Then who was it?
Rick had a fleeting, paranoid thought. Someone had seen him, despite his precautions, with all that cash. But who? Had he been followed home from the storage unit? But who could have seen him there? Just the kid with the big holes in his earlobes who was barely paying attention.
Maybe someone in the neighborhood had seen him carrying the plastic bags of banknotes out to the trunk of his car. He no longer knew most of the neighbors here. It wouldn’t be impossible that someone had been watching, someone brazen and criminally inclined enough to break into the house. Maybe someone had got hold of a front-door key. Maybe someone had broken in before and had figured out how to do it quickly and quietly. A high school kid, maybe.
The more he thought, the more anxious he felt.
If he was going to do anything, it was time to move. Now.
Clutching the bronze bust, he started up the stairs, staying to the front of the first step, then to the back of the second, avoiding the noisy spots where the old boards had warped or shrunk over time, or both. A pallid moonlight shone in through the window. He looked up the staircase, didn’t see anyone there.
A board squeaked under his foot, and he froze. He stood still, waited and listened. He heard the footsteps upstairs, still moving along the floor.
He climbed a couple more stairs, silently. Waited and listened. Finally reached the third-floor landing.
His eyes had adjusted to the dim light. He looked around for a shape, didn’t see one.
“All right,” he said. “Whoever’s up here, come out now.”
He raised the bronze bust, cocked his arm, ready to slam it if need be, but equally ready to stay his hand if the intruder were just some high school kid, sheepish and apologetic.
From out of the darkness, something slammed into his gut, doubling him over in pain. He toppled, his head hitting the wooden floor, the bust clattering. He tasted blood, metallic and warm. Loud footsteps behind him. He tried to catch his breath, but he’d been hit in the solar plexus, and the pain was sharp and exquisite, as if someone were sitting on his chest, he couldn’t breathe, he spat blood. Someone was running, thundering past him and down the stairs.
From downstairs came a crash and a thud and the sound of a door slamming, and the intruder was gone.
Now he knew he had no choice. He had to get out of there.
6
He walked to Harvard Square, limping slightly, his head pounding, and into the Charles Hotel. The pain had subsided considerably. He’d been kicked, or hit, or walloped with something. His abdomen was tender and bruised. His rib cage hurt, mostly when he breathed. He’d bit his lip, hard, when he fell. Other than that, he was unharmed. By the time he’d gotten to his feet and gone downstairs, his attacker was gone.
He had no idea how the man-he’d assumed it was a man-had gotten in. But he had no doubt the man was after the cash. The house wasn’t safe.
“I have a deluxe king for three ninety-nine,” the clerk-midtwenties, neatly trimmed beard, tweezed brows-said.
“I’ll take it.” He hesitated. “You take cash, right?”
“Of course, sir, but I’ll need to take an imprint of your card for incidentals.”
He handed over one of his useless credit cards and hoped the clerk wouldn’t run it.
It occurred to him that he could in fact take the Presidential Suite, if the Charles had one. The most expensive suite in the hotel. But for now, just staying in a nice hotel room felt like an outrageous splurge. At least until he determined who this money belonged to, he’d be… prudent, as he liked to think of it.
He went to his room and felt relieved to bolt the door behind him. He felt safe. Later he’d bring a suitcase over. He took the packets of money out of his ski parka and locked them in the hotel safe. He took his MacBook Air out of his shoulder bag and did some quick research.
His father’s secretary-she’d been more than that, actually; she was his adviser and traffic cop and praetorian guard and personal assistant-was a woman named Joan Breslin. A no-nonsense platinum-haired woman with a South Boston accent, a brusque manner, a tart tongue. And clearly the patience of Job, having put up with Len’s shenanigans for all those years. As far as Rick could recall, she had retired after his father’s stroke. She was living in Melrose or Malden or Medford, one of the M-towns north of Boston.
He had her phone number but didn’t remember where she lived. Switchboard.com was no help. There was a long column of Breslins in Melrose and Malden, none of them Joan. She was married, Rick was fairly sure, or widowed, and she was of the generation of women who usually listed themselves under their husbands’ names. So she’d be under John or Frank or whatever, probably not Joan. ZabaSearch.com was more helpful, since it listed ages. Eventually he found a Joan Breslin, age seventy-two, in Melrose, listed under her husband, Timothy.
A woman answered the phone on the fifth ring. He imagined a tan wall phone in the kitchen, a long gnarled coiled cord.
“Is this Joan?”
“Who’s calling?”
“It’s Rick Hoffman. Leonard Hoffman’s son.”
A pause. “Oh, my goodness, Rick, how are you?”
“I’m good. And… Tim?”
“Yeah, you know…” She suddenly sounded worried. “Oh, no, is it-Lenny?”
“Dad’s fine. I mean, he’s the same.”
“Oh, good. I paid him a visit a couple years ago, Rick, but it’s hard, you know. Seeing him like that.”
“I know.”
“I can’t. It-it tears me apart.”
“Me, too,” he said. “Me, too. Thanks for that.” He paused. “I haven’t heard from you in a while, so I assume everything’s okay with the insurance, right?” She’d set up long-term care insurance for Lenny and very generously volunteered to handle all the paperwork for him as long as he was alive.
“Everything’s fine, nothing to worry about.”
“Joan, I wonder, if it’s not too much of an inconvenience, whether I could come by and talk to you for a bit. I have some questions.”
An inconvenience. Like your schedule is crowded, Rick thought, between mah-jongg and trips to the supermarket and to the post office to buy stamps, one at a time.
“Talk? I don’t know what I-”
“Just some loose ends concerning my dad’s law practice. It’s about… Well, I don’t know anything about how law firms operate. Things like escrow accounts and how he dealt with cash and all that kind of thing.”
“Escrow? Is someone complaining they never got their retainer back? Because-”
“No, nothing like that. It’s a bit… involved. Could I drive out to, ah, Melrose, and maybe we could have a cup of coffee?”
“I’ve got houseguests,” she said. “Can this wait?”
Rick agreed to call her back in a couple of days, after her guests had left. But Rick wasn’t particularly optimistic. She hadn’t sounded defensive or squirrelly on the phone. If she knew something about a vast quantity of cash, she’d sound different, he decided. Evasive, maybe, if she’d been involved in covering something up. Or frightened. Or at least knowing, somehow.
He went out to get some supplies for the next few days.
Half an hour later, in line at a supermarket on Mount Auburn Street, pushing a cart full of cold cereal and milk and yogurt, plus some junk food, SunChips and Tostitos Hint of Lime, he heard someone call his name. He turned around.
“Rick? That is you. Oh my God.”
“Andrea.” His face lit up.