“Wait. My guy here, David, he was walking along and these guys both opened their doors? Driver’s side and rear passenger.”
“Right.”
“Like they were waiting for him?”
“Could be. It didn’t strike me at the time. I was lying in the road, trying to figure out how bad I was hurt. There was blood gushing out of my nose and mouth and my arms were scraped to the bone.”
“Then what?”
“The passenger, he kind of grabs your guy, whatever, they start arguing about something.”
“Arguing?”
“Well, voices raised. Some physical contact. The driver, he’s totally ignoring me, he’s going to help his buddy. I start yelling at the top of my lungs, calling him an asshole, hoping the people in the park will hear me. Your guy twists away somehow, gets free and takes off like a scared rabbit. My only witness. I fucking needed him if I wanted to press charges against the driver but he just split on me.”
“Where?”
“Down the path.”
“What path?”
“Summit Path.” He pointed to a sign that was partly hidden behind the branches of a tree.
“Where does that go?”
“All the way down to Beacon Street. Only he wasn’t walking, he was flying.”
“What about the guys in the van, what did they do?”
“Got back in and took off.”
“Did you get a licence plate on the van?”
“I wish. I mean, I tried but it was covered with mud.”
“What kind of van was it, do you remember?”
“Old. Kind of grey. American, not Japanese, like a Safari or something.”
“Did you call the police?”
“What for? They were gone, my witness was gone. And no one gives a shit about cyclists in this town. Especially the BPD.”
“Isn’t this Brookline?”
“Huh? Oh, I guess. I don’t live here, I just ride the hill.”
“Get a good look at either guy?”
“Not the passenger, except to say he was white. The driver too. Tall, a little older than me, maybe thirty. Blond hair. Black leather jacket. That’s really all I took in at the time. I wanted to follow the van but what was I going to do if I caught it? Against two guys? I was fucked up enough already. I just got myself to the hospital, got my nose set. Got my arms cleaned up. Luckily my bike was okay. I don’t have the coin to get that fixed.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Freddy Macklin. Yours?”
“Jonah Geller. Listen, thanks, Freddy.”
“For what?”
“I think you might have saved David’s life.”
Summit Path might have been a path at one time but it was a staircase now, wide stone steps heading down with black wrought-iron railings on either side. I walked down the first flight to a gravel laneway and looked right and left. There didn’t seem to be anywhere there to run to or hide. Beyond them was the open space of the park opposite the lookout, not where a man on the run would want to be.
I kept going down another flight, which ran alongside an apartment building. Could he have run down into the parking lot, maybe to a doorway, hoping someone would buzz him in? I tried to put myself in his shoes. He’d been on his way home from work. Minding his own business. Two guys get out of a van, one of whom tries to grab him. Despite the fact that a cyclist is lying hurt in the street, he takes off. Why? Because he knows these guys are after him. He knows what they want. To abduct him or kill him. He gets free but he can’t be sure he’s not being followed. His heart is pounding, his feet flying. He’s not an athlete. He’s not used to this. No, I thought. He wouldn’t stop here. He could wind up trapped, pounding on doors, pushing buzzers, getting only silence in reply. I was sure he’d have kept going. I would have.
The third flight was narrower and ended at a street where cars rushed past going west. I swivelled around, taking in a 180-degree view, trying to see it as David would have. Beyond the street was one more shallow flight to Beacon Street. More options for him there. Maybe a cab, a cop car, pedestrians who might help out. And halfway across the boulevard a trolley stop where a green-and-white car sat as passengers got on at both the front and rear exits. Think, Jonah. What would you do? If there’s a cab, I flag it, whether I have the fare or not. I could always get the cabbie to drive past a bank machine. If there’s a cop car-big if-I throw myself at it, unless there are things I don’t want to tell the cops. If I’m David I know the area, probably better than the guys in the van do. I know how long it might take them to drive down from the top of Summit Avenue.
I probably know this trolley route too. Maybe I’ve taken it to work before, or to class when I was still in school. Maybe I run for it and jump on, blending in with the other passengers, hoping to attain some kind of invisibility. The rear doors had been tantalizingly close.
I ducked between cars and crossed to the trolley platform. It was seven-thirty. Roughly the same time he might have come two weeks ago. Nothing to lose by asking. I lined up behind other commuters and waited for the next car to come rolling along.
The driver was a man of about fifty, a solid gut resting on his thighs, rheumy blue eyes and a few busted veins in his nose.
I paid the two-dollar cash fare, took out one of my photos of David Fine and asked the driver if he had seen him board the car on a Thursday evening two weeks ago.
“You kiddin’ me?” he said. “You know how many people get on and off this route? I don’t even look at faces half the time. I’m checkin’ they’re payin’ their fare.”
“Just have a look at it, please.”
The driver sighed. “What time was this?”
“Around seven-thirty.”
“Probably would have been the car before this one.”
“Any way to find out who that was?”
“Yeah,” the driver said. “Stay on until we get to the end of the run at Cleveland Circle. If you’re lucky, you might catch him before he heads back east.”
I elbowed my way to the doorway so I could be first off, then sprinted to the bay where the eastbound car was boarding. I waited until everyone had paid their fare and found seats before approaching the driver, a black man with a touch of grey at his temples and in his goatee. I showed him David’s photo and asked if he remembered him boarding two Thursdays ago. “He would have boarded at Summit Path,” I said. “And he might have been out of breath like he’d been running.”
“A lot of people run to catch the train,” he said. “Else they have to wait for the next one.”
“He was wearing a skullcap.”
“Muslim or Hebrew?”
“Hebrew. Clipped to his hair.”
A light came into his eyes when I said that. “You know what? Two Thursdays ago-yeah, a young guy, not too big, maybe thirty? I remember him now and you know why? He came in the rear door, just as I was about to pull out. Huffing and puffing like you said. Which ain’t so unusual, I told you. So he gets on all out of breath, walks up to the front and pays his fare and-why I remember it-he gets off at the very next stop. See, we got a problem with fare jumpers on this line. It’s the only one you can get on at the rear and we’re supposed to keep an eye on them, make sure they pay. So I eyeballed him in the mirror when he got on back there, made sure he paid, which he did, but only rode one stop. This is an honest guy. He could have hung around the back door and just stepped off. Plus I wondered, why run like that to catch a train when you’re getting off one stop later.”
“You sure it was him?”
“Pretty sure. He had a briefcase too, I remember that now. Clutching it to his chest.”
“He say anything?”
“Nope. Just paid his two bucks, stood there till we got to Washington Street and got off.”
“You see which way he went?”
“Man, you want your money’s worth.”
“He’s been missing since that night. I’m trying to find out what happened to him.”
“Missing, huh? From here? No shit. I mean, I’m only surprised ’cause Brookline’s not a bad area, compared to some. Where I’m from, Mattapan? You could fill a whole lot of milk cartons with everyone goes missing from there.”