Chasers (24 page)

“Rev. Jim’s a sucker for a hopeless cause,” Dead-Eye said. “If you stepped back to give it a look, you’d find that’s true of most cops. It’s not by any accident that Saint Jude’s our patron saint. And at the moment there’s no more hopeless cause out there than our little merry band of brothers.”

“I’ll talk to him, feel it out, see if you’re anywhere close to being on the mark with this one,” Boomer said. “But if you’re right and Rev. Jim is on shaky turf, then we’ll be down one cop just as the kickoff whistle blows. And that’s not good for anybody’s health.”

“I can go that one better,” Dead-Eye said.

“How so?”

“I’m the one with the doubts,” Dead-Eye said. “Only holds then I should be the one who sits across from Rev. Jim and asks the question. I’m the one that needs to hear the right answer.”

Boomer looked at Dead-Eye and nodded. “There’s more to this than what you just put out there,” he said. “Why don’t you share it so we can both lose some sleep over it?”

“I’m not ready for that yet, Boomer,” Dead-Eye said. “Right now all I’ve got is a puzzle missing a few pieces. Until I get the full picture, there’s nothing else to say.”

“It’s your play, then,” Boomer said. “But we don’t have much time for diplomacy, so the sooner you get this done, the better we’ll all feel. Good news or bad, we’re on a need to know right now.”

“Tomorrow morning good enough?” Dead-Eye asked.

“Better than good,” Boomer said.

He popped open the driver’s-side door and stepped out of the sedan. Dead-Eye did the same from his end, and the two walked slowly across the double-lane avenue. “You think Buttercup ate his balls or just ripped them off and spit them out?” Dead-Eye asked.

“From what I hear,” said Boomer, “Buttercup never swallows.”

15

The Boiler Man sat in the back row of the movie theater, hands resting flat on the fat of his legs, eyes scanning the scattered few in attendance. His red velvet seat was sliced and torn, thick shards of tape holding the remains in place. The movie house had seen better decades, reduced now to highlighting second-run features a few weeks shy of a straight-to-video release. The one showing now was a Western filled with unknown faces and a plot he didn’t bother to follow. Instead, he kept his focus on the old woman in the third row, sitting alone, her full attention riveted to the dusty screen above. She was one of seven people in the house, all sitting alone.

The Boiler Man hated movies and had never quite come to a clear decision as to most of the world’s fascination with them. Even as an orphan boy who was raised for longer than he cared to be in an ivy-shrouded building in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, he dreaded the Tuesday-night screenings that served as the entertainment menu for the week. He didn’t see any of the action onscreen, whether animated or real, as a momentary escape from his horrid existence but, rather, as an extension of his forced imprisonment. He made it through the harsh treatment he and others suffered at the hands of the Christian organization whose uniform he was forced to wear during his years there by the sheer strength of his will and a determination, rare in a boy so young and so vulnerable, that he would not surrender to their desire to chisel him in their mold and coerce him to bend to their beliefs.

Saint Francis the Divine was the official name given to the orphanage situated some three hundred miles north of the Toronto, Ontario, suburbs, and the thirty-two-acre site was his official home practically since the day of his birth. The boys there gave it a name of their own, one that had been passed down through generations of beaten and degraded graduates.

They called it Hell Town.

The Boiler Man allowed his mind to drift as the movie droned on before him, the voices of Italian actors dubbed by American ones, the dialogue making little sense, regardless of the language. He was a bright student and excelled in all his classes. He had a sharp and analytical mind, a great ear for music, and a keen interest in history, especially when it came to military campaigns. As much as the Boiler Man enjoyed his time in the classroom, he truly thrived once out on the athletic field, mastering any sport he turned his attention to—from fencing to swimming to martial arts to ice hockey. He was a sharp enough skater, with a steady shot and a taste for the hard check into corner boards that caught the attention of local area scouts, who were always eager to bring a name out of their schools and into the ranks of the pros.

He further supplemented all the on-and-off-the-field activity with massive doses of reading, carting armloads of books each night into his cramped quarters—a small room, locked only from the outside, situated under the back stairwell of Quigley Hall. He devoured adventure novels, always seeking out the most violent of the lot, and found that in mind and spirit he was linked more with the villains of such works than with the ones who were deemed the heroes. The Boiler Man read through the biographies of controversial world leaders and technical books on weapons and tactics, learning and absorbing valuable lessons in the pages of each one. The combination of the various aspects of his academic and athletic lives helped him to cope with the late-night visits from the Squad.

They were a cluster of in-dorm instructors equipped with whips and rods who believed that inflicting punishment on the flesh served only to strengthen a youthful mind. The beatings were numerous and painful, given that the select members of the Squad were expert on the multiple variety of torture methods that were the practice of the day, often experimenting late into the night on new techniques that had just been brought to their attention. The Boiler Man soon enough became their favorite target, due to his ability to withstand vast amounts of punishment with a strength seldom seen in a student so young and so visibly fragile.

The leader of the Squad was a middle-aged, overweight English scholar who preached Shakespeare by day and doled out beatings under the shroud of darkness. His name was Charles S. Pennington. “He was a repulsive man in all respects,” the Boiler Man once confided to one of the few friends he allowed himself. “He only smiled when he had a whip in one hand and flesh to snap it against. I detested his very presence and lived for the moment when I would be able to release my well of pain in his direction. I wanted to show him that his brutal lessons had not been wasted.”

Charles S. Pennington was the Boiler Man’s first kill.

He waited until two weeks after his official release from Saint Francis the Divine to exact his revenge on the Squad’s leader. He left equipped only with a high school diploma, a certificate of academic excellence, a printout listing the college courses for which he had accumulated credit, and six letters of recommendation presentable to any would-be employer. The Boiler Man was a month past his eighteenth birthday when he walked that final time down the wide, expansive front hall of the only place he had ever lived. He never once looked back at the walls of the institute, allowing himself a small smile as the thick double doors slammed shut behind him, sending him out to an unknown and uncharted world filled with cities and countries he knew only from books and magazines. He ventured out without fear or trepidation, convinced that he was about to embark on an adventure that would not only be justified but might prove to be financially rewarding as well. The Boiler Man’s goal was to put all that he had learned in his years at Saint Francis the Divine to full use and then add to it until there would be no one better at the art of murder than the institute’s most gifted and valued student. He marked as his first target in that quest the man who took such pleasure in inflicting pain on others, the respected Charles S. Pennington.

He chose his location with care, a local bookstore less than a mile from the school grounds. He wanted a method that would not only be noticed and commented on by the surviving members of the Squad and the student body as well but appreciated by the master of pain himself. It had to be a death of classic proportions, one that would propel the Boiler Man toward his chosen path and help to establish for him a reputation that would soon be etched in the blood of countless victims.

The very instant Pennington spotted the Boiler Man heading his way in the rear of the bookstore, he knew his moment of truth had finally arrived and that the student he had beaten and tortured for so many years was now about to take a giant step forward and surpass the teacher. He didn’t put up a struggle or say a word as the Boiler Man quietly led him out of the small store, down a grimy and narrow alley, and into the open mouth of a basement stairwell. And it was there, inside that dark, dank chamber of torture, that the young orphan who had been weaned behind the walls of Saint Francis the Divine vanished off the map and the Boiler Man was brought to life.

It took three long days for Charles S. Pennington to die.

The body was never found, despite an active and fairly intense investigation. None of the officers involved in the case ever bothered to tap into one of the thick oak wine barrels that lined the far walls of the basement. If they had taken the time to open the dozen containers at the back, they would have found the fermented body parts that would eventually make up the human puzzle that had once been Charles S. Pennington.

The movie was in its final moments, and the Boiler Man was ready to strike.

He stood up, eased out of his empty row, and walked down the center aisle of the theater, moving with an eerie silence. When he reached the fourth aisle from the front, he stopped and looked down at the old woman gazing up at the screen. The old woman sat still as stone, her eyes focused on the movie. “You need something from me it had better wait until this is over,” Theresa said.

“I didn’t come here out of any need,” the Boiler Man said, his voice barely audible above the sounds onscreen.

“And you didn’t come here to see a Lee Van Cleef movie,” Theresa said. “So whatever it is, let it rest until the end of this one.”

“Fair enough,” the Boiler Man said, slipping into the seat next to Theresa. “I’m always more interested in endings than beginnings.”

Theresa gently moved her left hand down against the side pocket of her housedress, her fingers feeling for the .38 Special. The Boiler Man smiled up at the screen, absorbed in the final climactic shoot-out. “Don’t,” he said to Theresa. “You’ll be dead before you can grasp the handle, and you’ll miss the best part of the movie.”

“I have people in the lobby,” Theresa said, “three of them to your one. Be aware of that fact.”

“I’ve met them,” the Boiler Man said. “And they won’t interfere with our business. Because they’re dead, I mean. It’s only the two of us. I figured it would be much cozier that way. I’m not one for crowds.”

“What do you want from me?” Theresa hissed, glaring at him with hateful eyes.

“I thought you wanted to see how the movie ended,” the Boiler Man said.

“Fuck the movie,” Theresa said, practically shouting out the words in the near-empty theater. “And tell me what you want here?”

The Boiler Man did a slow head turn and looked at the old woman, a player in the drug game since she was in her early teens, and smiled. “I come to give you a gift,” he said. “From an angel.”

16

Boomer stood waist-deep in the cool waters of the Sound, walking a wicker basket filled with fresh-caught clams back toward the moored rowboat. He dropped the basket over the side of the boat, resting it under one of the seating planks. “Two more bushels and we should be set,” he said.

“We’ve caught enough to fill the needs of three restaurants already,” Natalie said. “What do you plan to do with all these clams?”

“Half the catch I give to my sister,” Boomer said, looking up at her through the sharp glare of the midmorning sun. “She makes the best stuffed clams on the planet, and makes sure I get more than my share. What’s left I give to the elderly in my old neighborhood, folks my parents knew and would spend mornings like this with when they were young.”

“Do you come out here a lot?” she asked. She was wearing a large black T-shirt over a bikini bottom, her back resting against the side of the boat, her long legs stretched out under the open planks.

“Not as much as I should,” Boomer said. “Used to come here every week in the spring and summer like clockwork. Back when my dad was alive. It was our time to spend together, get to talk or just be in each other’s company.”

“How did he die?” Natalie asked.

Boomer paused. “Like a lot of people,” he said. “For no reason.”

“Would you have been a cop had he lived?”

“I can’t answer that,” Boomer said. “I was a kid when he was killed, and all I can remember is wanting to go out and somehow try to make that right. Get the guy who took my father from me. And if I couldn’t do that, then go and get the ones who took other kids’ fathers. Getting back and getting even was all I thought of. Back then and now.”

“Our choices are made for us, more often than we like to think,” Natalie said. “It’s as if it were all planned out even before we arrived on the scene. Look at the two of us. Your whole life has been built on revenge. And mine has been designed to avoid the clutches of someone like you.”

“What if you had decided against going into the life?” Boomer asked. He was leaning against the boat now, his arms folded and at rest on the bow. “Would your father have allowed you to make that call?”

“You not only met him, you went up against him,” Natalie said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. “What do
you
think he would have done?”

“Could you get out now?” Boomer asked. “If you wanted to?”

Natalie smiled at him. “You
are
out, and you can’t stay away,” she said. “What makes you think I’m any different? We’re both in, Boomer, because we both want to stay in. It’s the only life we’ve known, and the only one we’re ever going to know.”

“It’s crazy for us to be here like this,” Boomer said. “You know it, and so do I.” He let a moment go by. “But even knowing that,” he said, “I’m glad we’re here, just the two of us.”

“Have you ever come close to having someone in your life?” she asked.

“Once, a lot of years ago,” Boomer said. “I was in love. I thought she was. And she was—but with me, not with what I did. She came to see me one day when I was in the hospital, banged up, shot up, and I caught that look in her eyes and I knew. She couldn’t handle the danger end, and I didn’t want to make her a young widow. It was safer just to let her go.”

“I’m not afraid of the danger end, Boomer,” Natalie said.

Boomer hoisted himself into the boat, knelt down in front of Natalie, and reached for her hand. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never kissed a crime boss before. At least not on the lips.”

“And I’ve never kissed a cop,” she said.

He reached up, took her in his arms, and held her, their bodies warmed by the sun, their eyes locked. Holding her tight against his damaged chest, he leaned down, put his lips to hers, and stepped over a line he never thought he’d cross.