by Linda Barnes
He drove faster. I stopped thinking about where he might be going and concentrated on keeping up, following the silver zigzag as it slid through the river of red taillights. Back into Boston, the traffic lighter now, the workers all gone home, curled up contentedly by the fire or the flickering television. At a stoplight, I grinned at myself in the rearview. Tailing the guy felt good. If Allston was our destination, we’d head west soon.
He turned south. I kept the tail loose, followed him onto 93, the Central Artery, into the underground network of tunnels that locals call the Dig or the deathtrap depending on the daily news, headed toward Route 3. I scrunched my eyes, then opened them wide. The Dig is like one of those kids’ toys, a marble run. If you pick the correct lane, it shunts you out to your destination; if you have the misfortune to get in the wrong lane, you go to the wrong place. Often only one lane goes where you’re headed and at the moment I didn’t have any idea where I was bound. The silver zigzag raced on, flashing in and out of traffic. Was he on to me, or just having fun, enjoying the night drive?
Whew. I’d guessed right, gotten lucky, going with the majority as we zipped under downtown, emerging from the claustrophobic tunnel alive, no heavy concrete panels crashing on my head tonight, escaping onto Route 3, dashing toward the South Shore. I tried to convince myself this was a good thing for my client. Aunt Ruthie in Hingham, sweet old Aunt Ruthie had invited our bridegroom over for a cup of chamomile tea.
There were strip joints on the South Shore. Maybe I’d spend most of the night in the Foxy Lady parking lot while Ken threw himself a little solo bachelor party. What would my client think of that?
I kept to the right lane, primed for the Volvo’s exit. We passed Quincy and Braintree. We passed Hingham. Marshfield. Plymouth. Where the hell was the man going? On vacation?
Vacation is what I think of when I cross the Sagamore Bridge over the Cape Cod Canal. Escape. Turning off the clock, turning back the clock to a simpler quieter time. I don’t go to the Cape—or “down the Cape,” as the natives say—in summer; too many tourists. I prefer it in the fall when the weather’s still fine and the ocean warm, preheated by the August sun. There’s a sense of relief on the Cape in the fall, all the summer people with their bustle and desperation gone. Sam and I once rented a cabin in Orleans and never woke before noon.
Mooney and I drove down to interview a witness in Falmouth. We stopped at a clam shack, walked along a white sand beach. I kept my distance, unwilling to be accused of playing up to the boss. Hadn’t done any good; the guys hooted when we returned and I had to take a lot of crap about sunburns.
The bridge shoved us onto Route 6, the Cape Highway, a straight shot to Provincetown, the end of the world.
It was just past ten o’clock. In downtown Boston, the streets would be packed with restaurant-and moviegoers, with fans emptying out of the Garden, long since renamed but never called anything else. Here, traffic was sparse. I slowed down, settled in behind a plumber’s van, and soothed myself with the thought that Route 6 had few exits and those carefully marked. I could lie back a few cars, watch for the silver zigzag to leave the roadway.
The downside: If I missed him, I couldn’t double back on the divided highway. I shifted my butt in the seat, made myself deliberately uncomfortable to keep alert.
He didn’t take the first exit or the second. Not the third. The fourth was the charm, and I was momentarily relieved; I didn’t think my kidneys could make the trip to Provincetown.
Exit 4. Route 149. As a cabbie, I carry a mental map of the Boston area, but it grows sketchier the farther I get from town. The surroundings seemed vaguely familiar. Where had I driven heading south on 149? The old Barnstable Fairgrounds? Yes. The fairgrounds were to the west and Cotuit Bay must be at the end of the dimly lit, narrow two-lane road. Ken must be nearing his destination. No reason to leave Route 6 if he intended to continue east on 28, its southern low-speed parallel. I edged the cab a little closer. Sam and I had visited a restaurant down this way, close to the tiny town of Marstons Mills. Wasn’t there a small rotary, a traffic circus, a place where I might lose the magic taillight?
The Volvo stayed on the main drag, doing a 180 around the small circle before continuing to the south as though the rotary had been nothing but a stop sign. I wondered if there was ever enough traffic to make cars stop and wait at the rotary, whether there would ever be popular demand for a traffic light. Didn’t look like it, with wide open spaces all around.
Much of this part of the Cape is devoted to golf courses, but some of the low flat land is a military reservation. There are small towns dotted here and there, clumps of weather-beaten houses, wildlife sanctuaries. I wondered about Indian reservations. The town of Mashpee is nearby and that’s the center of the Wampanoag tribe, along with Aquinnah on Martha’s Vineyard. The Nausett tribe, smaller than the Wampanoag, shares its name with the small town west of Mashpee. The taillights vanished over a rise and I sped up.
Lighting was minimal, but I didn’t want to risk my brights. Damn. Just as my hand moved off the steering wheel to find them, the wheel wrenched hard to the right and then I was fighting with the cab, hanging on as a loud thump, thump, thump announced trouble and the tires locked and skidded.
Instinct took over. One minute the car was out of control and the next minute it was slowing and stopping, sliding but stopping, not quite on the road, but not quite in the ditch, and my hands were clenched so tightly on the steering wheel that I thought I might need help to pry them off.
Quiet. It was absolutely still, like church, except no one coughed or rustled in the pews. Dark and quiet and still. No cars, no streetlights, scudding clouds across the faint hint of a moon.
Damn again. I knew that sound. I knew what made a car behave like that. A blowout, a flat, and while I’d checked the oil and gas, I hadn’t cracked the trunk and checked for a spare. Oh, please, I prayed silently. There’s got to be a spare. I got my flashlight out of my bag and flicked it on, pointing the beam out the side window.
I couldn’t see grass; I couldn’t see ground. I knew there were no cliffs on the Cape, just dunes overlooking the ocean still far to the south, but who wants to take chances, so I slid to the passenger side, closer to the center of the road, and got out. I didn’t slam the car door. The silence was so profound, it didn’t seem right to break it.
As I edged around the car to inspect the tires, I kicked something that skittered across the road. My lowered flashlight caught a gleam of silver. I bent and studied the pavement.
Carpet tacks. Too many of them. In fact, a whole box of carpet tacks.
The rain started again, pockmarking the gravel at the side of the road, its faint patter the only sound on the planet. The metallic barrage of a jackhammer or the wail of a siren would have been a welcome intervention. I won’t say that the worst parts of Dorchester and Mattapan hold no terrors for me, but they hold familiar fears. I’m a city kid. The dark rural silence sent shivers up my spine.
Mooney used to get on my case whenever I’d make an intuitive leap, make use of what he used to call unwarranted imagination. Hey, I’d respond, most cops have no imagination, period. Now I gave mine free rein.
Had the man in the Volvo tossed the tacks, or had they been lying here for hours, days? If they’d been here even ten minutes ago, why had the Volvo passed with no problem? Luck of the draw? Karma?
I decided to hold Ken responsible for the tacks.
Okay. Had he simply been trying to stop me? Was the man insane or just reckless and impulsive? Had injury been his deliberate goal? Had he assumed I was someone else, some unknown—to me, at least—enemy? Would he U-turn the Volvo, return to demand why I’d been tailing him? Come back to finish me off? Would I hear a car approaching on the roadway with the sputtering rain? See a car if it traveled with no headlights?
Every cheesy horror flick I’d ever seen took place at night in the deserted woods. Woods exactly like those that kissed the margins of Route 149. After fifteen minutes spent crouch
ed in the wet, leafy underbrush, I decided imagination might be running rampant. I decided Ken wasn’t coming back.
By then my hair was plastered to my head and my clothing soaked through. I was also shivering uncontrollably. And the rain kept pelting down.
PART TWO
NINE
I threw myself into the air, timing the leap to meet the opposing center, smashing the ball at a wicked downward angle for the kill. Tie game: 10-10. Our point, our serve, the rhythm of the game speeding up, the momentum changing, slowly turning in our favor. I could feel the surge of energy around me, a corresponding ebb across the net. A teammate smacked my upraised palm.
“Let’s do it,” Marlena, our co-captain, yelled.
When everything else in my life turns ugly, I have a place to go. Some people find succor in the warmth of their family, but I find what I need in the smell of the locker room, in the warped wooden floorboards of the old Cambridge Y in Central Square. I find it in the thwack of skin on a volleyball, the community of players who show up three times a week for no glory or pay, to test their skills and keep their edge. I find it in Loretta, who cares for her elderly mother in the Cambridge projects and is always the first to offer a hand up after a fall, and in Jody, who alternates between cursing and apologizing for her foul mouth. I find it in focusing so narrowly and moving so quickly that there’s no chance to dwell on the disastrous past.
I leapt again, but by this time, my counterpart across the net had grown tired of my routine. She leapt, too, straight-arming the net instead of the ball. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. My nose hit the butt of her palm, that hard place near the base of the thumb, and I went down fast, blood oozing from my nostrils.
Tears welled unbidden and I pressed both forefingers against the bridge of my nose, prodding both sides, squeezing and thinking, Please, not again. Loretta had a bag of ice on my face so fast, I don’t remember waiting for it. My nose has been broken three times, so I used my diagnostic skills. I didn’t think this was break number four. I hadn’t heard that awful grinding noise. The cartilage along the bridge seemed stable. I could breathe.
Sitting out the next game with a towel staunching the scarlet flow, I had way too much time to reconstruct and deconstruct, to think about Friday night and replay the long lost weekend.
Only one flat tire, and thank God and Leroy, Gloria’s car mechanic brother, there had been a functional spare in the trunk. So much for the good news. With no cell service out in the back of beyond, I couldn’t call 911 to tell the cops to clean up the tacks, much less call Roz to order her to sit on Jessica’s apartment. It had taken way too much time to change the tire, the barely accessible front right tire, poised over a ditch, in icy pouring rain, with a crappy tire iron and a rickety jack.
A car had come around the rotary within minutes once I’d started the repair. I’d had visions of a helper, a trucker with a two-way radio, a Good Samaritan, a cop. The sedan had given me a wide berth, driving by without hesitation. Angrily, I’d watched it out of sight, almost hoping it would pick up a stray tack or two. Then I’d found myself considering Mooney’s comment about the American-made sedan, wondering whether someone might have been trailing me while I was trailing Ken. Then I’d decided I was getting more than borderline paranoid. The driver was simply tired, eager to hit the sheets, uninterested in prolonging his evening to help a sopping wet six-foot damsel wielding a tire iron.
I’d finished tightening the lug nuts, swept the tacks into the ditch with the aid of the flashlight and a plastic snow sweeper. I’d even made a few passes through Marstons Mills, up and down the rainy side streets, searching for the Volvo.
No luck at all.
A cheer went up from the Y-Birds’ side of the net. One more game for the match. I yelled encouragement, wiped my nose with a fresh tissue, pinched it, and leaned back, wincing. My nose was still sore from blowing it practically nonstop Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Oh, I know, you catch cold from germs, not from rain and chill, but the rain and the chill had gotten to me nonetheless. The Y was my first post-Cape, post-cold venture out of the house.
The bride-to-be, Jessica Franklin, hadn’t called Sunday, so I hadn’t had to confess my abject failure over the phone. It hadn’t surprised me, her decision to wait till Monday, but it had surprised me when she didn’t show for our Monday meeting. Didn’t come, didn’t call, wasn’t answering her cell. I was planning to stop by her apartment after the game. I wasn’t looking forward to the conversation, and now I’d get to conduct it through a swollen red nose.
And speaking of failure, consider my latest conversation with Sam. Just when my cold was at its fruitiest, head pounding, nose dripping, guess who called, waking me, sweating and shivery, at an ungodly hour? Still phoning from nowhere. I’d unburdened myself about Paolina, about the cutting, and McLean.
“Don’t worry about money. You need money, go to Eddie Nardo.”
“This the same Eddie Nardo who’s putting your stuff in storage?”
Silence.
I’d told him that I didn’t need his money right now. Paolina’s late father hadn’t planned on his stash being used for therapy instead of college, but therapy was what my sister needed now if college was ever going to be an option.
I wasn’t planning to say anything about Jonno’s revelation, about the dead woman in Sam’s recent past. I really wasn’t, but I was exhausted and sick, and I guess I got angry when he asked me again. Meet him, please. Run away, marry him in Italy. And this right after we’d talked about Paolina. He knows I’d never leave her.
“I told you to leave the legal stuff alone,” he’d responded, voice tight. “I’m taking care of it.”
“How? Long distance?”
“I’ll get back to you,” he’d said, and like our last phone call, this one ended when he hung up.
“How’s it going?” Loretta called. “Can you play yet?”
I focused on the game. We were down by two. Movement seemed sluggish, listless; both teams were running on fumes.
“Soon,” I said. “Give me five.”
I shifted the icy towel on my nose. I hadn’t linked Sam to Anthony “Big Tony” Gianelli until I’d already fallen for him. Then, when I became a cop, I’d made the choice to avoid information about anyone named Gianelli. Not for me a special assignment to Organized Crime, not for me a precinct in the North End. I’d stayed far from OC, tried not to think about OC, and now OC was being pushed in my face. How do you do monstrous things and not become a monster?
Mooney thought Sam was guilty, and why not?
My nose hurt and I felt mean. I tossed the bloody towel on the bench, went in and played erratically, making the hard shots, missing the easy stuff.
Two men marched into the gym near the end of the match. They drew my eyes like a magnet; both wore suits and had a thickness across their shoulders and upper bodies that spoke to me of underarm holsters. They stood for a moment, framed by a shaft of sunshine, then made their way to the bleachers and sat heavily.
Just when you think it can’t get any worse, my grandmother allegedly used to say, it always does.
We fought back to a tie, but wound up blowing the lead and losing by two lousy points.
TEN
“Cops.” Loretta edged close to me in the locker room and spoke in a stage whisper. “Outside. For you.”
A couple of players stopped, shirts over their heads, shorts halfway down their thighs, and stared. They know I used to be a cop, but on the whole we keep our outside worlds outside the game. I know Annie’s a lawyer. I know Margie works for Blue Cross and Deirdre has an autistic kid, but we keep our volleyball games about volleyball. I showered quickly, which I always do because the Cambridge Y is not some fancy spa where you want to luxuriate in the ambience. Believe me, you just want to get the sweat off and exit before you have a chance to notice the mold on the plastic shower curtain or the silverfish scuttling into the dark corners.
I got dressed on autopilot. This is about Sam, I t
hought. At last; about time; no more dancing around. Someone was finally going to fill in the blanks, tell me exactly what Sam was accused of doing. Cops were going to try to make me alibi him or betray him; maybe they would demand that I reveal his location. I don’t know what I’d expected to feel, but one major component was relief. I toweled off, took the scrunchie off my ponytail, shook out my hair.
They were Boston cops, not federal agents. That was the first surprise.
“Nasty shot, that last one. Nice. Ya play college ball?” The bigger cop spoke first. He was built like a tackle, his neck the size of a bull’s.
My alma mater, UMass Boston, a commuter school, hardly had any teams, just students too busy holding down jobs to provide much in the way of rah-rah spirit. I shook my head no.
“Ya totally deeked ’em. One minute, you’re goin’ right and then, wham, ya shift midair.”
There’s nothing worse than a cop trying to flatter you.
“Carlyle, right?” the big guy went on. “I’m McHenry and this here is McDonough. We both answer to Mac, so guess what? They teamed us up.”
He waited. I nodded.
“We’re outa Area A.” The second Mac was short, lean, and black, not what you’d expect from the surname.
“What’s this about?” I wanted to head to Dunkin’ Donuts in Central Square. I was hungry. Maybe they’d buy me a glazed and a cup of coffee.
“Got a car?”
I shook my head. I’d returned the maimed cab to Gloria. Today was my day to rent or buy.
The Big Mac said, “Something we want to show you.”
The Little Mac said, “We’ll drive.”
I should have said no right then, told them I was busy and under no obligation to accompany them anywhere. But I wanted to know about Sam, and curiosity—well, curiosity left me open to error.
The backseat of their unit wasn’t caged, but the door-openers were nonoperational. I settled in uneasily. Little Mac drove.
