by Linda Barnes
I got back in the elevator cube, dropped the grocery bags, and hesitated over the buttons. Did I want to press the penthouse floor, go up to Sam’s place, see Jonno’s handiwork? Did I have time? I consulted my watch, determining the latest time I could leave, beg a cab, and make the rendezvous with Jessie and her fiancé.
Where the hell was the Jaguar? The last time I’d seen Sam, he’d dropped me at Logan. Then, I’d learned later, he’d left town as well, flying to Vegas. No way would Sam have left his car at Logan. The long-term lot at Logan is more like a used car showroom for auto thieves than a parking lot.
I hit the lobby button and hefted the bags.
“Hey, babe, wuzzup?” Raoul, the doorman, glanced up with a wolfish grin. His eyes were sleepy and unfocused. He took note of me only because I’d cleared my throat and made him lose count of his reps. He was using the small weights, the ten-pounders he kept stashed under the desk. Maybe someone had complained about the fifties.
“How are you?” I replied cheerfully.
“Doin’ fine, doin’ fine.”
Raoul, the night doorman, was notorious for paying no attention. That’s not quite true. He paid attention, a great deal of attention, but only to his muscular development. As far as he was concerned, as long as his pecs and abs were in great shape, the lobby could disappear in a puff of smoke. He put on a good act; he was more than capable of shining on the management company that employed him, but most of the tenants knew. And he was so damned pleasant all the time, greeting everybody with a wide smile and happily carrying heavy packages upstairs for all and sundry, that the tenants didn’t really care that he paid no attention at all. At least he’d smile and say good evening. To anyone and everyone, whether they had any business being in the building or not.
“Mr. Gianelli leave a message for me?” I asked.
Sam had done so in the past. Lubricated with a couple of bills, Raoul’s memory was excellent.
“Uh, Mr. G. Right. Uh, no. Nothing like that, ma’am. Uh, miss.”
Raoul gave me his full attention as I crossed to the elevator. Before the doors had closed, his hand was reaching for the phone.
Had Jonno hired him as a spy: “Anybody goes up to the Gianelli apartment, you give me a buzz and I’ll make it worth your while”?
I took the elevator up to Sam’s floor. My key still fit the lock, but I didn’t venture inside. I knew the place too well. There was no safe concealed behind a picture frame, no secret compartment under the floor. Those improvements were confined to the family’s North End enclave.
When Sam moved into Charles River Park, he’d had two smaller condos knocked into one, making his apartment the sole dwelling on the floor. The outside corridor stretched from the elevator to well beyond the stairwell, ending in a small alcove. I shoved a potted palm slightly to the right and concealed myself and my groceries behind it. Raoul had most likely called Jonno, but I figured I might as well find out if anyone else had an interest in the goings and comings at Sam’s place.
It took only six minutes.
The man was built like a door, broad through the shoulders and hips, not so much tall as solid. He had a florid face and a drinker’s red-veined nose. Late forties, maybe fifty. His baggy suit jacket made me think cop.
He used a key on Sam’s door. As he entered, I departed, groceries in hand, flying down all twelve flights to the garage, where I exited by the same door I’d entered. Then I circled around to the front of the building to find a late-model Ford Taurus parked in the turnabout. Light brown. An American-made sedan, just like the car Mooney had asked about.
I memorized the license plate. Roz can work wonders with a license plate. I don’t know if she mesmerizes the clerks at the DMV or what. I’ve never asked her to sleep with anybody to gather information, but she may regard it as part of the job.
What was the name of the federal agent Mooney had mentioned? Dailey, I thought. Reilley? Too bad I couldn’t run the description by my old friend.
I took a deep breath and plunged down the path into the cold. The ten-minute trudge to the Science Park T stop seemed to take forever. Honestly, at one point, I thought about stealing a damned car. This city, seems like everybody else does.
SEVEN
The Jag would have been a lousy tail car. Too conspicuous, I told myself, scrunched behind the wheel of another aged Ford cab. The bucket seat in Sam’s car would have put me instantly to sleep, and the heating unit that kept it toasty under your butt, who needed it? The musky smell would have made me nostalgic and I didn’t need that either. The Spartan chill of Gloria’s cab would keep me alert. If I kept the roof lights off outside the city limits, the cab, in the dark of night, would look like any other car.
Right.
Tailing a citizen does not require the same virtuosity as playing the violin, but if it did, I flatter myself I’d be the Isaac Stern of tailing, or at least a concert-master in a decent orchestra. I’m good at waiting. I can amuse myself for hours, tuning my mind to a guitar riff I want to master, wandering through an intricacy of fingering possibilities while my eyes search for movement in the darkness.
There was the possibility I’d lose him: a one-person tail is always risky, but Jessica Franklin hadn’t let my warning deflect her determination to hire me. If I lost him, she’d insisted, I’d have a place, her place on Pomeroy Street in Allston, to wait and pick him up again. And if he didn’t show at her place, didn’t sleep in the right bed, then she’d know.
So the job was a simple tail, period, full stop, finish. She didn’t want even a cursory background check done on her Ken. I’d recommended one, the whole megillah, tracing the prospective groom back to the day of his birth, making sure he’d done what he said he’d done, lived where he’d said he’d lived, worked where he’d said he’d worked. But no, if the man didn’t commit adultery tonight, my client was willing to spend the rest of her life with him.
How trusting. How quaint.
I’d run through the arguments: This isn’t smalltown America anymore and many less-than-decent people have figured that out. The anonymity of cities lets the cons start over, re-create themselves from scratch. They’re not saddled with their father’s reputation or their mother’s; nobody knows who their family is, so it’s easy as pie to be whoever somebody believes them to be. Private investigators fill the role the family used to take in matchmaking, and why not? Somebody ought to do it. We’re nosy Aunt Bessie with a nephew at Amherst who never met your Ken on campus all those years he said he was there. So, does Ken really have that master’s degree? Was he really born in North Dakota in 1985? Is his dad a big shot in import/export or doing time at Walpole? Most folks are honest, but alas, crooks don’t come with FDA warning labels tattooed across their foreheads.
I glanced for the twenty-seventh time at the photo the bride-to-be had reluctantly parted with, a five-by-seven that told me some of what she saw in the guy. He was a handsome devil, maybe a little too handsome for his own good. Sandy hair, wide eyes, well-shaped freckled nose, nice smile. Good-looking guys; I don’t know, do they really tell more lies? Is there scientific proof? Did my client’s desire to have him tailed imply that she felt insecure in the relationship, suspected that, behind her back, people were wondering what a guy like that saw in her, asking why he hadn’t hooked up with some supermodel-type instead? I decided to have Roz run the basics on the man, no matter whether Kenny-boy slept at home or not.
The rain started at 7:38. Just what I needed. Jessica had guaranteed that she and the boyfriend would exit the restaurant by the front door at a quarter to eight. The attendant would bring up Ken’s Volvo, which he’d have previously left with valet parking. The Volvo S60 was a plus, a distinctive silhouette with oddly shaped taillights, a relatively easy car to track.
I’d filled up on gas, checked the oil and the wiper blades. The cab was old, but the engine was sound; it didn’t snort or stall. I’d be paid more than cabbie wages. Nothing to beef about, just rain-slicked roadway and no idea where
the man might be headed. Maybe he’d head straight to Jessica’s like a homing pigeon and sleep peacefully in his own bed. Maybe the printed message was a lie delivered by a jealous coworker of Jessica’s or a spiteful ex-girlfriend of Ken’s.
I’d tried to get the names and addresses of Ken’s former gal pals, but Jessica wasn’t having any. She’d behaved as if naming her suspicions would make them real. Just tail the man and tell her where he goes, write down any addresses.
Maybe he had a whole harem. His looks, it was possible.
The door to Mamma Vincenza’s opened, a slice of yellow light in the dark. My client led the way out. I watched her closely, but she didn’t glance around. I’d warned her about that. Don’t look for me; don’t give the show away. She smiled and chatted with Ken like a good little actress.
He wore a camel-colored overcoat that had set him back several hundred, a maroon scarf neatly twisted at his throat. He didn’t touch her as they got into the car. The Volvo was silver, with a moonroof.
Hello, luck. A gift, an absolute gift: His left taillight was busted. An irregular sliver of red plastic had slipped its mooring, and the Volvo was unique on the highway. I wondered if Jessica had broken it to help me out. If she’d done it, I owed her a tip of my hat for enterprising behavior.
Speaking of hats, I had a couple of different ones in the car, plus a raincoat, a shawl, my bottles of water, a bottle for other purposes, bananas, a stash of Fig Newtons, and a plastic bag of hard candies to suck on. I was wearing layers and running shoes, ready for a long haul and looking forward to it. Tailing and surveillance are my meat; I like to do what I do well, and my fellow officers used to claim I had an infinite capacity for watching and waiting for something to happen.
In my work, it’s a strength. In my life … How long could I watch and wait for Sam to return? I’d waited a long time already, for him to make up his mind, for me to make up my mind. And now that we had come to an agreement, now that the proposal had been made and accepted, where was the payoff?
I’m too old to believe in happily-ever-after transformations, but for a minute, I’d let my guard down and bought into the fantasy. We hadn’t gone so far as to have invitations printed as Jessica’s mother had, but there had been a sense of anticipation. Now I had to peel it away, dismiss the scent of orange blossoms and the whole irrational mystique that’s grown up around weddings, the perfect culmination, the perfect day, as though one day could alter the future, as though the right ceremony could forge a bond beyond the bond already created.
Legality, that’s what it was, a simple legal procedure that could be countered and later reversed by another civil procedure.
Marriage was what you made it. And so many made a mockery of it. My client was wary, and why not?
I followed the Volvo with the broken taillight, three cars back, northeast on North Square toward Sun Court Street. North Square turned into Moon Street and I hung a right onto Lewis, lots of rights and lefts till we hit the Surface Road and slid onto Summer. This was the easy part, the warm-up, because I knew where the Volvo was headed: South Station for the train to New York, the 8:20 Acela Express. Ken let Jessica off on Atlantic Avenue, leaving her on the wrong side of the street with lanes of busy traffic to cross. I didn’t see them kiss. Not a good sign. I wondered if she’d been able to carry off the dinner with aplomb, without asking him what his plans were for the evening or doing anything else to stoke suspicion.
As he drove away, I saw him lift a cell phone to his ear.
Ah, cell phones. They’ve made deception so much easier. When I’d asked whether she’d ever called home and found him unexpectedly absent, she’d replied that they had no landline, just cells. You call someone on his cell, ask whether he’s home, and he says, “Sure, honey, just kicking back here on the sofa watching the Celtics. How’s your day been?” You can’t exactly ask him to hold up the camera phone and shoot a picture to your phone so you can check his veracity. Not without inviting trouble.
He drove while he talked, but unlike so many other Bostonians, he drove well, holding his speed and position on the busy streets. If I was going to lose him, I’d lose him in the downtown swirl, I thought, so I edged closer, only one car behind, and tagged along through a yellow, then another one. Not suspicious behavior. Hell, there’s practically nothing you can do in a cab that’s suspicious in this city. The way Boston cabbies drive is truly awful, encompassing everything from abrupt U-turns in heavy traffic to wrong-way jaunts down one-way streets. And the cops usually wink. The way cops drive, well, that’s another story.
We took a quick right-left combo, my shadowlike behavior less than notable because that’s the way most of the traffic was heading. The man had just eaten, so we weren’t heading into the South End for a restaurant stop.
I was abruptly aware of a pulsing beat, heavy thumping bass coming from the Volvo. Yes, Ken had put his phone away and was jerking his head rhythmically. Maybe loud party music was his way of consoling himself for the departure of his fiancée. Or maybe the man was getting in a party mood and the anonymous letter was right on the button.
EIGHT
The Volvo reversed course, scooted over to Kneeland Street, and darted through Chinatown. Ken cut a right onto Washington Street without signaling and headed into the financial district. The shortcuts the man knew, he would have made a good cabbie. Fortunately, he didn’t seem to keep a keen eye on the rearview mirror. The god of traffic lights stayed with me; the red lights didn’t part us. The music blared so loudly that I could have followed him by ear.
I almost lost him near Winthrop Square, but there he was turning the corner. A little speed and I was on him as he made his way through the concrete canyons. Rain blurred the windshield and I prayed it would calm back into a drizzle. If it hadn’t been for the broken taillight, I’d have lost him twice.
He pulled over and parked abruptly. I rolled past; nothing else I could do, and circled the block at breakneck speed, a maneuver any cabbie in search of a fare learns to execute quickly.
The parking space was empty, the Volvo gone. Damn. He hadn’t parked. Had he pulled over to answer a phone call? To see if he was being tailed? The roads here were twisty one-way streets. I made a set of widening turns, reluctant to admit I’d lost him. There! I caught a flash of a white zigzag taillight and screeched a left from the right-hand lane to a chorus of indignant honks.
I stayed well back as the Volvo led the way to Government Center, turned onto Cambridge Street, and sailed over the Longfellow Bridge into East Cambridge. Through Kendall Square, right on Broadway, right again. Just past a knot of high-rises, he pulled in to park at the curb.
Another phone call? Another ruse? Again, unless I wanted to advertise my presence, there was nothing I could do but circle the block.
The Volvo, to my surprise, was still there, parked. I caught a glimpse of a silhouette entering the lobby of one of the tall buildings nearby. The shadow carried something in hand, not a briefcase, more the shape of a woman’s tote bag. Right height, right weight, right coat.
I pulled in at a fireplug, puzzled. Killed the lights.
It didn’t look like the sort of building for an assignation, more like lab space for one of the many MIT offshoot start-ups in the area. Possibly legal offices or stockbrokers. It was after hours, Friday night, hardly time for a business meeting. Who knew? Maybe he was playing sex games on a desktop with a willing paralegal. I made a note of the time and the address and settled back to wait, proud of myself for tracking him thus far.
I thought about calling Paolina, safe, physically safe, at McLean. No. Even if she agreed to talk, I couldn’t risk any activity that might split my concentration.
I regretted—well, almost regretted—not bringing a partner, someone who’d casually enter the building foyer, determine whether there was a guard, read the billboard listing the various offices. Someone who’d help while the time away, someone who’d talk, who’d help me decode Ken’s driving habits.
Mooney used
to do that. Mooney always talked. It was one of the reasons we’d never dated; I’d enjoyed talking to the man too much to risk our professional relationship. God knows, I’ve had my troubles with romantic relationships. I despise the very word relationship.
I put on a pair of lensless spectacles, removed my hat, and fluffed up my hair. If Ken, the groom, happened to change his habits and check the rearview, the cab itself would be unremarkable in the darkness, without the roof lights little more than a pair of well-lit circles. Some people, when they stop at traffic lights, glance at the drivers behind them, and if he did, I wanted him to see a different look, even if only a different misty outline.
I was tempted to race in and write down the names of the offices myself, but I’d have an awkward situation on my hands if he suddenly emerged, so I settled in to keep an eye on the door. I didn’t think there was much risk of missing his return to the Volvo. The place might have a back exit, but why bother with his car out front? I didn’t think he’d stay indoors long. It wasn’t intuition; he was parked in a no-parking zone.
He emerged twenty-two minutes later and stuffed the tote in the trunk. I logged the time, gave him a half-block head start, and we were off to the races.
Twenty-two minutes might be time enough for a quickie on an office desk, but it didn’t seem an attractive option. Okay, so maybe he had a little business to finish up after dinner. Now was the time for a playboy to head to a bar or to the unknown girlfriend’s bed. Or maybe he’d go back to the Allston digs he shared with his devoted fiancée, drink the lonely night away, watch the Celtics win. That would keep my costs down; Gloria expected me to return the cab with a full tank.
