He could see his sister’s mockery out of the corner of his eye but didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledgment.
Finally, he sidled right up to her and let fly the burp he’d been suppressing for a minute or so, right into Wendy’s airspace, which led her to squawk vehemently. “Yuck!” she protested, theatrically loud, and Len’s brow scrunched with the fleeting look of dark annoyance, and Rick could see him decide, no, he wasn’t going to hold an inquiry into the incident; Len didn’t want to know. He seemed almost relieved by the distraction.
Rick wondered about the regret or bitterness Len must have felt over the career he ended up with, as a bag man and a fixer, about as far removed from the legal heroics he’d once envisioned as you could get. He wondered if his father thought about such things anymore. If he thought about anything anymore. He wondered whether the stroke had wiped out his ability to think, along with his speech.
He didn’t think Joel Rubin was lying when he insisted he didn’t know who Len bought cash for. It made sense that his father would have protected his clients’ identity, not just because of attorney-client confidentiality, but because his clients were almost certainly involved in something criminal. Joel had claimed he didn’t have any idea who this mysterious “P” was, and Rick believed him.
But there had to be a way to figure out who “P” was, who he worked for. No one would know like a newspaper reporter. A real old-school journalist. Luckily, Rick still had contacts from his reporter days. A lot of them had accepted buyouts from TheBoston Globe as the paper downsized and were now freelancing, just skating by, but at least one remained at the paper. Monica Kennedy was one of their star investigative reporters, a hard-bitten woman in her late forties with unkempt steel-gray hair and thick smudged aviator glasses. She’d won a George Polk Award for her series on sexual abuse in Boston’s Catholic archdiocese, a lot of attention for exposing a state crime lab tech who’d faked hundreds of drug test results. Back in the 1990s, she’d done a whole series on cost overruns in the Big Dig.
He was still high, though less high than he’d been in Joel Rubin’s apartment, and his thoughts were muddled. He wasn’t thinking clearly. It took a great effort, but he scrolled through the contacts on his phone and eventually found it. Monica Kennedy.
He hadn’t talked to Monica in probably ten years. The only number he had was her work phone number. But that was unlikely to have changed. He called it, let it ring. On the fifth ring he got her voice mail. He left a message, asking her to call him back.
Then he drained his coffee, tossed the cup into a trash can, crossed the street, and got into his car. By now he felt confident enough to brave the traffic. Maybe it was an illusory confidence, but after all, driving around Boston required far more guts than skill.
He inspected his face in the rearview mirror. His eyes were bloodshot, droopy, and glazed. His clothes reeked of marijuana. He wouldn’t be fooling anybody. But he could always stop into a CVS, if he passed one, and buy some Visine. Maybe that would help.
He put the car in drive and turned right onto the Lynnway, past Meineke Muffler, a U-Haul, another Dunkin’ Donuts, and then car dealerships, one after another. He drove slowly, cautiously, braking at yellow lights, infuriating the drivers behind him. Not the way he normally drove, and not the way you drive in the Boston area. But despite the big hit of caffeine, the marijuana’s effects hadn’t yet gone away. Everything around him seemed to be going fast, jittery and choppy.
He took his cell phone from the passenger’s seat and glanced at it. He knew he shouldn’t be using his cell phone while he drove. He pulled into a Shell station, filled up the tank, then parked in the side lot. He found “Recents” on his phone and redialed Monica Kennedy’s number and got her voice mail again. He didn’t leave a second message.
He continued on the Lynnway, eventually getting onto VFW Parkway, past the old greyhound track in Revere, Wonderland, now a shopping plaza. Soon the city of Boston loomed into view, its handsome glinting skyscrapers reminding him of the magical first time you glimpse the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz.
Within a few minutes he was navigating a newly built series of roads, broad thoroughfares and rotaries built during the Big Dig. Then he entered the Ted Williams Tunnel, zipped through it. Everything did move faster around Boston now. Boondoggle or not, you had to give it that much: The Big Dig really had made the trains run on time.
He passed the airport, and the cargo terminal, and he continued on more new roads to TheBoston Globe’s headquarters, a sprawling midcentury building on sixteen acres on Morrissey Boulevard, a no-man’s-land south of downtown. Then he pulled into a visitor parking space and hit redial on his phone.
This time Monica answered.
“Kennedy,” she snapped, the warning bark of a junkyard dog.
“Monica, it’s Rick Hoffman.”
“Oh… Hoffman, hey.” She sounded distracted, unenthusiastic. “Yeah, I was about to call.”
“Can I take you out to lunch?”
“Already ate at my desk.”
“I mean, can I have half an hour of your time?”
An annoyed sigh. “You still at that crappy magazine?”
“Sort of.”
“Heard you got canned.”
“That would be more accurate.”
“Hope you’re not looking for something here. Globe’s not hiring.”
“Nope.”
“Does it have to be today?”
“I’d prefer it.”
Another sigh. “After I file my column. Four, four thirty.”
“Meet you at the Globe?”
“Liars.” He knew she meant the Three Lyres, the official after-work bar for Globe reporters and editors and staff.
She hung up.
Monica wasn’t a bad sort. Like most newspaper reporters, she didn’t waste any charm on anyone who wasn’t a potential source.
He didn’t want to sit in the parking lot. He just needed to find some coffee shop with Wi-Fi nearby and do some online research. Then he realized he wasn’t far from Dorchester, where Andrea’s nonprofit, Geometry Partners, was based. Maybe she was there. She wasn’t returning his calls, and he owed her an apology.
More than that, he owed her a do-over, another date, if she’d agree to it. He owed her another Rick, the real Rick, not the poser and fop and idiot with bundles of hundreds burning a hole in his pocket.
Ten minutes later he found the crumbling street off Dorchester Avenue and an old brick warehouse that had been converted cheaply into offices. The paneled door looked as though it belonged not on a warehouse but on a split-level ranch house in the suburbs.
Hardware-store stick-on numbers on the door said 14. A sheet of paper that said GEOMETRY PARTNERS in big computer-printed letters was taped just below the numbers. He suddenly had to pee. A lot of coffee had flushed through his digestive system and wanted out.
He knocked on the door awhile, then gave up waiting for someone to answer and just pulled it open. Inside was a small office crowded with two metal desks and a few people, looking like parents and kids, black and Hispanic. He approached one of the desks and asked the woman seated behind it, “Is Andrea Messina here?”
“She is, but she’s tied up in meetings all afternoon. I’m sorry. It’s nonstop.”
He took one of Andrea’s business cards from a tray on the desktop. It had her name and FOUNDER/CEO and the name GEOMETRY PARTNERS fashioned into a kind of colorful diagram, angles intersecting circles and dotted lines and points. He put it in his jacket pocket. Then he took another card and wrote on the back, “One more chance? Please?” and signed it “Rick.”