Green Monster

by Rick Shefchik

  Blood dripped from what looked to be a flesh wound on her right forearm. Sam pulled her bloody hand away from the wound and saw that the bullet had indeed just grazed her arm. Paul opened a cabinet under the steering column and pulled out a first aid kit. He applied an antiseptic wipe to Katherine’s wound, then covered it with a gauze pad and wrapped it with surgical tape. Sam was more concerned about Katherine going into shock than he was about the wound itself. He had her lie down on a reclining deck chair. Her face had been ashen, but in a few minutes she began to get control of her breathing, and some color returned to her cheeks.

  “Paul, are you okay to take us back?” Sam asked.

  “Bastard missed me,” Paul said, the Boston accent reappearing. “What happened to him?”

  “I shot him. He didn’t float.”

  Sam looked out beyond the Katy K’s bow and saw that the driverless inboard had almost vanished in the distance, headed full throttle to the middle of the Atlantic.

  “We need to get you to a hospital,” Sam said to Katherine, who was now sitting up. “And we need to talk to the cops.”

  “I’m…all right,” Katherine wheezed. She motioned for Paul to help her back into her wheelchair. “You…can’t…report this. The police will…ask questions.”

  “They tend to do that,” Sam agreed.

  “She means, they’ll find out about the extortion note,” Paul said.

  “How much do you know about it?” Sam asked. He studied Paul’s face.

  “Enough. And I know cops. They don’t keep secrets.”

  “Did either of you tell anyone we were going to be on the yacht today?”

  “Only the harbormaster at the yacht club,” Paul said.

  “Look, somebody knew we were going to be out here,” Sam said. “Somebody tried to kill us. I don’t know who, and I don’t know why, but this is getting pretty damned hard to keep a lid on.”

  “There’s…no body,” Katherine said. “No boat. Nobody has…to know.”

  “I killed a man.”

  “He had it comin’ to him,” Paul said, in the pugnacious tone of a Red Sox fan who’d just punched a Yankee fan in the face.

  Sam knew he hadn’t committed a crime. More than that, he knew the Kenwoods were paying him to help them save their baseball team, and if he reported this murder attempt, there would be no way to keep the whole story from ending up in the papers and the evening news.

  If a driverless inboard was reported by a fishing trawler, he’d just have to withhold what he knew about it for a while. If somebody at the yacht club noticed the bullet holes in the Katy K and asked questions, Katherine would just have to play the proper Bostonian and tell them to mind their own business. But one thing was certain: Sam had been shot at twice within the past seventy-two hours, and he was getting tired of it.

  ***

  When they returned to the Kenwoods’ house, Sam helped Paul get Katherine up the steps and into her bedroom, where she said she wanted to take a nap. Paul checked the dressing on her wound, called the Kenwoods’ home health nurse to come over for a few hours, and then drove Sam back to his hotel in the Lincoln.

  “Katherine thinks someone’s trying to kill her,” Sam said to Paul from the back seat. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Paul said. He didn’t turn his head. “Maybe someone’s trying to kill you.”

  Sam thought about the events of the last few days, and called Marcus on his cell phone.

  “Sammy, what’s happenin’,” Marcus said. “You back in town?”

  “No, I’m headed to L.A. for a few days. You find that drive-by punk yet?”

  “Yeah, we found him.”

  “Why’d he do it?”

  “He can’t say.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “Can’t. He’s in a coma.”

  “What happened?”

  “We found him in a crack house in North Minneapolis. He’d been shot five times.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  “Too early to say.”

  Shit. Sam needed some answers, and no one had them. All he knew was that he couldn’t find Babe Ruth—but Babe Ruth might have found him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sam sat in one of the armchairs in his hotel suite, staring into the ashes of the cherrywood fire from two nights earlier. He went over the facts of the case so far, and found as many holes as there were in the side of the Katy K.

  Someone was shaking down the Red Sox for $50,000,000. Someone was supposedly willing to admit he threw the World Series. Lou Kenwood didn’t want to pay the extortionist, but he didn’t want the story to become public, either. Lou was worried that a gambling scandal would shatter his reputation as a savior and gravely wound both the Red Sox and Major League Baseball. On top of all that, someone had twice shot at Sam, once when he was with Marcus, the other time when he was with Katherine Kenwood and Paul O’Brien.

  Who had not been around when the bullets began to fly? Lou Kenwood. Heather Canby.

  But Sam came back to Paul O’Brien. Paul was from South Boston, home of the Boston mob. He’d been a truck driver—probably involved with the Teamsters. His father was dying of Alzheimer’s disease. Beyond the financial motivation, a son with peripheral ties to the major leagues might just be willing to participate in a fix if it meant his father could celebrate a World Championship before he died. If it were to turn out that the Series really had been fixed, the senior O’Brien wouldn’t even know; according to Paul, his disease was so far advanced that he didn’t know what year it was.

  Paul had been on the boat when the gunman opened fire, and unlike Katherine, he had emerged unscathed. He’d seemed unusually calm for a man who’d almost been murdered by a hitman—a hitman who’d been tipped off that they’d be on the boat.

  Sam called Heather.

  “It’s your private eye,” he said. “What do you know about Paul O’Brien?”

  “Why?” Heather said, sounding surprised by the question.

  “We were shot at today on the Kenwoods’ yacht. Katherine thinks somebody’s trying to kill her. I think somebody’s trying to kill me. It all makes me want to know more about O’Brien.”

  “Let me close my door,” Heather said.

  She put the phone down. When she returned, she spoke in a quieter voice:

  “First, Lou trusts Paul with his life.”

  “What about you?”

  “What I think doesn’t matter.”

  “Sure it does. I’m asking.”

  “I’ve wondered about him. He’s from a rough background.”

  “Did you run a criminal background check on him when you hired him?”

  “I don’t know. That was before I got here.”

  “Look it up,” Sam said. “See if you can get me his full name, age, address, and Social Security number.”

  “All right. Why?”

  “I want to run him through the national crime computer.”

  He heard her fingers clicking on a keyboard. After a minute or so, she read Sam the information.

  “I don’t like this,” Heather said. “Lou would really be angry if he knew you were looking into Paul for any reason.”

  “Yeah, well, he’ll be angrier if he loses his team. Somebody knows I’m working for Lou, and they don’t like it. That guy on the boat today sprayed us pretty good, but Paul wasn’t hit.”

  “Were you?”

  “No. But Katherine took one in the arm.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “I don’t think she’s any worse off than she already was. Look, I know a guy in town who grew up in South Boston about the same time Paul did. I’d like to go see him. Have you got a car?”

  “I’ll be at your hotel in forty-five minutes,” Heather said.

  Sam had received a nice note from Terry Donaghy after the Masters back in April, but they’d last talked more than three years ago. After Sam left Boston, they’d kept
in sporadic touch as Sam got deeper into his police career and Terry played in a series of bands while holding down bartending jobs. According to his note in April, he was still working at Sweeney’s Tavern in South Boston, not far from where he’d grown up. Sam looked up the number in the phone book and was told by a woman who answered the phone that Terry was expected in around four p.m. Sam hoped to talk to Terry before the place got crowded.

  He was waiting outside the Taj on Arlington Street when he heard the roar of a motorcycle coming down the one-way street from Beacon. The loud pipes echoed off the façade of the hotel, and Sam was irritated that the owner of the bike was disturbing the quiet calm of the early-autumn afternoon. Then the Harley-Davidson pulled up in front of the hotel, and when the rider’s red-and-blue Red Sox-themed helmet came off, Sam realized it was Heather. She was dressed in a black leather jacket with tight blue jeans and black mid-heel boots.

  “Is that yours?” Sam asked her, pointing to the Harley.

  “Yes. It’s easier to get around the city with one of these.”

  She shook out her honey-blond hair, tilting her head back and raking her fingers from her forehead to the back of her neck.

  “I hate helmet hair.”

  “Then why wear one?”

  “Mandatory helmet law in Massachusetts.”

  “What’s the fine?”

  “Thirty-five bucks.”

  “Big deal.”

  “Lou makes me wear it.” She looked embarrassed. “It’s in my contract. If I want to ride the bike, I have to wear the helmet.”

  “Where’s mine?”

  Sam looked at the back of the bike, where most riders kept spare helmets, if they had one. Nothing there.

  “We’re only going to Southie, you wuss,” Heather said. “Get on.”

  Sam shrugged and put his leg over the seat, grabbing Heather around the waist. She was about as big around as a rolled-up throw rug. Sam was afraid that he’d pull her off the bike if she accelerated too quickly, but as she gunned the accelerator, put the bike into gear, checked over her shoulder, and then pulled out into traffic, she had no trouble resisting his backward pull.

  “Watch your hands,” she yelled over her shoulder. “I can only do one thing at a time here. What’s the address?”

  Sam yelled into her ear that Sweeney’s was located near the corner of West Broadway and Dorchester. Heather nodded and kept the bike on Arlington until it turned into Herald, and then took a right at Albany, which ran parallel to I-93. Sam kept glancing sideways, and noticed that they were getting a lot of interested stares from people in cars and on the sidewalks. They turned left at West Broadway and went about a half-mile up the street until they reached Sweeney’s. When Heather pulled the bike over to the curb in front of the bar and took her helmet off, Sam again noticed that they were getting looks from the people nearby.

  “Another first for Boston,” Sam said. “I should be in the history books with Sam Adams and Paul Revere.”

  “What do you mean?” Heather said as she smoothed out her hair with her hand.

  “Think about it. Have you ever seen a guy on the back of a motorcycle driven by a woman? I never have.”

  “No, I guess I haven’t either.”

  “Neither have these people,” Sam said. He gestured toward a few curious onlookers. “Until now.”

  The block was undergoing a facelift. The sidewalks were being replaced, and the businesses around the tavern had obviously diversified in recent years: a Chinese restaurant, a Payless Shoes, a coffee shop with free wi-fi, and a small international grocery that sold fresh tortillas and falafel. They walked into the saloon, a narrow storefront with raised pub-style lettering spelling Sweeney’s over the door. There was a small window on either side of the open door, and a neon Budweiser sign hung in one of the windows, with the words “Boston Red Sox World Champions 2004” underneath the beer logo. Maybe the newer one hadn’t arrived yet.

  It was much darker inside; while Sam’s eyes were trying to adjust to the light, he heard his name called out.

  “Sam Skarda! You old piece of shit! What are you doin’ here?”

  Sam recognized Terry’s voice, though it was harder to recognize Terry himself as he came walking around the end of the bar and grabbed Sam’s hand. Terry had shorter hair and more bulk than he’d had a decade ago. He’d been the bassist and lead singer in their short-lived band, a gifted entertainer with a strong rock voice—his dad had been an Irish tenor who sang every year in Southie’s St. Patrick’s Day parade—and the kind of soulful eyes that made women want to come back and see the band night after night. His eyes still looked full of life, even in the dim light of the tavern.

  “Who’s your knock-out friend?” Terry asked. His instincts for applying the charm to attractive women had not diminished.

  “Heather Canby, this is Terry Donaghy.”

  “At your service,” he said. He kissed Heather’s hand. She looked him over and smiled, but did not seem impressed. She’d been schmoozed by men who were just as charming, and much farther up the food chain.

  There were two older men sitting at the bar, both smoking and wearing jackets that seemed a little heavy for the fall weather. One of the half-dozen booths on the opposite side of the room was occupied by a balding guy who was engaged in a hushed conversation with a chubby woman who had dyed-black hair and hoop earrings. The bar smelled like the tap hoses needed a good cleaning.

  “This guy,” Terry said, putting an arm around Sam’s shoulder, “was a fuckin’ hero at the Masters this year.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Heather said. She forced a polite smile. “Sam, you wanted to ask some questions.”

  “Let’s get a booth,” Sam said.

  Terry checked with the guys at the bar to see if they needed a refill, then followed Sam and Heather to the farthest booth from the door, next to a small corner bandstand where Sam recognized Terry’s old sunburst-finish Fender Precision leaning up against a covered amp. Terry asked Sam and Heather if they wanted anything, but they declined.

  “I see you’re still playing, Terry,” Sam said. He gestured toward the tiny bandstand.

  “The owner lets us play once a week, for tips,” Terry said. “I’m trying to put a CD together—you know, original stuff. But studio time is expensive, and I gotta work most nights.”

  “I hear you,” Sam said.

  He thought about what it might have been like if he’d stayed in Boston after college. Would this be his life, too? He saw Heather looking around the bar as though she were observing a zoo exhibit.

  “So, you said you wanted to know about a guy,” Terry said.

  “Yeah. Paul O’Brien. He would have been in school around the same time you were.”

  “Lotta O’Briens in Southie.”

  “He was a truck driver. Now he’s a chauffeur. Kind of big, red curly hair.”

  “Oh, yeah, I knew that guy. Paulie. His younger brother Johnny was in my class. What’d he do?”

  “Nothing, as far as I know. Where’s Johnny now?”

  “Walpole,” Terry said, lowering his voice. “He, uh, kind of got mixed up with Donnie Sullivan and that bunch.”

  “Gambling?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Maybe some drugs, too.”

  “Ever hear that Paul was into any of that stuff?”

  Terry shot a glance over his shoulder at the two guys sitting at the bar.

  “It’s not such a good idea to talk about, you know…Sullivan…around here.”

  “I thought Sullivan had disappeared.”

  “He did.” Terry was now talking almost in a whisper. “But he’s still got guys around…”

  He moved his eyeballs sideways toward the bar, without moving his head. Sam glanced up at the two guys at the bar, and saw that one of them was staring back at their booth. Maybe he was checking out Heather. Maybe not.

  “So you don’t know anything about Paul O’Brien?” Sam asked.

  “You
’re like, what? A private investigator now?”

  “Yeah. Not a cop.”

  “Look, Sam, I’d help you if I could. I just don’t know anything. I remember the guy—kind of tall, red hair, right?”

  Sam nodded.

  “But that’s all. His brother got in trouble, but as far as I know, Paulie is clean. Or, he was.”

  “Well, it was a long shot,” Sam said.

  “Maybe not,” Terry said quietly. His eyes darted toward the bar again. “I’m just saying, it’s not a good idea coming down here and asking about guys like him.”

  “I don’t want to get you in any trouble, Terry. You know that.”

  “I know. Geez, it was good to see you again. You still playing?”

  “I’m in an oldies band with some of the cops I used to work with. We play maybe twice a month.”

  “You gotta keep your hand in, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “How long you gonna be in town? We should go out and see some bands, or jam.”

  “I’d love to, but we’re leaving for L.A. tomorrow.”

  “The two of you?” Terry said. He looked back and forth between Sam and Heather. “That should be fun.”

  “It’s business,” Heather said. She stood up. “Nice to meet you Terry.”

  She extended her hand to him, and Sam got up, too. He handed Terry his card.

  “If you can think of anything else,” Sam said quietly.

  “Yeah, definitely. You comin’ back to town?”

  “Don’t know yet. I’ll call you.”

  Terry gave Sam a hug and watched him walk out to the street with Heather. Then he went back behind the bar and got the two men refills, without being asked.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Caracas, Venezuela—

  Elena felt herself being lifted roughly from the ground by a man with strong arms. It was too dark to see anything but the dim outline of the shanties on either side of the narrow walkway where she’d stumbled. A baby was crying somewhere up the hillside, and a dog began barking when the man who held her by her wrists asked her where she was going.