Hard News

by Jeffery Deaver

  The houseboat still floated but it looked like a load of charred wood had been dumped onto the deck; irregular, glistening slabs of fluted charcoal rose from it. A haze of smoke still hung around the pier and made everything-- the houseboat, the debris, the trash cans, the chain-link--appear out of focus. The front of the pier was cordoned off with yellow police tape, fifty feet in front of where the boat bobbed like a man-o'-war that had lost a sea battle. Rune remembered her excitement at seeing the houseboat for the first time, riding in the Hudson, fifty miles north of here.

  And now, a Viking burial.

  She sighed, then waved to the patrolman in the front seat of a blue-and-white. He was a friend of Healy's from the Sixth Precinct, the station where the Bomb Squad was housed.

  "Look at this," she called.

  "Sorry about it, honey. Some of us'll drive by once in a while, check up on things, just till you get your stuff moved out."

  "Yeah, if there's anything left."

  There was, but the stink and smoke damage were so bad she didn't have the heart to go through it. Anyway, Courtney was restless and kept climbing on the pilings.

  Rune took her by the hand and led her back up Christopher Street.

  "What's that?" Courtney asked, pointing at a storefront sign encouraging safe sex. It showed a condom.

  "Balloon," said Rune.

  "I want one."

  "When you're older," Rune answered. The words came automatically and she decided she was really getting into this kid bit. They continued on Christopher then along the tail end of Greenwich and finally onto Eighth Street. It had become a lot shabbier in the past year. More graffiti, more garbage, more obnoxious kids. But, God, the shoe stores--more places to buy cheap shoes than anywhere else in the world.

  They walked down to University Place, past dozens of chic, black-clad NYU students. Rune made a detour. She stopped in front of an empty storefront. Above the door was a sign, Washington Square Video.

  "I used to work there," she told Courtney. The little girl peered inside.

  In the window was another sign, on yellow cardboard: For Rent Net Lease.

  Just like my life, she thought. For rent net lease.

  They walked to Washington Square Park and bought hot dogs then kept walking south through SoHo and into Chinatown.

  "Hey," Rune said suddenly, "want to see something neat?"

  "Yeah, neat."

  "Let's go look at some octopuses."

  "Yeah!"

  Rune led her across the street to a huge outdoor fish market on Canal Street. "It's like the zoo, only the thing is the animals don't move so much."

  Courtney didn't buy it, though. "Pukey," she said about the octopus then got yelled at by the owner of the stand when she poked a grouper.

  Rune looked around and said, "Oh, hey, I know where we are. Come on--I'll show you something totally excellent. I'll teach you some history and when you start school you can blow everybody away with how much you already know."

  "Yeah. I like history."

  They walked down Centre Street past the black Family Court Building. (Rune, glancing across the square at the Criminal Courts Building and thinking of Randy Boggs. She felt the anger sear her and looked away quickly.) In a few minutes they were in front of the New York Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street.

  "This is it," Rune announced.

  "Yeah." Courtney looked around.

  "This used to be called Five Points. A hundred years ago it was the worst area in all of Manhattan. This is where the Whyos hung out."

  "What's a Whyo?"

  "A gang, the worst gang that ever was. I'll read you a bedtime story about them some night."

  "Yeah!"

  Rune remembered, though, that her present copy of New York Gangs was now just a cinder and wondered where she could get a new one. She said, "The Whyos were really tough. You couldn't join them unless you were a murderer. They even printed up a price list--you know, like a menu, for how much it cost to stab somebody or shoot him in the leg or kill him."

  "Yuck," said Courtney.

  "You hear all about Al Capone and Dutch Schultz, right?"

  Courtney said agreeably, "Uh-huh."

  "But they weren't anything compared with the Whyos. Danny Driscoll was the leader. There's this great story about him. He was in love with a girl named Beezy Garrity--isn't that a great name? I'd like to be named Beezy."

  "Beezy."

  "And this rival gang dude, Johnny somebody or another, fell in love with her too. Danny and him had this duel in a dance hall up the street. They pulled out guns and blasted away." Rune fired a couple shots with her finger. "Blam, blam! And guess who got shot?"

  "Beezy."

  Rune was impressed. "You got it." Then she frowned. "Danny was pretty bummed by that, I'd guess, but it got worse because they hanged him for killing his girlfriend. Right over there," Rune pointed. "That's where the Tombs were. The old criminal building. Hanged him right up."

  Well, now she'd have plenty of time to do her documentary about old-time gangs. She wished she'd done that story in the first place. They wouldn't have lied to her. Nope, Slops Connolly would no way have betrayed her. They were creeps and scum but, she bet, back then thugs were honorable.

  "Come on, honey," Rune said, starting toward Mulberry Street. "I'll show you where English Charley started the last big fight the Whyos were ever in. You want to see?"

  "Oh, yeah."

  Rune stopped suddenly and bent down and hugged the girl. Courtney hugged back, squeezing with just the right amount of strength that Rune needed just then. The little girl broke away and ran to the corner. A woman in a business suit, maybe a lawyer on break from court, crouched down and said to Courtney, "Aren't you a cute one?" Rune joined them and the woman looked up and said, "She's yours?"

  And as Rune started to say she was just looking after her Courtney said, "Uh-huh, this is my mommy."

  *

  RANDY BOGGS LAUGHED OUT LOUD. THE MAN SITTING IN the seat next to him, on the Atlanta-bound Greyhound bus, glanced his way but must have been a seasoned traveler and didn't say anything. He probably knew not to engage in conversation with people who laughed to themselves. Not on a bus, not in north Georgia.

  What Boggs was laughing at was the memory of Lynda's astonished face as they walked out of the restaurant and he handed her fifty dollars, telling her to get on home and not go back in that bar if Tom Cruise himself was in there offering to take her to Bermuda. "Uh-huh," she said suspiciously. "Why?"

  "Because," Boggs answered and kissed her forehead.

  "You mean you don't wannta?" Nodding toward the room.

  "I'd love to, 'specially with a pretty thing like you but there's someplace I gotta be."

  He collected his bag and she gave him a drive to the Charlottesville bus station, which was a ways away but not so far that fifty dollars didn't buy the trip. He thanked her and trotted off to wait at the terminal for the bus that would eventually get him to Atlanta.

  What had tipped him off had been the Men's Colony comment--the California State Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo.

  Seemed pretty strange that Jack Nestor--knowing that Boggs was Inside and knowing intimately why Boggs was Inside--he had never before mentioned he'd served time himself. It'd be natural for him to tell Boggs what it was like. Maybe brag a little. Ex-cons always did that.

  But what was stranger still was that Nestor had been in the same prison, at the same time, as Juan Ascipio.

  Okay, it could have been a coincidence. But if Nestor wanted something to happen to Boggs in Harrison, Ascipio would have been a good choice to start that accident happening.

  The accident that killed Severn Washington and came close to killing Boggs.

  A lot of strange things happening. The Obispo thing. And the way the witness, Bennett Frost, had died. And then the tape of Rune's story disappearing.

  Beneath his lazy smile and easy manner Randy Boggs was spitting mad. Here he'd done right by Nestor, never said a goddamn word at
trial or the entire time he was Inside. Boggs was a stand-up guy. And look what happened: betrayed.

  The bus rocked around a turn fast and he felt less angry. Boggs smiled. It wasn't as good as a car but it was still movement. Movement taking him away from Harrison and toward a pile of money.

  He laughed again and said to the man beside him. "I love buses, don't you?"

  "Be all right, I guess."

  "Be damn all right," Boggs said.

  WHOA, A FIRE.

  Jack Nestor, back on Christopher Street, looked at the charred wreckage of the houseboat. He leaned against a brick building next to the highway and wondered what this meant. He thought about it some. Okay, if she'd been inside, still tied up, when it happened she'd be dead and, fuck it, he could leave. But it was also pretty likely that somebody would've seen the fire and come to help her before she got toasted.

  Or maybe she'd moved and some asshole just torched the place.

  A lot of questions, no answers.

  So Boggs the prick was gone. And now the girl was gone too.

  Damn. Jack Nestor lit a cigarette and leaned up against the brick, wondering what to do next.

  The answer, he decided, was to wait.

  He hadn't slept well the night before. A lot of driving. The pictures again too. They'd wakened him and he'd lain in bed, thinking that now he was going to kill Randy Boggs he needed to find something to resent about him. There wasn't much. He wasn't a nigger, a fag, a spic. He didn't insult you. He didn't go after your woman.

  Nestor's hand went to his stomach and he squeezed the glossy scar. The imaginary itching crawled around in his belly somewhere. Then he decided that Boggs's sin was that he was a Loser, capital L. Nestor smiled. That was plenty of reason to hunt the shit down and kill him.

  Good. That was taken care of.

  It was a mild April night and the sky was lit by this eerie glow you couldn't tell where it came from. All the streetlights, probably. And headlights from cars and taxis and office buildings and stores ... This made him think about all the buildings in the city, which of course included restaurants. Which reminded him that he was starving.

  And then, just as he was about to go get a burger, there was the girl! She was walking slowly up the dock to the houseboat, looking at the smoldering mess. She was dressed in those weird clothes of hers--black miniskirt, boots, a couple of T-shirts, one bright red, the other yellow. Over her shoulder was a large bag but she was nice enough to set that down and stand with her hands on her hips, looking at the boat. She walked forward to look at some of the burnt junk on the pier and kicked it absently. She walked to the yellow police Do Not Cross tape and stood with her hands on it, looking down as if she was praying.

  Nestor took the gun from his jacket pocket and looked around. Cars zipped past and there were people strolling along the riverfront but no one was near him. The sun was going down fast, a huge wad of orange fire, sinking directly in front of him. He could see it disappearing, inch by inch into Hoboken behind the charred skeleton of the houseboat.

  Nestor aimed. He kept both eyes open; he didn't squint. It was a seventy-five-yard shot and he wished he had a stock and butt piece but he didn't so he leaned hard into the brick wall for support, crooked his arm and set the pistol in the V between his biceps and forearm. He aligned the sights and lifted it a millimeter to compensate for the distance. There was no wind.

  He held his breath.

  Complete stillness.

  Then: The last streak of sun slipped under the horizon.

  A car sped past and honked.

  The girl turned.

  Jack Nestor fired two fast shots, whose sharp cracks spread across the water, echoed briefly then faded.

  He'd aimed for her back first then her head. Both slugs hit her. The first one struck her shoulder high. The second caught her in motion as she spun around. He saw a puff of blood, like smoke, on her cheek.

  She dropped to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.

  Nestor walked quickly back to the car. On the way he changed his mind. A burger would no longer do the trick. He decided to go looking for the biggest steak he could find in this goddamn town.

  chapter 29

  AT FIRST, RANDY BOGGS THOUGHT HE'D BEEN CHEATED by the bank.

  He'd never had a good relationship with financial institutions. Although he'd never robbed any, several Georgia and Florida savings and loans (with the word "Trust" in their names, no less) had foreclosed on his family's houses after his father had missed various numbers of mortgage payments.

  He was therefore predisposed to be suspicious.

  So now, when the pretty girl behind the window handed him eleven tiny piles of cash so thin that they looked like a kid's building blocks, he thought in panic they'd kept most of the money for a fee or something.

  She looked at his expression and asked, "Is everything all right?"

  "That's one hundred ten thousand?"

  "Yessir. They just look small 'cause they're new bills. I counted 'em once and our machine there counted 'em twice--you want me to do it again?"

  "No, ma'am." Looked right at Ben Franklin, who stared back at him with that weird smile as if it was as natural for Boggs as for anyone else to be holding a fortune. A hundred ten thousand and some change--the extra being thanks to the interest Jack Nestor had mentioned.

  "Kind of thought a hundred thousand'd be a bigger pile."

  "You got it in nickels and dahms, it'd be pretty sizable then."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  "Y'all want an escort? Lahk a guahd or anything?"

  "No, ma'am."

  Boggs loaded the money in his paper bag and left. Then he wandered around downtown Atlanta for an hour. He was astonished at the changes. It was clean and landscaped. He laughed at the number of streets with "Peachtree" in them--laughed because he remembered his daddy saying most people thought that referred to peaches when in fact the name came from "pitch tree," like tar. He passed the street named Boulevard and laughed again.

  This was a town where it seemed you could laugh at something like that and nobody would think you were crazy--as long as you eventually stopped laughing and went about your business. Boggs went into a luggage store and bought an expensive black-nylon backpack because he'd always wanted one, something made for long-distance carrying. He slipped the money and his change of shirt into the bag, which put him in mind of clothes.

  He passed a fancy men's store but felt intimidated by the weird, headless mannequins. He walked on until he found an old-time store, where the fabrics were mostly polyester and the colors mostly brown and beige. He bought a tan off-the-rack suit and a yellow shirt, two pairs of black-and-red argyle socks and a striped tie. He thought this might be too formal for a lot of places so he also bought a pair of double-knit brown slacks and two blue short-sleeve sport shirts. He thought about wearing the new clothes and having the clerk bag his jeans and work shirt. But they'd think that was odd and they might remember him.

  Which probably wouldn't matter at all. So what if they remembered him? He hadn't done anything illegal here. And so what if they thought he was odd? If he'd been a rich Buckhead businessman who'd decided on a whim to buy some clothes and wear them home nobody'd think twice.

  But he wasn't a businessman. He was a former convict. Who wasn't supposed to leave New York. And so he paid fast and left.

  He walked into a Hyatt and strolled past the fountains. Boggs had always loved hotels. They were places of adventure, where nothing was permanent, where you could always leave and go elsewhere if you weren't happy. He liked the meeting rooms, where every day there was a new group of people, learning things for their jobs or maybe learning a new skill, like real estate investing or how to become Mary Kay pink-Buick saleswomen.

  Every guest in a hotel stayed there because they were traveling.

  And a traveling person, Randy Boggs knew, was a happy person.

  He went into the washroom on one of the banquet room levels and, in a spotless stall, changed int
o his suit. He realized then that he was still wearing his beat-up loafers with the 1943 steel penny in the slit on the top. That afternoon he'd get some new shoes. Something fancy. Maybe alligator skin or snakeskin. He looked at himself in the mirror and decided he needed more color; he was pretty pale. And he didn't like his hair--very few men wore it slicked back the way he did nowadays. They wore it bushier and drier. So, after lunch: a haircut too.

  He walked out of the john and into the coffee shop. He was seated and the waitress brought him an iced tea without his saying a word. He'd forgotten about this Southern custom. He ordered his second steak since he'd been Outside--a sandwich on garlic bread--and this one, along with the Michelob that went with it, was much better than the first. Boggs considered this his first real meal of freedom.

  By three he'd bought new shoes and a new hairstyle and was thinking of taking the MARTA train out to the airport. But he liked the hotel so much he decided to stay the night.

  He checked in and asked for a room close to the ground.

  "Yessir. Not a problem, sir."

  He tried out the room and the bed and felt comforted by the closeness of the walls. He realized only then that he was uncomfortable in the spaciousness of Atlanta. With their tall, dark canyons of buildings, the streets of New York had made him feel less vulnerable. In Atlanta, he felt exposed. He took a nap in the darkened room and then went out for dinner. He saw an airline ticket office and went inside.

  He walked up to the United counter. He asked the pretty ticket agent what was nice.

  "Nice?"

  "A nice place to go."

  "Uh--"

  "Outside of the country."

  "Paris'd be beautiful. April in Paris, you know."

  Randy Boggs shook his head. "Don't speak the language. Might be a problem."

  "Interested in a vacation? We have a vacation service. Lots of good packages."

  "Actually I was thinking about moving." He saw a poster. Silver sand, exquisite blue water crashing onto it. "What's the Caribbean like?"

  "I love it. I was to St. Martin last year. Me and my girlfriends had us a fine time."

  Man, that sand looked nice. He liked the idea. But then he frowned. "You know, my passport expired. Do you need a passport to go to any of those places?"