A Fine Line (24 page)

“Just a Coke, please,” she said. “Ballpark beer tastes like warm urine.”

I sidled past Horowitz and started up the aisle. I was hoping he’d follow me and stand beside me at the porcelain trough that passes for a urinal in the Fenway Park men’s rooms so we could talk some more.

But he didn’t.

I returned with two Cokes. As I slid past Horowitz, I said, “What else can I tell you?”

“Nothin’,” he said.

I sat down and handed a Coke to Evie. I leaned toward her and said, for Horowitz’s benefit, “So now what happens?”

“Just do what you’ve been doing,” he said. “He calls you, you call me. And don’t say anything about this to anybody, understand?”

“Nobody?”

“Nobody,” he said.

The Red Sox retired the Tigers in the ninth inning and the game was over, a satisfying one-run victory for the Old Towne Team. Everybody in the ballpark stood up to cheer as the players trotted off the field.

When Evie and I turned to leave, Horowitz and Alyse were gone.

T
hat evening after supper, Evie and I took our coffee out onto the balcony. The sun was setting somewhere behind us, and over the harbor, the light was fading from the sky. The breeze had shifted. Now it was coming in off the water, and it tasted salty and moist. The bell buoy in the channel was clanging hollowly the way it does when the sea kicks up and the air becomes damp and heavy. Out toward the eastern horizon over the airport, dark clouds were boiling and churning and moving toward us.

“Gonna have some weather,” I said. “Taste it?”

“Weather?” said Evie. “We always have weather.”

“To us old-time New Englanders,” I said, “weather means bad weather. Duck hunters, they always hope for weather. Wind, rain, cold, drop in barometric pressure. Weather makes the ducks restless, gets them flying.”

“Makes me restless, too,” she said.

We sat there silently, watching the airplanes take off and land at Logan Airport while the cloudbank moved in on us,
like someone was slowly pulling a giant black blanket over our heads.

“You’re worried, aren’t you?” said Evie.

“Sure.”

“About Ethan.”

I nodded.

“Because that person hasn’t called?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I keep thinking I shouldn’t have involved Horowitz. That the guy with the voice knows. I’m worried I blew it for Ethan.”

“You did the right thing,” she said.

“We’ll see.”

“Detective Horowitz will handle it. He knows what to do.”

“I hope so.”

“No matter how it turns out,” she said, “you did the right thing, bringing him in on it.”

“If it turns out bad,” I said, “that will be no consolation.”

A few minutes later, Evie said, “He’s teasing you. The man on the cell phone.”

“With his silence, you mean.”

“Yes. Trying to spook you.”

“He’s doing a damn good job of it.”

We watched the darkness close in on the harbor. The wind picked up. It was moist and salty, and as we sat there with our bare feet propped up on the railing, thunder began grumbling in the distance. A minute later a fat raindrop splatted on my ankle. Then a sudden bolt of lightning zigzagged across the dark sky, a quick flare that momentarily illuminated the gray wind-chopped water and the rocking boats at their moorings below us. The images remained in my eyes
for an instant after the burst of light was gone. A few seconds later came a crash of thunder.

“Shall we go inside?” I said to Evie.

“No. I love thunderstorms.”

“We’ll get wet,” I said.

She patted my bare leg. We were both wearing shorts and T-shirts. “So we get wet. It’ll feel good.”

She groped for my hand and held onto it, and we watched the rain come sheeting across the water and in on us. We were drenched instantly. The air temperature plummeted, and soon we were shivering. I stood up, and Evie did, too, and we hugged each other there on my little iron balcony, pressing close, sharing our warmth, blinking the rain out of our eyes.

Evie laughed against my shoulder, then stepped away from me. She held my eyes as she shucked off her soaking T-shirt, balled it up, and tossed it off the balcony. Then she wiggled her shorts down over her hips, bent over so gracefully it made my throat hurt, still looking up into my eyes, and slid the shorts off her feet. They went over the rail, too.

She laughed again, then put her arms around my neck, pressed her wet bare breasts against my chest, and kissed me on the mouth. I raised my arms over my head, and she peeled off my T-shirt and threw it over the side. Then she knelt in front of me and tugged down my shorts.

She stood up and hugged me hard while lightning zipped across the sky and thunder filled the air around us and the wind slapped rain against our bare bodies, and when I felt that I was about to explode in a billion megawatts of pentup electricity, I picked her up and carried her into the bedroom.

Sometime in the night I woke up with my heart pounding. I sat up in bed.

Beside me Evie stirred, then said, “What is it?”

“I thought I heard the phone.”

She reached out and put her hand on my back. “It didn’t ring. I would’ve heard it.”

The cell phone was sitting on the table beside the bed. Its green light was winking in the darkness. I picked it up and held it in my hand. It didn’t ring.

I put it back. “I guess you’re right,” I said. I lay back and let out a long breath. “Why hasn’t he called?”

“He’s trying to get into your head,” said Evie. “It’s his game.”

“Well, he’s winning.”

She rolled onto her side, put her head on my shoulder and her arm across my chest, and kissed my throat. “Go to sleep,” she whispered.

I held onto her, and after a while I did.

When my eyes popped open, gray light was filtering in through the window. I looked at my watch. Six-thirty. Evie’s head was on my chest and one of her legs was hooked over mine.

I eased myself out from under her and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Wha’sup?” she mumbled.

I patted her shoulder. “Nothing, honey. Go to sleep.”

She groaned and flopped onto her belly.

I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt, put the cell phone in my pocket, and padded barefoot into the kitchen. Through
the sliders I saw that we had ourselves a drizzly June Sunday. So much for San Diego weather.

I got the coffee going, then took Henry for his morning walk down to the park. When we got back, I fetched the fat Sunday
Globe
from outside my door and brought it in. I gave Henry some breakfast, then took the paper into the living room.

Normally I start with the sports, but today I turned to the Metro section. No stories about the Spotted Owl Liberation Front or arson fires or FBI subpoenas or kidnappings there.

None in the national news, either. Agent Randall was doing a good job of media control.

It felt unreal. Twenty-four hours earlier, the voice on the cell phone had led me on a scavenger hunt to the apartment over the Vintage Vinyl record store in Central Square. I’d watched a videotape of Ethan Duffy with duct tape over his eyes holding up the morning newspaper. Then I erased the tape, got in my car, and drove home.

Brought Horowitz into it.

Went to a ball game.

Made love in a thunderstorm.

Now I had to convince myself it had all happened.

I got up, poured a mug of coffee, and took it out to the balcony. I leaned my elbows on the railing and looked up at the gray sky. The misty June rain dampened my face.

When I went back inside, Evie was pouring herself some coffee. She had one of my ratty flannel shirts wrapped around her.

I went over and kissed her forehead.

She smiled. “You’re all wet.”

“A lot of people have told me that.”

We went over to the sofa and sat down. “What do you want to do today?” she said.

“Oh, I don’t know. Read the paper. Watch a ball game. Rescue Ethan.”

She touched my arm. “How are you doing?”

“To tell you the truth, I feel like I’m going to explode,” I said. “What the fuck is he up to?”

“You’ve got to be patient, Brady.”

“Patience is the least of my very few virtues,” I said. “When there’s something wrong, I need to be fixing it. Look at me. I’m not doing anything. I can’t think of anything to do. It’s driving me nuts.”

“You’re waiting,” she said. “That’s what you’re doing.”

“I hate waiting,” I said. “You know that.”

She smiled. “I know that very well.”

“I keep thinking about Ethan.”

She put her head on my shoulder. “I know.”

“I’m trying to decide whether I should call his mother, tell her he’s okay.”

“You did call her, didn’t you?”

“That was after he called me. That was before I found out he’d been kidnapped.”

“You intend to tell her that he’s been kidnapped? That some weirdo has got him with duct tape over his eyes? You think she wants to hear that?”

I shook my head. “I know. That doesn’t sound too good, does it?”

“If it was me,” said Evie, “I don’t think I’d want to hear that.”

“But it would give me something to do,” I said. “It would make me feel useful.”

“You can’t be selfish, Brady,” she said. “Anyhow, don’t
forget, Detective Horowitz is working on it.”

“Yeah,” I said, “or screwing it up.”

“He told you not to talk to anybody about it, didn’t he?”

“Even Ethan’s mother?”

She shrugged.

“So what am I supposed to be doing while I’m waiting for this bastard to make the next move?”

Evie picked up the magazine section of the newspaper. “Come on,” she said. “Help me do the crossword.”

The crossword puzzle didn’t take us long. Evie was very good at crosswords. After we finished it, we read the paper, swapping sections back and forth.

Around eleven I fried some bacon and made a mushroom omelette. Sunday brunch, which we ate at the table that looked out the sliding glass doors to the harbor. The rain had stopped sometime in the morning. Now it was just one of those cool, cloudy June days in New England.

After Henry licked our plates and we cleaned up the kitchen, Evie spread out the real-estate section on the livingroom floor, and we both got down on our hands and knees and made up stories about what our lives would be like if we lived together in some of the country properties we found. Billy and Joey would have their own bedrooms, and maybe they’d come and stay with us now and then. Hell, there would be plenty of extra rooms, so our friends could come for weekends. We talked about buying a horse and digging a trout pond and growing vegetables and fruit trees and having lots of dogs and cats who could roam freely in our woods and meadows. Evie wanted goats, and when I asked her why, she said she just thought goats were cute, and
I realized that it wasn’t that scary, the idea of living with Evie, and for a while I managed to push Ethan Duffy and the Spotted Owl Liberation Front and the voice on the cell phone into a dark corner of my brain.

Then Evie sat back on her haunches and said, “Guess what?”

“I give up.”

“I got a job offer.”

I looked up at her, trying to read her face. The first thing that flashed through my mind, for some reason, was Chicago. The woman I loved would be leaving me. It had happened to me before.

“Hey, that’s great,” I said, trying to look pleased. “Where?”

She looked solemnly at me. “Beth Israel.”

I know I grinned foolishly. “Beth Israel? Here in Boston?”

She smiled. “You didn’t think I was going to move out of state or something, did you?”

I shrugged. “People do that all the time.”

“Not me,” she said. “My job is my job, not my life.” She reached over, grabbed my hand, and peered into my eyes. “What if I told you this job was in, like, Los Angeles?”

“Truthfully?”

“Of course truthfully,” she said.

“Truthfully, I’d be heartbroken. And I’d probably try to hide it from you, support you and your career.” I bent toward her and kissed her neck. “I don’t want you to move away from me. I’d rather you moved nearer to me.”

“Beth Israel is nearer,” she said.

“Yes it is. It’s practically around the corner. Is it a good job?”

“Lots more money, lots more responsibility. Is that good?”

I smiled. “Not necessarily. You gonna take it?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve got a couple weeks to decide. They only made the offer on Thursday.”

“But you’ve been negotiating for it for a while, huh? Sending in your resume? Having interviews?”

She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t be upset.”

“You never said anything to me about it.”

She shrugged. “I was afraid they wouldn’t want me. It was like, if I told anybody, it would be bad luck.”

“I bet you told Marcus.” Marcus Bluestein was Evie’s boss at Emerson Hospital.

“I had to tell Marcus,” she said.

“What’s he think about it?”

She smiled. “You know Marcus. He’s my biggest supporter.” She squeezed my hand. “My second-biggest supporter, I mean.”

“So you’re tempted by this job,” I said.

“Tempted? Oh, yes. It’s a really good job. But I don’t know about commuting into the city every day from Concord, and the idea of moving again . . .”