The adrenaline that had kept me going isn’t so much ebbing away as turning into smoke and vanishing into the night air. Exhaustion overtakes me. It’s late. The trains and buses to the Boston area are done for the night. I need to be smart about this. I know what I need to do when I’m back in Revere, and I will need full command of my faculties to pull it off. In short, I need to sleep.
There are a lot of subway stops near here — too many for the cops to cover — but in the end I choose to walk. The shaved head should still throw them — Hilde Winslow only saw me with the ditched baseball cap — but I also wear a surgical mask. Not many people are wearing them anymore, so I worry I may stick out with it. But it’s also a great disguise. Should I keep it on? Hard call. So is deciding where to go to sleep. I think about walking north to Central Park. There are plenty of places to hide and make shelter, but again, would that be a place the police might cover? I check my burner phone. Only Rachel, who bought it for me, knows the number. I wait for her to contact me, but she hasn’t yet. I’m not sure what that means, if anything. She probably still feels watched.
I make a plan. I keep the mask on, and I head up to Central Park. I take the path into the lush Ramble, the park’s nature preserve, near Seventy-Ninth Street. The trees are thicker up here. I find a spot as deep and secluded as I can find. I lay out branches everywhere near me and hope like hell that if someone approaches me, I’ll be able to hear and react. I lay down and listen to the babbling stream mixed in with the city sounds. Then I close my eyes and fall into a mercifully dreamless sleep.
At rush hour, when I know Penn Station will be packed, I board an Amtrak to Boston. I have the cleanly shaven head. I wear a mask. Sometime during the ride it hits me that I’ve now been free for twenty-four hours. I am on edge the whole time, but when I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, I realize that there is nearly zero chance anyone will recognize me. I don’t know how risky taking this train is, but really, what choice do I have?
When I’m an hour outside of Boston, my burner phone finally rings. I don’t recognize the incoming number. I hit the answer button, but I don’t say anything. I hold the phone to my ear and wait.
“Alpaca,” Rachel says.
Relief washes over me. We came up with seven code words to start every conversation. If she doesn’t open with the code word, it means that it is not safe and someone is forcing her to make the call or listening in. If she reuses a password — if on the next call she says “Alpaca” — I’ll again know someone, somehow, is listening in and trying to fool me.
“All okay?” I ask.
I don’t have a return password or code. I didn’t see a need. There is a fine line between careful and ridiculous.
“As well as we could expect.”
“The cops questioned you?”
“The FBI, yes.”
“They figured out where I was headed,” I say.
“The FBI?”
“Yes. They almost caught me at Hilde’s.”
“I didn’t say anything, I swear.”
“I know.”
“So how?”
“I’m not sure.”
“But you got away?”
“For now.”
“Were you able to question her?”
She means Hilde Winslow, of course. I tell her yes and fill her in on some of what I learned. I tell her that Hilde admitted lying on the stand, but I leave out the gambling debt and the connection to Revere. If somehow someone is listening in — man, all of this can make you so damn paranoid — it’s better not to give them the slightest hint of my destination.
“I’m getting as much cash together as I can. I’m going to figure a way to lose any tail that the FBI has on me, just like we talked about.”
“How long will that take?”
“An hour, maybe two. Pin-drop me your location when you get where you’re going. I’ll come to you.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s one other thing,” Rachel says when I finish.
I wait.
“Cheryl visited me last night.”
I can feel the tightness in my chest. “How did that go?”
“I showed her the photo. She thinks we are both delusional.”
“Hard to argue.”
“She also said that my personal issues could be interfering with my judgment.”
“Those being?”
“I’m going to forward you some links, David. Read them. It’s easier than trying to explain.”
Rachel texts me links to three different articles on her proposed me-too article and the subsequent suicide of a young woman named Catherine Tullo. I settle back and read all three. I try to study the situation objectively, as though it does not involve a person I adore as much as Rachel.
But it’s hard to be objective for a lot of reasons.
I have questions for Rachel, but they can keep.
I lay back and close my eyes until I hear the call for North Station in Boston. I look out the window as we pull up to the platform, fearing a huge police presence. There are scattered cops, which is normal, I guess, but they don’t look particularly wary. That doesn’t mean much, but it’s better than seeing a hundred with guns drawn. I head out of the station and into my home city. I can’t help but smile. I head down Causeway Street and hit the Boston-ubiquitous Dunkin’ on the corner of Lancaster Street. I grab half a dozen donuts — two French crullers, two chocolate glazed, one toasted coconut, one old-fashioned — and a large cup of unflavored black coffee because I hate flavored coffee, especially from Dunkin’.
I head down Lancaster Avenue with the Dunkin’ bag in my hand. I’m still wearing the surgical mask, but eventually I will risk that to eat the French cruller. My mouth is watering at the thought. Fifteen minutes later, I’m at the Bowdoin Street subway and on the Blue Line heading toward Revere Beach. I try to flash back to past times when I made this journey in my youth. We had a group of guys back then, all of us in the same class at Revere High. I was closest to Adam Mackenzie, but we had TJ, Billy Simpson, and the man I was on my way to visit, Eddie Grilton.
Eddie’s family owned the pharmacy at Centennial Avenue and North Shore Road, a stone’s throw from Revere Beach station. His grandfather started the place. Everyone I know got their prescriptions filled there, and way back when, first Eddie’s grandfather and then his father ran numbers and books for the Fisher crime family.
The small parking lot behind the pharmacy was completely isolated from the street. Back in the day, it was our main hangout. We drank beers and smoked weed. Of course, that was a long time ago. The crew was mostly gone now. TJ was a physician in Newton. Billy opened a bar in Miami. But Eddie, who had wanted out of this town more than any of us, who hated his grandfather’s life and his father’s life and the teen years he’d been forced to work in the pharmacy too, was still here. He’d ended up going to pharmacology school, just like his old man wanted. After he graduated, he worked that high counter until the old man, like the grandfather before him, keeled over and died of a heart attack. Now Eddie ran the place and waited his turn to keel over.
When I get off at Revere Beach station, I grow wary again, not just because of the possible police presence but because this is my old neighborhood and if anyplace will see through my disguises, it’s here. I am within a thousand feet of my childhood home, the Mackenzie home, Sal’s Pizzeria, Grilton Pharmacy, all of it.