BAIT BAIT by KENNETH ABEL When narcotics cop Jack Walsh accidenttally kills the son of a Mafia boss JohnnyD'Angelo in a drunken road accident his life is effectively over. Byt when he comes out of jail to begin a solitary existence in a small, remote town he finds there is no escape from the past. For D'Angelo honour dictates that Walsh is killed to avenge his son - and for the FBI, who up to now have been unable to nail the Mafia boss, Walsh in the perfect bait to pin a murder rap on him.   ORION Copyright © 1994 Kenneth Abel All rights reserved The right of Kenneth Abel to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Orion An imprint of Orion Books Ltd Orion House, 5 Upper St Martin's Lane, London WC2H 9EA A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 1 85797 553 7 Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives pic For my wife and daughter 1 "Let him die. Save us all trouble." Laughter. He tried to lift his head. A hand settled on his forehead, shoved him back. "He's up." "Got a vein?" Cold metal on his forearm. His sleeve was torn back. A hand rolled his hand into a fist, squeezed. A sting as the needle went in. The strap tightened around his wrist with a jerk. No pain. There should be pain. If you feel it, you make it. That's what they told you, the guys with the bullet scars on their bellies, grinning at you when they lift their shirts. Too fast to think, they said. Before and after, nothing in between. One minute, you're standing there, and the next ... A flash in a dark hallway, so bright you can almost see the bullet streak toward you. Your hand, slick with sweat, trying to get the gun down, but there's nothing to shoot at in the dark. At the end of the hall, the sound of a window breaking. And then, behind you, Jerry thrashing on the stairs. You're trying to hold him down, but he's jerking away, moaning, there's blood everywhere, and suddenly he's not moving anymore, he's smiling, the asshole, shaking his head, blood coming out of his nose, saying, it's the ones you don't feel that . . . In the hospital, Jack Walsh was still a cop. Private room. Card from the union on the table, a drawing of a guy in traction, tongue hanging out, a pretty nurse peeking under the sheet, saying "Well, that's not broken." The other side, they called it. You took the bullet, woke up to flowers, three weeks of hospital food, soap operas through a thick haze of morphine. You're a hero, just for being alive. You get a medal for breathing, the joke goes, two if you can fill the bedpan. It was the lawyer that ruined it. He showed up early in the afternoon, poking his head through the door. "Well, you're up." He pushed the door open, squeezed into the room. A heavy man, wheezing, his shirt tight across his stomach. He squinted behind his glasses. "The doctors said you'd sleep a few more hours. But I figured, what the hell? I'm here, I'll have a look. Save myself a trip, you know?" He settled into a chair, grasping his briefcase between his knees. He leaned forward, thrust out a damp hand. "Don Markoff. Feel up to a talk, Jack?" "You understand, Jack, the department has to do this." The lawyer balanced the briefcase on the edge of the bed, digging through a thick wad of papers. "It's a disclaimer. It just says you weren't on duty when the accident occurred, that you were operating the vehicle without the authorization of the department, not in your capacity as an officer. It's a liability thing. You understand, Jack?" He drew a paper from the briefcase, placed it delicately on the bed. Jack's leg hurt. Suddenly, like someone had yanked a blanket off him. Burning, they tell you. Like a hot poker shoved right through you, so you want to pour water on it. He tried to focus on the lawyer's words. Accident, he said. A disclaimer. . . . My capacity as an officer. He shook his head. That wasn't it. What this felt like was--he wanted to say gravel popping under a truck's wheels. Like someone took a hammer to the front of his leg, went right up from the ankle to the hip, cracking the bone. "You with me, Jack?" The lawyer frowned, tapped at the paper with one finger. "I've got to have your attention on this. You're covered, but the department needs this before it can process your claim." "Tell me again." The lawyer gave a sigh. He was gonna have trouble with this one. Handsome guy, strong face, all that dark hair, like a Kennedy maybe, one of the kids. Eyes that look right into you, even through the drugs. Cop's eyes. But you could see the liquor in his face. Swollen. He picked up the paper, held it out. "You sign this, you're just saying you weren't on duty. You don't have to admit anything about how it happened, that's for the Review Board. You're just saying that the department shouldn't be responsible. You got it?" "You think I could get a nurse in here?" "In a minute, Jack. This is important. You're gonna live with this for a long time. In my experience, it doesn't hurt to cooperate. The duty log says you signed out Friday night at 10:42. The call came in at 3:38, Saturday morning." He grinned. "You had yourself a time, didn't you? They got some nice blood work on you, found a bottle in the car. There's a witness, old guy in a cab, says you didn't even slow down. Went right through the light. How's that look, Jack? The girl, she was telling 'em on the scene how you had a few at the hotel. . . ." Ah, shit. Chris. The lawyer caught his expression, smiled. "You're a married guy, aren't you, Jack? That girl's gonna be a problem for all of us. Hardly a scratch on her, but you watch, she's got a lawyer by now, gonna retire on the department if you don't sign this. And the kid . . . Well, you want the truth, that's gonna be your worry, not mine. His people don't go to court. Not by choice, anyway." "What kid?" The lawyer paused, rubbed at his chin. "They didn't tell you?" "Tell me what?" "The kid, Jack. In the other car." His leg was on fire now. He tried to shift his weight, but his hips wouldn't move. He pulled the sheet back. The cast extended up his left leg, encasing his hips. The lawyer was watching him. "The kid died, Jack. He had one of those little Mazdas, the convertible, you know? Brand new, red one. Got it for his birthday, I heard. I saw it this morning, Jack. Looked like when you step on a beer can. They had to cut it in half to get him out." He gestured toward the door. "Nobody's been in here to talk to you?" "Just you." "Jesus, you don't even know who you killed." He sat back, tugging at his collar. "You fucked up, Jack." Kate Haggerty crossed the street, carrying the sack carefully. Four coffees, three black with sugar, one light. Three years of law school, a year of clerking, two with the U.S. Attorney's office, and she was getting coffee. She walked up the block past the auto body shop, the hair salon, the fish market, to where the van was parked in a lot across from the funeral parlor. She wasn't complaining. This was her operation, Riccioli had made that clear. It was a stroke of luck. The emergency room doctor knew her from college. He recognized the kid, figured she might want to know. She'd called the judge, could run the subpoena out to his house in half an hour. The judge agreed to sign it, but he wanted Riccioli's name on it. "That's fine, young lady." The judge's tone was patient, as with a child. "Now you just call up your boss and have him sign the paper. You understand?" Yeah, she understood. Young lady. The way they looked at her when she stood before the bench, the half-smile, thinking, such a pretty girl. Eyes on her runner's body, watching her move. Wondering why she pulled that pretty red hair straight back. She clenched her teeth, dialed Riccioli's house. "They're gonna take him to DiNapoli," she told him. "That's where the family goes." "Do it," Riccioli growled, his voice still thick with sleep, then hung up. Three hours later, the van was in place, the microphones transmitting the sounds of footsteps, a coffeepot gurgling, a man belching. It was a long shot, she'd admit. Still, it was her show to run. If the guys hunched over their headsets in the back of the van wanted coffee, she'd get it. She tapped at the door. It opened a crack, and she climbed in. The ambulance bearing the mortal remains of Vincent D'Angelo turned into the narrow drive just before noon. Haggerty watched the driver swing the door open, slide the stretcher out, dropping the wheels. An attendant appeared at the door, and they wheeled the stretcher up the shallow ramp. "Used to be a good-looking kid. He did commercials, you know? On the TV." The attendant's voice was thin over the headset, distant. "I seen one just the other night. Toothpaste." Haggerty saw one of the men make a note in a log. "Mosca," the man said. "The mortician's assistant. He's been in there all morning, since they got the call." "His head went through the windshield, got stuck there." The other voice was deeper, a faint accent. Spanish, Haggerty figured. The driver. "Ain't that some shit." "You wanna sign this, Tony?" "Give it here. You want coffee? Cups under the counter." A rustle of paper. "His father tells us he wants an open casket. You believe that?" "You gonna tell him no?" "Do I look stupid?" A faint clink, then another. Haggerty imagined the attendant bending over the body, picking bits of glass from the flesh with a tweezer, dropping them onto a tray. "Jesus, look't him. How'd you like to be the asshole did this to Johnny's boy?" Russo swung the Lincoln into the driveway, under the blue awning. "Keep going. Around back." Listen to him, Russo thought. Like he's telling you where to pick up his laundry. He parked it next to the ambulance, walked up the ramp to ring the bell. When the door buzzed, he pushed it open, waved to the car. "Here we go." Harmon raised his camera. "Johnny-boy." A stocky man in a pale suit, gray hair swept back, got out of the car, hurried up the ramp. The camera whirred, tracking him. "Just Russo." Harmon murmured. "He's traveling light." At the rear of the van, one of the quiet men flicked a switch. The reels of tape began to turn slowly. Russo stepped back, holding the door. "Gray van," he said. "In the lot across the street." Johnny D'Angelo paused in the shadow of the door, lowered his sunglasses. He smoothed his hair back, straightened his tie. His eyes looked tired. "Assholes," he said. "They've got no shame." "You see 'em spot us?" Harmon lowered the camera as the door swung shut. "Pretty quick." "They've had practice. You're not gonna get much here." "We get what we get." Haggerty watched the ambulance driver emerge, back out, swinging wide around the Lincoln. "How's he look?" "Like shit." Harmon slipped the lens cap onto the camera, made a note in his log. "Sometimes I hate this job." Riccioli didn't look up from the papers scattered on the desk before him. It was a thick file, the tab marked in Riccioli's broad scrawl, "Johnny D." Haggerty watched him flip through the pages quickly. She knew the contents. A brief police sheet, mostly from the early sixties. Three years at Lewisburg on an auto theft and transport charge. Probation officer's statement, "Attitude--poor." Informants' reports from two decades, the name marked in red. In recent years, entire pages ran red. Photographs, starting with a mug shot of a young tough, hair slicked back. Later, a man talking on a street corner, entering a restaurant, surrounded by reporters on the steps of a courthouse. Finally, three shots of dead men--one slumped in a car, blood streaming from his head; another sprawled in the street, his eyes staring; the last, an elderly man in an expensive silk suit, slouched at a cafe table, the back of his head blown off. Flipping to the end, she had been startled to find copies of the boy's death certifi cate, an autopsy report, and--barely two hours after the van had dropped her at the steps of the Federal Building--a transcript labeled "DiNapoli Funeral Parlor, 7/8/92." "So you got nothing." Riccioli rubbed his eyes. For a moment, he looked like he needed sleep. When he looked up, it was gone. "Funeral arrangements. He didn't stay long. They left him alone with the kid, maybe five minutes. I couldn't even hear him breathing." "You figure he spotted you." "Took him thirty seconds, maybe." Stay cool, she told herself. You're frustrated, but he doesn't have to see it. Riccioli liked to sweat the younger lawyers, peering at them from under his eyelids, asking the obvious until they stumbled, finding a flaw where none was visible. She sat back, watching him scan the transcript. It was a shot. They've been running tapes out of the pizza joints for three years now. You come up empty in one day, he's gonna start yelling? Johnny, they had discovered, was a very clever boy. "What about the cop?" "A drinker. Put in more than six good years, promotions, transfer to narcotics. He lost a partner about eight months ago, watched him bleed to death in the North End. After that . . ." "You talk to him yet?" "Not yet." "The girl?" "Treated and released. I heard she came back to work at the courthouse this morning. They had to send her home." "All right." Riccioli sat back, fixing her with his eyes. He was a thin man, his face tanned from a recent vacation. Ten, rnaybe twelve years older than me, Haggerty thought. Mid forties. Worked his way through law school, played the politics shrewdly. Not bad for a grocer's son. A corner office, windows on three sides, huge mahogany desk, expensive leather couch. On the wall near the door, a picture of the president, smiling broadly, clasping his hand. In recent months, she'd heard talk of a run at the statehouse. The file on his desk looked worn, well-thumbed. "I want you to pursue this," he said. Haggerty fought the urge to smile. "There's probably nothing here, but it's worth a look. Let's get the van back over there. The man's grieving. He's angry. I want to know what he's saying, even if it's just ordering flowers." "And the cop?" Riccioli swung his chair toward the window, silent. He twisted a pen between his fingers. "Get his story, then let the department handle it." He paused, drew a pad toward him. Absently, he drew a box, put an X inside it. "We play this one up front. The media asks us, we're calling it accidental death, but we're looking at vehicular homicide. Nothing special about this, you got it?" "They're not gonna buy that." "No, they're not. But that's our line. We're respecting the family's privacy, you know? It's a tragedy, but these things happen." He closed the pen, slipped it into his pocket. The pad disappeared into a drawer. He stood, reached for his coat. Haggerty rose, clutching at the papers on her lap. "When they press you, give 'em the cop." He smiled. "Maybe our friend Johnny would like to know who killed his son." 2 Ice. These little towns, they let the snow freeze on the sidewalks, then the wind blows it smooth as glass. Jack Walsh eyed the long walk into town, his leg aching. Twenty minutes for the bus. Athol. Like a kid with a lisp. A name to conjure with during nine months in MCI. What better home for a failed cop, an ex-con, a drunk facing the cold morning sober? The place looked the same as he remembered it, just poorer. A mill town, waking to its own hard morning-after. You can't escape your past. One bus in the morning, running up the hill from the flats where the mill workers live, past the high school, then a long, slow loop past the mills along the river. Only the mills all moved to Georgia ten years back. Everyone broke, living on credit. No jobs anywhere in the county--none in the whole state of Massachusetts lately. Movie house closed, radio station off the air. Three cops in the whole town, sitting in the doughnut shop every morning, watching traffic. When he was a kid, he rode that bus to school, carved his name on the back of the last seat. Couldn't wait to get out. Now, he's standing on the edge of the road, wind cutting his face like bits of glass blowing through the pines, praying for that bus to come, knowing that if he gets on, pushes his way to the back, his name would be there. Some life. A mistake, the lawyer had called it. Tough luck when it happens to you, but better than being the other guy, right? Still, if you're a cop, something like this happens, you start looking for work. The first reporters showed up at the hospital the same night. He could hear them arguing with the cop in the hall. Lying there in the dark, he felt like one of those chickens hanging in the window of a Chinese restaurant. He could imagine the picture. Stretched out on the bed, his leg dangling from its strap, face turned toward the camera, surprised. The Cop Who Killed Johnny's Boy. That's how you sell newspapers. He listened to them shouting in the hall, the nurses joining in now, trying to push them toward the elevators, the cop pressed against the door, telling them where to put their cameras. The department did that much, at least, kept the sharks off him for a few days. So they got Anne, instead. Caught her coming into the lobby that night, cops trying to hustle her through the crowd of reporters, the lights making her look even paler. The Wife. Thank God she didn't bring the kids. By the time she got to the room, she'd stopped crying. Closed the door behind her quietly. Just stood there, looking at him. Let him feel her silence. Finally, she laid her bag on the edge of the bed, glanced around the room. "How do you feel?" "Like shit." And she nodded. What else could he say? "I took the children to my mother." "Do they know?" "Not yet." He shifted his weight. His leg ached. Beyond the window, he could see rain in the glare of a streetlight. Whenever he thought of that night, that's what he remembered. The rain falling. A cone of pale mist. The sound of Anne quietly sobbing. The bus appeared in the distance, headlights flickering as it bumped up the hill. The snow had begun to fall again. He shifted the cane to his left hand and dug in his pocket for change. The first step was tricky. Wedge the cane into the ground, get a grip on the inner edge of the door, heave. Worse when it's snowing, when the slush from a dozen pairs of shoes makes the floor slick, the ground so soft the cane twists out of your hand. Two women, clerks down at the Food King, watched him lurch down the aisle, their eyes blank. "A small town likes a story," his brother Larry had said during the drive out. Eyes on the road, a careful driver. "I can give you a job, a place to stay. But you can't hide from it here. We get the papers, too." Local boy, a dozen years gone. He had a friend in the bottle. One girl too many. The bus rattled up the hill. He stared out the window, thinking of the girl. He hadn't noticed her at first, leaning against the counter while he filled out the requisition form, her fingers riffling the pages of a thick paperback. He'd felt her looking at him, her eyes amused behind those little round glasses, like the hippies used to wear. Blond hair pulled back into a thick braid. When he handed her the form, she smiled. He watched her walk back into the file stacks to pull the folder, her legs taut beneath the faded jeans. He picked up the book. It was in German. "You can read this?" he asked when she returned to the counter. "If I work at it." "What's it about?" "Death." She smiled. "I think." He dropped the book on the counter. "Sounds like fun." "It's for a class." "You a student?" "Night school." "What do you study?" She shrugged. "Human nature." She peeled the pink carbon off the back of the form, scribbled her initials in one corner, and dropped it into a tray on the counter. She tucked the pencil behind her ear, tossed a stray lock of hair back with a flick of her wrist. "Learn anything today?" "You ask a lot of questions." "I'm a cop." "Glad you're not a proctologist." It took a minute, but when he laughed, she rewarded him with a smile that made his knees weak. "Points for accuracy." She pushed the file across the counter. "But you gotta work on your time." Two days later, he made time to take the file back, lingered by the counter to watch her carry it back into the stacks. Not beautiful exactly. Put her next to Anne, she'd look plain. But her small body glistened with youth. She looked untouched by time, hurt, the slow uncoiling of hope. She flirted easily, with a confidence that swept aside fear. Watching her bend to slip the file onto a shelf, he felt his heart tighten with desire. Later, when he trailed one finger up the inside of her bare thigh, he discovered a tiny scar, a pale half-moon etched in the soft skin at the top of her leg. "What happened here?" "I grew up in Florida. We used to ride our bikes to the beach in our bathing suits. We had a shortcut through a fence. A nail cut me. I had to get a shot." He bent, touched his tongue to the tiny ridge of flesh. She squirmed, raised her hips to meet him. . . . He pushed the image from his mind. In recent months, he sometimes woke in the pale half-light before dawn, his body hot with the memory of her. Gripping his hips with her slim legs, her cries as they rocked against the mound of pillows on the creaking hotel bed. He drove the memory from his head with images of his children's faces, Anne sobbing in the hospital room, the boy's forehead, streaked with blood, when they pulled him from the crumpled car. It was this image that had haunted him in the hospital. When the papers got hold of his Academy picture, matching it with a shot from the kid's high school graduation, he stopped shaving, letting the beard hide the flicker of pain in his jaw at each shuffling step. Get used to it, the doctors told him. You'll have it for the rest of your life. In bed for two weeks, then the wheelchair until his ribs healed enough for crutches. With therapy, they had him walking within a month. Quick, the doctors called it. But he had worked at it, sweating through hours of exercises, passing the nights flexing the muscles in his thigh and calf, again and again, while the television flickered. By that time, he had known the indictment was coming. He was told nothing, but lying there in the dark, the sweat beading on his forehead, he could picture the scene. The courtroom, crowded with reporters. The prosecutor, playing to the cameras. And the court, sensing the public interest, coming down hard. He would do time. Bad enough for a cop if he's healthy. On crutches, with enemies, he wouldn't stand a chance. Two weeks after the accident, he resigned from the department. At his trial, the boy's family sat in the front row. He recognized D'Angelo from the newspapers, watched him twist in his seat, smoothing his tie, to whisper to a blunt-faced man in the row behind. The man stared at him, nodding. Walsh sat in silence as a parade of officers from his Division testified about his years of service, the injuries he had suffered, his grief at his partner's death. The judge, hunched over his papers, avoided his gaze. Told to stand, he found his knee had stiffened, had to lean on the table to keep from falling. In the brief silence that followed, the boy's mother burst into tears. A young woman quieted her. From the corner of his eye, he saw D'Angelo tug at his collar, his face flushed. His eyes met Jack's, and he smiled sadly. Leaning forward, he raised one hand, blew gently across his palm. Like a speck of dust. His lawyer, hired by the department, considered the sentence a victory. Eighteen months in a state medical facility. He would serve no more than ten. His injuries would keep him out of the general population, where a cop could meet with an accident. He would spend his days in physical therapy, his evenings in counseling sessions for substance abusers. The department would notify the warden of his case. Two cops from the South Shore had done time there on a misappropriations charge, spent three years shooting pool with the guards, sleeping in a storeroom next to the guard station. "They had a VCR." The lawyer grinned. "An account down at the video store. Used to order out pizza." Pizza. Jack smiled. I can call D'Angela's. But the lawyer had been right. He had done his time without a hitch. Nine months, eighteen days. Sleeping in the infirmary, an intern's room off the chronic ward, fitted with a heavy lock that allowed the warden to claim him as a secured prisoner and let Jack sleep without jumping at every sound. He worked out, shifted papers in the infirmary office each afternoon. In the evenings, he went to AA-- thirty prisoners crowded into a classroom, somberly reciting their failures. My name is Jack, and I'm . . . Beyond the steamed windows of the bus, the winter fields looked faded as an old photograph. He felt the old women's eyes on him. Maybe they remembered him. As a kid, he'd worked in his father's store every summer. Hauling boxes °ut of the trucks, dragging them down the aisles to stock nails, light bulbs, garden shears, combination locks. At night, hitching the few miles into Gardner with his friends to try the bars. Flirting with the girls behind the counter at the Chicken Fry, the local guys glaring at them from the parking lot. A couple of fights, a lot of tough talk. It had seemed like something was happening at the time. Now look at him. Riding the same bus into town. Spending the day perched behind a counter, cane propped against the stool, watching a local kid drag boxes along the aisles, slide a razor across the edge, peel the top back. Larry, sitting in the tiny office at the rear of the store, frowns at his columns of figures. Some nights, as the kid pushes a broom along the aisles, the cash registers spitting their totals onto long strips of paper that curl along the floor, he half expects to see his father on his toes beyond the window, stretching to drag the security grate down. Like nothing has changed, the other life a dream that fades in his coffee. Except that now, as the bus clatters over the tracks, past the old graveyard, he can almost see his father's stone among the pines. In his pocket, a letter from his wife's lawyer, which he will carry on his lunch hour across the square, past the courthouse, up a painful flight of stairs, to show the lawyer who handles his brother's collections. The lawyer, a heavy man in a wrinkled suit, squints at the pages, shakes his head, pushes the letter back across the desk. "They're gonna sue you," the lawyer says. "Third-party complaint. Then they file for a judgment to get out of it, making you the sole defendant. This way, the kid's family can't get the house." Jack nods, knowing this. The lawyer sits back in his chair, watching him fold the papers and slip them back into his pocket. "It's just procedure," he says. "What're they gonna get from you, your cane? You got nothing, so they get nothing. What's to worry about? You're safe." Safe. A thin snow swirls around him as he crosses the square. He makes the walk often. Each week, an envelope arrives from an expensive law firm in Boston. Witness depositions. An action by the insurance carrier. Letters from one lawyer to another, with his name typed in at the bottom. And send it to the cop. D'Angelo, sitting in his lawyer's office, smoothing the fabric of his tailored suit. He's yanking my chain. Reminding me that he hasn't forgotten me. The snow stings his eyes. At each step, a weight bounces off his hip--a slim .25 Beretta with an extra clip, stitched into the broad hem of his down jacket, held in place by a double loop of elastic, a strip of Velcro at the fold where, with a slight tug, the pocket drops free. Below the counter at the store, he had bolted a pair of wing clips to a ledge one evening, easing the tension with a screwdriver until they gripped the barrel of a .410 pump with a pistol stock. Another, with the barrel sawed off to an inch, hangs from a pair of clips beneath the bed frame in his cabin. Many nights, as the wind howls through the trees beyond the window, he wakes with his body tensed and sweating, his hand reaching. A police-issue flak jacket dangles from a hook on the bedroom door. He eyes it as he dresses each morning, feeling naked as he slips his shirt on. He limps on through the whipping snow, his eyes scanning the cars parked along the square, watching the traffic for a sudden slowing, a passenger alone in the rear seat, a window open despite the cold. Safe. From his office window, Johnny D'Angelo looks down upon the back lot of South Boston Auto Repair, James P. Gallo, Prop., a business in which he has no documented interest. At one end of the lot, a row of crumpled cars stands behind a wall of melting snow. During the last year, each car has been sold at least four times, the names on the transfers drawn from residents of nursing homes in the western part of the state. Only days after each sale, accident reports are submitted to the insurance companies, with damage listed a few hundred dollars below the car's value. It is a very profitable business, which, by virtue of its three employees' vast appetites, deposits a large percentage of its income at the end of each week into the cash registers of its neighbor, D'Angelo's Pizza. Johnny D'Angelo shakes his head. Stupid, he thinks. They should push that snow out of the way. Some insurance guy has a slow afternoon, comes down here to look at the car. Maybe he remembers there hasn't been any snow in the last three weeks, starts thinking about how that car could get wrecked when it hasn't moved. He swivels his chair to face his desk. Across from him, Jackie Mullen from the South End leans forward, tapping one finger on the desk as he talks. Johnny shifts in his chair, not looking at him. Fat Jackie. Like a meatball in that cheap suit. "This guy, he's into me for thirty-two hundred this month alone. Over fifteen thousand for the year. I got two guys in the hospital. He tried to run 'em down with a fuckin' Buick." Fat Jackie settles back in his chair, one hand raised like he's trying to stop a bus. "You and me, we've had our problems over the years. But we always worked it out. But this guy, he's way outta line. I'm supporting him and his whole family here. Don't get me wrong, it's not the money, Johnny. I got money. You hear what I say? Fuck the money. It's the lack of respect. I'm supposed to let him walk away from this, just 'cause he's gonna marry your daughter? I ask you." He spends too much time staring out the window lately, his stomach twisted with pain. Jimmy's a good guy. He doesn't think, is all. Lets things slide, I gotta send someone down there to get him to move that snow. Can't figure it out for himself. And yet, as he reaches for the phone, raising one finger to silence Fat Jackie, he knows it isn't the snow that bothers him. Nor the letter dangling from the sign for the last three weeks. (Sout Boston Auto Repair, just like you say it, Jimmy'd said, trying to get him to laugh.) Even Russo can figure it, standing with Jimmy while a kid drags a shovel out of the garage. "You gotta think," he tells Jimmy. "He sits up there staring at that oil spot on the pavement over by the fence. Only he doesn't want to look at it, so he looks at the sign, or the snow, or whatever." He shakes his head. "It's gonna take him a while, Jimmy. He's gonna be on you about something until then." And as he says it, they can see him in the window, one hand smoothing his tie with a practiced gesture, silver hair combed straight back, his face expressionless. Russo lets a hand fall on Jimmy's shoulder, gives it a shake. "You want my advice, Jimmy?" Russo sweeps his arm across the parking lot. "You get some black paint, get a truck in here during the night to move the cars for a couple hours and do the whole lot. He doesn't see the oil every day, maybe it won't bother him so much." "I don't know, Tommy. Used to be, he had a gripe 'bout me, he told me. I didn't have to hear it from you." "What d'ya want, Jimmy? It's like when we gotta go up to the North End, up by where Vinnie got killed. He makes me drive all the way down Hanover through all the traffic, so we don't have to pass the street. He doesn't want to see it, you know? We get where we're going, he's in a bad mood. Tells me the shocks need work. Or he's in a restaurant, I can see him through the window yelling at the waiter. Poor guy didn't do nothing, but he's angry. Like with you." "You think he's angry at me?" Russo shrugs, tugs his collar up against the wind. Not my problem, he thinks. Some guy over at the police yard wants the car off his lot, has it towed it over to Jimmy's, dumps it in the back. And Jimmy, he gets shook at the police truck pulling up in back, so he lets 'em. Leaves it sitting out there, what, six weeks? He's looking at it every day, seeing Vinnie's face like he was on the table, bits of glass in a little dish next to his head. When he glances back at the window, it is empty. As Johnny settles into his chair, Fat Jackie leans forward once more. He doesn't like waiting, staring at D'Angelo's back while he watches some fucking kid shovel snow. He can feel the anger on his face, his skin hot. But he holds his temper, knowing if he walks out he'll get no satisfaction. He plays along with it, waiting his chance. Now, as Johnny's eyes meet his own, he leans into him, keeps his voice quiet, takes his best shot. "He's not your kid, Johnny. I known him since he was stealing cigarettes out of the machine down at the Trailways. He's a punk, and he's done violence to my people." He raises one finger, same as Johnny did, holds it there for a moment to make the point. "Where I come from," he says, his voice almost a whisper, "we don't let that slide." Johnny looks at him, his eyes tired. "I'll take care of it," he says. According to papers filed with a grand jury convened by the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, D'Angelo's Pizza, Inc., employs thirty-two people at six retail outlets, another twelve at a central warehouse, and an administrative staff of seven, including its president and sole stockholder, John Anthony D'Angelo. The company employs an additional seven people at two subsidiaries, D'Angelo Restaurant Supply and DRS Farms, Inc. After an evening slogging through the financial records, Haggerty had to admit she was impressed. The restaurants offered a documented cash source, with register receipts to support the entire operation. The trick was that some of the sales were legitimate--a fact, Haggerty saw from the file, that had sunk Riccioli's last indictment. The restaurants sold pizza (By the Slice! By the Pie!) from an outlet two blocks from the federal courthouse. Haggerty smiled, shook her head. Try telling a juror the place is a front when he's just eaten lunch there. Yet, a former employee had testified--reluctantly, Haggerty noted--to false receipts, a night manager who kept the cash registers chattering until dawn, recording sales that never took place. A good system, Haggerty thought. No way to prove the money's dirty. On the other end, the company bought all its supplies--flour, tomato sauce, cheese, kitchen equipment--from the two subsidiaries, leaving a hazy trail of invoices and checks that hid the fact that no money was spent. From one pocket to the other, Haggerty thought. Lots of cash comes in, but nothing going out. Pure profit. The way Riccioli figured it, the money--from drugs, truck hijacking, insurance fraud, kickbacks--was laundered through local banks as receipts from the pizza joints. For decades, criminal prosecutions had failed as witnesses, under the stares of mob lawyers, grew forgetful. In recent years, the prosecutors had turned to accountants where the police had failed. The guys on the federal organized crime task force had a joke: The mob has a retirement plan, death and taxes. By selling a few pizzas, D'Angelo could avoid the tax weasels. Haggerty had heard that during the last audit the IRS boys had come away shaking their heads, claiming that the restaurants showed a documented profit. On the books, the income from the six pizza joints scattered across the city was larger than the combined sales of the two largest burger chains, statewide. A lot of pizzas. Haggerty pushed the records aside, stretched. She needed a run, a shower, more sleep. Too many hours in the office, chasing leads that had been checked dozens of times. For over a year, the D'Angelo file had remained in her files, unopened. A week of surveillance during the funeral of D'Angelo's son had produced nothing, and Riccioli had abruptly pulled her from the case. As a last gesture, to satisfy her own mania for order, she had scribbled a note to a file clerk she was cultivating at the Department of Corrections, requesting--along with the name of her hair stylist-- notice of the disposition of the charges against the police officer, sentence imposed, and estimated date of release. The clerk's note returned a few days later, and she dropped it into the file and forgot it. When, almost a year later, she found on her desk a Notice of Release for "Walsh, John D., Vehicular Homicide," it took her a moment to make the connection. She set her briefcase on the floor, slipped off her shoes, and slumped into her chair. It was late, and she was tired. The streetlights shimmered through a thin rain beyond the window. The tiny office was strewn with files, stacks of papers, exhibit boxes. The ancient leather chair was cracked, the stuffing spilling out in several places. She had draped it with a Navajo shawl, held in place by strips of masking tape. At idle moments, her fingers sought the fringes taped to the base of the chair, twirling them into elaborate knots. She picked up the paper, tapped it with one finger. Footsteps receded down the dark hall. The cop! She pushed back from the desk with one foot, tugging at a heavy file drawer. The folder was covered with a thin layer of dust. At the back of the file, she found three sheets, captioned in boldface, "Update to Main File," that Janice, her secretary, had slipped into the folder when she was out. The sheets were dated in the last four months. Someone's been working the file, Haggerty thought. Funny no one mentioned it. She shrugged. It wasn't her case. If Riccioli wanted to reassign it, that was his business. She had too much work as it was, too little time off, no life beyond the walls of this tiny office. She stuffed the release form into the file, and shoved it into the drawer. She hooked the edge of the metal drawer with her toes to shove it closed, then paused. If the file was active, she should keep up with it. Riccioli knew she had done the background; if he assigned it to her, there would be no time to catch up. She sighed, lifted the file back onto her lap. The tax reports took hours. When she found her mind drifting, she got up, switched off the office light. In the darkness, she fumbled for the desk lamp, feeling her senses grow alert. She bent the lamp down, so the only light in the room was the glare that reflected off the pages. An old law school trick: eliminate the distractions. Confused by the details of corporate structure, she sketched a series of boxes on a legal pad, marking one "Pizzas," the next, "Supplier," which she linked by a dotted line to "Farms." Below that, she drew a series of arrows, charting the flow of money from the restaurants to the subsidiary companies, and, by a complicated series of transfers, back into the main company. A very clever boy, our Johnny. When she felt that she had glimpsed the faint trail of money from the cash registers in the restaurants to the private accounts at the bank, she stuffed the reports back into the file. Again, as she slid the thick folder into the drawer, she hesitated. The updates. She pushed the chair back to her desk, noted the dates from the forms on her legal pad. She bit her lip for a moment, then retrieved the release form on the cop. All right, maybe it means nothing. Maybe you're obsessive. Disappointed it never came to anything. That's what Riccioli will think. Still, it can't hurt to get it in the file. She gathered her papers, glancing at her watch. Nine-fifty. The file room closed at ten o'clock. She would have to sign the file out and get it back first thing in the morning. Another late night. When she got home, she spread the file on her couch, flicked on the television to chase the silence from the tiny apartment. The furniture--a battered couch, an oak coffee table painted an unspeakable brown, and her father's old leather recliner--had emerged from her parents' attic when she left for college, following her to law school. She kicked off her shoes, scratched the soles of her feet on the edge of the table. One day . . . Taking up the file, she added the release notice to the jumble of papers at the back of the file and initialed the change on the file log, alerting the file clerk to send out update notices. Next, she flipped through her own reports on the surveillance two years before, looking for comments in Riccioli's cramped hand. A red marker had noted D'Angelo's spotting the surveillance van, an exclamation mark in the margin. So do it better, asshole. She flipped to the back of the file. There were only two new entries. She consulted the dates on her legal pad, confirmed that a third update notice had gone out only three weeks before. She sorted through the clipped pages more slowly, found nothing more recent than January. "Well, shit." She would have to ask the file clerk, a silent woman who loathed disorder in her files. Haggerty could imagine her scowling, glaring at her with suspicion. She shrugged. "Not my fault." She set the file aside, stretched out on the couch with the new entries--a recent IRS report concluding that there was insufficient evidence for prosecution on tax fraud charges, and, stapled to a blank sheet of paper, an embossed wedding invitation, folded once, addressed to Thomas Riccioli, United States Attorney. Inside, in a flowing script: Mr. and Mrs. John A. D'Angela request the pleasure of your company at the wedding of their daughter Maria D'Angela and Francis Anthony Defeo Sunday, February 10, 1991 at 2:00 p.m. St. Vincent's Church, Boston "That's balls!" she laughed. "Good for you, Johnny." Attached to the sheet was a news clipping, "Assault Charges Dropped," and a photograph of a young man pushing through a crowd of reporters. Beside the photograph, Riccioli had scrawled, "Frankie Defeo meets the press." She glanced at the clipping, a fight in a bar in Revere spilled out into the parking lot. Frankie had taken an axe handle from his car and broken three ribs on some kid from Saugus. The kid filed charges, then refused to testify when the case came to trial. Little league stuff, Haggerty thought. Must be ambitious, though, marrying Johnny's girl. She remembered a photograph of the daughter from the cop's sentencing, clutching her mother's arm, shouting at the press. Pretty girl, small, with angry eyes, a cascade of black hair across her shoulders. Haggerty tried to imagine the girl's life--the little girl visiting her father in prison, the police cars in the driveway after school, urgent phone calls in the middle of the night, her mother dragging her from bed to hide with a neighbor. And in high school, the boys watching her from a distance, leaning against the fence at the convent school as she walked past, their eyes following her to the car, where Tommy Russo chewed his cigar. Haggerty smiled. She knew these boys, had met them at the fence when the afternoon bell rang. The nuns watched from the windows, taking notes on which girls tugged their skirts up at the afternoon bell, accepted drags on a boy's cigarettes, or, shielded by a crowd of boys, slipped into a car for the ride home. But Kate Haggerty, a lawyer's daughter, had gotten grades and gotten out. If she smiled at the memory of the boys at the fence, it was because distance is kind to such boys, smoothing their rough edges, giving their crude jokes, their dangling cigarettes, their battered cars the innocence of a life that holds no claim anymore. And if you can't get out, Haggerty wondered. // you're marked by the rumor of violence, the need for silence? If the boys at the fence watch you with wary eyes, what then? "You marry one," she murmured. "The first one who has the courage to ask you." She turned back to the news clipping, the photograph of Defeo pushing his way through the crowd, his eyes empty. A small guy, but wiry. His face was pale, the dark hair combed back. He had a weak mouth, curled up at one edge in a sarcastic grin. A boy who wants that life, who watches with envy as the car drives you away. "This wedding thing, it's gonna kill me." Russo could see him in the rearview, flicking the ash from his cigar through a crack in the window. "Angela, she's got this list. The fucking florist, the photographer, the band. It's three feet long, Tommy." He leaned forward, peering through the windshield. A block away, a car pulled into the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes, stopping in the pale light of the street lamp . A Chevy, blue. He settled back in his seat. "You think I'm kidding? She calls 'em all at least twice a week. The colors are wrong. The song list is too short, some fucking thing." "Keeps her busy." "Am I complaining?" "Yeah, Johnny." "All right. Give me a break here, Tommy. It's making me crazy, that's all I'm saying. Like we're launching a ship here, or something." His cigar glowed in the darkness. "She's busy, she's happy," Russo said. "Got no time to think, you know?" "Maria came to me, I figured, you know, it's too soon. I told her, 'Your mother, she's not ready for this. She's still thinking about Vinnie, right?' I mean, Tommy, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, and she's crying. Every night this happened. I get up in the morning, she's got the covers up over her head. I come back a couple hours later, she's still there. How's she gonna make a wedding?" The cigar glowed. Like it was his fault, Russo thought. Angle screaming at him. What's he gonna do about it? Doesn't he care? And him just sitting there, listening to it. Asks me one day, can we get a guy inside the prison? I told him, we got a dozen guys in there. They can't get at this guy. Sleeps with the guards, for Christ's sake. Just wait, I told him. He's gonna get out of there one day. Tell her, he says, shaking his head. Tell her. "Maria, she wants to go right in there, give her the news. What am I gonna say, no? So next thing I know, Angie's ourta bed, she's in the kitchen on the phone to Mr. Charles, making an appointment to get her hair done. Telling me she's gotta start looking for a dress, for Christ's sake." He flicked at his lip with one finger. "I'll tell you, though, I gotta get outta there, she starts with that list." "Here he comes," Russo said. A second car turned into the restaurant lot--a Lincoln, the leather roof shining under the lights. "Look at him in that car." "He's got an account down at the Soft-Wipe. You can see him over there every morning." Johnny grunted. He pressed a button, and the window rolled down. He leaned forward. The Lincoln parked in front of the entrance. As the headlights died, the Chevy pulled out, tires squealing. It swung past the Lincoln, came to a sudden stop. A man leaped out of the passenger side, approached the car. Even from their distance, they could see the driver look up, surprised, raising one fat arm as the man yanked the door open, lifted the gun ... Jackie Mullen felt the door jerked from his grasp. He looked up, saw the gun reflected in the window, raised one hand. The gun swatted his hand aside, nestled in the hollow of his ear. "Wait," he whispered. Three faint pops, echoing along the wet street. Jackie slumped across the front seat. The gunman trotted back to the Chevy. It pulled out with a screech, bumped over a curb in a shower of sparks. Headlights flaring, it rounded the corner and pulled to a stop beside them. Johnny nodded to the driver, looked past him at the gunman. "All right, Frankie," he said. "Angie said to remind you 'bout the fitting tomorrow. Mr. Tux, on Washington." The passenger nodded, a flash of teeth, and the Chevy roared off. Johnny settled back in his seat, the cigar glowing. "Okay, Tommy. Let's go." The note was on Haggerty's desk when she arrived at the office a few minutes after seven: See me. Ricdoli. She dropped her briefcase beside the desk and the file in a chair by the door. Riccioli, phone to his ear, waved her into a chair. He listened in silence, scribbling notes on a legal pad. A secretary came in with a sheaf of papers, which he tore open. "They just arrived," he said into the phone. He flipped through the papers, peeling off a police report, which he set aside. "And the car?" He scowled, scribbled a note on the pad, spun it around and pushed it across the desk to Haggerty. You took the D'Angelo file. Why? She took out a pen, but he held up one finger, pulled the pad back, flipped the page to make a note. "All right," he said. "I want witness statements, not just from the restaurant patrons, but everyone. You got a grocery distributor down the block, a couple of machine shops that used to have a swing shift. Put some people out there tonight, see what they come up with. This one's on my red list." He kept Haggerty waiting while he dictated a memo to his secretary, reminding her to have the police reports distributed to all attorneys who were active on the D'Angelo file. Haggerty, fumbling in her pocket for a pen, looked up in surprise as she heard her own name. Riccioli, his back to her, clicked off the recorder and spun the chair to face her. He considered her a moment in silence, then ejected the tape from the dictaphone and tossed it into a tray on the edge of his desk. "What do you know?" "I was just doing a routine update, staying current." "You have an interest in this file?" "The cop was released ten days ago. I just got the notice." Riccioli was silent for a moment. He turned to stare out the window. "Do you anticipate any activity from that angle?" "Hard to say. Johnny spotted the surveillance at the time, so he knew we were interested. That might have scared him off. On the other hand, to let something like this go . . ." She shrugged. "It's hard to forgive in his business." "The A.G.'s staff thinks he's trying to go up-market," Riccioli said. "They think he wants to clean up his act, get out of the messy stuff. The theory is he's planning to turn the whole thing over to one of his people and run the restaurants straight." "It doesn't make sense." "No?" He turned to look at her. "Explain." "There's no retirement option. Next guy would always be looking back over his shoulder, wondering where the loyalty lies. He gets itchy, thinks he's got to clean the slate." "Richard the Second," Riccioli murmured. "I'm sorry?" He shook his head. "Go on." "Johnny's made a lot of enemies over the years. They see he's out of the business, it means he's put down his guns. If they decide to take a shot at him, he can't hit back." "Unless the new guy is family," Riccioli suggested. "Then he avoids both problems. You figure your kid won't come after you, and he can't let someone else take you out." "But the son's dead." Riccioli smiled, shook his head. "Vinnie wasn't for the business. We kept an eye on him, but his father never let him near the action. That was fine with him, I think. He wanted to be an actor, did a few commercials. Liked to chase the girls. It's the old story, the father spends his life building it up and the son doesn't want it." "You're figuring Frankie Defeo," Haggerty said. "He's a tough kid." "But smalltime." "So was Johnny when he started. And Frankie has guts. He took a risk going after the daughter. He could have ended up in a ditch on the South Shore." "Or the heir apparent." "We figure he showed up a few weeks after the son died. Saw an opportunity, I guess. Johnny made it as a hitter. He took the dirty jobs, showed he was tough. But that was twenty years ago. Now you got wiretaps to think about, tax indictments, all the stuff we've thrown at Johnny over the last ten years. Maybe he looks at this kid moving on his daughter, he sees an operator. A tough guy, but someone who can play the angles, too." "I guess this explains the invitation," Haggerty said. "Johnny likes his little jokes." "But you don't buy it." Riccioli studied her. His eyes were tired. He reached for his coffee cup, and she could see by the way he gripped it that it was cold. He'd been here a while. "The A.G. boys are pretty convinced." "It's just a theory." "They've got a source." "Ah." That explained the missing update--an informant, his reports restricted to the top levels. Haggerty felt disappointed. He'd been testing her, letting her make her case when he had information that proved her wrong. Riccioli picked up the police report and tossed it across the desk. "Somebody took out Jackie Mullen last night. Put three bullets into him outside a pancake house on the South Shore. According to surveillance, he met with D'Angelo in the morning." "Did they get it on tape?" "Every word. Mullen was threatening Frankie Defeo." "And Johnny?" "Very cool. Heard him out and said he'd take care of it. Play it for a jury, it'll sound like conciliation." Haggerty's mind raced. D'Angelo knew he was under surveillance. Any important business, he left the office, made his calls from public phones. Why would he agree to meet Mullen there? Unless he wanted it on tape. "So you figure he's immunizing himself," she said quickly. "He's talking for the tape, pretending he wants to avoid violence." "Maybe." "You think Defeo did the shooting?" "It's his score. Johnny would want it settled before the wedding." "But he'd be giving us Defeo." "The district attorney is bringing an indictment this morning." Haggerty stared at the police report, her brow furrowed. "I don't get it. Why?" Riccioli glanced at his watch. He gathered his papers, rose. "That's the question of the day, isn't it." Frankie Defeo had coffee at the T&D Diner in Day Square every morning. He arrived around ten, sat at the counter, near the window. He folded his newspaper to the sports section, then watched the traffic. He knew, from recent experience, that habits were dangerous. "What gets a guy killed," Johnny had said pointedly, watching him slip the gun into his pocket, "ain't that he's got enemies. Fuck it, I got enemies. We all got enemies. What gets a guy killed is he likes pancakes in the middle of the night. Or he buys his newspaper at the corner store. He goes to see his girlfriend on Thursdays, parks his car around the block so his wife don't see it. You follow me?" But Frankie Defeo was a fatalist. Crazy, they called it in the neighborhoods. The kind of kid who'd jump the third rail and ride the back of a subway train to beat the fare. A kid who stole because stealing was easy and working was dull. Walking into a liquor store when he was fifteen with a .22 in his jacket pocket, the owner laughing at him, whipping that huge .357 from under the counter, still laughing when Frankie jumped through the plate-glass window. Frankie grinned. More guts than brains. Sitting there in the window of the T&D every morning, should have a target on his back. "Somebody wants me," he had told his friends, "they'll know where to find me." This morning, it was two guys in bad suits. He spotted them getting out of an unmarked in the Dunkin' Donuts lot down the block, looking over at the diner. Cops, he figured, 'cause the hitters don't dress that bad. They waited at the opposite corner until a uniform pulled into the Texaco across the street. When they started toward him, he sighed, waved the waitress over. He slipped a business card out of his wallet. "Gina," he said, "you wanna be an angel, call this number for me?" Even as a girl, Angie Tomasino had seen it coming. When her girlfriends had sprawled on the floor of her living room, scribbling their married names for every boy in the neighborhood, it hadn't taken long for her destiny to appear. "Angela D'Angelo," they sang, delighted with the cruelty of fate. And though Johnny D'Angelo was six years older, a tough boy who spent his nights unloading trucks in unlit alleys, they nudged her toward him at parties, called out to him in moaning falsetto as he drove past, tossing them a grin. She could feel his gaze on her as they shoved her forward, giggling. When, months later, he shouldered his way through the crowd at a party, holding her with his eyes, she bit her lip, threw her head back, and met his gaze. "Angela D'Angelo," he said, smiling. "It's got a ring to it." "That's the only way it'll happen," she said. He cocked his head, the smile lingering. "What?" "A ring." He laughed, pushed past her to the keg. Later that night, hearing shouts from the street, she had peered through a window to see him pinning a local boy to the ground, punching him. His shirt was spattered with blood. Watching it, she had felt strangely excited, as if she were somehow a part of it--the circle of shouting boys, the flash of headlights from passing cars, the dull thud of the punches. She could not pull herself away, watching until the distant wail of a siren scattered the boys. Rising, Johnny put the tip of his shoe against the boy's throat. "It's over," he said. "Friends now?" The boy swallowed hard, nodded. As Johnny stepped back, he glanced up at the house, catching her eye. He stood there for a moment, the siren growing louder, just looking at her. When she let the curtain fall, he turned and walked away. It was almost a year before they spoke again. By then, he had begun to make a name for himself, had beaten an arrest for car theft, was waiting for trial on another. He saw her in the bakery where she worked on Saturdays, walked clear past the window, then came back. He stood for a moment, looking in at her, making her remember him that night, the blood on his fists and shirt. He dropped his cigarette, pushed the door open, and came over to the counter where she was standing. "Hiya, Angela D'Angelo." "Johnny." "You're selling cookies now?" "Saturdays." "Your parents, they think you're a good girl, huh?" And he smiled at her, inviting her to smile with him. "You want some cookies, Johnny?" He looked down at the counter, ran his finger along the glass over the rows of cookies. "These any good?" "They're all good, Johnny. I gotta say that." "Lemme have one of these." She opened the case, took a piece of wax paper and lifted out an Ossi di morti, passed it over the counter. "Thirty-five cents." He dropped the coins in her palm, held the cookie out to her. "Here." "What?" "I hate these." He ran his finger along the counter. "How about these? You like these?" "They're okay." "Gimme one." He laid some more coins on the counter, pointed. "And one of these." She took the cookies out, but he'd already moved down the counter, his finger trailing along the glass. She took out a box, unfolded it. "That's okay, I don't need a box." "You gonna eat these here?" "Nah, I hate cookies." She looked at him. "Johnny, what're you doing?" "What else you like?" "I can't eat all these cookies." "How about one of these chocolate things?" "Stop it, Johnny." "Not till you come out with me." "You never asked me." He came back along the counter, gave her that smile. "So I'm asking you." Just like that, she told her daughter. She had thought about it a lot in the last few weeks, at night mostly, after a day of talking to florists, looking at reception halls, choosing menus. When she and Johnny got married, it was a ceremony at St. Stephen's and the reception at the KofC hall on North Margin Street. A few streamers across the ceiling, some flowers, all her high school friends wearing their prom dresses. Who could afford more? So this time, she was gonna do it right, give her daughter the kind of wedding she used to dream about, the kind you see in those magazines. Besides, we gotta do it right, 'cause of who your father is. It's a social event. People are gonna talk about it. We're setting the tone for the community. She smiled, coming up the front steps. If her friends had known, when they used to tease her. Angela D'Angela. Now, they had to drive out to Newton, past the country club where the rich lawyers played golf, and peek through the gates, up the curving drive, to see her house. She liked to imagine them, standing out there, trying to decide whether to ring the bell, biting their lips. She set her packages down on the hall table, stepping over the pile of mail that had spilled through the slot. Standing there, she counted the envelopes. Thirty-two, today alone. That made two hundred and eighty-four since the invitations went out ten days ago. Johnny had laughed at her, ordering the response cards. "What is this?" He waved the card at her. "Like they're not gonna come. These people, they're hoping they get invited." "You gotta do this, Johnny. That's just the way it's done." "All right." He tossed the card on the table. "But anyone says no, I want to know about it." And he had been right. For six days, she had been slitting the envelopes open, piling the acceptances on the kitchen table. Nobody had sent regrets. Every night, Johnny asked, teasing her with it. "So what's the story, anyone coming to this thing? We gonna be sitting there in an empty hall, listening to the band?" She set the regular mail aside, took out her letter opener. She got pleasure from these slim cards, the formality of the manners: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Russo will attend. People she saw every day, in the supermarket, at Johnny's office, became different in these cards. Like you could already see them in their gowns and tuxedos, toasting Maria with their champagne glasses. It made life seem more graceful, more real. These are people, the cards seemed to say, like the pictures in the society pages. This was tradition, family, the kind of thing that makes you feel like you have a place. Her fingers worked quickly, taking up each envelope, slipping the letter opener under the flap. A flick of the wrist to slit it open, a quick glance at the card, then she tossed it onto the pile on the table. As her fingers closed on one envelope, she paused. Too thick. There was something folded inside. She glanced at the front, no return address. She shrugged, tore it open. In her bedroom, Maria D'Angelo had the headphones on and U2 turned up loud. She bent over one bare foot, brushing the red polish onto the nail with careful strokes. In the slight pause between songs, she heard her mother scream. She took the stairs two steps at a time. Her mother was in the kitchen, her face pressed against the refrigerator, sobbing. "Momma? You okay?" Her mother waved her off, turned her face away. "What happened?" She shook her head, her shoulders trembling. Maria glanced at the pile of cards on the table, the unopened envelopes in a neat stack. On the floor beside her feet lay the letter opener and a crumpled page. She bent, picked them up. It was a response card, a single page stapled to the back: Thomas Riccioli will not attend. She flipped the card up. A photocopy of a form, the title in thick block letters--Notice of Release. The girl unlocked the bicycle from a post near the entrance of the parking garage, and tied her knapsack to a rack behind the seat with an elastic cord. She knelt, tucked her jeans into her socks, then unhooked the helmet from beneath the seat. "Look't this. I love those things. She looks like she's wearing a fuckin' hard-boiled egg on her head." "You wanna start the car?" Russo sighed. The girl had one leg over the bike. She balanced like that for a moment, clipping a pair of dark lenses over those weird little glasses. "We're gonna lose her, Johnny. It's rush hour. She'll cruise between the cars, we're still sitting there. You want her followed, you should get one of those bike guys, the messengers. Give him a hundred bucks, he'll stay on her ass. She sees him, she figures he's making a delivery, you know?" "Did I say tail her?" Russo started the car. "Where to?" "Get on the highway. Let's take a ride up to Medford." Ah, shit, Russo thought. Sightseeing. From the street, the house wasn't much to look at--an aging two-family on a small lot. Six rooms down, five up. The yard was overgrown, and it needed a coat of paint. A plastic slide and a couple of kid's bikes were strewn across the narrow drive at the side of the house. Russo could see the wife in the kitchen window, her head bent, looking down at something in her hands. Dishes. In the weeks after the accident, they'd spent hours parked on this street, sitting in the dark. Russo knew every house on the block, what time the people got home, which ones had kids, or dogs that had to get walked, the windows where televisions flickered late into the night. The cop had moved out when he got out of the hospital, moved into an apartment over in Brighton with two other cops who'd split with their wives. Johnny had kept a tail on him right through the trial, until Dukie, the tail, had started talking about splitting the lunch tab with the guys from the U.S. Attorney's office, asking them for copies of the pictures to give to his kid. "So fuck him," he had said to Johnny at the time. "They're just waiting for you to get restless. A clean shot or no shot, right? Let the court have him for now. We'll wait our turn." And Johnny had sat in silence, the tip of his cigar glowing, his face turned to the pale light of the windows, the shadows of the children moving across the shades. "I'm gonna walk up to the corner, get a pack," Russo said, twisting in his seat. "You want anything?" Johnny shook his head. "Ask about the cop," he said. Russo shrugged, flicked off the dome light, and got out. He walked up the street to the corner spa. An old man sat behind the counter, watching a soccer game on a portable television. "Camels," Russo said. "You got coffee?" "Yes. Very good." The old man nodded, his accent thick. A postcard was taped to the side of the register, a city in sunlight beside the sea, See Beirut Now! Russo smiled, shook his head. Everyone's homesick for somewhere. The old man poured the coffee into a cardboard cup, squeezed the lid on. He snapped a bag open, set the coffee inside and tossed in two packets of sugar and a creamer, a napkin, a plastic stirrer. Ask for coffee, get a picnic. He reached for the cigarettes, paused. "Camels, yes?" "That's right." The old man dropped the cigarettes into the bag. His hand hovered over the register. He pursed his lips, searching for the numbers, pecked out the sale. Russo tossed a twenty on the counter. "Maybe you can help me," he said. "I had a friend used to live up here. Loaned me money a while back. I wanted to pay it back, but I lost his number, you know? Jack Walsh. He's a cop." "Yes?" The old man frowned, his brow wrinkled. He considered Russo's face, frowned, shook his head. "I am sorry." He counted the change onto the counter, turned back to the television. As he walked back up the street, Russo could see that Johnny had the window down, the smoke from his cigar swirling in the flicker of passing headlights. It's coming, he thought. Gnawing at him, like he's got a gutful of hate, he's gonna die if he don't spill it. He paused on the sidewalk before the house, peeled the plastic from the top of the cigarette pack, shook one loose. He shook the match out, flicked it into the gutter. The wife was watching him from the window, her face still. It's coming, lady, he thought. And it's gonna be bad. Anne Walsh watched the man walk away into the shadows. A moment later, she heard a car door close. Cop, she thought. The way he looked up at her. She'd been expecting it since Jack was released. Before the trial, she had tried to get used to the idea of cops watching the house, keeping track of who visited, checking her packages, taking plate numbers off her neighbors' cars. She had grown up in the life, watched her father grow old in the uniform, married a cop she'd met at a barbecue held for her father's retirement. She'd become a teacher, working with abused children in a state facility, but she'd never lost the eye. She could spot an unmarked on the street, could tell an all-night diner from a greasepit, and always scanned the block before walking to her car. In her purse, she carried a tiny pistol, her father's solemn gift on the day she moved into her first apartment. When she met Jack, watching him squeeze onto a bench opposite her at the long picnic table, flashing his rugged smile, she had fixed him with a cool glance, hoping to discourage him. Cop's girl, cop's wife. She was determined not to share her mother's fate, lying awake through the late shift, wondering how she would raise the kids alone if ... But if he got the message, he gave no sign of it. He shrugged, struck up a conversation with her mother that lasted through the ice cream. During quiet moments, she could feel him looking at her, but when she glanced up at him, she found his attention fixed on her mother's words, a slight smile on his face. When the group at the table broke up, he rose with the women, swept up an armful of paper plates and followed her into the kitchen. "I hear you don't date cops," he said, dumping the plates into a garbage bag. He held it open for her to scrape the blackened grill. "Not cops I don't know." "Jack Walsh," he'd said, smiling. He leaned over the sink to run water over his hands, pulled a paper towel from the roll. "Ask your father about me." And then he was gone, the screen door slamming behind him. She could hear him calling out his good-byes in the yard below, caught a glimpse of him pushing through the gate. What's to ask, she had thought. Movie cop. Thinks he's Mel Gibson, crashing through doors with his gun out. If he passes a mirror, he might blow the collar. She grinned, shook her head. In the backyard, her mother was bent over her father's chair, whispering in his ear. They glanced up at her as she pushed through the screen door, her mother smiling. Her father, she noticed, was less cheerful. Later, as the crowd thinned, he waved her over, pulled up a lawn chair beside his own. "Your mother worries you might be lonely," he said. "She thinks you work too much." "And what do you think?" "I think you're smart to stay away from cops." "Got anyone in mind?" "Your mother does." "He said I should ask you about him." "Big mistake." "Yeah?" He drained his beer, leaned forward to pitch the empty can into a garbage bag. "Jack Walsh is a good cop," he said. "He seems to think so." "He's got good instincts, works the street better than I could." "But . . ." "Women like him. He's a handsome guy. You go for coffee, the waitress flirts with him." "So you're saying he stays busy." "I'm saying he's not your type." She laughed, pushing out of her chair. "I could have told you that." To her surprise, he let two days pass before calling. His voice was pleasant over the phone, quiet, but with a touch of laughter, so you pictured him smiling. Smooth, she thought. He gets lots of practice. "So did you ask your father about me?" "We talked." "Your basic neutral answer." "You anxious to know what he said?" "I can guess. He told you I'm a ladies' man. As a cop, I've got more guts than sense. Maybe I've seen too many movies." She smiled. "That about it?" "Pretty much. If you figured he'd say that, why did you tell me to ask him?" "Are we talking strategy now?" "I'm curious." "That's a good sign." "Call it idle curiosity." "You want the whole plan? You're a smart woman, independent. You're not gonna date a guy your father likes. I figure I'll do better as the black sheep. Maybe you'll take a risk." "So you're the boy my father warned me about." "It sometimes works." He'd picked her up at nine. Just coffee, she told him as she got into the car, and he smiled. To her surprise, she enjoyed herself. He told her stories--not about his work, but scenes from his childhood: a cop's son, who swore he'd never end up like his dad. "Before he made his twenty, bought the hardware store, he worked property crimes out of Area D. He used to sit there at night in the dark, the TV flickering but no sound on. A beer in one hand, another on the floor next to his chair. Just sat there, watching cop shows, like he was trying to figure out why it looked so different. I'd see him sitting there, and I'd think, 'Not me. No way.' " He smiled. At midnight, he drove her home, walked her to her door. "You've blown your image," she told him, unlocking the door. "How's that?" "You're not so bad." "New strategy. Gotta keep you off balance." And with that, he smiled, kissed her on the cheek, and walked back to his car. Two nights later, she invited him in. She dried her hands on a dish towel. The kitchen floor was scattered with toys. In the corner, Becky was busy taking all the pots out of a cabinet. From the living room, she could hear the faint blip, blip of a video game. "Danny," she called out. "Homework!" "I am!" She heard papers rustling. "No television, no video. You've got school tomorrow." "I'm almost done." She gathered up the toys and dumped them in a wicker basket. She made up Becky's bottle, used it to tempt her away from the cabinet long enough to straighten up the pots. That was it, she thought. The night, a few weeks before the accident, when she'd woken in the middle of the night to find him gone. She got out of bed, her legs suddenly weak with fear. You didn't hear the phone, she'd reminded herself. They'll call if . . . And then she heard a cough. She threw a robe over her shoulders, went downstairs. She found him in the living room, sitting with the lights out, the television flickering. When he looked up at her, he was crying. Just before dawn was worst. He would wake, suddenly, his heart pounding, the sheets bathed in sweat. Most days, he would lie there a few minutes, until his pulse slowed, then get up, make coffee, watch the sun come up. On weekends, he tried to make himself go back to sleep. Pulled the sheets up over his head and imagined that he was sailing--a clear sea, a warm night, the boat rocking gently. But his jaw ached with tension, the muscles in his legs cramped until he had to draw them up, digging into the flesh with his fingers. At last, exhausted from the effort, he would get up, turn the shower up so hot it stung his skin, leaning his head against the wall, while the water pounded the tension out of him. Awake, he couldn't remember the dream. Still, it didn't take a fancy shrink to figure it out. He woke feeling like something had swept over him. A feeling in the belly like you get when there's shooting. As if you had looked away at the wrong moment, and some crucial thing had slipped past you. Out of control, like a car sliding on a slick . . . He yanked the shower handle, so the cold water hit him before he could jump back. Gasping, he reached for a towel. His cane hung from the edge of the counter. The house was dark. On his second day in town, he had bought a set of curtains at a discount store. Thick and ugly, like the kind in roadside motels. Except he needed them, not to keep the daylight out, but to blind the windows at night. The last thing he wanted was to throw a shadow on the blinds when he moved through the house. Like a target. On Saturday, he wasn't scheduled at the store until noon. He ate his breakfast in the flicker of the television. A coyote, in a flying scarf and goggles, a pair of wings strapped to his back, soared through a crimson sky. Danny used to watch this, he thought, eating his cereal on the living room floor, climbing up into my lap. He pushed the thought away. A tiny cloud of smoke raced along a winding road. The coyote wiggled his eyebrows at the camera, adjusted his goggles, dove. A car crunched over the gravel in the drive. Jack dropped his spoon, knocked the chair over backwards as he flung himself toward the hall, where his coat hung. He pressed into the corner; the gun dropped into his hand with a slight tug at the coat hem. When his breathing steadied, he edged across the door to the narrow window, peered through. A woman was climbing out of a battered Volvo, pulling her scarf up against the wind. She carried no bag, and her hands were empty. He dropped the gun into the pocket of his bathrobe, and, suddenly conscious of his uncombed hair, limped back along the hall to the bathroom. His cane was still dangling from the kitchen table. Funny, he grinned. Like that coyote, a little cloud of dust behind me. The porch step creaked. At the door, he hesitated, one hand resting on the gun in his pocket. No chances. He glanced through the window. She was chafing her hands together, blowing into her cupped palms. No deep pockets, the coat buttoned up to the neck. Offer to take it, get behind her, where you can watch her hands. As she raised one hand to knock, he swung the door open. She looked up, surprised. "Mr. Walsh?" He remained silent, watching her face shift as she caught her balance, the lips tightening, the eyes growing guarded. "Mr. Walsh, I'm Kate Haggerty from the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston. I'd like a few minutes of your time." The kitchen was clean, she noticed. He set the chair on its feet, wiped the floor where the spoon had fallen with a paper towel. Heard me coming, she thought. He's expecting visitors. She accepted his offer of coffee, watched him limp across the small kitchen. He was thinner than the pictures, his face tired. She looked for a drinker's flush around his eyes, but saw none. It was a handsome face, she decided, tragic. A man who lives with pain. Making himself taste every ounce of regret. When he turned back to the table with the coffee, she looked away quickly. He settled into the chair, wincing as he stretched his leg out. He stirred his coffee, waited. "I'm sorry it's so early," she offered. "You're not as far from Boston as I thought." "About half a lifetime." She smiled. "Have you been back?" "Not much reason." He smiled. "Plenty of reason not to." "That's what I'm here to discuss." "What's to discuss? I'm not very popular these days." "Have you been threatened?" "No one has to threaten me. If they want me, they'll know how to find me." "You're not exactly on display here." "You found me." "I got your address from your probation officer. I had her pull your file. She has the only copy." He shrugged. "So they'll get it some other way." Haggerty frowned, looked away. Watching Walsh brood over his coffee, she found his pain too convincing. He expected trouble, that was obvious. He would sit here in his gloomy cabin, waiting for the unspoken threat to become real, even believing it a kind of justice. He thinks he deserves it, Haggerty realized. "Tell me about your partner," she said. He looked up, surprised. "What?" "Jerry Friar. According to your personnel file, you filed a DD 5 Complaint with Internal Affairs after his death. . . ." "That was a long time ago." "You made some serious charges." "I was angry." "Why?" He glared at her. For the first time, she glimpsed the rage that lay beneath his grief. His eyes clouded over, and he shifted his gaze to the window. "You read the file," he said. For a moment, she hesitated. The file revealed only that a hearing had been scheduled, and then abruptly canceled ten days later. Perched on a narrow bench in the hall outside the parole officer's cramped office, she had pondered the two dates, until, flipping back through the pages, she had realized why the date stuck in her mind. Three days, she had thought, growing excited. He filed the complaint three days after his partner was killed. What did he know that the Review Board didn't? What could get him mad enough to risk his career, then just drop it a few days later? What makes a good cop into a drunk? "I want to hear your side," she said. "What's this got to do with D'Angelo?" "You tell me." He considered her, shook his head. "You've got a question, you ask it." "All right," she leaned forward, held up one finger. "Jerry Friar was killed in a drug buy in the North End. Nothing happens there without D'Angelo knowing about it." "You're thinking like a prosecutor," he said. "It doesn't work that way on the street. Some kid sells a little smoke, makes some money, decides to move up to Burmese Yellow. He's working out of a triple-decker, got customers coming up the back steps. Now Johnny's gonna know about it even tually, because the distributor gets his stuff from the Chinese in New York, and they keep records. But this kid, he's got six months before they catch up with him. And when they do, Johnny just sends someone to let him know he's gotta start paying his taxes. He says yes, and he's back in business. That's about as organized as it gets. D'Angelo, he's just like the IRS, only you can reason with him." "What about Friar?" "Just like I told you. Some guy selling out of a triple decker. We knock on his door, he starts shooting. Jerry's coming up the stairs and catches it in the chest. Just ran out of luck." "This was during Operation Clean Sweep." "There was an even pound of crap." "What do you mean?" "Big publicity. The mayor on television, the D.A. Even the U.S. Attorney." He looked at her. "In the end, what happens? The reporters get some film, the mayor gets reelected. Jerry takes a bullet, bleeds to death on the stairs. The guy . . . gets away." His fingers kneaded the muscle in his leg, digging into the flesh. "Nothing changes." "So you were angry." "I got over it." "Two weeks later. First you filed a complaint." "We all make mistakes. I make a lot." "Tell me about the complaint." He looked away. Beyond the window, the trees stirred in the wind. A memory swelled within him--a streetlight throwing shadows across an empty room. No, not empty . . . He shook his head, pushing it away. "Let's go back," Haggerty suggested. "You said you knocked on the door, and the suspect began shooting. Of ficer Friar was coming up the stairs when he was hit. Is that correct procedure? Doesn't that leave him in the line of fire?" "You should be a lawyer." He smiled. "So, as I understand it, the Review Board could have drawn two conclusions. Either Officer Friar failed to take cover as you entered the apartment, or you moved too fast, leaving him exposed when you knocked on the door." He remained silent. "Maybe that's why you filed the complaint, to cover up your mistake." She paused, watching his face. "That could put a burden on a man, knowing that his screw-up got his partner killed." He tipped his chair back, stretching for the coffeepot. He filled her cup, slipped it back onto the counter. "But that's not what happened, is it?" "No." "Want to fill in the blanks?" He sipped his coffee. "You're doing fine." "All right," she said. "Let's try again. At what point did you identify yourselves as police officers?" He smiled thinly. "We didn't." "So you knocked on the door, and the suspect just started shooting." "Funny, isn't it." She sat back in her chair, considering. "I have only your word for this." "No, you don't. I never said it." "But you were willing to testify before Internal Affairs. You filed a complaint." "And then I withdrew it." "Why?" "I came to my senses." He looked at his watch, pushed his chair back. "I have to get ready for work." She caught his arm. "You're saying the guy knew you were coming." He stood, took the cane from the edge of the table. "I didn't say that," he said. The Volvo bounced over the gravel drive, paused at the edge of the road, then turned east. "She's gone." Harmon lowered the camera, let the curtain swing back. He noted the time in a log, grinning. "God, you remember the legs on her?" Cardoza loosed his headphones, letting them dangle around his neck. "Too cold," he said. He scribbled a series of numbers beside the time in the log. "She'd freeze it off." "I'd risk it." A flash of color caught Harmon's eye. He raised the camera, got two quick shots of Walsh locking the kitchen door, a few more as he limped down the driveway. "He's heading out." Cardoza leaned over to the edge of the stairs, called out. "Brodie! Let's move." A toilet flushed. Brodie clomped down the stairs in his boots, grabbed his coat at the door. "Bus stop?" Cardoza scanned the road with the telephoto. "He's walking east." "The lake again." "Stay warm." Brodie hurried out. Harmon picked up Walsh at a break in the trees, got a tight shot of his face. Worried. "Looks like a tough night." "Tough life, you ask me." Detective Lieutenant Tony Keenan waited for the patrol car to disappear around the corner. After six years in Narcotics, running buy-and-bust operations in the Irish projects of South Boston, Keenan shared the dealer's hostility to beat cops. The last thing you wanted in the middle of a buy was a couple of uniforms, their mouths stuffed with glazed donuts, gaping at you from a passing cruiser. More than once, his crew had found themselves, guns drawn, facing down some late-shift heroes, the buy blown. Part of the problem, Keenan knew, was that he had the look. He was a small man, his eyes narrow and intense. On the street, he wore his dark hair pulled back into a short pony tail. He kept a pair of dark glasses tucked in the breast pocket of his jacket, which, he figured, fit the image. A toothpick jutted from the corner of his mouth. Maximum trafficante. His crew laughed at the slicked-back hair, the salon tan. They called him Luis, savoring the pun on his rank. When the patrol car vanished behind the row of warehouses, Keenan reached up, unscrewed the bulb in the dome light, and got out of his car. He paused at the rear of the car, opened the trunk, and took out a small canvas bag. He checked the street in both directions, then walked up the street past a loading dock to a narrow ramp, where a yellow floodlight flickered and spit in the cold drizzle. At the top of the ramp, a narrow strip of duct tape was visible on the fire door. Keenan smiled, walked farther up the street to an empty lot. A chain-link fence ran along the street, topped by a loop of razor wire. He ran his hand along the fence until he found the cut in the wire, the thin strip of plastic woven through the loops. He pulled the plastic free and slipped through the hole, tugging the bag after him. He made his way through the shadows along the warehouse wall to a basement window set into a recess in the wall. One pane of the window was missing, and when he squeezed his hand through to slip the latch, his fingers came away coated with a thin film of oil. The window opened silently. He dropped the bag through the window. Gripping the edges of the window frame, he lowered himself through, dangled for a moment, then dropped into the darkness. He fished a penlight from his coat pocket, played it across the cavernous basement. Crates were stacked to the ceiling. The narrow aisles were spanned by cobwebs. Something skittered through the darkness to his left. Keenan picked up the canvas bag. Pushing the webs aside with one hand, he picked his way toward the distant stairs. The police cruiser slowed, its searchlight drifting across the loading dock, up the ramp, past the fire door. "Hold it," Officer Eddie Shea said. He swung the light back to the door. "I told you I saw something. It's taped." His partner, Officer Frank Breden, threw it into park. "Good eye," he said, picked up the radio. Keenan could smell him on the stairs. The stink of his cheap cigarettes lingered in the narrow stairwell, getting stronger as Keenan moved quietly up the stairs toward the third-floor landing. He was seated on a crate near the stairs, his back against a fire wall. A thin man, with blunt features, his dark hair swept back and oiled. Mestizo, Keenan thought. Straight from the barrio. Beside him, a narrow window looked out over the bright floor of the warehouse below. He smoked, one hand toying with the cigarette pack on the crate next to him. A rifle lay across his lap. Keenan slipped out of the unlit stairway, moving quietly. He was only a few yards away when the man glanced up, his eyes registering surprise. Keenan let the canvas bag drop against the stock of the rifle, smiling. The man sat very still, watching him. "Evening." Keenan nodded toward the window. "He down there?" The man nodded. His gaunt face was green in the light from the frosted window. Keenan eyed the rifle. "That for me?" The man gave a thin smile, shrugged. Keenan picked up the pack of cigarettes, shook one loose. "You mind?" he asked. "These things, they got a wicked stink. I could smell you two floors down." The man was silent, watching him lay the pack on the crate, bring the cigarette slowly to his lips. "Light?" The man hesitated, then shrugged, raised up on one hip to slip his hand into his pocket. Tight pants, Keenan thought. A ladies' man. His left hand drifted under the hem of his coat. As the man raised a slim gold lighter, Keenan leaned closer. The knife blade caught the flame, flashing under the man's chin. He gave a startled grunt. The flame sputtered, died. One hand drifted up to touch his throat. He looked at it, surprised by the blood dripping from the fingers. He leaned back against the wall, slowly. Keenan lifted the rifle from his lap, laid it on the floor. He took the cigarette from between his lips, flicked it against the man's blood-soaked shirt, a shower of sparks tumbling into his lap. "They'll kill you, these things." "You're late." Sagria was seated at a table in the tiny office. A lamp swung on a cord above his head, gleaming on his bald head. Keenan looked around for the suitcase. Sagria watched him in silence. "In due time, my friend." He gestured to the bag. "I see you have brought what we discussed." He reached for the bag. "May I?" Keenan's hand closed on the handle, slid it off the table. "Get the money." Sagria smiled, shook his head. He stood slowly, smoothing his tie. He crossed to the door, reached up to a cooling vent, and pulled off the grill. A briefcase was wedged into the duct. "Satisfied, Lieutenant?" He returned to the table, leaving the briefcase. "I want to see it." Sagria waved a hand toward the bag, casually. "Be my guest." Keenan walked over to the duct, stepping into the tiny squares of light from the window. Now, he thought. As I reach up for the bag. A clean shot through the window. He slipped the briefcase from the duct and walked back to the table. Sagria frowned. "You got a problem if I count this?" The frown vanished. A smile, the hand extended, palm up. "Please." Sitting in his chair, not moving a muscle. He knows something's wrong. Now he's got to run with it. Keenan laid the briefcase on the table, pressed the latches with his thumbs. It was locked. He sighed, shook his head. "You gonna give me the key, or I gotta break it open?" Sagria's eyes were on the window, the darkened warehouse beyond. "You consider this a misfortune, Lieutenant. Dealing with me. Am I correct?" "Like stepping in dogshit. It's part of the job." "Ah, but you're wrong. Your job, Lieutenant, is to arrest me." He gestured toward the briefcase. "This, I think, is another matter." He ran a hand over the top of his head, then smoothed the fringe of hair above his ears. His eyes remained on Keenan's face. "May I show you something, Lieutenant?" Sagria slipped his hand into his pocket, drew out a bullet, flattened on one side where it had whanged off something hard. He smiled at Keenan, leaned forward across the table, laid the bullet before him. Keenan looked at it for a moment. He picked it up, held it up to eye level. A big bullet--nine-millimeter, he figured. The flattened edge meant bone, a head shot maybe. A guy lying on his side, so the bullet leaves the skull, hits the pavement and ricochets, ending up in a wall. Some cop digs it out, realizes he's found a treasure. Keenan turned it in the light, tracing the spiral pattern from the gun barrel. And then, suddenly, his mind flashed on a scene of carnage, a wall splattered with blood. Keenan laid the bullet on the table. Two shots for each guy. That meant three bullets still missing. Three nines each with a thin spiral carved in the lead--a ballistics signature-- as they had spun from the barrel of a Clock 7 registered to Lieutenant Tony Keenan, Narcotics Division, on a departmental UF 10, Force Record Card. Keenan sighed. Stupid mistake. He kept two throwaways in his locker, and another--an old .45 automatic, the serial numbers filed--taped beneath the seat of his car. That night, almost two years before, he'd parked near the docks, the kid who fingered the couriers grinning at him, watching him slip the .45 from under the seat and drop it into the pocket of his coat. They'd found the Colombians sleeping on a pair of cots in the back room of a bait shop. He got in their faces with the .45 and the badge, put them on the floor, facedown, spread. He put the gun behind one's ear, a fat guy, his breath whistling through his bad teeth. ^Donde estd? tQue dijo? He'd pulled back on the slide, let it snap, chambering a round. The man stiffened, sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. The kid watched them from the door. He bounced the .38 against his thigh, smiling. iComo se llama? Machito. iDonde estd, Machito? The man took a moment, thinking about it. Keenan got his other hand in the guy's hair and pulled his head back so the gun pressed into the bone. Keenan glanced over at the other one, saw his body tense, listening. La ultima posibilidad, Machito. jNo se! He pulled the trigger. A dull click as the gun jammed. Machito screamed, kicked out at him. Keenan brought the gun down on his head, slammed his face into the floor. The other one was on his knees now, lunging for the door. The kid, surprised, brought the gun up just as the man barreled into him, driving a shoulder into his gut. They went down in a heap, the kid gasping for breath. Keenan dropped the 45, drew the Clock from the shoulder holster as the man scrambled to his feet. He shot him, once, at the door. He got to his feet, thinking. Machito was moaning, both arms wrapped around his head. The one in the door was still breathing--a thick, bubbling sound. Chest wound. He'd be dead in a few minutes. The kid lay beside the table, coughing. Keenan sighed. He got the fat one by the hair, pulled him up to sitting position, leaned him against one of the cots. His head lolled back. Keenan slapped him, twice. His eyes opened. Keenan let go, stepped over to the partner, got a handful of his shirt and flipped him over. He put the gun under his chin, looked up at Machito, who was shaking his head, raising one hand. Keenan pulled the trigger. A moment later, as Machito screamed, slapping bits of bone and brain off his face, Keenan realized that he'd been pointing. He turned, saw a large freezer in the front room. As he started for it, Machito pushed up off the cot, his eyes wild, lurching toward him. Keenan spun, shot him through the throat. Machito hit the floor and skidded, catching the edge of a display case with his shoulder. Glass showered over him. He flipped onto his back, his feet trying to get a grip on the floor. Keenan walked around the display case, leaned over, and put a round through the side of his head. He found the cocaine, packed in plastic, in the bottom of the freezer, under a thick layer of ice. He retrieved the .45 and got the kid to his feet. The kid leaned against the door, coughing. Then he straightened, shook his head. "Shit." They dragged the bodies to the edge of the dock and tumbled them into the harbor. Four days had passed before the bodies washed up. Keenan forced himself to let a week more go by before he reached for the phone, dialed the ballistics lab. "You got anything on a couple of floaters Area B pulled outta the harbor," he asked the lab clerk. The clerk punched it up on his computer, the keys clicking softly. He shifted some papers around, punched the keys again, then put Keenan on hold. When he came back, his voice was apologetic. The bullets were missing. Just misplaced, probably. Try back in a few days. Fine, he'd thought, smiling to himself. Trust the lab to fuck it up. The bait shop had remained closed for a week. A fire, the sign said. When it reopened, there was new glass in the display case, a fresh coat of paint on the walls. A bit of plaster, he thought, over the hole where they'd dug the bullet out. Now, in the harsh yellow light of the warehouse office, he watched Sagria carefully, waiting for the pitch. If they wanted something, why set up the hit? Was he just stalling, giving the mestizo a chance at a clean shot? Or did he really want to talk? Slow down, he thought. Feel it out. Sagria spread his hands. "Your mistake, of course, was you became greedy." Keenan watched him. His head was sweating. And the accent was slipping, not so smooth as before. "I wonder about this two years ago," he continued. "When does he become greedy? For two years, you arrest my couriers, take a little off the top before you make your report. A bit here, a bit there. This I can accept. Your salary, I understand, is not large. For two years, you take your little bites. I admire your restraint. 'A disciplined man/ I think. I try to find your source, but you I do not confront." He smiles, shrugs. "A businessman, he must pay the tax." Then, leaning forward, his face stern. "But when you take my people, you do not make the arrest, I read in the papers that they float in the harbor, I think maybe it's time we talk." "You want the bag. I want the money and the bullets. What's to talk about?" Sagria cocked his head, looked at him with curiosity. Bullets? "Alas, it is not so simple. There is still the matter of my men, the ones who could not swim." Keenan shrugged. "No papers, no prints. They don't exist." Sagria tapped his forehead with one long finger. "At first, I think the same. But then, I think this is wrong. These men, maybe they are more real now than they were in life." He picked up the bullet, holding it gently. "Such men are tools, like this bullet. Barrio rats, we call them. They are nothing until I put them to use. But now, like this bullet, they become interesting. Your homicide detectives, they ask themselves, 'Who are these men? Where do they come from? Who kills them?' " Keenan watched his fingers toy with the bullet, making it vanish and reappear, the light shining on the dull metal. "What do you want?" "Ah, you see? We have something to talk about after all." His hand disappeared into his pocket again, emerging with a small key, which he laid on the table. "Open the briefcase." Keenan picked up the key, unlocked the briefcase and popped the latches. The money--ten stacks of twenties-- was wrapped in thin paper bands. He picked up a stack and ran his thumbnail over the edge of the bills. He stopped counting at a hundred. "A good feeling, yes?" Keenan dropped the money into the briefcase, closed it. Take your time, he thought. Don't rush. "I'm listening," he said. Sagria smiled, returned the bullet to his pocket. "I have an associate, a man with whom I am doing business. He wants some information that I want to give him. A gift to my friend. I think of you. An easy task." "What kind of information?" He took a paper from his pocket, slid it across the table. "A name, nothing more." Keenan glanced at the paper. A single page of an FBI informant's report, the speaker identified only by his six digit identification number. Large sections of the page were blacked out with a thick marker. "An informant," Sagria said quietly. "A man who speaks when he should be silent. You have access to such information, do you not?" Keenan tossed the paper on the table. "You got this, why do you need me?" Sagria gave a sad smile. "Alas, that is all we have been given. An appetizer, offered by a man we do not trust." Keenan thought about it, then pushed the briefcase across the table. "Keep your money," he said. "A point of honor, Lieutenant?" "It's not my line." "He is an informant, Lieutenant. A man of no honor. But like Machito and Garvas, my poor swimmers, he may have great worth as a corpse." "To who?" Sagria smiled. "That is my business." Keenan shook his head. "You want me to make it my business. I like to know who I'm working for." Sagria considered for a moment, nodded. "Our friend of the angels." Keenan hesitated, shook his head. He gestured to the bag. "Check your merchandise. I'll take the bullets." Sagria gazed at him, thoughtful. Again, bullets. He glanced at the bag. "A poor bargain, don't you think?" "As you said, I made a mistake." "I did not mean for you. My poor Machito, he had a family." "Spare me." Sagria looked at him from under his heavy brows, frowning. "That I cannot do." Cocky son of a bitch, Keenan thought. Ready to give the signal if I walk out. He glanced down at the bullet in the middle of the table. Still. You listen, you learn. He waved a hand at the canvas bag. "Check it," he said. Sagria shrugged, unzipped the bag. He took out a plastic packet, unwrapped one corner and touched his finger to the powder. As he raised the finger to his lips, Keenan took the .45 from his pocket, swung it up with both hands, and shot him, twice, in the chest. The packet exploded in a white cloud. Sagria tumbled back off the chair. Keenan came around the table and shot him again, once in each eye. He bent over the body, ran his hands through Sagria's pockets. He found the bullet, slipped it into his pocket. But when he searched for the remaining bullets, he came up empty. He felt the panic rise within him. Where were the other bullets? He squatted beside the body, thinking about it. Sagria had the bullet from the wall. If the others had vanished from the ballistics lab ... A memory tugged at him. He ran his hand across his face. The realization straightened him up. He took a step back, slapped his forehead. "Ah, shit." He picked up the briefcase, glanced around. The cocaine had settled in a white mist over the table and floor. "Shots fired." Eddie Shea pressed against the wall of the narrow hall, drew the hammer on his service revolver back with both thumbs. He edged toward the glass door, which was propped open a crack with a strip of cardboard. A pale light shone from the warehouse floor beyond. He could hear his partner's breathing behind him. His palms were sweating. He paused, rubbed his right hand along the side of his pants, shifted the gun. He reached for the door, jerked it open. He went through the door, moving fast. He split to the left, found cover behind a stack of crates. He got the gun up on top of the crates, hoping it wasn't paper towels inside, and did a quick scan of the warehouse floor. Empty. Then he saw the office off to one side, the lights on. A figure moved past the window. Breden came through the door, split right, and ducked behind another pile of crates. A stack of iron rods leaning against the wall behind him toppled with a crash. In the office, the figure froze, ducked out of sight. "Police," Shea shouted. "Toss out your weapon!" For a moment, nothing happened. Then a sudden movement, a crash of breaking glass, and the figure darted past the window, heading away from the door. Shea edged around the side of the crates, then went left for the wall. He heard footsteps, off to his right, knowing it was Breden. He came up on the office from the back, away from the windows. He peered around the corner to the door, which was closed. Two steps up, back to the wall, a quick glance through the window. A body lay in a snowfall, arms outflung. The face was coated with blood. Otherwise, the office was empty. A window on the opposite wall had been shattered, the glass pushed out. A shuffle of footprints in the dust. He stepped down, went around the office, keeping it between him and the open warehouse floor. Under the window, the footprints led off toward a door, with a stair beyond. Breden came up from behind a forklift and swung his gun up to cover the doorway, waving him forward. He followed the footprints, which trailed off before they reached the door. Not enough for a trail, Shea thought. But he's got it on his shoes. Breden came up behind him, and they eased into the stairway. Metal steps, two flights for a floor. If he was on the stairs, they'd hear his footsteps. Three floors above them, a bare bulb hanging at each landing, a dark basement below. You could see between the steps all the way to the top. He could be waiting in the doorway to pick them off as they came. Or in the basement ... He didn't even want to think about that. "Where's our backup," he whispered. Breden shrugged. He was sweating hard, the drops trailing down the side of his face. Shea swallowed, waved Breden up the stairs. He went down. Keenan heard the cop ease into the basement, feeling his way in the dark, not wanting to use his flashlight. He ducked out of the aisle, then kept still for a moment. There was a lot of basement between him and the window, where a thin strip of moonlight fell across the back wall. He'd have to drag a packing case over to climb out. If the cop heard him, he'd get him hanging from the window frame, put a bullet in his leg in case he managed to pull free. That's what he'd do. Weird to be on the other side, listening to the cop move through the darkness, trying to figure a way out. His heart was pounding. Not the high he got on a bust, but scared. He wanted the whole thing over--Sagria dead, the 45 under thirty feet of water, the money tucked away in a safe-deposit box in a bank down in Providence, even a bit of information he would find a use for, soon. It was close; until the cop stepped into the basement, quicker than he expected, he was sure he'd make it. Now he could hear sirens in the distance, could feel it slipping away from him. The cop moved into the long aisle, moving slow, keeping to the right. Without thinking, Keenan stepped clear, brought the .45 down, and emptied the magazine down the length of the aisle. The first three rounds caught the cop, spinning him around. His hand grabbed at a crate, and a whole stack crashed down on him. Silence. Keenan stood for a moment, uncertain. Footsteps echoed on the metal steps. Get out! Now! He ran down the aisle to the window, dragged a crate over and clambered up. He tossed the briefcase through, hooked the window frame with his fingers, and heaved. He hung for a moment, his arms trembling with the strain, then got a knee into one corner, wedged a shoulder through, and he was out. He grabbed the briefcase and ran for the fence. It was snowing. The air tasted like freedom. Riccioli was in a foul mood. The newspapers were playing the cop's shooting at full volume--two photographs and a thick headline: "Cop Clings to Life!" A major cocaine distributor had been killed, execution style, and the crime scene --the tiny office, the table and two chairs--suggested a negotiation gone awry. A third body, an unidentified male Hispanic, had been found at the scene, armed with a rifle but killed with a knife. Riccioli shook his head. It didn't make sense. A meeting, that much was clear. The killer was expected, even trusted. He cuts the bodyguard's throat, then strolls down to his meeting, where he pulls a .45 and blows away a ranking Colombian, then pauses to gun down a cop on his way out the door. Any way you look at it, a serious breach of good business practices. Riccioli tossed the newspaper aside. The locals would claim jurisdiction, because of the cop. But a deal gone this sour might leave bodies strewn across the countryside for months. Sagria's murder left a hole in the distribution network, and a lot of angry Colombians. His people would have to work their files hard in the next few weeks, trying to keep up. Nothing like a gang war to fuck up the files. A folder on his desk held the night's surveillance reports. He flipped through them quickly, pulled out the D'Angelo transcripts. He skimmed them, making notes with his red marker in the margins. An hour in the parking garage below the courthouse, forty minutes parked on a side street in Medford, the last stop of the night. Starting to get impatient. Riccioli smiled. He was feeling better now. The last transcript was from the team in Athol. His eye ran down the page, paused. He started again, reading with a growing sense of alarm. "Shit!" He hit the switch on the intercom. "Joan, get Hag gerty in here. Now!" He got up and paced. When he heard the outer office door close, he went to the window, stood looking out. The door opened behind him. He didn't turn. "You wanted me." "Sit." He watched the traffic on Congress moving past Post Office Square toward Faneuil Hall. A week ago, he had left the office early on a Saturday afternoon to meet his wife there. While the girls scrambled through the cobbled plaza, they sat on a bench, eating frozen yogurt, Caroline telling him, quietly, the reasons why she wanted a divorce. He turned to face Haggerty. He had caught her early, still wearing her sneakers. Her suit was expensive, tailored to show off her figure. He remembered, too clearly, the days of living on an Assistant U.S. Attorney's salary, crammed into a tiny apartment, buying a few good things for the office while your jeans split at the knee. Not so long ago, even now. Looking at her, he felt a burst of envy, and with it, a sudden awareness of desire. She was a stunning woman, her face delicately carved, her figure taut from exercise. The kind of woman, he thought, who can shut down street comments with a cool look. A woman that men stare after in restaurants. A type that exists only in fantasy, until she passes you on the sidewalk, stealing your complacency, making you despair at your life. He cleared his throat. "You went out to Athol," he said. He picked up the transcript and dropped it in front of her. She glanced down at the transcript, then back up at him. Registering the fact of the tapes, her eyes narrowing. He turned back to the window. "I don't encourage contact with the subject of an ongoing investigation. In fact, I require that any such communications take place only with my authorization." "I needed information." "On what?" "The file seemed incomplete." He was quiet for a moment, considering. "What did you learn?" "I'm not sure. Walsh is a bitter man. He filed a grievance after his partner's death, then withdrew it. Now he talks like a man who's learned a few things the hard way." "Could be guilt." She shook her head. "That's what I thought at first. I went out there to see if I could shake his story. He's not a man who shakes easily." "As I recall, we're talking about a guy who spent a few years as a drunk." "That's just it. You look at this guy now, he's a man waiting to die. But he's looking it in the eye. It would take a lot to turn this guy into a drunk. He's like a man who lost his faith. Now he doesn't need it. He's got D'Angelo." Riccioli smiled. "The Church of Johnny." "He's a quiet guy, Walsh. Not much interested in telling his side of the story. Makes you work it out for yourself. He knows more than he's saying." "All right." Riccioli turned, perched on the window ledge, his legs stretched out in front of him. "Let's suppose, for a moment, that you're onto something with this. Walsh has a past. He's seen too much, lost his illusions." He flicked a speck of lint off his pants, ran one finger along the edge of the crease. "How does that help us with D'Angelo?" Haggerty glanced down at the legal pad on her lap, the page still blank. "He claims there's no connection." "But you disagree." "It's just an instinct." "The trouble with instincts," Riccioli said, "is they make what's simple seem complex. This guy, he's got no friends left. Lots of enemies. He doesn't sleep too well at night. You come along, trying to get his side of the story, he's gonna grab onto you like a drowning man. He'll pull you into the middle of this, and we lose our shot at D'Angelo." "That's not what happened out there." "I know what happened. I read the transcript. I'm telling you this as a warning. Stay clear of this guy. We didn't create the situation. It landed in our lap. I give you credit for that. Our job now is to make the best of it. D'Angelo's starting to get itchy. Let's not blow it now." Haggerty nodded, silent. He watched her for a moment, looking down at the blank pad in her lap, thinking about it. When he stood, she closed the pad. She got up, smoothing her skirt. "Everything okay, otherwise?" She looked up at him, surprised. "Life treating you okay?" "Sure. Fine." Riccioli smiled, wanting to say more, but feeling awkward now. He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his coat. "This place can eat you up. No one knows that better than me." She smiled, looking away. "It's a lot of work, but I don't mind. It's exciting." "Just don't forget to have a life." They stood in silence for a moment, embarrassed. Riccioli glanced down at some papers on his desk. "Could you ask Joan to step in here on your way out?" "Tony." Keenan stood on the porch, smiling at her through the screen door. Sunglasses folded in his hand. T-shirt and jeans neatly pressed under the leather jacket. "I was out here running errands. Figured I'd stop by, see how things are going." She pushed the door open. "The kids are at school. I was just straightening up. Danny'll be sorry he missed you." She stood in the middle of the kitchen, looking at the dishes in the sink. She must look terrible, her eyes tired. Dressed for housework. She smiled. "Can I offer you some coffee?" "Thanks, Anne. That'd be nice." Walsh had six boxes of wood screws on the counter next to the register, sorting them by size. "A couple of weeks of farmers digging through 'em, they get all mixed up," Jerry had said, dropping the boxes on the counter. "We get complaints. Some guy tries to use a half inch screw on quarter-inch plywood, he brings 'em both back. I don't give him his money, I lose a customer." A guy was looking at pipe wrenches in aisle two. A woman by the window was examining prices on the snow shovels, frowning. Ted, the stockboy, had walked down the street to meet his girlfriend for lunch. Jerry was back in the office with the blinds down, doing the bills. Walsh took a sip of coffee, watched the girl coming across the square, all bundled up in a parka. Watched her stop on the sidewalk, the traffic passing, then come on across, pausing under the awning to push the hood back. The bell on the door gave its dull jingle. It was the haircut, Jack figured, that drew the eye. He watched her as she walked back into electrical, across to aisle four, and back up to where the wood screws should have been. The woman by the window looked up at her as she went past, shaking her head, going back to her shovels. He'd seen women with shorter hair in Harvard Square, maybe Jamaica Plain, even bald in recent years. Holding hands, dressed in those T-shirts with Spanish slogans, a campesino waving a rifle in the air, a little pin in the shape of a triangle up by the shoulder. When he was in uniform, they'd give him hostile looks, waiting for him to make a comment. A lot of cops did. Or just a grin, nudging your partner, making little kissing sounds as they walked past. He'd just shrugged. No stranger than being a cop, walking the streets in a uniform all summer, fifteen pounds of gun belt dragging at your hip. Harder, maybe. All the stares. She was coming up the aisle toward the counter now, smiling at him. Her hair was like the crewcuts they used to give kids, but soft, so you want to run your hand over it. Pretty when you looked at it up close. Dark, with little streaks of silver, showing off her long neck. Her eyes looking at you, amused, telling you she didn't care what you thought. "You got 'em," she said, shaking her head. She pointed at the wood screws. Unzipping the parka, shrugging out of it. And there it was, the Spanish, the campesino, stretched tight across her breasts. No pin. He smiled. "Customer service." "I know you," she said. "You're up the road from me. I see you getting on the bus." "You're in the red house. With a porch." "That's it. How's your leg." He shrugged. "How'd you hurt it." "I got stupid." "Never hurt me." She smiled again, her eyes wrinkling slightly. "I lied. I know about your leg." "Yeah?" "Small town." "Funny I haven't seen you around." "I hang around the house, mostly. I'm a potter. Got a wheel set up in the living room. I get a lot of orders this time of year, for Christmas. I get going, I can be in there for days." "But you hear the rumors." She shrugged. "People talk. You're a tragic figure, you know?" "That's what they tell me." She looked down at the box of screws, dipped her hand in the pocket of her jeans and came out with a three-quarter inch. She grinned, shook her head. "I'm not sure how to ask for this . . ." "Let's skip it. It's too easy." "I need about ten of these." He counted them out, snapped a tiny paper bag open with a flick of his wrist, dropped them in. "That's fifty-four cents, with tax." "I love these little bags," she said. "Only place you get 'em." "That's why we're here." She stuffed the bag into the pocket of the parka before putting it on. She zipped it up, raised the hood. "Stop by some time. I'll show you my wheel." He shook his head, smiling to himself, as she crossed the street. Takes all kinds. "You hear from Jack?" Anne shrugged. "His lawyer talks to my lawyer." She was wearing an old gray tank top, tied in a knot under her breasts. When she reached for her coffee, Keenan could see her nipples outlined against the cloth. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, no makeup, a pair of old sweatpants on her legs. She was beautiful. "What about the kids?" "Danny writes to him. I let Becky scribble on the paper with a crayon. He calls once in a while, talks to Danny about the Celtics." "They still got him under wraps?" "Pretty much. He won't give us his address. Says it's better we don't know." "How do you send the letters?" "There's a post office box out in Worcester. Someone forwards it." He took a sip of his coffee. "That's tough," he said. "Danny took it hard. He's had some trouble in school." "You want me to talk to him?" "It's nice of you to offer. He looks up to you. His father used to talk about you." "I'll stop by some time when he's home." "Come for dinner." He smiled. "How can I refuse?" And suddenly, she was crying. The tears ran down her cheek. She wiped at them with the back of her hand. Smiling at him, sadly. Shaking her head. He reached out, took her hand. She squeezed it, hung on. He stood, came around the table to where she was sitting, taking both hands now, raising her out of her chair. He put his arms around her, pulling her to him. She buried her face in the hollow of his neck, sobbing now. His hand drifted across the bare skin of her lower back, gently. "Tell me," he whispered. "There's the bus," Harmon said. He dropped the newspaper next to his chair, went over to the window. He checked his watch. "Six-seventeen. Running late." Cardoza came out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on a dish towel. "All the traffic down at the Food King. This morning, a lady down there asked me to thump her cantaloupe. She's got this melon in her hands, smiling at me. She says, 'I can never tell with these things. I want a ripe one.' You believe that? Thump my melon, she says." Harmon watched through the binoculars as two women and an old man got off the bus. Then Brodie, heading off down the road, carrying a lunch bucket. Walsh came last, taking his time on the steps, getting the cane out first. He hesitated for a moment, looking up the road. "Looks like something caught his eye." He scanned up the road a second. Nothing. He brought the binoculars back to the bus stop. Walsh was gone. "Shit. Where'd he go?" He swept the glasses along the strip of road down to his driveway, all the way to the house. Then back along the road in the other direction. He caught a glimpse of movement among the trees on the far side of the road. "Got him. He's heading up the drive to the red house." Cardoza picked up the pen, made a note in the log. "Ever been there before?" "Not since we've been here." He was standing on the porch, looking away from the door, like he was having second thoughts, getting ready to leave. The door swung open. "Well, whad'ya know." "What?" "Lady friend." The door closed behind him. Harmon ran the glasses over to the side of the house, where the old pickup was parked. "I got a blue Ford half-ton. License 413 DYZ." "House number?" Back to the door. "Two twenty-one." "Phone wires?" "Southeast corner, to a pole on the next lot." "I'll call Fowler. Get a truck out tonight." She kept the place hot. A wood-burning stove in the kitchen, glowing red. Electric space heaters plugged in everywhere. She comes in a room, the first thing she does is turn up the heat. There's an inch of snow on the ground, wind bending the trees back, and she answers the door in her underwear. Smiling at him. "I'm glad you came." Little panties and the campesino shirt. Clay on her arms, the insides of her thighs. Grabbing his arm, pulling him in. "Don't let the cold in." Photographs on all the walls, black-and-white prints taped to the paneling. Old women on a hotel porch in Miami. Farm workers in a field, squinting against the sun. A stripper on a stage, a snake draped across her shoulders. "So tell me," she called from the kitchen. "You were really a cop?" "Seven years." "You like it?" "For a while." He crossed the room, paused in front of a row of pots on a shelf. Navajo designs, mostly. A few in bright pastels, modern patterns. "Are these yours?" "You see it, I made it." "Nice work." "I'm having tea. You want some?" "Sure, thanks." "You want mint, chamomile, or Sleepy Time?" "Anything." Beyond the shelf were more photographs. Three kids sitting on a sofa in a vacant lot, a burned-out building at the rear. A couple of guys in drag, blowing kisses. An Elvis impersonator, his gut sticking out of a silk jumpsuit, signing autographs for two women with hair piled high on their heads, their faces serious. "I like your pictures." "My true love. I'm not that good, really. It's the people you look at, not the shot." She came out of the kitchen, carrying two cups. She handed him one, sat down at her wheel. A mound of clay was piled on the plate, shapeless. "Maybe I'll take you. Behind the counter at the hardware store, you know? Get that look you have." "What look?" "Cop look. Watchful." He sipped the tea. Mint. "You always walk around in your underwear?" "I got tired of washing the clay off my clothes. Does it bother you?" He looked at her long, slim legs, the lean angle of her hip, her small breasts under the T-shirt. She smiled at him, set her cup down on the floor, pulled the low bench up close to the wheel. She turned it on, the mound of clay spinning. "Your customers mind?" "They're mostly women. Housewives. They look at the pots. Once in a while, one of them gets interested." "Yeah?" She shrugged. "It's a small town." "You always live here?" "I moved out from Cambridge last year." He smiled, sipped his tea. "I grew up in upstate New York. Got tired of the noise in the city. Somebody heard about this place. It was cheap. How 'bout you?" She pressed her hands in the clay, shaping it. Digging her thumbs in to make a ridge. "I grew up here." "No kidding. And you came back anyway?" "Not much choice." "Alaska. California, a lot of people go there." "I got kids. I hope to see 'em again, one day." She was silent, a line of clay spilling over the top of her hand. She broke it off with the tip of her thumb, and it dropped to the floor. "What do you do when they get interested," he asked. She looked up at him. "Depends," she said. He got his hands under her knees, eased in slow. Her heat surrounded him. She turned her face away, her breath quickening as he found the rhythm. "Wait," she whispered, and her hand came across her forehead, trembling. He went in harder, making it happen. Bent down to get her nipple between his teeth, tugging at it gently. "No! Tony, wait." She put her hand against his chest, pushing him back. He stopped, looked down at her. "I'm sorry. I just . . ." The hand moved across her mouth, and she shook her head. He eased his weight off her, settled beside her on the bed. "It's okay," he said. "I understand." She looked away. His hand settled over hers on the bed. "You want me to go?" For a moment, she lay still. Then she nodded. He found his pants on the floor, the shirt a few feet away. She watched him dress, not saying anything. He came around the bed, sat on the edge to tie his shoes. When he finished, he leaned over, kissed her on the forehead. "I'll call you." She shook her head. "In a few days, maybe?" "I'm sorry, Tony." He left her there, the sheet pulled up under her chin. At the bottom of the stairs, next to the phone, he found her address book. It was under Jack, nothing else. A P.O. box in Worcester. He dropped the book, went out through the kitchen, closing the door softly. "Coming out." Harmon lowered the glasses, checked his watch. "Twenty-two minutes." Cardoza came over to the window. Brodie was coming up the drive, rubbing his hands against the cold. "Quickie?" Harmon shrugged, making a note in the log. The sun was setting over the trees. Cardoza squinted, shielded his eyes with one hand. "What's he got in his hands?" Harmon raised the glasses, tracking him down the drive to the road. "Looks like a pot." Frankie Defeo paused on the steps, yawned, rolling his shoulders like a boxer stepping into the ring. Behind him, the lawyer stopped short, halfway through the glass doors, waiting. "Look't him," Johnny said, laughing. "Been on vacation." Russo looked up at him in the rearview, leaning out the window of the Cadillac to wave the kid over. "He a right kid, Johnny." "He's a clown." Johnny tossed the butt of his cigar out the window. "I had a circus, this guy'd fit right in." He was coming over now, the lawyer right behind him, looking nervous. Johnny pushed the door open, slid over on the seat. "Get rid of the lawyer." Russo got out of the car, walked around the front, caught the lawyer's arm just as Frankie was getting in the car. He stuffed a twenty in his breast pocket. "Get a cab," he said. He walked back around the car, got in. "We set?" he asked the rearview. "Let's go." The lawyer looked relieved as they pulled away from the curb. "I hate them fuckin' guys," Frankie said. "This one, he tells me he's gonna talk to the judge, get me declared indigent. I say, what the fuck? Indigent. I got a job. He says, 'What's your job?' I say, you're lookin' at it. This, right here. This is my job. He's lookin' around. I say, you go to court, I go to court. He's like . . . Wha? I say, Where you live? Newton. All right, I say, I'll come to your house in a year, I'll buy it. Give you cash, in your hand. Who's fuckin' indigent?" "Shut up, Frankie." "It's just, what am I, a bum here?" Frankie leaned forward, tapped Russo on the shoulder. "Hey, Tommy. Could we swing by the T&D, let me get my car?" Frankie stared at him. "You hear me? Did I say something?" Russo got on the Southeast Expressway, the traffic slowing to a stop at the top of the ramp. Brake lights flared. When they crawled into the South Station tunnel, Johnny cracked the window, lit a cigar. He sat in silence for a moment, his face flushed. Then he sighed, shook his head. "First rule, Frankie," he said. "You talk, they hear you. A car's easy. They got transmitters the size of your fingernail. You gotta pick your spots. The tunnel's good. Underground parking garage. There's days I gotta talk to someone, it's raining, I spend the whole day goin' back and forth, through the tunnels, out to the airport, whatever." "Hey, that's smart, Johnny." "It's basic. Survival. You think this is smart, they'll have your ass in Lewisburg before you can say 'I married money.' Smart is figuring out what you want them to hear, gettin' something on the tapes so you can use it in court. That's strategy. Now, you tell me, what'd they ask you in there?" "I don't know. It was a load of shit, you know?" "Did I ask for your opinion? You were there, you tell me." "Where was I, who was I with, what'd we do. Bullshit questions. I told 'em, 'Hell, I'm gettin' married soon, you know? Where'd you be?' They just look at me." "Who was it?" "Assistant D.A. Little guy, Schumann. Guy taking notes, didn't get his name. And some guy sat in the corner, didn't say nothing. Just watching. Gotta tan, nice suit." "E italiano?" "Non lo so. Forse." "Riccioli, the U.S. Attorney. Him, you don't fuck around with, you got it?" Frankie shrugged. "They ask you anything else?" "When's the wedding." "You know these movie stars, can't take a crap without someone's watching them? That's us. Only we got a bunch 'a guys, their whole job is to screw us. The D.A., the federals, the fuckin' IRS. Like dogs, sniffin' around us, just waiting their chance." Johnny waved the waiter over, an old Chinese guy in a white jacket. He took the chopsticks off the napkin, held them up. "You wanna bring me a fork? I can't eat with these fuckin' sticks." "Me too," Russo said. "You all right, Frankie?" "I'm okay." "You got the fried noodles with the hot sauce?" Johnny asked the waiter. "Last time I was here you put 'em on the table." "Dinner only," the waiter said. "Not lunch." Johnny looked around the empty restaurant. "You too busy, or what? Bring us the noodles. You come back, we're gonna order." The waiter went back to the kitchen. "I gotta look at the menu," Frankie said. "What's good here?" Johnny leaned across the table, grabbed the menu out of his hands, slapped it on the table. "Nothing's good here. It's a crappy place." He put his finger against Frankie's forehead, poked at him, twice. "You hear okay, Frankie? I been talkin' here. You eat the same place every day, you get what Jackie got. Or some guy from the U.S. Attorney's office gets smart, puts a wire under the table. You're just gonna eat, fine. Go where you want, let 'em listen to you chewing. But you wanna talk business, you don't go there. You pick a place you ain't been in a while, the food's lousy, no reason in the world you should go there. What're they gonna do? Someone comes in here now, sits down, we just shut up, eat our food." The waiter came out of the kitchen with a basket of fried noodles, a bowl of sweet and sour. Johnny handed him the menus. "You got specials today?" "Specials, yes. We got--" Johnny raised his hand, stopped him. "Whatever. I don't care, all right? Just bring us the specials. Put 'em in the middle of the table, we'll take what we want. Okay?" The waiter ducked his head, disappeared. "All right," Johnny said, turning to Frankie. "So you walked on the Mullen thing. They got nothing but Jackie griping 'bout you on the tapes, and the judge cut you bail. Means they got no case. What're they gonna do? Look for a witness, maybe. Hope the gun turns up. They'll try to push it to trial, 'cause that's what they get paid for. We go in there, say you were at the house, planning the wedding, right? The whole thing's gonna stink, the jury'll be holding their noses." "So I'm clean." "They're just goin' through the motions. Anybody else, they would'a dropped the case. But we're having this wedding here, you're joining the family, they figure they'll get an early start on you." "No hurry," Frankie said. "I'll be here. I'm not going anywheres." Johnny picked up his fork, drawing lines on the table103 cloth. Russo watched him, a long, curving trail of lines like a rake would leave in the lawn. Watching his face now. "You did okay," Johnny said, not looking up. "Glad to help, Johnny." He looked up, frowning. "Help what? Did I need help?" Frankie hesitated, caught off guard. "What I meant was . . ." "I didn't have no problem with Jackie Mullen. That was your mess. You clean it up before you come into the family." Frankie was silent. This wasn't going as he figured, sitting in his cell, keeping his mouth shut. Doing it for the family. A ritual, just the same as the wedding. And when he walked, Johnny was there in the Cadillac, waving him over. Taking him out to celebrate, right? So he brings him to this clink place, no one in it, starts givin' him a lecture about keeping his mouth shut. Like he doesn't know? What's he been doing in there for two days, jerkin' off? He's gotta sit there, nodding. Good idea, Johnny. I'll keep that in mind. Telling him now the whole thing was his screwup, like he had debts or something. Some kinda bum, getting Johnny to pay to keep the shame off his daughter. Johnny pointed the fork at him, said: "You gotta stop thinkin' like a punk. This thing we got, it's a serious business. We got subsidiaries, partners in every city in the country. Most of what we earn is clean, from investments. People come to me, they need help, I say, 'Fine.' I help 'em out. I take an interest in their affairs. They see the value in this, so they give me an interest in their business." He picked up his water glass, swirled it so the ice clinked softly. "I sit in my office, people bring me my envelopes. Maybe that impresses you. But you think I get to keep it? We got stockholders, just like a company. Every guy that works for me, he's a stockholder in this thing. I gotta give him his share. You wanna know, I spend most of my time figurin' out the percentages." He looked over at Russo, grinned. "Used to be, ten years back when Jerry A. was running things, we had to send half down to Providence." "Good old days," Russo said, smiling. "What was good? I spent half my time sitting in a cafe on Hanover Street, trying to do business on a fuckin' pay phone." "Coffee was good." "I drank so much coffee, I could'a floated home. You get nervous, start looking for cops on your way to the bathroom." He shook his head. "Day I moved my operation down to Southie, that was the day I started to get things under control. People from the neighborhood, they can't just stop by, ask you to solve their personal problems. They got business, they gotta get in their car, drive down there. By the time they get to my office, I know they're serious." "I always wondered why you moved down there," Frankie said. "These ain't our people down there. Fuckin' Irish." Johnny turned, looked at him. "See, that's the point. You think like a punk from the neighborhood. I'm a businessman, that's where I run my business." He took a cigar from his coat, lit it. "Anyway, I made a point movin' down there. The Irish, they had to come to terms with m§, show some respect. So I moved in, made sure they had to look at me every day. They didn't like it. Week after I bought the building, some kid tried to burn it down." Frankie grinned. "Yeah? What happened to the kid?" Johnny puffed his cigar, shook the match out, tossed it on the table. "You go to church, you can light a candle." The tip of his cigar glowed. "Now, I own half the buildings on the street. The Irish want something, they come to me. We do business." "Like Fat Jackie." Johnny considered him for a moment. "Yeah, Jackie and me, we did business." "I don't know," Frankie said. "You see 'em down there on St. Patrick's Day? Drinkin' that green beer? End of the day, half of 'em can't stand up. You're gonna do business with these guys?" "You think I got a choice?" Frankie shrugged. Johnny looked at Russo, shook his head. "Tell him." Russo took out his wallet, slipped out a dollar, held it up. "What's that?" Frankie looked at him, grinned. "What'ya mean? It's a dollar." "No, you're wrong." Russo laid the dollar on the table, took a red pen from his inner pocket. "It's a suit." "A suit." "That's what I said. A suit." He uncapped the pen. "You go to the tailor, you buy a suit, you ever think where it comes from?" "Kinda suits I buy?" Frankie laughed. "Hong Kong, probably. You guys get yours custom, right?" "Any suit, same thing. Whether the guy makes it there, or he gets it shipped in from Mongolia, he's gotta pay for it the same." Russo drew a line across the dollar near one end. "The guy who sells the suit, that's his cut. He's gotta pay for the materials, that's about the same." He drew another line, a short distance from the first. "Shipping, tax, rent, all that stuff, same thing." He drew a third line, looked up. "Now it gets complicated." "Yeah? We get a piece of that?" "Sure, we get a piece of everything. Direct, if we got a deal on the guy, or else we get it from the shipping company, the unions, lotsa places. But it's not just us." He drew a line of boxes across the top half of the bill. "The suit's stitched in New York, then the Gambinos get a share. It gets shipped outta a warehouse in Hartford, Ray takes his piece. Garment workers are all Chinese now, so we slip a little to the chinks. The tailor's a Jew, I don't know, maybe he pays something to the rabbi. You get the picture?" "Not much left." "Hey, we're just getting started here. Now you got the guys work for us, they get their share. Those garment workers, they're up on the third floor, you pay one guy. Four floors up, it's a different guy. South end of the building, they both get a share. It's all negotiated, so nobody gets pissed off, wants to tear up the suit." "Tommy's amazing," Johnny said. "Keeps all that shit in his head. I just spread it around the way he says, everybody's happy." Frankie laughed. "Except the guy who buys the suit, right?" "He don't know, won't hurt him." Johnny reached over, took the dollar from Russo. He folded it, tucked it in Frankie's pocket. "This shit's important. The whole business, it's right there on that dollar." Frankie patted his pocket. "Yeah? Then I'm a rich man." Johnny looked over at Russo. He puffed his cigar, shook his head. "You're easy," he said to Frankie. "Like reading the fuckin' newspaper." He leaned forward, jabbed Frankie's forehead with one finger. "It's all right here. Anyone who wants to can read it." Johnny leaned back. He stuck the cigar in the corner of his mouth. "Tell me something. Whatcha want?" "Me?" "You go to sleep, what'ya dream about?" Frankie grinned. "Besides women?" "I look like I'm jokin' here?" "I wanna be rich." "That's it?" "Hey, I'll take it." Johnny glanced over at Russo. "He wants to be rich." "I heard." Johnny shook his head. "You gotta think about it, work it out in your head. What you want, the thing you gotta have, that's your weakness. Your problem is you got no idea what you should want, so you say, 'I wanna be rich.' Any idiot can say that." He puffed his cigar. "You ever go fishing?" "Yeah. I been fishing." "How do you catch a fish?" Frankie grinned at Russo, shrugged. "I dunno. Stick a worm on a hook." "You find something it wants, stick it right in its face. They used to hunt wolves, they'd tie a goat to a stake. The goat cries all night; it's scared. The wolf hears it, knows it's weak, so it comes along, gonna take a bite. But it gets there, starts eating the goat, some guy jumps outta the bushes, jabs it with a spear. The wolf, he's strong, but desire makes him weak. You get what I'm saying?" Frankie shrugged. "Still wanna be rich." Johnny looked at him, thoughtful. "Desire," he said, touching Frankie's forearm lightly with the tip of the fork. "That's what'll kill ya." And then, the waiter comes over, piling dishes in the middle of the table. Johnny smiling, tucking the napkin in his collar. Frankie looked down at his arm. Four little dents in the skin. Keenan watched them come out of the restaurant, Defeo pausing on the sidewalk to chew a toothpick, looking up at the sky. When he glanced down, Johnny was climbing into the Cadillac, vanishing behind the tinted windows, pulling the door closed. The car glided out of the parking lot. Defeo sighed, crossed the street, stopped beside a new Saab, dug in his pocket for the keys. He got in, taking a moment to check himself out in the rearview, run a hand through his hair. Then he reached for the keys. He looked up, surprised, as Keenan rapped on the window, flashed his badge. Keenan smiled, seeing his eyes go blank, his expression shift from momentary panic to the dull gaze of a street punk, going dumb at the sight of a badge. Then the kid's eyes slid up to Keenan's face, flickered briefly with relief, then disdain. Defeo shook his head, started the car. Keenan drew his gun, laid the butt against the glass. "Knock, knock," he said. "Don't make me break your pretty windows." Defeo hesitated, glared at him. Slowly, he reached across to the passenger side, popped the lock. Keenan strolled around the front of the car, one hand trailing along the bright hood. He climbed in, ran his hand across the upholstery, shook his head. "You've been a good boy? Got yourself a toy?" Defeo scowled, keeping his eyes straight ahead. "You're gonna fuck me up, man. People see me sitting here with you, they're gonna lose all respect for me." "Yeah?" Keenan glanced around at the neighborhood, grinned. "Same old story. Guy makes it big, he don't remember his old friends. We go back a long way, Frankie." He reached into his coat, drew out a pack of cigarettes, shook one loose. Frankie reached across, snatched the pack away. "I don't like people smoking in the car." Keenan looked at him, surprised. Defeo hit a button, and the window descended. He tossed the cigarettes onto the street. Keenan flushed. His hands became very still. He glanced around the car. "This thing set you back . . . what? Like twenty thousand?" Defeo looked out the window, watching a truck roll over the crumpled cigarette pack. "Something like that." Keenan nodded, his hand moving across the dash, pausing on the gleaming Blaupunkt stereo. "You get the off-the-lot discount on it, or you go straight?" Defeo glared at him. "Hey, this is for my bride. You think I'm gonna give her a stolen car?" Keenan shrugged. "You're a punk, Frankie." His hand caressed the buttons on the stereo. "You know how you can tell a punk? Expensive shoes and a stolen jacket. Hangs a little long in the sleeves, you know? Shoes you gotta buy, 'cause if they don't fit, you get blisters." He twisted a knob, and it popped off in his hands. "Oops." He tossed it into Defeo's lap. "You're gonna have to get that fixed." Defeo looked down at it. He picked it up, fitted it back onto the pin in the front of the radio. "Get out." "Ah, Frankie. Now you're pissed. And we were havin' such a nice talk." Defeo leaned across him, opened the door. "I said get out." Keenan sighed. "You wanna do this the hard way? Maybe you're dirty, got a little coke in the glove box? I could impound the car, pull you in on suspicion of being a punk with a short memory." »iSt Defeo was silent, his eyes fixed on the steering wheel. Keenan popped the glove box open, glanced at the title, peered under the warranty book. "You ever watch the guys at the police garage take a car apart? They have a great time. Tear up the carpet, cut the upholstery open, yank the engine out. They get finished, there's always a couple parts lying there on the floor of the garage. You ask 'em about it, they're like, 'Hey, we got most of 'em back in there.' " Defeo put the car in gear, glanced in the rearview, eased out into traffic. Silent, he headed up a ramp onto the highway, got in line for the toll at the tunnel. "You wanna talk to me," he said. "You got till we get outta the tunnel. That's where you get out." "What's the hurry?" Keenan yanked the handle next to *| his seat, laid it back. "We'll talk about old times." § Defeo looked at him. His eyes narrowed. "You lookin' for money?" He yanked his wallet out of his back pocket, tossed it into Keenan's lap. "Here, this is it. That's what I got." Keenan picked up the wallet, grinned. He slipped a thin wad of bills out, fanned them--a pair of twenties, a few singles. "What, you're gonna buy me off with forty-four bucks?" He glanced through the wallet, found a folded bill stuffed in the credit card pocket. He unfolded it, smoothed it against his wrist. One side was marked with red lines, « squares. He glanced at the back. Nothing. He added it to the " pile. Defeo was watching his rearview, easing into the next lane. "I got a bank card now. I want cash, I go to the machine." "Like a normal guy." Ahead of them, a car pulled up to the toll. Defeo glanced over at the money in Keenan's hand. "You wanna give me a couple of those, we can pay the toll?" Keenan raised his eyebrows. "Yeah? They make you pay now? I thought you had a friend used to wave you right through." "Yeah, well, I had a lot of friends. 1 gotta be more careful now." "Important guy." "Just gimme the fuckin' money." Keenan peeled off a pair of ones, passed them over. Defeo lowered his window, started to hand them to the attendant, then snatched them back. He shook his head, separated the top bill, shoved it back at Keenan. "Christ, not this one! Gimme another." Keenan looked down at it--marked in red. He smiled. He peeled off another bill, passed it to Defeo. "Sentimental value?" Defeo snatched the money from his hand, stuffed it back in the wallet. "None of your fuckin' business." A horn sounded behind them. Defeo flicked the finger at the driver out his window, put the car in gear, and headed into the tunnel. He looked shook, like he knew he'd slipped up. Keenan caught a glimpse of the marked bill as he tucked it into his pocket. Defeo fixed his eyes on the road. "You wanted to talk to me?" Keenan drew a bullet from his pocket, held it up. "How's your memory, Frankie?" Frankie found a spot near the entrance to the parking garage. He let the engine idle for a minute, enjoying the way it growled. Black Camaro, the windows tinted dark. He'd picked it up in the South End during the morning rush. Just like when he was a kid. Waited outside a package store, like he's talking on the pay phone, while a guy runs in for cigarettes on his way to work. Leaves the keys in the ignition. The guy standing at the counter, watching as Frankie walks over, jumps in. Mouth hanging open, he can't believe it. He turned the engine off, but left the key in it, flipped through the radio dial, looking for a station that would come in underground. Static, all the way down the dial. "Yo, Johnny. Okay to talk here." He grinned, shook his head. w, There was a box of tapes on the floor of the backseat, and he dug through it, found some old J. Geils, put it on low. He sat back to watch the dashboard clock tick up toward five, keeping an eye on the people trickling out through the glass doors, sneaking out early. At about ten past, he saw her through the doors, stopping to talk to the security guard in the green jacket. Old black guy, reading his newspaper the whole time. Never even spotted him sitting there, what? Half an hour, at least. The girl came out, carrying a backpack. She had it open, taking her helmet out. Blond hair, little round glasses. Stopping next to the only bike in the place to roll up her jeans. Frankie flicked his cigarette out the window, started the engine. She rode up the ramp, waving to the guy in the booth. | Frankie tossed the guy a five with the ticket, watching her turn left, heading for the river. He lost her for a few minutes in traffic, picked her up again on the bridge, coming up behind her, watching her ass as she pedaled, then going on past, getting a good look at her face. He got caught at the light in Cambridge, third car back, watched her come up on him in the rearview. She stopped at the front of the line, one foot down for balance, watching for an opening in the traffic. When the light changed, he started up slow, ignoring the horns behind him, letting her stay ahead, get a little speed up. She turned east out of Kendall Square, heading up Archbishop Medeiros past the warehouses. He checked the mirror, saw a Federal Express van turning into the street, moving slow. "Shit." He hit the clutch for a second, popped it, making the car jump, losing speed. Put the emergency flashers on and edged over onto the shoulder, letting the van go past. He watched it get on up the block, past the girl, make a right into an alley. A glance in the rearview. The road was clear, both ways. He dropped down a gear, hearing the engine wind up, saw the girl look back as he came up on her. Made a big show of swinging wide around her, then, as he pulled even, cut the wheel hard, getting her with the edge of the bumper. She was thrown over to the right, bounced off a parked car, and came back across the hood of the car, her face going hard off the windshield. He punched the brakes, and she slid off. He gave the rearview a quick look. Nothing. He jumped out, trotted around to the front of the car. She lay in a heap, one arm twisted under her. He saw her glasses, shattered, a few feet away. He picked them up, stuffed them in the pocket of his jacket. Straightening, he saw a woman watching from the door of a warehouse, her eyes wide. He pointed at the girl. "Call an ambulance, for Christ's sake!" The woman vanished into the warehouse. He walked back to the car, backed it up, and swung wide around the girl. Taking it easy up the street, around the corner, down two blocks to the Galleria beside the river. He turned into the underground lot, took a ticket, and went down two levels. He left the keys in the car and rode the elevator up, stripping off his leather jacket. Walked into Banana Republic and laid down a hundred-eighty dollars in cash for a tan bomber jacket, all kinda stupid patches on the sleeves, looked like a fuckin' boy scout. He stuffed the other jacket in the bag and walked down the escalator, out through the flickering TVs in Lechmere to the street, where he got a cab. "Southie," he told the driver. And two minutes later, they were on the expressway, heading over the bridge. Easy. "Tony. Phone." Keenan waved from across the squad room, picked up a phone on the nearest desk, punched the flashing button. "Narcotics. Keenan." "Tony, this is Anne Walsh." "Anne." He settled into the beat-up swivel chair and propped his feet on a radiator, where a pair of gloves steamed. "I'm sorry to bother you at work." "Please. I've been trying to get up the courage to call you far four days." "Something's happened, Tony. I wasn't sure who else to C£U1." « He sat forward, pulled the phone across the desk. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine. The kids are fine. It's nothing like that, exactly, ^t least, I don't think so." She hesitated. He could hear the children in the background. "Do you think you could come by, Tony?" He checked his watch. "I'm off in an hour." "It might be nothing." "Don't apologize. I'm glad you thought of me." He sat for a moment, staring out the window, the dial tone buzzing in his ear. The P.O. box was a dead end. A remailing service in Worcester, whose clients ran to young couples with bad debts, telephone sales outfits, a few men with exotic tastes in entertainment which they kept hidden fr^m their wives. The owner, unimpressed by his badge, h^d chewed his cigar, silent, while Keenan hinted at grand Jury interest, eyeing the pair of file cabinets that stood against the wall. The man flicked the ash from his cigar into JJ a filthy coffee cup, blew smoke at the ceiling, where a fan *urned lazily. "You're outta your jurisdiction here," he said. He leaned f°rward, thrust the cigar at Keenan. "Without confidentiality, I got nothing here. My customers, they want to be left &l