“Sure does,” I said. “And now I think about it, the implied threat in ‘when it’s time, I’ll find you’ doesn’t really feel like Zeke, either. Or, for that matter, fit a witness-in-hiding scenario.”
“Wait a minute—” Lenihan spun around on his stool to face me. “—how about your father’s?”
“My father’s what?”
“Funeral. Maybe your phone-freak’s somebody hasn’t seen you since your father’s funeral.”
“God, Dad’s funeral was two years ago, I don’t remember much of anything about it. It was such a blur. Bagpipes and the overwhelming smell of flowers, cops in dress blues everywhere, and relatives I don’t remember ever meeting mumbling words of sympathy I couldn’t seem to hear. I don’t know, I don’t think I could tell you who was there or who wasn’t.”
Lenihan looked down at his hands and nodded. “Yeah, know how that goes.”
I wondered what he meant by that, but I didn’t ask.
He tipped his glass high and drained it. “What about that pusher your father bagged a couple of years back? What was his name, the one someone stuck a shiv into over at County?”
“Cass,” I said, “his name was Sebastian Cass.”
“Yeah,” he said, “Cass, that’s the guy. The stink the press raised over that one, you’da thought some head of state got offed. But I don’t suppose you went to that funeral.”
“No, I didn’t. But I do remember driving through the mob scene at the church.”
“You were there?”
“I was dropping off Dad. He went to the church service. Cass getting murdered in lockup really tore Dad up badly. That and the media circus it started was why he retired.”
It was getting late. We had polished off both pizzas and downed the last of our beer. On the forty-two-inch plasma, two post-game commentators were analyzing Boston’s four-nothing loss to New York. The bartender came down and waggled a finger at our empty glasses. “Two more?”
Lenihan glanced at his watch. “I’m good, how about you, Slim?”
“No, I’m all set. Didn’t mean to keep you out so late. Hope I haven’t gotten you in trouble.”
Lenihan was reaching for his wallet. He stopped and looked at me and arched an eyebrow. “In trouble with who?”
His left hand was resting on the bar. I laid my right hand on top of it and tapped his wedding ring with my middle finger.
“Oh.” He looked down at the ring. “No, she’s been, ah—” He busied himself with his wallet. “—gone for three years, now.”
Knowing how common it was among cops, I said, “Divorce?”
He shook his head. “Breast cancer.”
“Aw shit,” I said, “sorry. Someday I’ll learn to keep my mouth shut.”
“It’s okay, no sweat. Like I said, it’s been three years.”
I pointed at his wallet. “Put that away. I told you, this one’s on me.”
The bartender, who had discreetly turned his attention to the TV screen when I did the bit with Lenihan’s ring, turned back to Lenihan and held up his hand. “Uh-uh, Chief,” he said. “Compliments of the house.”
I slipped a folded twenty from my bag and gave the bartender a sugar handshake. “Thanks,” I said. “Appreciate the after-hours pizza.”
We headed for the door and Lenihan asked, “Did you drive or walk?”
“Drove.”
“Where d’ya park?”
“Over on North Street.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
A heavy mist haloed the streetlights, and the air was pregnant with the smell of the harbor and the promise of rain. Side by side. Not quite touching. Our footsteps muffled in the heavy mist. I was acutely aware of his nearness.
When we got to my car he said, “I’m gonna give you my cell number.”
I must have looked surprised.
“You see the Neon or hear from this guy again, I want you to call me.”
I beeped the lock, opened the driver’s side door, and, in the glow of the overhead light, thumbed the number he gave me into my phone. He held the door open as I slid in under the wheel.
He leaned down, one hand still holding the top of the door, and put his other hand on my shoulder and gently shook it. “I mean it, Slim,” he said looking down into my eyes, “you hear from this wacko again or see him call my cell right away. Okay?”
My pulse quickened when he touched my shoulder, and my breath felt hot in my throat. I managed a hoarsely whispered, “Okay.”
He stepped back and closed the door.
I pulled away from the curb and headed home.
Jackson Ave shows up on most street maps of Boston, but it’s not really a street. It’s a wide brick walkway that rambles up from Commercial Street down on the waterfront to Charter Street up on Copp’s Hill. It’s fronted on one side by a row of three-story, ancient brick houses and bordered on the other by the low walls of a hillside park called Copp’s Hill Terraces. My loft occupies the third floor, front to back, of one of the narrow old houses halfway up Jackson.
Parking spaces are scarce down on Commercial and nonexistent up on Charter, so, for not a lot less than the monthly mortgage payment on a small house in the suburbs, I lease a parking space in a lot just west of Jackson Ave. on Commercial.
The heavy mist had turned to rain. I was drifting along in the late evening traffic on Commercial Street, windshield wipers ticking away, recalling the look in Lenihan’s eyes and the way his hand felt on my shoulder, smiling at the warm glow I got thinking about it.
But somewhere, way back there in my erotically blurred brain cells, something was screaming at me. Jumping up and down to be remembered. Something the weirdo had said on the phone. Something about the ballgame on TV. I knew it was back there. But between all the beer and pizza and my libido working overtime, I was having trouble doing any heavy thinking.
I drove past the lower end of the stairway up to Copp’s Hill Terraces, signaled for the left turn into my parking lot, glanced up at the rearview mirror, and spotted the Neon as it passed under a streetlight two cars behind me. The sudden jolt of seeing him behind me threw a bucketful of water on my fuzzyheaded musings.
And I remembered.
The ballgame. The score. Four-nothing. Four, Val, you scatterbrain, four.
He had told me, when I’d asked him what he wanted me to call him, “I’m hurt you don’t remember, Val, it’s only been four years.”
I zipped into the lot, skidded into a U-turn around the attendant’s shack, swiped my pass-card through the slot at the exit gate, banged a right back out on Commercial, and passed the Neon coming the other way. In the mirror I saw the Neon’s brake lights flash red and its rear end slither sideways on the rain-slicked roadway.
I pulled over and double-parked at the foot of the long stairway up to Copp’s Hill Terraces. I grabbed my handbag, hopped out of the car, and made a dash for the stairs. Halfway up I looked over my shoulder and saw the Neon skid to a stop behind my car. Someone leaped out of the Neon and headed for the stairway. I pulled out my phone, hit my new entry for Lenihan, and took the rest of the stairs two at a time.
I ran out into the park just far enough so whoever was coming up the stairs below could no longer see me, squatted down and duck-walked back into the shadow of the low wall at the head of the stairs, and was unzipping the side compartment of my handbag when Lenihan finally answered his phone.
“I’m up on Copp’s Hill Terraces,” I whispered into the phone, “and the wacko in the Neon is coming up the stairs after me. Get some cops over here, like now.”
Lenihan was yelling something I couldn’t hear as I closed the phone, dropped it into my pocket, and slid the compact Beretta out of the side compartment of my bag.