Tracking Shot

by Colin Campbell

  “Look, here’s what…”

  “No. You look.” Harris got himself under control and lowered his voice. “I’ve got a District Court judge climbing up my ass. The Chief of Police is chasing me for answers. And half the force is being pulled from Fourth of July parade control for close-order protection.”

  He folded his arms across his chest to contain his anger. “Then you, the least credible witness with links to all the affected parties, come in with a new theory that doesn’t even include the judge who’s crawling all over me. So forgive me if I don’t give your theory too much credence.”

  The room became quiet. A fire truck rumbled past outside. McNulty waited to see if Harris had finished, then took another moment before responding. He could understand the detective’s frustration. Cops prefer to get on with the job and it’s annoying when politicians, judges or the brass stick their noses in and tie up your resources. The people furthest removed from the streets always feel they know what’s best when in reality, it’s front-line cops who should make all the important decisions. Harris was being hamstrung.

  McNulty nodded. “You finished?”

  Harris looked like he was going to explode. “I’ll be finished when people stop getting in my way and I can get on with the investigation.” He jabbed a finger at McNulty. “I should have locked you up after the motel room. Then you wouldn’t keep getting under my feet. So here’s a piece of advice, I’m going to count to ten, and if you’re still here when I’m finished you’re going to stay here. In cuffs. In a cell. Incommunicado.”

  He raised a hand and started counting off on his fingers. “One.”

  He stared at McNulty. “Two.”

  McNulty stared back. “Three.”

  Harris didn’t back off. “Four.”

  McNulty gave Harris one last hard stare then spun on his heels. “Fuck it.”

  By the time Harris reached five, McNulty was out the front door and striding toward his car.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Larry wasn’t in the shower when McNulty finally stopped wandering and went to see him later that evening. It was getting dark and the light was on in Larry’s room. McNulty stood on the motel balcony for several minutes, soaking up the sound of the river and the cool night air, then he knocked on the door. Larry looked out through the drapes then opened the door.

  “You come to wash my back?”

  “If you’re getting a shower I’m going to see Amy.”

  “That’s something you should consider.”

  McNulty let out a long deep sigh and slumped against the wall. “There’s a lot to consider. And Amy’s bottom of the list.”

  They sat in the same chairs at the same table as last time but without the bathrobe and the pruning flesh. McNulty had had plenty of time to think about his next move while driving around Waltham after having been kicked out of the police station by Detective Harris. None of it had made for pleasant thinking. All of it had an element of risk. And some of it needed the help of an understanding producer.

  “Absolutely fucking not.”

  The understanding producer was going to take some work. McNulty leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs and prepared to formulate his argument. In situations like this he favored affirmative action. Or threats.

  “Larry. This is going to go one of two ways.” He rested one hand on the table and put the other in his pocket. Casual-like. “Either I quit and look into this myself…”

  Larry sat back as if slapped across the face. He blinked twice. “You serious?”

  McNulty kept his tone friendly, the threat implied not overt. “Or I take a couple of days off and do some digging. Get to the bottom of this and save the Titanic.”

  Larry was getting used to being slapped across the face. “The Titanic’s in danger?”

  McNulty uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “The police are pinning all this on a movie company that’s linked to a porn trial and happens to be making a film about a judge who’s a dead-ringer for the real judge in the porn trial, and doing it in a replica of the judge’s real courtroom. If they make that stick, or if it goes public, you haven’t got a movie. And you sure as shit won’t have a production company.”

  Larry’s face was as red as when he’d come out of the shower. “But the photos.”

  McNulty shrugged. “We didn’t get around to that.”

  “So push it.”

  “He doesn’t trust me. And anyway, it shows the shooting but doesn’t give any reason why we’re not involved.” He waved at Larry. “They’ve still got you tied up with the trial.” He indicated himself. “And me tied up with everything.” He sighed. “My robbery theory. That’s just speculation. I’ve got no evidence.”

  Larry shifted in his seat. “You’re not a cop. You don’t need evidence.”

  McNulty took his hand out of his pocket. “They’re cops. Evidence is all they listen to.”

  Larry considered that for a moment, then looked at his technical adviser. “Can you get the evidence?”

  McNulty raised his eyebrows. “If I take a couple of days off to do some digging.”

  Larry kept a blank face and didn’t speak. He glanced toward the door and then back at McNulty. He was trying to breathe normally but it wasn’t easy. There was a lot at stake. After a long pause he nodded slowly. “We’ll work around you. There’ll be a day off on the fourth, anyway.”

  McNulty had known Larry would come around, but there was something else. Something that needed approaching from the side. McNulty fixed steady eyes on his producer. “Did you mean what you said about Titanic Productions being family?”

  Larry slitted his eyes and spoke slowly. “Yes.”

  McNulty nodded. “Well, push comes to shove, I might need the family to pull together.”

  Larry was noncommittal. “Mmm-hmm?”

  McNulty kept it vague. “You know the first rule of stunt work is to eliminate the risk?”

  Larry nodded but didn’t speak.

  McNulty lowered his voice. “Well, this could get a bit risky.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Waltham wasn’t big enough to have a lot of potential targets. The most obvious were the banks but the banks were closed until nine a.m. so it was the following morning before McNulty began making his inquiries. There were only ten banks in and around Waltham. He got the addresses from the same kid who’d shown him the motel CCTV and followed recommended police inquiry practice, starting with the nearest strip of banks on Main Street.

  McNulty still carried himself like a cop so getting in to ask a few questions wasn’t a problem, but without a badge or official I.D., there was no easy way to broach the subject, so he just came right out and asked. “How much money do you keep in the vault?”

  The hardest thing for ex-cops to accept is the fact that they no longer have any authority. They’re just Joe Citizen. There was a time when you walked into a room and people stopped in case you were after them. You had the power to force entry, seize property and deprive a person of his liberty all on the strength of a uniform and an I.D. card. McNulty didn’t have a uniform or an I.D. card. The world didn’t stop when he walked into a bank. It didn’t stop until he asked the teller how much money they had in the vault.

  McNulty was almost thrown out of the Rockland Trust on Moody Street and the teller at the People’s United Bank was a hair’s breadth of bringing Main Street to a stop. If she’d hit the silent alarm, the police would have closed Main Street and the streets on either side of the bank, and isolated the building. The McDonald’s behind the bank would have been evacuated and the appropriately named Nathaniel P. Banks School opposite would have been used as a command center. Neither of those things happened but they came close. What McNulty learned was that he’d need to use lateral thinking, and that banks don’t have armed security guards anymore.

  By the time he’d exhausted the town center banks and moved toward Hardy’s Pond and the Concord Turnpike he was using his connecti
on with Titanic Productions as an introduction and “location scouting” as the reason he was asking so many questions. The amount of money they kept in the vault became a conversational aside instead of the main reason he was there. It was a tactic that worked wonders, and told him absolutely nothing.

  Bank of America on Waltham Street confirmed that most branches didn’t carry large amounts of currency anymore because most businesses transferred money electronically and paid bills online. Cash transactions were mainly walk-in trade or customers visiting the strip malls on either side of the road, most of whom used the ATMs dotted around the shopping district. The manager of Santander around the corner on Trapelo Road helped McNulty lead into his next area of inquiry: cash deliveries and industrial payrolls. The days of the factory payroll heist were over, because staff were paid directly into their bank accounts and the only armored-car deliveries were to the banks themselves. This brought McNulty right back to the input offered by the teller at the Bank of America: most branches don’t keep large amounts of currency on hand. Santander’s manager agreed.

  “The only big money drop around here is the Fourth of July giveaway. And that only happens once a year.”

  McNulty’s ears pricked up. “The giveaway? Is that a big deal?”

  The manager gave McNulty a look as if talking to a fool. “Biggest deal there is. That guy DeVries throwing cash at the masses. Even bigger this year, with the election and all.”

  McNulty played the fool. “How come?”

  The manager indicated a poster on the wall. It was the same Fourth of July ad he’d been seeing all over Waltham but hadn’t really paid attention to, the parade at Banks Square and the fireworks at Waltham High School. Next to it, a smiling county sheriff looked out from a campaign poster.

  “DeVries is a major contributor to the re-election campaign. He makes a big deal of it at the end of the parade—money truck and everything.”

  McNulty looked at the manager. “How much we talking about?”

  The manager kept a straight face. “This year?” He paused for effect, then lowered his voice. “One million dollars.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  McNulty sat in the Santander parking lot and ran the air conditioner. His mind was still grasping the enormity of a charitable donation with six zeroes behind it, some of it to the community but most of it in campaign contributions—all of it worth killing a fake judge and a few movie extras for. He wondered about the man who could afford to give away so much money and still finance an orphanage and adoption service. How much must Harlan DeVries be worth? And how much would he miss a million dollars if somebody stole it from him? Probably not at all, since he was giving it away anyway. Charitable donations he could claim back against tax; stolen money would be covered by insurance. Dead people would remain dead.

  A warning beep and a flashing orange light caught his attention, the gas gauge indicator on the dashboard. He needed a gas station. He snapped on his seatbelt and pulled out onto Trapelo Road. Just across the intersection, a red panel van with a dented roof pulled out after him.

  The warning beep stopped but the orange light flashed every thirty seconds. McNulty followed Trapelo Road west toward the I-95, four junctions north of the cloverleaf junkyard and one junction south of the Concord Turnpike. He skirted the top end of Hardy’s Pond, then it was a long smooth ride to Mike’s Exxon, a half-mile from Santander. McNulty drove at medium speed in high gear to preserve gas but reckoned there was enough to get him there. Warning indicators usually give you ten miles to find a gas station.

  He activated cruise control, still thinking about Harlan DeVries and the million-dollar donation. There was no traffic coming from the other direction and he wasn’t paying attention to his rear-view mirror, so he didn’t notice the red van until it filled his rearview mirror and revved its engine. Houses drifted by on either side of the road. They passed a sports field on the left. Then the van lunged forward in an extra burst of speed and slammed into the back of McNulty’s car.

  McNulty was about to curse the careless driver when he saw red. Glossy red that had once been dull grey. He put his foot down and pulled away but the red van sped up and rammed him again with a slight sideways turn. They locked fenders and the back of his car was dragged across the road. He slammed on his brakes and the impact was more complete when he downshifted and hit the gas. The fenders disengaged. The car accelerated faster than the van and McNulty gained vital distance, but not for long.

  The passenger window wound down in his rear-view and an arm came out. The gun was small and black and ugly. McNulty swerved to the driver’s side and the gun disappeared. The van swerved as well but couldn’t get over far enough to bring the gun to bear again. McNulty mounted the sidewalk and took out two mailboxes. The van followed, caught up, and rammed the car again. This time the force spun McNulty around and the van overtook him on the inside. The car did a three-sixty, ending up behind the van. The van skidded to a stop. The passenger door opened and this time the gun was held in two hands, strong and level at McNulty’s windshield.

  There was no time to think. McNulty floored the gas and aimed straight for the van. The man with the gun dived back into the van just as the car scraped the side and smashed off the open door. McNulty skidded across the road, mounted the opposite sidewalk, then leveled out and picked up speed. The gunman wasted no time collecting the door, and then the van came after him again.

  The warning beep sounded again. Several lights flashed on the dashboard. Oil and water and battery warnings. The offside wing had buckled and was pinching the front wheel. Smoke and steam spiralled out of the wheel well, and the friction slowed his escape. The red van again came roaring up behind him.

  They came out of the tree-lined residential area onto the final stretch before the I-95. An electricity substation flashed by on the right just before Mike’s Exxon, which was now a Gulf filling station. McNulty didn’t have time to ponder whether Mike might fix his car because the van put on a last burst of speed that crushed his rear fender and popped the trunk. The rear window shattered and the back of the car slid sideways, forcing McNulty to overcorrect. The car swerved left, then skidded right and left the road.

  A shiny black car pulled away from the nearest gas pump, then made a sharp left when the driver saw McNulty coming. A shocked face looked out from the service station window. A dog yelped.

  McNulty took out the first pump and a floral display and hit the central post supporting the newly painted Gulf canopy. The airbag deployed and hit him like a punch to the chin. Gasoline spurted out of the ground. Heat from the fractured engine and the sheered wheel well added to the sparks from severed electric lines. The van sped past onto the highway cloverleaf.

  McNulty was dazed but conscious. The fumes told him what would happen next. The sparks made it come true. Mike’s Exxon became a Gulf fire as the gas station exploded and scared the dog again.

  THIRTY-NINE

  McNulty woke up in a hospital bed with the sun streaming through his window. In the Maxwell Blum Emergency Pavilion at Newton-Wellesley Hospital just south of Waltham. He knew it was the Maxwell Blum Emergency Pavilion because it was written on everything from the bedding to the paper cups. The rest he pieced together as he drifted in and out of consciousness as the day wore on. Dreams and memories mingled until he wasn’t sure what he remembered and what he had made up. There had been the examination room and an ambulance, heat and a fire truck, something to do with a dog, and a lot of shouting.

  He came awake with a start. Wide awake this time. His arm jerked the needle taped to a vein. He tried to scratch his nose but the arm wouldn’t move. When he raised his head he found out why. He was fastened to the bed with leather straps.

  “The dog pulled you out of the car.”

  “The one I nearly ran over?”

  “Didn’t seem to hold a grudge.”

  After the rush of medical staff had disappeared, Amy Moore was sitting next to the bed. There’d been a
lot more shouting when she’d raised the alarm. The patient was awake and trying to struggle free of his bindings. The doctor explained McNulty’s injuries and a nurse removed the drip and the tabs monitoring his heart rate. It boiled down to this. A broken nose that had been reset and taped with a metal clamp bent across the bridge. Two cracked ribs that had been tightly wrapped. Various cuts and abrasions, and a nasty dog bite he’d been given a shot for. He’d been strapped to the bed because he kept thrashing about in his sleep and was likely to rip out the needle.

  Now it was just McNulty and Amy, no bindings or needles. He looked at Amy and indicated his face. “It’s gonna take a lot of your makeup magic to put this right.”

  Amy smiled but it didn’t reach her eyes. “With those black eyes you look like Kung Fu Panda.”

  He patted his flat stomach. “Without the gut.”

  Amy rested a hand on his stomach. “I think you’re putting a bit of weight on.”

  McNulty laid his hand on hers. “I’ll start worrying when I look like Larry.”

  This time Amy’s eyes crinkled. “Not unless you shrink as well.”

  McNulty glanced at the door. “Where is the little fat fella?”

  Amy leaned forward to be closer to him. “He was down earlier.”

  She looked into his eyes. “Gave us all a couple of days off. You should get run over more often.”

  “It was the dog that nearly got run over.”

  “Run off the road then.”

  She focused on his face. “Or is there another reason we’re taking a break?”

  McNulty shrugged then wished he hadn’t. His ribs were sore and everything ached. Even smiling hurt, but it was hard not to smile with Amy holding his hand. “I thought you Americans took the Fourth of July seriously.”