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.
“Well, I’m fine,” she replied.
“Good.”
She said nothing for a while, and the two of them just sat there as he sipped his beer. “There is one thing we need to talk about,” she said finally.
“Sure,” he said. “What is it?”
“I’m pregnant.”
She had planned to say the words gently, so they would land with the weight of a feather. Instead she blurted them out, the consonants exploding in her own ears. Kozlowski looked as though he had been slammed over the head with a toaster. He sat there, his beer dangling midway between his mouth and the side table.
“I found out today,” she continued. “I was expecting the doctor to tell me that I had the flu, but, nope, turns out I’m pregnant.”
Kozlowski still said nothing.
“Well?” she said, looking at him. “You wanna join the conversation?”
“I think we should get married,” he said at last.
“Fuck you,” she replied, getting off the sofa and storming out toward the kitchen.
“Is that a yes or a no?”
“You really don’t get it, do you. You don’t understand that this isn’t the 1950s, and you and I aren’t Ozzie and Harriet. I’m not some fucking damsel in distress you have an obligation to. You don’t even know whether or not I want to keep the baby.”
“Do you?”
“Of course I do, asshole.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is that I don’t know whether I want to be married. I’ve never seen myself in that role. And I sure as hell don’t want to be married to someone who’s only asking because he knocked me up and he thinks he owes it to me.”
“Who said anything about owing?” Kozlowski’s voice was raised, though it wasn’t quite at her decibel level. “I love you, and you love me-at least it seems like you do when you’re not acting like a crazy person. You’re pregnant with my kid. I’m sorry if it seems to me like these are all good reasons why we should get married.” He got up and walked over to the window.
“I don’t care about should.”
“It’s not about should! Not in that way. But I am who I am.” He turned and looked at her. “I’m fine with what we’re doing now-this thing between the two of us-when it’s just us. But you start adding a kid into it, then, yeah, I want to be married. I want my kid to have real married parents.”
“Parents are real whether they’re married or not.”
“That’s great-for other people. But not for me. Not for us. I love you, and I’d want to be married with or without a kid, but if we’re going to have a child together I need to be married.”
“So are you saying you want to be married, or you need to be married, or you should be married? Which is it?”
“Jesus Christ! I don’t know!” he yelled. His face was turning red now. “I don’t parse every goddamned thought I have out like that! Tell me which is the right answer, for the love of God, and that’s the answer I’ll give you!”