mae reached up to touch Angie’s hair.

  “She likes your hair,” I said.

  “You like this mess?” Angie dropped to one knee as Mae ran her hand through her hair.

  “It’s very tangly,” Mae said.

  “That’s what my hairdresser says.”

  “How you doing, Patrick?” Phil held out his hand.

  I considered it. On a bright autumn morning with the air so fresh it felt like a tonic and the sun dancing lightly on the orange leaves, it seemed silly to not be at peace with my surroundings.

  I let my hesitation speak for itself, then reached out and shook the hand. “Not bad, Phil. How about yourself?”

  “Good,” he said. “Still taking it day by day and all, but, you know how it is, everyone’s life has static.”

  “True.” I looked some of my own static dead in the face.

  “Yeah, well…” He looked over his shoulder at his ex-wife and a child playing with each other’s hair. “She’s a prize.”

  “Which one?” I said.

  He smiled, a rueful one. “Both of them, I guess. But I was talking about the four-year-old at the moment.”

  I nodded. “She’s something else, yeah.”

  Angie walked up beside him, Mae’s hand in hers. “What time you have to be at work?”

  “Noon,” he said. He looked at me. “Guy I’m working for now’s an artiste in the Back Bay, got me ripping up his entire duplex, ripping up nineteenth-century parquet floors so we can inlay it all with black—black—marble. You believe that?” He sighed and ran his hands through his hair.

  “I was wondering,” Angie said, “if maybe you wouldn’t mind pushing Mae on the swings with me?”

  “Oh, I dunno,” he said, looking at Mae, “my arm’s kinda sore.”

  “Don’t be a big baby,” Mae said.

  “Can’t be called a big baby now, can I?” Phil said as he scooped her up with one arm and settled her on his hip and the three of them crossed the avenue toward the playground, waving brightly to me before they walked up the steps and headed for the swing sets.

  21

  “You’re going to go see Alec Hardiman,” Bolton said without looking up as I walked into the confeRenee room.

  “I am?”

  “You have an appointment this afternoon at one.”

  I looked at Devin and Oscar. “I do?”

  “This office will be monitoring the entire visit.”

  I sat down in a seat across from Devin, a deep cherrywood table the size of my apartment between us. Oscar sat to Devin’s left and a half dozen Feds in suits and ties filled the rest of the table. Most of them were talking on telephones. Devin and Oscar didn’t have telephones. Bolton had two in front of him at the other end of the table, regular and special Batphone, I guessed.

  He stood up and came down the table toward me. “What did you and Kevin Hurlihy discuss?”

  “Politics,” I said, “the current value of the yen, things of that nature.”

  Bolton put his hand on the back of my chair and leaned in close enough for me to smell the Sucrets in his mouth. “Tell me what you talked about, Mr. Kenzie.”

  “What do you think we talked about, Special Agent Bolton? He told me to back off the Warren investigation.”

  “So you fired a round into his car.”

  “Seemed an appropriate response at the time.”

  “Why does your name keep coming up on this case?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Why does Alec Hardiman want to talk only to you?”

  “Again, no clue.”

  He snapped the chair back as he walked around the table, stopped behind Devin and Oscar and put his hands in his pockets. He looked like he hadn’t slept in a week.

  “I need answers, Mr. Kenzie.”

  “I don’t have any. I faxed Devin copies of my case files on the Warren case. I sent over photos of the guy with the goatee. I told you everything I remember about my meeting with Kara Rider. Beyond that, I’m as in the dark as you guys.”

  He pulled a hand out of his pocket, rubbed the back of his neck. “What do you, Jack Rouse, Kevin Hurlihy, Jason Warren, Kara Rider, Peter Stimovich, Freddy Constantine, District Attorney Timpson and Alec Hardiman have in common?”

  “This a riddle?”

  “Answer the question.”

  “I. Don’t. Fucking. Know.” I held up my hands. “Clear enough for you?”

  “You have to help us out here, Mr. Kenzie.”

  “And I’m trying, Bolton, but your interviewing technique is about as socially skilled as a loan shark’s. You piss me off, I’m not going to be able to be much help, because I won’t be able to think past my anger.”

  Bolton walked to the back wall at the other end of the room. It was the width of the office, at least thirty feet, and about twelve feet tall. He tugged at the sheet covering it and when it came away in his hands I was looking at a corkboard that covered ninety percent of the wall.

  Photographs and crime scene diagrams, spectral analysis sheets and evidence lists were stuck by pushpins and thin wires to the cork. I came out of my seat and walked slowly down the length of the table, trying to take it all in.

  Behind me, Devin said, “We’ve interviewed everyone involved in either case that we know of, Patrick. Plus interrogations of everyone who knew Stimovich and the latest victim, Pamela Stokes. Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  All the victims were represented by photos, two each of them living, several of them dead. Pamela Stokes looked to have been about thirty. One of the photos showed her squinting against the sun, her hand held over her forehead, a bright smile lighting up an otherwise bland face.

  “What do we know about her?”

  “Saleswoman for Anne Klein,” Oscar said. “Last seen leaving The Mercury Bar on Boylston Street two nights ago.”

  “Alone?” I said.

  Devin shook his head. “With a guy wearing a baseball cap, sunglasses, and a goatee.”

  “He’s wearing sunglasses in a bar, and nobody’s suspicious?”

  “You ever been to the Mercury?” Oscar said. “It’s filled with très chic Euro-trash wannabes. They all wear sunglasses indoors.”

  “So there’s our killer.” I pointed at the photo of Jason and the guy with the goatee.

  “One of them anyway,” Oscar said.

  “You’re sure there’s two?”

  “We’re working on that assumption. Jason Warren, without a doubt, was killed by two men.”

  “How do we know that?”

  “He scratched them,” Devin said. “Two different types of blood under his fingernails.”

  “Did the families of all the vi
ctims receive photographs of them before they were killed?”

  “Yes,” Oscar said. “It’s the closest we have to an MO. Three of the four victims were killed in places other than where their bodies were found. Kara Rider was then dumped in Dorchester, Stimovich in Squantum, and what was left of Pamela Stokes was found in Lincoln.”

  Below the current victims’ photos were photos under a heading “Victims. 1974.” Cal Morrison’s slightly cocky, boyish face stared out at me and even though I hadn’t thought of him for years until that night at Gerry’s bar, I could immediately smell the Piña Colada shampoo he’d worn in his hair, and I remembered how we’d all razzed him about it.

  “All the victims have been cross-refeReneed for similarities?”

  “Yes,” Bolton said.

  “And?”

  “Two,” Bolton said. “Both Kara Rider’s mother and Jason Warren’s father grew up in Dorchester.”

  “The other?”

  “Both Kara Rider and Pam Stokes wore the same perfume.”

  “What kind?”

  “Lab analysis says it was Halston for Women.”

  “Lab analysis,” I said as I looked at photos of Jack Rouse, Stan Timpson, Freddy Constantine, Diandra Warren, Diedre Rider. There were two of each. One from the present, the other at least twenty years old.

  “No clues whatsoever as to motive?” I looked at Oscar and he looked away and then over at Devin and Devin passed the ball to Bolton.

  “Agent Bolton?” I said. “What do you have?”

  “Jason Warren’s mother,” he said eventually.

  “What about her?”

  “She’s occasionally been consulted as a psychological expert in criminal trials.”

  “So?”

  “So,” he said, “she provided a psychological profile of Hardiman during his trial that effectively crushed his insanity defense. Diandra Warren, Mr. Kenzie, put Alec Hardiman away.”

  Bolton’s mobile command post was a black RV with tinted windows. It was waiting for us, idling, when we came out onto New Sudbury Street.

  Inside, two agents, Erdham and Fields, sat at a black-and-gray computer station that took up the right wall. On the tabletop was a serpent’s nest of cable, two computers, two fax machines, two laser-jet printers. Above the hutch was a bank of six monitors with a matching bank of six across from them on the left wall. Down at the end of the work center I could see digital receivers and recorders, a dual-deck VCR, audio- and videocasettes, diskettes, and CDs.