“Yeah.”
“Good. You get me out, and I’ll get you the money I owe you.”
“I’m not worried about the money,” Finn said.
“Yeah, right. A lawyer not worried about money. Who the fuck you think you’re dealing with, Finn?”
“I saw your apartment when I picked Sally up,” Finn said. “I know you can’t pay me. Not if that’s the shithole you’ve been living in.”
“Don’t ever judge a book by its fuckin’ cover, Finn. I just need you to get me out on bail. I’ll take care of everything else.”
Devon heard Finn sigh on the other end of the line. “We’re in pretty good shape as far as the hearing goes. I’ll get there a little early and we can talk through any questions you have. The most important thing will be for you to keep your mouth shut and let me do the talking.”
Devon laughed again. “Right. You’re the boss.”
“I’m serious about that, Devon. Judges don’t like to hear from smartass defendants. Nothing pisses them off faster,” Finn said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll be good,” Devon replied. “And I swear to God, I’ll get you your money when all this is done.”
“Whatever.”
“How’s Sally?”
“She’s fine. She’s fourteen.”
“Yeah, I know. Fucked up as it sounds, though, she’s the best thing that ever happened to me. Will you give her a message?”
“Sure.”
“Tell her I’m getting out tomorrow. Tell her everything’s gonna be fine. Tell her to trust me.”
“I’m pretty sure she’s heard that before,” Finn said.
“She has,” Devon admitted. “This time it’s true, though.” He hung up.
As he walked back to his cell, he took his first deep breath of the day. Ever since he’d heard about Murphy’s murder, his chest had felt constricted. Now he had real hope. Perhaps the past would remain in the past after all.
Devon would have waited a little longer. The St. Patrick’s Day fete in the building next door was winding down, and in a matter of a half hour the risk of being seen would have gone down dramatically. Being seen wasn’t necessarily fatal to the job-undoubtedly the four young men who had passed by them on the street had seen them-but it increased the risk of something going wrong. The Irishman was not going to be restrained anymore, though, so Devon got out of the car.
It was unseasonably warm. It had been down in the thirties the night before, but by midday it was well into the sixties, and by the time the sun went down the temperature had passed seventy degrees. Devon had spent some of the day walking the city, trying to clear his head before the job. Drunk girls were walking around in loose T-shirts, and the bars opened their windows to let the people breathe. The city was so packed you could hardly move on the streets, and the heat brought out the best and the worst in everyone. St. Patrick’s Day was like that in Southie. It was like Christmas and New Year’s all rolled into one with a keg of green beer to top it off. Devon never liked it. It was amateur hour out at the bars, with every rich prick from the colleges or the suburbs with an Irish grandmother or maid walking around screaming “Kiss me, I’m Irish,” like they had any real fucking idea what it meant to be Irish.
Devon met up with the Irishman at around ten, and they went over the plan again. That took about twenty minutes. Then they sat in the Irishman’s apartment, saying nothing. Devon turned on the television and started watching some of the NCAA tournament, but Irish turned it off. He didn’t seem to be much of a hoops fan.
At eleven-thirty, they put on the police uniforms Vinny had gotten for them-real ones, not some costume-shop fakes, complete with guns and utility belts-and pasted on cheesy fake mustaches. Then they headed out.
The drive over to the Fens took a little time. Devon was careful to stop at the lights and keep to the speed limit; the last thing he wanted at that point was to get pulled over. Not that anyone was likely to pay them any attention; there were still so many people out on the street drunk off their asses. That was good in the sense that the real police would already be overwhelmed responding to reports of drunk and disorderly behavior, bar fights, and traffic accidents. Devon had tried to keep Irish as relaxed as possible, but had only been successful for a time. Now he was at a half-jog, trying to keep up with the man as they made their way the short distance from the car to the museum.
The warm weather made their overcoats seem more out of place. It was the one part of their uniforms that wasn’t authentic, and Devon hoped that the security guards wouldn’t notice. There was little they could do about it; the coats were necessary to conceal some of the tools they would need to do the job.
They walked up to the back door and rang the bell. It was one o’clock, and it took a minute or two for someone to answer. The voice on the intercom sounded as if it belonged to a kid. “Hello?” he said.
Chapter Thirteen
Lissa Krantz sat on the enormous sofa facing the fireplace in the living room of her top-floor apartment in the Back Bay. Her legs were pulled up underneath her and a cashmere blanket was pulled up to her waist. Looking out through the bay windows, she took in the Esplanade that wound along the banks of the Charles, and looked out toward Cambridge on the other side of the river. She’d always enjoyed the apartment, but it had only felt like home for a year or so-since Tom Kozlowski had all but moved in.
“You want a glass of wine?” he called from the kitchen. The apartment was large enough that he had to yell.
“No thanks,” she called back.
“Beer?”
“Nope.”
They were a mismatched couple. She’d grown used to the quizzical stares that greeted them wherever they went. He was nearly twenty years her senior, and despite having been off the force for a few years he would always look like a cop. Not the Hollywood variety, with their silk suits and their styled hair, but an old-school cop-the kind of wash-and-wear, just-the-facts-ma’am kind of cop who still viewed the world through a two-toned lens. She would never change him. Fortunately, that had never been her goal.
It was ironic. She recognized that when people looked at the two of them out on the street, they wondered how on earth he had managed to catch her. And yet she had chased him. Everything about him had captured her from the beginning. Her psychiatrist no doubt still tied the attraction to a troubled past and unresolved parental issues. Maybe he was right. On the other hand, she seemed to have less need for her psychiatrist these days.
In her heart, she knew that the attraction was more than just repressed childhood insecurity. Deep down he was smart and decent and kind, and something about his rough features, scarred and uneven, stirred a base passion in her. The past year with him had been the best of her life.
Now, in all likelihood, it was about to end.
He walked into the room, beer in hand, and sat down into an overstuffed chair cornering the sofa. “Long day?” he asked.
She shrugged. “You were there for most of it.”
“How’d it go at the doctor’s?”
“Fine.” She opened her mouth to say more, but nothing came out. “How did the meeting go with Ballick?”
He shook his head. “Not very well. Safe to say that he won’t be helping us out. On the other hand, we didn’t get shot, which is always a plus.”
“That’s good. I mean the not getting shot part.”
He looked at her and she turned away. “You sure everything’s okay?” he asked.
“Yeah. Why?”
“I don’t know. You seem weird.”
“How so?”
Kozlowski’s face twisted. He was still a novice at deciphering her moods, and he approached conversations like this the way an apprentice animal trainer approaches a tiger for the first time-carefully, and with a healthy amount of fear. “Don’t know,” he said finally. “I can’t put it into words.” It was a catchphrase he’d picked up somewhere in the past year, and he used it as a fallback defense. It was usually effective.