“Yes. And it wasn’t to shop because nothing they have is kosher.”
“I still don’t see-”
“You think you could talk to your counterpart in Somerville about this other man? See if they have any leads? I know he’ll tell you more than he would me.” I wished I could tell him about the money that linked the men so surely in my mind, but that’s where that had to stay for now.
He sighed. “All right. I know one of the detectives there pretty well. We were on the Boston beat together. I’ll see what he’s got. But don’t get your hopes up, Geller. Even if some connection pans out somehow, they’ve both been gone too long.”
“For what?”
“For there to be any good news.”
Carol-Ann Meacham was around thirty, dangerously thin with dull brown hair and a pinched mouth with turned-down corners that she stretched into a smile cold as tundra. A face we’d call mieskeit in Yiddish. It generally means plain, veering into ugly. She was easily that and, by the look of her, not a woman who approved of much.
Her office was in a warren of small offices in the north end of the hospital. Grey metal cabinets lined both walls, and cardboard boxes of files were piled on top of them. More loose files were piled on top of those. One match in that room would have sent up a fireball.
We settled into chairs opposite her desk. Jenn got out our digital camera and took a couple of test shots to see if there was enough light in the office to get away without using a flash. There wasn’t.
“My colleague will take some candids while we’re talking,” I said. “And then maybe we’ll pose a couple.”
“You said this is for the Globe and Mail?”
“Yes.”
“I looked it up this morning to prep for this. You don’t have any bylines with them.”
“I’m freelance,” I said quickly. “I’m hoping this will get my foot in the door.”
“I see.”
“Let’s start with the research parameters,” I said. Parameters. I am such a quick study. “Your goal is to collect a hundred thousand samples?”
“At least.”
“And how many would you say you have so far?”
“At the end of the first full year, we had a little over twelve thousand.”
“That seems low.”
“It’s bound to grow as it becomes better known.”
“Not everyone likes getting stuck with a needle.”
“Of course not. And there’s a consent form, of course, and not everyone is comfortable with that. There are literacy issues with a large segment of our population. But we are confident the compliance rate will improve over time. And a new initiative we launched last month extends the study to visitors as well.”
“Really? You think people coming to visit will give blood samples?”
“Not without compensation, of course. Anyone who volunteers gets their name entered in a draw with some great prizes. A trip for two to the Bahamas, a new car, golf clubs, Red Sox tickets. All donated by hospital supporters. In fact, it would be great if you’d mention some of their names in your article. You could even give a sample yourself. Your colleague could take a photo of that.”
She looked at Jenn and gave her a colicky smile. Jenn quickly flashed her and she flinched. She was off-balance. Time for a low block to shake up her legs.
I asked her, “Was a man named Harinder Patel one of your participants?”
Loved her reaction: eyes widening, tendons in her throat sticking out like harp strings.
“I–I can’t comment on any individuals,” she sputtered. “That’s confidential. And why would you-”
“Because he and David Fine are both missing.”
“Who are you? You’re not a reporter.” Then she looked at Jenn. “You. Are you the woman who called me yesterday?”
Jenn didn’t say a word. She just pointed the camera and flashed Carol-Ann again.
“Stop that! No more pictures. And no comment. Get out of my office, both of you.”
“You called David repeatedly before he disappeared,” I said. “And he called you. I’m going to go out on a limb and say you weren’t lovers.”
“Lovers! Are you mad? Get out, before I call security.”
“How about the Brookline police? Want to call them too?”
“What are you talking about?”
“They’re investigating David’s disappearance,” I said. “And they know about Mr. Patel too.”
“Know what? What is there to know?”
“Come on.” I said. “He was a patient here. His son told me so.”
“So what? We have hundreds of thousands of patients here.”
“How many go missing?”
“You really need to leave now.”
“No. You really need to tell us what you know about David.”
“Nothing! Okay? I don’t know anything about him. He just left one day.”
“We’re pretty sure he was abducted.”
Her face went as grey as the cabinets behind her. “What do you mean? Who would abduct David Fine?”
“Why don’t you tell me? That night, he told his roommate he was stopping at a lab on his way home. Around six. You might have been the last person he spoke to. Was he here?”
“You have no basis for this-this interrogation.”
“You think this is an interrogation? Wait until the cops bring you in.”
Her complexion, like the song, was a whiter shade of pale. “I don’t know what happened to him! I–I wish I did. But I swear, he never said a word to me, not a word, not about leaving or anything.”
“But he was here.”
“Just to look at sample results. Morbidity and mortality statistics.”
“Why all the phone calls between you two?” Jenn asked.
“What calls?”
“They’re recorded in his phone, Carol-Ann.”
Her face grew tighter, as if strings were being pulled inside. “All right,” she said. “He did ask me out. I liked him and we talked a few times on the phone, okay?”
“Why didn’t you tell us that before?”
“Because it’s none of your business. But I can see that you’re not going to leave me alone until I tell you the truth, so I’m telling it. We were making plans to go out on a date and that’s all there is to it.”
“What did you decide?” I asked.
“About what?”
“The date.”
She hesitated before coming up with, “Dinner and a movie.”
“Dinner where?”
“Near David’s apartment.”
“Which restaurant, Carol-Ann?”
“Sichuan Garden, okay? Right on the corner.”
“All right,” I said. “Thanks for clearing that up.” I turned to Jenn. “I think we have everything we need, don’t you?”
Being the devil she is, she set off the flash again, right in Carol-Ann Meacham’s lying face.
“Now we do,” Jenn said.
CHAPTER 11
“Sichuan Garden my lobster-loving ass,” I said as we walked back to the car. “What was he going to order there? The shrimp, the pork or both?”
“You’d order both,” Jenn said.
“I’m not Orthodox. But David is the real thing. You saw his room. He eats out of his closet so he can keep kosher.”
We retrieved our car from a parking lot and headed back toward the hotel. We still had paperwork of David’s to go through, and more calls to make, moves to plan.
Jenn turned on the camera and scrolled through the photos she had taken of Carol-Ann Meacham. “Too bad lies don’t show up on camera,” she said. “Look at that face. Totally defensive. Her body language too.”
“Like he would have asked her out. Yech.”
“Which brings us back to the phone calls. Why else were they calling each other at home?”
“Let her stew a bit. Maybe she’ll be more inclined to tell the truth next time we ask.”
Jenn leaned forward to peer out at
the next street sign and said, “Shit. I think you should have made that right on Newbury.”
“The GPS would have told you that if you’d let me use it.”
“Just make the next left and double back on Commonwealth.”
I followed her instructions, then turned left on Newbury to get to the laneway behind the hotel, where the parking entrance was. A grey van behind us made all the same moves. Two men in the front seats. Both white. The driver had blond hair. The licence plate was covered over with mud.
“Ready for our next interview?” I asked.
“With whom?”
“The clowns who are following us.”
A white grocery truck sprayed with dozens of tags had its back doors open at a loading dock ahead on our right. That left room for one car only to pass. I stopped with my nose parallel to his, blocking the van behind us, and told Jenn what I was going to do. She unfolded our map and got out, moving toward the parked truck as though looking for someone to ask about directions. As soon as she was clear I put the gearshift in reverse and hit the gas. Slammed hard into the van behind us, rocking it backwards. Then I grabbed the GPS off the dashboard and rolled out of the car.
The driver had been stunned for a moment by the impact, but now he was getting out of the car and reaching for a chrome gun butt in his waistband. I threw the GPS at his head. It didn’t hit him but he had to duck and that gave me the time I needed to rush him and drive my left fist into the bridge of his nose. His head snapped back, blood streaming from his nostrils. His eyes looked half closed but his hand was still on his gun. I pulled my right wrist in close to my chest and drove my elbow forward into his cheek. It opened a nasty gash, as elbow strikes should, and knocked him flat on his back, out cold.
I looked over to check on Jenn. As soon as the passenger opened his door and swung a leg out, she threw her shoulder against it. He yelped in pain as the door slammed against his shin. When he tried to push it open, she braced her feet against the curb and kept the pressure on until he howled.
I thumbed the magazine out of the driver’s gun and put it in my coat pocket. I ejected the shell and put it there too. The empty gun went under the driver’s seat. Then I reached in and turned the engine off, grabbed the keys and scrambled around the back to Jenn’s side.
Her guy had his hands on the edges of the door, trying to keep Jenn from closing it on his leg. I slammed the heel of my hand onto his fingers and he let go with a yell. I opened the door and grabbed him by the lapels with one hand, and patted him down with my other. No gun. His wallet was in an inside pocket of his leather jacket: Kevin Walsh, a Boston address, somehow made it to twenty-six dumb years of age.
“Your partner’s out, Kevin, so you’re going to have to do all the talking.”
“About what? We were just taking a shortcut here and you attacked us, man, you’re crazy.”
“You were following us. And you and your friend tried to grab a man named David Fine two weeks ago. On Summit Avenue with this van. You hit a cyclist and he got away.”
“You’re crazy!”
“Where is David Fine?”
“How should I know!”
I added my weight to Jenn’s on the car door and he cried, “Ow. Christ. Okay. you’re right, you’re right.”
“About what?”
“We tried to grab him. Please.”
“Then what?”
“Let go my leg!”
“Then what?”
“Aargh! He got away, like you said.”
“Where?”
“Fuck!”
“Just tell me where.”
“Down those steps. Down that path. I don’t know what the fuck it’s called. He ran down them and we couldn’t find him with the van.”
I nodded at Jenn and we took just enough weight off the door to keep his leg pinned without pressure.
“Who hired you?”
“He did,” Walsh panted, pointing to his driver’s seat. “He said we had a job to do, didn’t say who hired him. Didn’t say why.”
I looked at Jenn. “Do you believe him?” He saw the look in my eyes and tried to pull his leg inside the car but Jenn was too fast. She threw herself against it again and he screamed as it trapped his leg, lower this time, closer to the ankle.
“Christ!”
“Who wanted him? Who wanted David!”
“No fucking way,” he said. “Break my leg, go ahead. I ain’t saying fuck all.”
I could tell he was too scared to talk, whether I broke his leg or not, and one of these shitheads had to drive the other one out of that alley. I picked up the GPS and went back to our car, got the digital camera and took shots of both pretty boys. I also took close-ups of both drivers’ licences and the van. I banged the mud off the front plate and shot that as well. Then I helped Walsh swing his limp partner into the back seat so he could drive them both to a hospital, if they so chose. I figured they would head for Sinai. If they’d been following us for any amount of time, they knew where it was.
We had a message from Colin MacAdam when we got up to my room. Karl Thompson had cracked David’s password and had sent us a link to a ghost drive where we could look at his email and Internet history. Jenn started on that while I booted up my laptop, uploaded the pictures I had taken of our assailants and called Mike Gianelli in Brookline.
“How would you like to see a photo of the guys who tried to abduct David Fine?”
“You serious?”
“Give me an email address, you’ll have them in a second.”
“All right, Geller,” he said, and gave it to me. “I’ll circulate them here and with some of my old guys in Boston. We come up with something, I’ll call you. Jesus Christ,” he said, “maybe turning you loose wasn’t such a bad idea.”
When I called Adath Israel and asked to speak to the rabbi, the woman who answered said they didn’t have one. “We will, shortly,” she said. “Certainly for the High Holidays. Our search committee is almost done. Are you thinking of joining?”
“No, I’m from out of town,” I said. “I was hoping to ask the rabbi about a member named David Fine. I was told they’re close.”
“Oh, you want Rabbi Ed,” she said. “Ed Lerner. Yes, he and David were close, I’d say. But he’s not with our congregation anymore. He stepped down last month.”
“Can I ask why?”
There was a pause and then she said, “Personal reasons. That’s all I can say.”
“Could you put me in touch with him?”
“His number is unlisted,” she said. “So, no.”
“It’s very important,” I said. “David is missing and his family has hired me to find him.”
“Missing?”
“More than two weeks.”
“But he’s such a lovely young man,” she said, as if that were some kind of shield against trouble. “No wonder he hasn’t been at services lately. All right, you leave your number with me,” she said. “I’ll get Rabbi Ed to call you. And you didn’t hear it from me, but his daughter might be in the book under S for Sandra.”
“She’d be listed?”
“She’s single, I heard. She’d be crazy not to.”
“David is here on a very limited visa, right?” Jenn asked.
“Yeah, a J1.”
“Can’t work anywhere, can’t moonlight.”
“No.”
“So he probably can’t vote, right?”
“No. No way.”
“So why did he spend so much time checking the website of Marc McConnell, congressman from the Eighth District?”
“Which is where?”
“Let me check. There’s a map on McConnell’s site. Hmmm. Mostly downtown Boston, Cambridge, parts of Brookline-but not where David lived. Curves right around it.”
“The same city line that kept the Boston PD out.”
“Right.”
“So someone who can’t vote and can’t even ask for a favour because he’d be asking the wrong guy … how much time was he on the site?
”
“In hours or minutes, I don’t know, but he visited it more than once. Bookmarked a number of pages. And searched McConnell on Google.”
“We should do the same.”
“Wait. He also emailed him a few times.”
“Saying what?”
“Slow down there, hombre. Let me get this open. Okay, he wrote February 23, asking for a meeting with McConnell.”
“Did he say why?”
“No. But he does say it’s urgent.”
I crowded in over her shoulder and read along with her.
“Any reply?”
She checked and found a formulaic response from someone named Tim Fitzpatrick, an adviser to McConnell, who thanked David for his interest in the congressman’s work and asked if he wanted to be on his mailing list. “Okay, then two days later, David emails again, saying-”
“ ‘I really need to meet with Mr. McConnell,’ ” I read. “ ‘It is in both our interests that we meet immediately.’ ”
“Dated February 26.”
“And two days after that he’s gone. Is this hotel in his district, by any chance?”
“This block of Commonwealth?” She glanced at the screen. “Smack in the middle,” she said.
“Then we’re constituents,” I said. “Let’s get ourselves an audience.”
CHAPTER 12
Sean Daggett and Kieran Clarke were having drinks in leather chairs facing each other across a glass coffee table. Something Kieran had found, a smooth Irish whiskey called Redbreast they were having over ice, one cube each.
“Tell me about McCudden and Walsh,” Sean said. “Are they total fuck-ups or can they not catch a break? First they lose the Jew they’re supposed to grab, now they get beaten up by Canadians. One of them a girl. That makes them 0 for 2.”
Kieran was Sean’s oldest friend from Russell Street, and his best friend left. He had the size Sean lacked, a little over six-two and 20 pounds heavier than when he’d played football-call it 240 now, but still all brick, no mortar. “Walsh says they got suckered. Says the guy rammed them in an alley.”
“What does McCudden say?”
“He ain’t talking yet. Still doped up. Took two pretty good shots.”
“From a Canadian.”
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