The time crunch, however, made it so Landry couldn’t wait around for Rob to show up. He had to track him down quickly but couldn’t watch three places at once. Landry needed help.
He punched numbers on his cell phone.
“Gourley’s Detective Agency.”
“Doug Gourley, please,” Landry said into the phone.
“Mr. Gourley is with a client. Can I have him call you?”
“You tell Mr. Gourley someone wants to talk about Sarajevo.”
“He can’t be interrupted right now, sir. If you would care to leave a message.”
“Just tell him.” Landry’s tone made it clear he expected compliance. “Sarajevo. Trust me, he’ll want to talk to me.”
The secretary hesitated, then said, “One moment sir.”
The phone clicked in Landry’s ear and he was on hold. Thirty seconds later he heard a gruff voice.
“Gourley here.”
“Do you know who this is?”
“Hey, how’re you doing? It’s been a while.”
Landry had known Gourley would recognize his voice, just as he knew Gourley would be smart enough not to say his name over an open phone line. The two of them had spent too many years working in places where a slip like that could cost people their lives. Habits learned in that fashion don’t die easily.
“Did I pull you away from something important?” Landry said.
“Nothing that can’t sit in the waiting room until we’re done. What’s up?”
“I need some help.”
“Name it.”
“Three watchers, each for a different location.”
“Local?”
“Yeah, Boston area.”
“When?”
“I need them in place within the hour,” Landry said. “Have you got the manpower available?”
“I can get it. What are they watching for?”
“I’ll fax you a photo of the guy, plus the three addresses and my phone number. If he turns up they’re to call and say so. If he leaves again they should trail him and report in, but nothing else. No one touches him until I get there. After that, your guys are done. I’ll take it from there.”
“How good is this guy they’re after?” Gourley asked.
“No worries there. He’s not in the business and he doesn’t have a clue anyone’s interested in him.”
“Any idea how long it’ll take for the guy to show up?”
“Before the end of the day would be my guess.”
“I’m going to have to charge you,” Gourley said. “I hate to do it but there’s rent to be paid. You know how it is.”
“No problem. Expenses are all taken care of.”
“Then fax me the information and I’ll get the guys on the ground right away.”
Lesley held a couple of napkins wrapped around her paper coffee cup as she and Shayna walked slowly along the downtown sidewalk. Once in a while they paused to take a drink. The warmth seemed to leech into the top few inches of her throat but advanced no further.
“Are you as cold as I am?” Lesley said.
Shayna shrugged. “I’m fine.”
Lesley took another sip and shivered as a chilly October breeze shifted a Dunkin’ Donuts bag on the sidewalk.
“Well I’m not,” she said.
“No shit,” Shayna said. “What was your first clue?”
Lesley sighed and stared at the sidewalk as they sauntered aimlessly along. “You want to know what bugs me worse than anything about this whole mess?”
“Hit me,” Shayna said.
Lesley drained the rest of her coffee and dropped the cup in a nearby trashcan.
“How could I have read Rob so wrong?” she said. “If he was the kind of person I thought he was, then he couldn’t have done what he did.”
“This isn’t your fault, you know. You’re not the one who went whacko and attacked a bank.”
Lesley jammed her hands in her pockets and hunched her shoulders.
“When I first met Rob,” she said, “I knew almost right away we were going to end up together.” She looked sideways at Shayna and grinned ruefully. “Sounds corny, right? But it’s true. And it scared the heck out of me. I was in a new town, a new school, and here I was feeling like I’d just met the guy I was going to marry. That was the last thing I wanted right then. So I kind of ignored him for a while, hung with the girls, went out with other guys. But there was no denying it. When we started going out it was like, yeah, this is the one.”
Lesley kicked a pebble on the sidewalk in disgust. “So if I’m so pathetic at reading people, how can I ever trust anyone again?”
“Not every guy is a nutcase,” Shayna said.
“But apparently I’m no good at figuring out which ones are.”
“You’ve got to stop beating up on yourself.”
“I just can’t see doing this all over again,” Lesley said. “If Rob and I were to get back together, I’d always be waiting for something like this to happen again. And if it was someone else, I’d always wonder when their hidden side was going to show itself.”
Shayna stepped in front of her friend, forcing Lesley to stop walking.
“Stop it,” Shayna said, putting a hand on Lesley’s shoulder.
Lesley pressed her lips hard into a thin line and took a deep breath through her nose. When she let it out she felt deflated, small.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Shayna said.
The caring look in Shayna’s brown eyes made Lesley feel a bit warmer.
But only a tiny bit.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The walk light turned green. Tim pedaled his bike across Commonwealth Avenue and headed for Rob’s apartment building. When he got close, he saw Rob waiting on the sidewalk next to the building’s parking lot, straddling his own bike. Tim’s gut clenched when he saw Rob, but Tim pasted on a supportive smile as he approached.
“Hey,” Tim said as he stopped beside Rob. “How are you holding up?”
Rob shrugged and grimaced. “You know. I’ve had better days.”
“No kidding.”
A car turned to enter the parking lot, which forced Rob and Tim to move out of the way.
“So how far do you want to go?” Tim asked.
Rob shrugged. “It’s supposed to rain soon. Let’s just play it by ear.”
“Works for me. You lead the way.”
Tim got to stare at Rob’s back for a while as they rode slowly at first to warm up, then started keeping pace with the cars. Once they passed by Boston College, Rob turned off Beacon Street. They normally wound their way through the smaller residential streets so they had less traffic to worry about. This allowed Tim to pull up beside Rob.
“I was surprised when you called,” Tim said. “I figured you’d have other things on your mind today.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” Rob said. “I needed this bike ride, I can tell you that.”
“You mean there’s more that I don’t know about?”
“Lesley and me, we … uh …” Rob clenched his lips together.
“What?” Tim said.
Rob lowered his head momentarily, then looked up and blinked his eyes. “Man,” he said, “this whole thing really sucks.”
“I can imagine.”
Rob took a deep breath and let it out.
“We broke up,” he said.
Guilt and exultation immediately went to war with each other inside Tim. It was hard to witness such misery, but on the other hand the door to Lesley was opening sooner than he would ever have dreamed possible. He looked away, not wanting to give Rob any sense of what he was feeling.
“You’re not serious,” Tim said, his face sober once again.
“Earlier today, after the arraignment.”
“What happened?”
“She won’t believe anything I tell her. She thinks I’m lying when I say I didn’t attack the bank.”
“She’s just upset. I mean, who wouldn’t be?”