Most opponents would have said good move after that last play, but ol’ Mike here didn’t say a word. So I took the ball, steamed left, flipped the ball around my back, pulled up in the middle of the key and buried a ten-foot jumper. Three zip. Need I say that the crowd, ladies and gentlemen, was going wild?
He handed me the ball in silence. Not much of a talker, Mike. I took it and raced left, stutter-stepped, and faked a baseline drive. He, of course, completely went for the fake, but when I reversed into the middle, he stuck his leg out and I sprawled across the court, the ball bouncing vacantly toward the shadows of the building. Rather than apologize or offer to help me up, he trotted after the ball.
“Foul,” I said when he got back. He gave me a disgusted look, then contemptuously bounced me the ball.
Just as I was about to dribble, a glint caught the corner of my eye, and I whirled around to my left to see that Baker had roamed from half-court to courtside, and was slowly walking toward me with a metal object in his mouth that was shimmering in the floodlight.
As he got closer, I saw what it was: a leather holster holding a silvery revolver, with the barrel sticking out of one side of his muzzle and the handle out of the other. Mike hadn’t noticed yet. Baker’s tail was wagging hard, like he was proud to show me what he had just found.
“Your gun loaded?” I asked, my voice low and even, not wanting to set off any panic.
He looked at Baker and saw what I was talking about. “Fucking dog.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “Tell me if the fucking gun is loaded, and tell me fast.”
Granted, it’s not normal for me, or for that matter, anyone I know, to threaten a stranger in the remote dark of lonely night, let alone a stranger who’s packing what appears to be a Colt .45, even if that Colt .45 happens to be temporarily in the custody of my dog. But the potential for harm to Baker overcame any fear, and I was about to put my fist through this guy’s greasy nose if I didn’t get an answer fast.
“It’s not.”
I knelt down and beckoned the dog to me. “Drop it, Baker,” I said, and he nuzzled against my knee, proudly looked at me and released the gun. “Good boy. Thank you.”
I had done a story on the gun industry once, and had learned how to load a weapon, so I checked and realized that Mike was, in fact, lying, and that this gun held a magazine clip filled with .45 caliber bullets.
I gingerly pulled it out and placed the magazine in my sweatpants pocket. I leaned down and picked up the basketball. I dropped the gun on the asphalt pavement, the clank echoing off the nearby brick of the schoolhouse.
“Game’s over,” I announced as I turned and walked away, Baker at my side.
It was about twenty strides to the gate that led to the side street that would bring me to safety, and each step felt like Neil Armstrong plodding across the moon, only I think Neil felt more secure up there in his spacesuit than I did in the North End of Boston in my sweatsuit.
I heard him say—or maybe it was spit—the word “asshole,” so I turned and looked back at him to make sure he wasn’t loading his weapon. It was then that he flashed me a look of hatred that I didn’t yet understand but wouldn’t soon forget.
When we hit the street, Baker and I broke out into a healthy jog. The problem was, we didn’t yet understand what we were running from.
Four
Monday, April 23
THERE WAS SOMETHING INTRINSICALLYnice about the roar of the jet engines, the clouds whisking past beneath us, the slight twitches of the plane as it sliced through the sunlit sky at breakneck speed with a precise destination in mind. Nicer still was my sense—right or wrong—that I was helping my newspaper and its founding family grab hold of its own destiny. When I am a reporter, asking questions, negotiating answers, probing lies and seeking truths, I am most at home with myself, even amid the most tumultuous times. Perhaps a psychotherapist would have a field day with that, but such was not my concern right now.
Time was. My flight was scheduled to be on the ground at tenA.M. I figured it would take about an hour to disembark, rent a car, and find the home of retired Boston homicide detective Hank Sweeney in a backwater town called Marshton. I was hoping to be back at the airport for a 1:20P.M. flight back to Logan. Missing the plane meant missing hours of valuable reporting and writing time the next day on the Randolph story, not to mention being there to help Paul at his time of greatest need. It wasn’t an option.
By the way, I don’t know of a nice way to say this, so I’ll be direct: I hate Florida. Well, I don’t mean to say I hate Florida as in,I hate Florida. I actually like Florida from the perspective of another state, what with the Everglades and all those nice, active retirees and the weather that’s warm even when it’s cold enough in Boston to freeze a tennis ball inside a golden retriever’s mouth. I just hate what the state represents—the last stop before death, the constant sense of ailment, a place with so little history catering to people who have almost nothing but. Perhaps depressing is the right word.
But not today. Today it meant rejuvenation, action, and most important, today it might reveal answers to some pretty important questions. That, of course, all depended on Hank Sweeney, or perhaps my ability—never to be underestimated, mind you—to make Mr. Sweeney dependable.
The drive from the airport due west to Marshton in my standard-issue red Pontiac Grand-Am took me past the usual array of Taco Bells, Napa auto parts stores, trailer parks, and then there were the retirement communities with names like Sleepy Hollow and Shady Elms. They could have been cemeteries, these senior complexes, a thought that made me depressed all over again. I decided then that if I ever reached old age, I would retire to some temperate college town in Texas or California, wear nothing but plaid shirts and checked pants, and spend my dying days leering at young co-eds who would think me either cute or harmless—or on my best days, both.
I didn’t find the drive particularly interesting, but I wondered if the gentleman behind me did. I wondered that because he had been following me in a white Cavalier ever since I left the West Palm Beach airport. He’d drift back a few cars, then catch up, fall back, get close, just like in the occasional action movie. But to paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, Jack Flynn, you’re no Bruce Willis.
I was cruising along a particularly desolate stretch of the divided road that ran ramrod straight due west from the airport when I first noticed the tail. According to Rand McNally, I was about fifteen miles outside of Marshton. I tried to think about what Bob Woodward might do in this situation. He’d probably tell his chauffeur to slow down, so I slowed down. I noticed in the rearview mirror that the Cavalier, directly behind me now, slowed down as well.
Next, Woodward would probably tell his driver to speed up, so I sped up, and sure enough, the Cavalier did as well. I slowed down, he slowed down. This was fun, as long as we remained in separate cars about thirty yards apart with no one-sided gunplay involved, which I couldn’t guarantee would be the case.
Truth is, the road out here was not what you’d call congested, which wasn’t good, because what I really wanted were people, under the theory that crimes were less likely to be committed in front of witnesses, mob hits in crowded steakhouses with names like Sparks being the obvious exception.
Looking back, not in my rearview mirror but in life, I can’t provide an adequate explanation for my actions of the next few minutes, though an offer of temporary insanity might well fit the bill. It wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but hell, neither was going into the newspaper biz, what with the chronically low pay, the long hours, the high divorce rates, the lack of public esteem. But sometimes you follow your gut or your heart and you do these things anyway. And sometimes, goddammit, things turn out all right.
So I pulled off the road, right there on Highway 201 in Florida. I pulled off the road into the parking lot of one of those combination gas station and convenience marts, called, I think ConvenienceMart. Look, when you’re in the American energy business, with the laws of supply and dema
nd generally on your side, creativity doesn’t have to be a strong suit. The white Cavalier pulled in as well and parked a few spaces away.
I sat in my car pretending to talk on my cellular phone. The other driver, in a baseball cap and a pair of clunky seventies-style sunglasses, got out of his car and walked up to a payphone. Sitting there, I had one overriding question: Who the hell uses a payphone anymore? Maybe I’d get the chance to ask him.
I started my ignition and he casually but quickly hung up the phone and walked back to his car. He was a lanky guy in an old tee shirt and jeans, youngish, with a hauntingly familiar look to him, but I couldn’t place it. So I got out of my car, walked up to his and rapped on his window. Because of the sunglasses, I couldn’t tell how surprised he was, or whether he was even surprised at all.
He rolled down his window and didn’t say anything. I mean, come on. You’d think he’d just say “Hello,” or “What can I do for you?”
So I asked, “You by any chance have change for a dollar for the phone?”
He replied, “Nope.”
The voice was familiar as well, a little bit gravelly with what seemed to be a thick Boston accent, and I don’t mean Brahmin. I said, “I can’t help but notice that you’ve been following me since we left the airport. I hope you don’t take offense if I ask you why?” I smiled at him for effect, though what effect I was going for, I’m not really sure.
“Fuck off.”
Certainly not that effect. I said, “Well, have a nice day.” And I walked off.
As I did, I heard his car door open behind me, and I turned and saw him striding in my direction at considerable speed. I probably should have broken for my car and tried to get away. Instead, I turned fully around and faced him.
“You want something?” I asked. I think I knew the answer already, but as my second grade teacher used to say, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, though this one may have been.
I might add here that the parking lot was otherwise empty but for the two of us, and though I’m sure there was someone working in the ConvenienceMart, I had yet to see any sign of them. That’s a longer than needed way of saying that out here in the Godforsaken parking lot of a seemingly barren gas station off a deserted stretch of Florida highway, I felt very much alone.
When he was within a couple of feet of me, he pulled a handgun out from behind his back and said, “Don’t try anything stupid. Turn around and walk to the side of the building.”
I did, or I started to anyway, but after I took about my third step, I faked right, like I was driving to the basket, and instead turned around in a swift, single motion to plow my fist into his nose. Mind you, they don’t teach you these moves at the Columbia Journalism School, but more than ever, I was starting to think they should.
When I turned, it was a blur of black and pink. I saw the gun, and somewhere beyond the gun, I saw a look of shock in his eyes, and I was so close to him I saw the pockmarks in his cheeks. Before I saw his nose, I felt it on the outer edge of my fist, a perfect shot, evidenced by the explosion of blood that spattered all over his face and my wrist.
“You fucking cocksucker.”
That’s him, not me. He was doubled over in agony, so I took the opportunity to kick him so hard in the face that I heard him wail as he fell backward. Yet somehow he still held onto the damned gun, and writhing in pain on the ground, I saw him take aim at me and prepare to pull the trigger.
So I bolted, not toward my car, because had I gone that way I would have been fully exposed for several long strides and given him a decent shot at me. Instead I raced two steps around the corner of the building, out of his line of fire, and galloped toward the back, where there happened to be nothing more than that previously referenced marsh.
I was about to become a victim of too much open space—thank you, Sierra Club. I hesitated, then decided I had no choice but to plunge into the swamp and take refuge behind some of the brush that stuck out of the water like strands of wispy hair on the head of a nearly bald man. So I did, I did. God only knows what lived under the surface. In fact, I think I did too—poisonous snakes that would snack on my legs, exotic eels that would slither into my pants and do unspeakable things to my favorite parts, slugs that would cover all my lower extremities.
As I waded deeper, heading toward a clump of green, I heard him stagger around the corner. He still had blood gushing from his nose, across his mouth and over his chin. He was a mess, but an armed mess. I saw him take aim again from the shore, so I dove under the cappuccino-colored water. When I came up, I saw him wading in after me.
He stopped and fired from about twenty feet away. I dove back under the water, popped up just long enough to grab another mouthful of air, and dove again. From beneath the surface, I could hear the pop of gunfire, but didn’t know how close it was.
I did know this: the shoulder-deep water was warm to the point of nearly being hot, rancid, filled with floating sticks and particles and leaves and other things I still don’t have the stomach to explain.
Then I had an idea. I surfaced, took measure of precisely where the gunman was, and dove back under. I did the chest stroke slowly in his direction, moving my arms firmly but gently so as not to cause any surface waves. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me as I kept pushing myself onward.
Finally, as I felt the last of the fresh air leaving my lungs, I also felt my hand graze a solid object. It was either the gunman or a tree, but I had no choice but to come up. So I thrust myself above water, saw I was right beside the guy, and slammed my left fist fully into his surprised face. I watched the gun flip through the air and splash through the skin of the swamp as his legs crumbled and he went under the surface himself.
But give him credit for resilience. From the murky depths, he grabbed my ankle and brought me down, then held me there as I flailed with my arms and legs. I must have been making reasonable contact, because he eventually let me go, and when I pushed my way up, I saw him splash toward the shore, then amble back around the building. I gave a halfhearted chase, but by the time the parking lot came into view, he was pulling out onto the highway, gone.
I limped over to my car. My hair was dripping filthy water down onto my drenched clothes. I was covered in dirt and twigs and slime, and smelled like a Delhi sewer rat on the hottest day of an Indian summer. That’s when my cell phone rang. It had been sitting there on the passenger seat of my car, and it rang like there shouldn’t be a worry in my little world, like I should just be able to pick it up and say, “Yeah, yeah, this is Jack. Hey, good to hear from you, thanks an awful lot for calling.”
So I answered it and heard the sonorous voice of Robert Fitzgerald ofThe Boston Record, casually asking where I was and what I was doing.
When I tried to speak, to imbue him in some way with the life-and-death adventure I had just survived, my voice was surprisingly weak. So I said, “Hey, Robert, do you mind if I call you back in about ten minutes?”
“Of course not,” he said. “You sound strange. Everything all right?”
“Fine,” I said. “Right now, I’m just really swamped.”
Five
IBEGAN THIS TRIPbelieving I was doing little more than a favor for Paul Ellis, conducting a process of elimination, the goal here being to eliminate his suspicion of foul play. Oh, it was a process of elimination all right, only someone was trying to eliminate me. I suddenly realized I was on a life-or-death mission in search of an unknown truth.
I pulled into Marshton without the white Cavalier anywhere in sight. I jumped off the highway onto Waterview Boulevard, though the only water to view seemed to be that damned swamp on one side of the divided road. I guess you have to credit the prescient town fathers for not calling their home Swampton. A mile or so down the road, just as my MapQuest directions said I would, I arrived at a complex called Serenity Heights.
Once there, I pulled into a community of tiny, cookie-cutter houses that sat on minuscule lots tight to the street. It was, in its defense, i
mmaculate. You could eat stewed prunes right out of the gutters—not that you’d want to, but like I said, you could.
I took a left on Pleasant Street, went through the intersection with Hereafter Boulevard—just kidding—and turned right on Tranquility Road, where I found Sweeney’s house, which was just like every other house—nondescript, shaped like a box, and small. The Buick Park Avenue sitting under the carport told me he was home, or at least somebody was.
I looked at myself in the rearview mirror and saw that my hair, mostly dry, was stiff and rigid from the swamp. My face was streaked with caked crud, as if I had just been thrown out of a spa in the middle of a mud wrap because the receptionist realized I wouldn’t be able to pay. My clothes, still damp, carried the odor of a men’s room at Fenway Park toward the end of an extra innings game. It would be nothing short of a miracle if I could convince Hank Sweeney that, (a) I wasn’t a vagrant seeking a handout, and (b) he should talk to me. In my present condition, I don’t think Oscar Madison would invite me inside.
Here’s what I know about homicide detectives: They spend their lives on the edge of the darkest abyss. They tiptoe across the spattered blood of freshly killed babies, kneel beside the mutilated corpses of beautiful young women, engage in idle chitchat with suspects who have inexplicably strangled the life out of the only person they may ever love. The good ones go home and coach Little League games and attend PTA meetings between telephone calls summoning them to yet another scene of still another horrific crime. The bad ones sit back night after night with a bottle of whiskey or a 12-pack of cheap beer getting shamelessly, stupidly drunk.
The best of them are the most creative members of a profession better known for regulation than invention. They can save lives and change worlds by the discovery of a single strand of hair, a microscopic fiber, or a cigarette butt discarded in a nearby sewer. They see a room forever marked by death and imagine the last pitiful moments of life. They look at a suspect, perhaps a suburban high school kid or an otherwise successful husband, and slowly, methodically, deconstruct the boundaries separating good and evil and imagine just how far over the division this creature might have passed—and what sent him over the line.
The Nominee Page 4
