Even with the gogs, Drew finds it hard to see the boat. It’s definitely not the same leaky dinghy. That one was gray wood. This one is an inflatable black plastic on black water, no running lights, low and silent as it drifts under the pilings of the wharf.
The next morning the blond girl pays another fine, drives the big dark sedan off the lot. Drew can’t be sure, but she thinks the car rides lower than it did when it came in.
“You thinking drugs?” Sergeant Lorello asks when she describes the setup: ship-to-shore communication, a camouflaged hole in the wharf, a corresponding opening in the car’s undercarriage. Drew would dearly love to work for the Boston Police Department. A dream come true. She hopes her report will speed up her application to the police academy.
She shrugs. “Anything, really. Anything somebody doesn’t want to pay duty on, anything illegal.” She has a suspicion, but it’s more of a hunch, so she stays silent.
“You got video footage?”
“It’s not great.”
“Why don’t you leave it with me? Our techs can work wonders.”
The night-vision footage is already good enough to identify the guy in the inflatable: Joey, the same guy Drew yanked out of the water, the blond girl’s forbidden “date.” Joey looks vaguely familiar, but Drew can’t quite place him.
“Do you think I should quit?” Drew asks Lorello as she’s leaving.
“You think Atlantic Tow is in on it?”
She thinks lots of people pay cash to get their cars back and cash businesses are good for money laundering. Somebody at Atlantic’s involved, but she doesn’t know whether it’s the owner or a rogue employee.
“LDP Enterprises owns the lot,” she says. “They’re a subsidiary of something called Allied HD, but I haven’t been able to trace the ownership yet.”
The sergeant looks at her over the rim of his glasses. “How did you get that far?”
“Online. Mainly database stuff.” Homeowners all over Boston don’t bother to password-protect their Internet connections. It’s easier for Drew to find an Internet hot spot than a legit overnight parking space.
Lorello makes a mark on a sheet of paper. “Let me know if you see the girl again. And don’t stick your neck out, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You got a Boston address yet?”
“Soon,” Drew promises. The fact that he asks makes her feel hopeful.
Drew spends the next afternoon looking for an actual apartment, with thick enough walls to muffle the wail of blues harmonicas and a landlord who doesn’t mind dogs. She would kill for a window that looks out on water, a pond or a stream if not the ocean, some visual reassurance that she’s not in the desert, but the rents on water-views are so far beyond her reach she reluctantly mulls the possibility of a roommate.
That night things happen so fast she has almost no time to react.
It’s chilly; Indian Summer has disappeared as quickly as it came. The moon recedes behind a bank of thick clouds. The light in the back row is out again. She feels more than sees a faint slip of movement, an air current, and as she straightens, something slips over her head and quickly tightens around her neck. A hard blow rattles her skull.
In the army, Drew boxed bantamweight, 119, five foot five, but tonight nobody rings a bell. Her opponent outweighs her, lifts her easily off her feet. She goes limp. As soon as she feels her captor’s muscles relax, she snaps her arms, scissors her legs, and escapes, but the thing over her head means she can’t see, can hardly breathe. Her punches hit air. She whirls, dodges, kicks. Arms grip her again. She grabs back, determined to mark her attacker.
That’s what she told her troops: Mark the guy, always mark the guy.
Her feet keep kicking, but they no longer touch the wharf. Blinded, she hurtles through space. The icy water is such a shock she almost gulps it in with a shriek before clamping her lips.
Down is up; up down. Sightless, she has no sense of which way to go for oxygen. She wriggles and thrashes, but the cold water clutches her in its frozen fist and holds her fast. Her chest is bursting, her brain starts to fuzz, then something hits her in the side like a slow-moving missile. It shoves her, pushes her, won’t let her stay down or give up.
She breaks the surface, sluggish, every move a slow-motion exertion, an effort of will. Breathing is painful. Her ribs ache. Her throat is raw. She claws at the soaked film over her nose with stiff and useless fingers till she rips a ragged hole. The only real thing, the only welcoming thing, is wet fur. Gid, paddling silently beside her, noses her in the direction of the scummy shoreline. She grabs at his collar, hooks a finger through the lead.
Their exit from the ocean is less than elegant. They lie in a soaked heap for minutes that seem like hours, both panting, winded, before staggering the length of a cobblestoned wharf toward a streetlamp. A passing man gives Drew the look reserved for dissolute alcoholics. The second cab agrees to take her to the police station.
Halfway there, shivering, she changes course, asks him to drop her near her car. In the privacy of the backseat, she strips, pulls on most of her dry wardrobe at once, layer after layer. She towels her bedraggled companion off as quickly as she can, apologizing to him, praising him.
“Hey, Ace, hey, hotshot, I didn’t know you could swim. What the hell is swim spelled backward? That would sure make some rotten name, tough guy.” She keeps on talking till her voice stops shaking, till her limbs stop shaking, till she notices that Gid smells terrible and realizes that she smells awful too.
Rosie’s Place will never be mistaken for the Ritz, but they’ve got tiled showers. The volunteers and staff are incredibly kind. Drew feels guilty lying to them. It’s been a long time since she felt guilty lying. Lying, in her experience, has served her better than telling the truth.
When Drew doesn’t show up for work the next night, doesn’t call, doesn’t come, she doubts anyone will report her missing. She reappears the night after that, walks coolly into the shed, and sits on a rickety chair.
Nate Parsons, paging through a comic, wearing old corduroys and a T-shirt, looks comfortably set for the evening. When he glances up and sees her, the color leaves his face.
“Miss me?” Drew says.
He manages a strangled response. “I — uh — thought you were sick.”
“No. You thought I was dead.”
Parsons closes his comic book.
Drew keeps talking. “You ever try renting an apartment in this city? Expensive as hell. Security deposit, first month’s rent, last month’s rent. It really adds up to quite a sum.”
“So why you telling me?” His voice feigns ignorance, but his fingers unclench and his eyes let her know that he recognizes greed when he sees it. Greed is something he understands.
“Simple,” she says. “I want to know how much you’re willing to cut me in for.”
“Cut you in?”
“You must be making a pile. I just want a reasonable sum. There’s the girl and there’s Joey. Is that his real name? And there’s you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Joey looks like you. He your kid? Your nephew? You’re not having any trouble hearing me, are you?”
“Huh?”
“You missing a transmitter? Ship-to-shore? Sort of like this one I pulled off the guy who tried to drown me? Looks like a hearing aid?”