18
The text came two days later.
On his laptop, actually. A tritone sounded, reverbing fuzzily like a vibraphone. A window opened on his laptop’s screen, asking whether he’d accept a digital fingerprint, an encryption key. The window was full of gibberish, a block of meaningless characters.
The sender was AnonText007@gmail.com.
He clicked yes, and then a text message popped right up: 7 p.m., IHOP, Soldiers Field Rd, NE corner pkg lot.
A meet had been set for the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Brighton.
Danny had already begun to hope the DEA had lost interest in him. That they’d finally realized it wasn’t such a good idea to press such a rank amateur into service. Too risky. Too many unintended consequences.
With a sense of foreboding he typed OK, and clicked SEND.
He knew he couldn’t tell Abby about the DEA.
She was a teenager, a member of the Oversharing Generation who documented their every move on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. She could never be expected to keep a secret like this. Her best friend’s father was a financier for a Mexican drug cartel? Her own dad was being blackmailed into gathering information on the Galvins? She’d be incredulous, then outraged, and most of all buzzing with excitement. Her need to tell Jenna would be an uncontrollable reflex.
Lucy was a different story. She was the soul of discretion. He trusted her absolutely. She’d never gossip; she knew how to keep a secret.
But when he called her that afternoon, he found himself unable to tell her the astonishing latest.
“Luce, baby, I’m going to be late for dinner tonight.”
“What about Abby?”
“Home, as far as I know. Not at the Galvins’.”
The complexities of their living arrangements had been worked out over time. With her son, Kyle, away at Bowdoin, Lucy was an empty nester. She disliked rattling around her Brookline condo, making dinner for one. She preferred spending time as a family with Danny and Abby on Marlborough Street.
She wasn’t Abby’s mom, and she wasn’t a substitute. She was Daddy’s girlfriend, not an authority figure. Yet in a sense she was Abby’s girlfriend, too: kind of a big sister. What might have been awkward in another family seemed to work fairly well, maybe because Lucy was a psychiatrist and knew where the land mines were and how to sidestep them.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll fix something with Abby, then. What’s up?”
He was ready with a lie. “An old friend of mine’s in town and wanted to pick my brain. He’s got some idea for a book. I think he wants publishing advice, which generally means how he can get an agent.”
“Who’s that?”
“You don’t know him-guy named Art? Art Nava?”
“I don’t know the name. From Columbia?”
“Nah, I met him through Sarah. A million years ago. Anyway. You two just go ahead and have dinner without me.”
Art Nava was a high school friend of his from Wellfleet, someone he hadn’t talked to, even thought of, since high school graduation. Why he’d chosen that name, he had no idea.
All he knew for certain was that he wanted to protect Lucy from the dangerous swerve his life had taken, to keep her innocent and uninvolved. To take this on alone and not endanger the woman he loved so much. It felt like the right thing to do.
But it was the first time he’d ever lied to her, and he was sure it wouldn’t be the last.
At five minutes before seven that evening, Danny was sitting in his car in the parking lot of the International House of Pancakes in Brighton. The lot was mostly empty: The pancake chain’s “eat breakfast for dinner” campaign had never worked in a big way-but a steady trickle of cars came in and out. The white noise whoosh of traffic from Soldiers Field Road was rhythmic, almost lulling. Or it might have been lulling, in another setting, at another time.
Because he didn’t know what to expect, and he hated uncertainty. He was to park in the northeast corner of the IHOP lot by seven o’clock.
They would find him.
He waited. A few spaces away, a red Jeep Grand Cherokee was parked. It probably belonged to an employee, maybe a manager. The other cars in the lot were clustered much closer to the restaurant.
Whenever a car pulled in, he looked up, watched to see if it was headed toward him. By 7:05 he’d watched a total of five cars enter the lot and three leave. None of them came anywhere near. The agent he’d talked to on the phone-Yeager, the less obnoxious of the two-had been emphatic about punctuality. He’d give them another five minutes and then leave.
His cell phone made a strange bling sound. It displayed the words ENCRYPTED CHAT RECEIVED. He unlocked the phone and read the message. Look to your right, it said. Take the side door. No key necessary.
He looked to the right, saw no one and nothing.
For a moment he didn’t understand. Then he saw, maybe twenty feet away, a motel. The CHARLES RIVER MOTEL, a sign said. A black side door with white trim. He hadn’t paid any attention to the building, but there it was, closer than the IHOP.
Then another bling, and a new text message: Room 126. First room on your right.
He got out, slammed the car door, looked around briefly. A low set of concrete steps leading into the motel, bracketed by hedges. You were supposed to insert a key card into a slot to open the door, but when he pulled the handle toward him, it came right open. Someone had jammed the door lock. The hallway was dim and smelled of diapers. He could hear babies crying, multiple babies in multiple rooms. He wondered if this was one of those hotels that the state had taken over for overflow low-income housing. The first door on the right was numbered 126. He knocked once, and it came right open.
Slocum, the one with the Just for Men Jet Black hair and the pointed face of a fox, at the door. Danny entered, and Slocum closed the door behind him without saying a word. Yeager was sitting in the corner. The curtains were closed, and the only light came from a single desk lamp.
“Daniel.”
“Seven o’clock sharp, huh?” Danny said. “I guess you meant government time.”
Yeager shook his head slowly, and said, “The precautions are for your own safety.” He held out a small, dark blue velvet bag.
Danny took it. Something heavy but small was inside.
“Careful,” Yeager said. “It’s just been calibrated. We don’t want it to get out of whack.”
Danny tipped out a large metallic disc that looked like a coin. It was a bronze medal that bore the inscription COLLEGIUM BOSTONIENSE.
“Look familiar?” Yeager said.
Danny nodded. “I think so.”
“It’s an exact replica of the Boston College President’s Medal he’s already got, only it’s made from resin.”
He weighed it in his palm. It was heavy and cold, even felt solid, like a real medal. “This is a transmitter?”
Yeager nodded once. “A GSM-based monitoring device. Sound- activated. Calls us when it detects sound in the room so we can listen in. But you get the hard job. You have to swap it for the original.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“Figure it out,” Slocum said.
Danny turned and said to Slocum, “I’ve been in the guy’s home office exactly once. Call me crazy, but if he really does cartel business in there, I have a feeling he might not want me wandering around in there by myself.”
Slocum gave a sour smile and looked away like he was bored.
Yeager said, “It shouldn’t take you more than a few seconds. You just need to find the right opportunity.”
“Simple as that,” Danny said. They were an odd duo, he thought, the two DEA agents. Yeager’s manner was studious to the point of affectation, but beneath it, like traces of old paint, a palimpsest, was something rough-hewn, crude, and nasty.
“Notify us when you’ve placed it,” Yeager said.