by David Hosp
‘I appreciate that,’ I say. ‘But you shouldn’t be involved from here on out. The company needs someone to run it.’ I head out toward the front door. I need to get home. I need to find Yvette, and I need to figure out a plan.
‘I’ve tried to find Josh,’ Tom says, following me out. ‘No one has seen him since Michael François was caught. I think he may have lost it.’
I nod. ‘I definitely think he’s lost it. But I’ll find him. I’ll spend a lifetime tracking him down, if I need to.’
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Ma is sitting at the kitchen table when I walk through the door. She stands and comes over to me. ‘Jesus Christ, you had me worried, Nick,’ she says. Something in her tone reminds me of the time when, as a child, I’d upset her or made her angry, and as she approaches me I assume that she’s going to slap me. I wince as she raises her hand, but instead of hitting me, she reaches out and gives me a hug. ‘I’m glad you’re home,’ she says.
I’m not sure how to react, so I simply hug her back. ‘Thanks. I’m glad I’m home, too.’ I wonder how much she knows. ‘I’m in a little trouble,’ I say. Always best to lead with understatement, I think.
She pulls back, looks at me and nods. ‘Yvette was here earlier. She told me. I need to hear it from you, though.’
I sit at the kitchen table and put my head in my hands, overwhelmed at the notion of sharing the details of my situation with my mother. ‘It involves a woman,’ I say.
‘Kendra was her name, I believe?’ Ma encourages me.
‘How much did Yvette tell you?’
‘She told me the girl was a real looker, and that you’ve been . . . obsessed.’
I nod.
‘She said you saw her in some sort of sex video when you were snooping around on that system your company has created, and you couldn’t get her out of your mind. She told me about the prick who was killing the girls, and that you helped Paul Killkenny catch him. And then, after he was in jail, this girl – Kendra – was killed last night.’
‘I was with her last night,’ I say.
‘Yvette told me that, too.’
‘It was stupid.’
She waves her hand as though it doesn’t matter. ‘It was human. You’re not a boy anymore, Nick. I know how the world works; I’m not looking to make you feel guilty about that. We need to focus on what to do to get you out of this.’
I’m not sure how to tell her what I need to tell her. ‘Ma, you’re gonna hear some things about what went on in the hotel room. Some things you may find . . . ’ I’m not even sure what the right word is.
‘Nick,’ she says, ‘if your generation wants to think you invented kinky sex, that’s fine, but it’s giving yourselves too much credit. You may be the first to share it on computers, but I’ve lived in a dark enough world that I’m not likely to be shocked.’
‘I didn’t kill her,’ I say.
She smiles at me. ‘I know that, Nick. I’ve known people who are killers – spent my life around men who are capable of killing, in fact. I can see when it’s there and when it’s not. It’s not in you. It’s not a part of your nature.’
‘So what do I do?’
‘You catch the man who really did this.’
‘How?’
‘First, you get someone involved who is capable of killing. I’ve always found that, in situations like this, that’s a good start.’
I’ve always known that Cormack is connected. I’ve never truly understood how connected, though. I suppose, if I’d ever thought hard about it, I would have guessed. He’s the owner of the largest tugboat companies operating in Boston Harbor and, as a result, has a hand in the delivery of nearly every large container ship that comes through one of the biggest ports in the country. He runs the union that covers not only the tugboat crews, but also the stevedores who unload the ships. If I’d ever thought hard about it, I’m sure I would have realized how crooked that makes him, but I’ve never had reason to think about it. Besides, I suppose that if I’d let myself think about that, it would also have implications about how mobbed-up my father was as well, and I never really wanted to deal with that.
I realize it now that I’m sitting with him, explaining my problems. I start by explaining what the company does, and what my role is. Then I describe the various players in the sick melodrama that has unfolded in the past weeks. I spend a fair amount of time describing Josh Pinkerton and his background, and give as many details as I can about NetMaster – which, frankly, are few. Cormack sits there, smoking a cigarette, taking it all in, with few comments. Occasionally he’ll ask a clarifying question, but for the most part he just listens. When I’m done, he stands up and paces the room for a couple of minutes without speaking. Finally he sits down again, across the table from me.
‘You think Pinkerton’s the doer on this girl you were with?’ he asks.
‘I do,’ I say.
‘Okay. That means you’ve got to prove it. If you don’t, the cops are gonna keep after you. From the sounds of it, they’ve got a pretty good case against you, and I’ve never known the cops to give up on a good case – even if it was against the wrong guy. Usually the easiest way to get the information you need would be to go right at Pinkerton. Grab him up off the street and work him over until he tells you what you want to know – until he admits to doing this thing. The problem is, we do that and then bring what’s left of the man to the police, they’re gonna know that we’ve beaten the shit out of him, and that’s just gonna make them think you’re even more guilty. If he recants, the cops will buy his story and discredit anything we’ve brought them in terms of evidence.’
‘Not to mention the fact that Josh has apparently disappeared, so just finding him is gonna be a challenge.’
Cormack nods. ‘If I’d just killed this girl and I was trying to frame you, I’d disappear, too. If no one’s talking to me, no one’s taking the cops’ attention off you. So that means we need to find another way to come at Pinkerton that’s not as direct.’
‘You have any thoughts?’
He rubs his chin. ‘From what you’ve told me, it sounds like this crazy fuck NetMaster was probably involved in some way, if Pinkerton killed the girl, right?’
‘I’d assume. Josh sent him after me when he realized I was talking to her, and it’s clear he’s not squeamish about using violence. I don’t know everything about Josh – I wouldn’t have pegged him to be into the whole rough sex scene – but I don’t see him as someone who has a lot of practice with murder. If he did want to go after Kendra, it wouldn’t surprise me if he used NetMaster to help him.’
Cormack leans back in his chair. ‘That’s our way in then,’ he says. ‘We pick up this whack-job and get him to spill his guts on what happened. Once we know what actually happened, we’ll be in a better position to figure out how to go about getting the evidence we need to get the cops off your back.’ He leans in and looks at me seriously. ‘Taking this bastard on isn’t going to be pretty, though,’ he says.
I nod. ‘He’s a pretty big guy. Picking him up off the street isn’t going to be easy.’
Cormack dismisses my concern with the wave of a hand. ‘I’m not talking about the logistics of getting to the man,’ he says. ‘I’m talking about the ugliness of getting him to talk. It may be that he’s a coward and an easy talker. We can’t assume that, though. We have to go into this believing that he’s gonna be a legitimate hardass. That means it’s gonna have to get rough and it’s gonna have to get messy. Are you prepared to let me and my boys do what needs to be done to get the information out of him?’
I nod. ‘Yeah.’
Cormack cocks his head at me. ‘You sure? You’ve always been the compassionate type. When you start to see the kind of pain we may need to inflict, you may have a change of heart on this. I need to know that you’re willing to follow through, before we start.’
‘He didn’t have any compassion for me or Ma when he came to our house. And he and Pinkerton sure as hell didn’t show any com
passion for Kendra. I’m ready for whatever needs to happen.’
Cormack nods. ‘Good. Okay, let’s go over it all again, and this time tell me everything you know about NetMaster. No detail is too small. We need as much information as we can get.’
I shrug my shoulders. ‘I think I’ve told you everything. I don’t think there’s anything more we can learn, unless you’ve got contacts in Amsterdam, where he apparently last worked.’
‘That’s the nice thing about working the docks,’ Cormack says with a smile. ‘You deal with influential people from every part of the world. If I have enough to go on, I can have people do the legwork for me.’
‘Okay,’ I say. I proceed to tell him everything I know about NetMaster again. On the second telling I realize that I’d left out some small details, and I understand why Cormack asked me to go through it again. ‘You want to take notes?’ I ask at one point.
He smiles at me. ‘This isn’t college, Nick. We don’t take notes; we don’t write anything down; and we don’t tell anyone our business, you get that?’
‘Yeah.’
He shakes his head. ‘You need to say it. This isn’t a game. I’ll help you out of my respect for the memory of your father, and out of affection for your mother, but this is serious business we’re dealing with now. We fuck this up, and people go to jail or get killed. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I understand that. I won’t fold.’
‘Good. I have to spend some time on the phone to get the information we need.’ He looks at his watch; it’s approaching three o’clock in the afternoon. ‘It’s mid-evening over in Amsterdam,’ he says. ‘My contacts at the port in Rotterdam will just be getting in to sort out the day’s illicit activities.’
The door bangs open and Yvette is standing there, looking at us. ‘I heard you got out,’ she says.
Cormack nods at me. ‘You two talk. I have my work to do.’ He gets up and leaves, touching Yvette on the shoulder as he passes her.
Yvette stands there looking at me, her expression inscrutable. There’s so much that I want to say to her; so many things that I want to explain, but I can’t figure out where to start. Looking back at her, and seeing my failures reflected in her eyes, makes everything seem all the more overwhelming. ‘Yvette—’ I start. It ends there, though, and I’ve no idea where to go with it. She rescues me.
‘I love you,’ she says. She coughs the words out as though they’d been caught in her throat for some time, choking her. And once the words are out, she looks both relieved and surprised.
‘What?’
‘I said I love you.’ She says it with more confidence and surety this time. ‘I don’t want you to say anything back to me right now. You’ve got too much going on and too many things to focus on, and if you told me that you loved me at this moment, I don’t think I’d believe you – even though I believe it’s true. I just wanted to tell you now, so that you’ll understand. I figure if I can love you right now, with all the shit that’s going on, it’s gotta be real, right?’
I stand up and move over toward her slowly. ‘Yvette, I—’
She cuts me off, putting her hand to my lips. ‘Don’t,’ she says. ‘Save it for later. Right now, we have too much to do.’
We’re sitting at the kitchen table and I’m shaking my head. ‘I don’t want you involved,’ I’m saying. ‘I’ve already put you through too much, and it’s gonna get dangerous from here on out.’
‘You haven’t put me through anything,’ she says. ‘The crazy assholes who run the company have put us through this. Gunta, with his technology and his dreams of rehabilitating a twisted fucker like Michael François, put us through this. Josh Pinkerton put us through this. And now it’s time for us to make it alright.’
‘I have Cormack helping. That’s all I need. You can’t help with that.’
‘I can’t help with what he’s doing, but there are other things I can do that he can’t.’
‘Like . . . ?’
‘Like hacking into Josh’s files at the company to see what’s there.’ I blink at her. ‘We need to see what’s on his computers,’ she says. ‘If there’s anything helpful, we need to know it.’
‘Things like what?’
‘He was together with this girl for close to four years, and he was obsessed with her even after that, right? What are the chances that he doesn’t have a ton of stuff on his computer about her. He’s gonna have emails and texts with her, from when they were together – and from what he’s admitted, chances are some of them are gonna be pretty raw. You think that’s not gonna be important in convincing the cops that he’s the guy they want?’
I know she’s right, but I can’t accept it. ‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘What’s dangerous about it?’
‘You and I both know that you’re talking about starting on the system at NextLife and hacking into his personal data from there.’
‘So?’
‘To do that, you have to be at the company – physically at the office, sitting there working on the company servers. And for all we know, he’s having the activity on the system monitored at this point. If he has visibility into what you’re doing, who knows what he’ll do?’
‘You think I’m an amateur at this?’ she demands, offended. ‘I’m not going to do anything that anyone can track. Besides, I’m gonna be at the office, where there are a lot of people around, and from what I understand, Josh has disappeared, so it’s not clear that he even has the means to find out what anyone at the company is doing anymore. I mean, hell – the rumors are already flying at the office and people are getting stressed. I’m not sure Josh is really in control anymore, and from what I’ve heard the IPO may be in jeopardy. Compared to what you and Cormack are going to be doing, this is a goddamned walk in the park.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘That’s sweet, but I don’t care. You need my help.’
I take a deep breath. I do need her help, but I’m not sure it’s worth it to put her in any danger. ‘If anything happens to you, I’ll never forgive myself.’
She reaches out and takes my hand. ‘That’ll make two of us.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The next morning I get a call from Cormack, telling me to meet him down at a warehouse near the edge of the old Charlestown naval yard. I check on Ma, make sure she’s okay and get her a cup of coffee before I head off. I peer through the kitchen before I walk outside, my head on a swivel as I make my way to the car. The lawyer bought me some time, but I know it’s only a temporary reprieve. The cops will pick me up and haul my ass back to jail as soon as the forensics come back and show that my DNA is in Kendra Madison’s body. I’m half expecting that I’ll be taken down at any moment, but I make it to my car without incident, start it up and pull out.
The old naval yard is an area of redevelopment on the eastern side of the Charlestown peninsula. It used to be all industrial, with ship repair shops and storage and smelters, all of them falling into disrepair as the need for their services waned. In the 1990s a development company purchased most of the land, and vomited up luxury townhouses along the shoreline. To the extent that urban homesteaders and young professionals have made an organized offensive to grab land in Charlestown, the spearhead of that offensive landed here. The parking lot is filled with BMWs and Land Rovers and Audis. The kids from the projects refer to the lot as ‘the car store’, and auto insurance rates for high-end models in this area are higher than any other place in the country.
The development company didn’t manage to get a hold of all of the property down by the waterfront. At the far end of the naval yard, several battle-scarred warehouses remain, like ancient barflies looking down with moral disdain on the pretty, manicured developments that have invaded.
I drive through the yard and exit at the far end, go through two large lots and pull up to a windowless cinderblock structure surrounded by a barbed-wire fence. I head to the gate in the fence and put in the combination that Corm
ack gave me over the phone. I open the gate, pull my car through and then get out to relock the gate.
The building is a chunk of concrete with a front door and a back door. There is nothing about it that would give any hint of its purpose – no signage, no identifiable heavy machinery in the parking lot – all it has is the number 142 in nondescript block lettering over the front door. That’s the number Cormack gave me.
I walk up and knock on the door. I can hear metal slide on metal as a peephole is pulled open. No sound penetrates the steel, and after a moment the peephole is closed. The door is unlocked and Cormack opens it. ‘Come on in,’ he says with a smile, as though he’s welcoming me to a garden party.
I step into the small building. It’s around 20,000 square feet of storage space, mostly empty. At the far end there are roughly thirty large cargo boxes stacked to the twenty-foot-high ceiling. The rest of the place is open space with a concrete floor. There are several chairs strewn about. Four of them are pulled into a small circle in the center of the building, and three of them are occupied by men in dark clothing.
‘Who are they?’ I ask.
‘They’re the boys. C’mon over and we can talk.’ He leads me over to the men, who watch us approach in silence. ‘Boys, this is the lad I was telling you about. Nick Caldwell, this is Toby Mickrick.’
One of the men stands. He’s my height, with a full head of pure gray hair and a large mole on his neck. ‘Knew your father,’ he says with a nod. ‘Good man.’
‘This is Slim Putnam,’ Cormack says. Another one of the men stands. He’s short and stout, with a barrel chest and a bald head. I assume, based on his girth, that his nickname is the product of some childhood cruelty that stuck. He merely nods at me.
‘And this, here, is Eddie Black.’ The third man looks as though he may lift weights professionally, and he is at least two inches taller than my six feet. He swings his chair over toward me and invites me to sit, going over and pulling up a fifth chair. We all sit down.
