“The garage door is rolled up about three feet in the middle loading bay in the back alley. Use that as your entry point. I’m watching the building from a distance. When you’re done, flash the lights of your car once before you illuminate them for good. The overnight managers start coming in around eleven-thirty, so you have to be out in the next ten minutes. When you’re inside the building, keep all lights off at all times.”
And he hung up. I turned to Hank and asked if he brought flashlights.
“Does the pope carry a rosary?” he replied, then handed small lights to Mongillo and me. As I led them around back, Hank said, “What are we doing here? Are you missing your Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes form this year, or is there something larger at stake?”
Mongillo laughed. I didn’t. I told them both, “We’re looking for any envelope addressed to me. We’re probably going to find it in an incoming mail bin that’s yet to be sorted, but who really knows? It was dropped off in one of the front boxes earlier today. I’m just hoping it hasn’t been brought down to the main headquarters for sorting already.”
Neither of them said anything, though I suspect I knew what they were thinking: this was like looking for a hunk of manure from a specific horse on a sprawling farm field. Or something like that. The face of my cell phone read 11:15. I said, “And we’ve got ten minutes to get in and out of the building, no lights allowed.”
Mongillo asked, “Would it be any easier if we were all bound and gagged as well?”
I ignored that, but Hank laughed. Apparently this was anything-goes night on the humor front.
As advertised, the garage door on the middle bay was rolled up about three feet from the bottom, leaving a gap that I slid under easily enough, and Sweeney did with just a little more effort. Mongillo, that’s another story, one that involves some pushing and pulling and a rather uncomfortable moment when I thought we might have to abandon him directly under the door. Once inside, Hank rapped softly on a regular exit next to the garage and said, “Mong, use this on the way out.”
So we were in, the three of us. My cell phone said it was 11:17 p.m., giving us about eight minutes of search time before we had to get out, and another five minutes to alert Peter Martin as to what we’d found.
“Look anywhere and everywhere,” I said, “for anything addressed to me.”
The place was as dark as the Black Forest on a moonless night, though I confess the closest I’ve been to Germany is a slice of German chocolate cake that I had at an absurdly overpriced New American restaurant about six months before.
Suffice it to say, the place was dark — extremely dark, can’t — see — your — hand — in — front — of — your — face dark. It was also moldy and more than a little musty, and it made me understand for the first time why UPS drivers are always so cheerfuclass="underline" because they don’t have to work for the post office.
The three of us fanned out across the first floor of the building — at least I think we did, but I couldn’t see them very well. A moment later, I did see a couple of slices of penetrating light from their flashlights, and I illuminated mine as well.
The place was lined with various canvas pushcarts. Little warrens were separated from one another by mesh netting. There were stacks of envelopes and piles of boxes stuffed in every possible crevice. It made it seem all the more extraordinary that a letter could be delivered to the most remote outposts in America in just a few days.
I quite literally stumbled across a row of those aforementioned pushcarts, each of them identified by zip code. I shone my light on the various labels until I found my code on the waterfront, and I reached into the deep basket and pulled out a fistful of envelopes.
I quickly shuffled through them with one hand, shining the light on them with the other, dropping each envelope back into the cart after I had scanned it. I got to the end without finding anything with my name.
So I went to the cart that bore the Record’s zip code, only I found hundreds more letters. I called out in a loud whisper, “Guys, over here, I could use some help,” and I flicked my light around the room. In a moment they were both by my side, and the three of us divvied up the contents of the basket. I was fairly sure we’d find it there.
We didn’t.
I checked the face of my phone — 11:21. Sweeney said, “Follow me, I found a bunch of white boxes with postmarked mail. I’ll bet it’s in there.”
Mongillo and I followed Sweeney across the cluttered floor, stumbling more than a couple of times but ultimately arriving safely. I should have taken Hank’s bet, though, because after we divvied up about six hundred envelopes and shuffled through them, we didn’t even find so much as a phone bill bearing my name.
Now it was 11:23, time to give up. Mac Foley would be toast in the morning Record, in a story under my byline. I briefly tried to convince myself that he deserved it, but both my conscience and my gut told me otherwise.
My hands, by the way, were starting to cramp, probably from lack of food, lack of water, lack of sleep, lack of sex, lack of joy, lack of humanity, lack of virtually anything that normal people have plenty of in their refined and enjoyable lives.
That’s what I was feeling — self-pity — when the first gunshot rang out, the report slamming off the concrete floors and walls and ringing in my ears. I’ll repeat that: a gunshot. A real live honest-to-goodness gunshot, right there in the Back Bay U.S. Postal Service Annex in the dark of a crucial night. When I thought about it for any more than a fraction of a second, it started to make perfect sense, because that’s just plain and simple what happens in the increasingly absurd life of intrepid reporter Jack Flynn.
It’s what I heard after the gunshot that really frightened me. A crash, very near me, as if someone crumpled to the floor not from the sound of the shot but from the impact. I dove for cover, then crawled furiously toward the sounds of despair, which now also included a voice muttering, “Fuck. He got me.” It was, for the record, Vinny Mongillo’s voice.
I extinguished my light so I wouldn’t be a sitting duck, or in this case, reporter. I crawled headfirst into a metal desk, then a tall trash can, grabbing the former before it tipped to the floor. In about twenty seconds, I felt the form of Mongillo lying on his back between a desk chair and a canvas bin.
“Vinny, it’s Jack,” I whispered.
“The fuckers got me,” he said. His voice was more angry than panicked, especially when he added, “Right in my stomach.”
I flicked on the light and circled both my palms around it as I shone the bulb onto Mongillo’s vast abdominal area, which was not unlike trying to hit the continent of Asia with a dart. I didn’t see any bullet hole in his plaid shirt. I didn’t even see any blood. I whispered, “Show me where it hurts,” and he took his big, beefy hand and drew little circles in the air above the right side of his lower stomach.
I shone the light and saw the truth: he was grazed with a bullet that might have cost him an old shirt and a little bit of skin, but it hadn’t penetrated any flesh, or for that matter caused any lasting damage, at least not of the physical kind.
I whispered, “Vin, I think the bullet skimmed your gut. You’ve got nothing worse than a scrape.”
He replied, “Oh, God, man, anywhere but my stomach. Don’t take away the one true pleasure I still have.”
I don’t think he was talking about sex.
I shut my light off and told Vin to stay down and keep his light off as well. I set off across the room in search of that which I didn’t yet know. I stole another glance at my cell phone: 11:25 p.m. We were about to be late.