Gospel (2 page)

‘I . . .' he began. But his voice began to falter as he realised an objection would seal his fate. How could he have been so foolish? This wasn't about his vote; it was about his chance at survival.

‘Do you want me to leave?' he asked.

‘Now Luke,' said Matthew stopping behind his chair, placing his large hands on Luke's tensed shoulders. ‘You have been a valued member of this group.'

Have been
.

‘Please do not misinterpret my interest in your opinion as anything but that. We operate as a democracy after all. Our decisions have always been made as a unit.' Matthew began to massage Luke's now hunched shoulders, his strong hands squeezing deep into Luke's less than impressive mass, kneading his soft bulk, finding nerve endings underneath the crevasses of his shoulder blades.

‘I suppose we just need to know you are with us on this,' he said. ‘After all, every decision we make is for the greater good. Revolution does not come without sacrifice; our forefathers knew it, our contemporaries will realise it, and our progeny will thank us for it in years to come.'

Matthew gave Luke's now aching shoulders one last squeeze before lifting his hands and slapping him solidly on the back before returning to his seat. ‘So let's take another vote, shall we?'

He looked to their chairman, the
first
of the four, who sat silently at the
head of the long rectangular table. John nodded, the proof of their leader's power evident in such customary quiet observation.

‘All in favour of activating the next phase of the plan?' asked Matthew.

Mark and Matthew raised their hands, followed by John who lowered those steely blue eyes to glare at Luke, the challenge undeniable.

‘All right,' said Luke and he raised his hand, his white handkerchief now high in an unintended symbol of surrender. ‘I'm in,' he said, looking directly at John. ‘And may God have mercy on our souls.'

Saturday 30 April

‘U
ggghh!'
David Cavanaugh let out an involuntary grunt as he felt the full force of the Boston University old boys packing down in a scrum against his Boston College home team.

How the hell he let his old buddy Tony Bishop talk him into playing in the forwards he did not know. He was an inside centre, too lean for the front row and he knew he would be hurting tomorrow. Hell, he was hurting right now.

Tony, one of the slickest half backs in the rugby old boys' network, with even slicker moves in his profession as a blue chip corporate lawyer, fed the ball slightly left of centre giving the BC boots a chance to drive it deep towards their back line.

David guided the ball to his right and straight back into Tony's hands where his friend quickly retrieved it and threw it back and to his left where it was caught by a short, stocky player named Evan Murphy. Murphy immediately kicked for touch, sending the ball down the other end of the field, out of their ‘danger zone', and within ten metres of the opposition's line. It was a good kick which gave BC the edge just before the referee blew the whistle for half time.

‘Jeez, Davy boy, you were on fire out there today, man,' said Tony, catching up with David as they left the field for the much-needed ten-minute break.

‘Thanks, Tony, but this forward pack thing is a one off, okay? Deakin will be here next Saturday and then I am going back to inside centre where I belong.'

‘Deakin sucks,' said Jay Negley, another of David's law school alumni, his white blond hair matted with blood following a heavy ruck in the first five minutes of play. ‘Hell dude, you seriously aren't getting any, are you? You haven't played this good since you broke up with—'

‘Jesus, Negley!' this from Tony who was always throwing water on Negley's ‘speak before he thinks' approach to conversation.

‘It's okay,' said David. ‘In case you haven't noticed, it has been twelve years since Karin and I divorced and I could not be happier with my current situation.'

‘Except your girlfriend is cooking herself down in Atlanta while you, my friend, are freezing your ass off here in Boston.'

Jay was right. Sara was experiencing an Indian Summer down in Georgia while Massachusetts seemed stuck in the grip of a winter time warp.

‘True, but she is back on Friday,' said David, who had not seen his fellow attorney girlfriend since Christmas.

‘Seriously, that's great, man,' said Tony.

‘No way,' said Negley. ‘In case you are forgetting, if we win today we play Penn State in the final next Saturday which means no horizontal tango for at least the first twenty-four hours after Sara's arrival.'

‘Sure,' laughed Tony. ‘Like that's going to happen.'

David smiled. ‘Anyway, your theory is all wrong. Murphy has been married for twelve years and he just scored three tries in the first forty minutes.'

‘Exactly,' said Negley. ‘Married twelve years, with three kids and another on the way. The theory is solid, dude. Murphy ain't had any for over six months and my guess is that situation isn't going to change any time soon.'

‘Then maybe you should put Murphy in the forwards,' laughed David.

Three hours later David stepped from a steaming hot shower and wiped his bruised hand across the surface of his foggy bathroom mirror.

‘Shit,' he said to himself as he surveyed the damage: his right eye starting to swell, his left cheek sporting a large red welt. Nora was going to kill him.

He smiled at the thought of Ms Nora Kelly, the fifty-something, long-serving secretary at Wright, Wallace and Gertz.

Strictly speaking Nora was Arthur's assistant, but she was more like a surrogate mother to David and his boss/mentor/friend, Arthur Ishmael Wright, who was at least five years her senior.

‘Good Lord, lad,' she had said, the last time he walked into the office wearing similar battle scars, her thick Irish accent dripping pure County Cork despite her having lived in Boston for over twenty years. ‘Rugby may be the game they play in heaven, but you certainly come off the field looking like you've been doing business with the devil. And it appears the devil got the better of you today, lad, which is not surprising.'

He opened the bathroom door, allowing the steam to escape into his sparsely furnished bedroom. It was clean but messy, lived in but not homey. In fact the entire apartment, a small but convenient studio in a sought after Downtown Crossing high rise, screamed ‘
unkempt bachelor lives here'
.

Still, while the space was limited, the twenty-third storey view made him feel like he had the biggest backyard in the city, overlooking Boston Common and the affluent suburbs of Beacon Hill and Back Bay and across the Charles River to Cambridge. Even better, it was only a five-minute walk to his office in Congress Street, where he was due to meet Arthur and Nora in less than half an hour.

He removed the plastic from his dry-cleaned tuxedo and groaned at the thought of having to attend the much publicised Vice Presidential dinner minus Sara.

Now she would have made the prospect of a night at the Fairmont with a bunch of palm-pumping politicians palatable. Hell, she made everything feel like Christmas, and she was coming home on Friday.

David had met twenty-nine-year-old Sara Davis almost a year ago when she asked him to represent her boss, Rayna Martin, in what turned out to be one of the biggest hate trials of the decade. It had been almost thirteen years since Karin had left him, her parting gesture a short, handwritten note on the semi-constructed mantlepiece of their newly purchased,
heavily mortgaged, two-bedroom Colonial in Fenway. Thirteen years of burying himself in his work, cruising through a series of meaningless relationships and eating cheap takeout with his shiftworking, nursing sister Lisa.

Until now.

Now he had Sara, and Karin Vasquez Cavanaugh Montgomery was finally in his past.

David reached for his Tag and realised he was going to be late.
Shit . . . Nora is going to kill me
.

‘C
yclists.'

‘What?' said Boston Homicide Detective Susan Leigh, manoeuvring their unmarked car out of BPD's Roxbury headquarters and wondering what gem her pain-in-the-ass partner would be coming out with next.

‘Cyclists!'

‘I see them, McKay. They've got reflectors on their wheels and it isn't that dark yet. They're from Northeastern. They train around here. So what?'

‘They're rude sons of bitches.'

‘What?' she said again, turning left into Tremont, heading east towards the Fairmont, and way past hiding her frustration.

‘Rude,' said Detective Frank McKay.

‘Cyclists are rude.'

‘Yeah.'

‘All of them.'

‘Yes.'

‘Okay,' she said, not sure she had the energy to go ‘there', wherever ‘there' was, with her
prone to ridiculous generalisations
partner, but knowing she probably didn't have any choice.

‘Every morning before my shift,' said McKay, needing no encouragement to continue. ‘I grab a coffee at Eat This! You know it?'

‘Yeah, I know it,' said Leigh, and she did, except she figured they made a mistake with the second word on the crappy plastic logo out front. ‘This!' should read ‘Shit!' Just got their anagrams shuffled is all.

‘Anyways,' McKay went on, ‘the cyclists come in early every morning, making all that noise with those taps on their shoes.'

‘Cleats.'

‘What?'

‘They're called cleats, not taps. They're cyclists, Frank, not Vaudeville players.'

‘Right,' said McKay who was not put off, just annoyed at being interrupted. ‘They push on past everyone in the queue, all sweaty and naked.'

‘Naked?'

‘Well, those fancy clothes they wear are so tight they may as well be.'

‘Right.'

‘They yell out their orders, five of this, four of that, confusin' Martha behind the counter, pickin' up the muffins in their clammy hands and then placin' them back in the bread basket. No “please”, no “thank you”. Can't understand why Martha puts up with them.'

‘Probably because she charges four bucks a pop for that shit she calls coffee and those rude naked people make her a small fortune in a space of twenty minutes or less and all before eight o'clock in the morning.'

‘Not worth it.'

‘Because they're rude?'

‘Yep.'

‘And naked.'

‘You got it.'

‘Of course. Don't know why I bothered asking.'

Detective Leigh had copped a fair bit of flack for volunteering for this detail. It's not like her ambition was a secret. Hell, everyone knew she had her sights set on Commissioner as soon as she was out of diapers, but the guys in homicide would not have felt like ‘guys' if they hadn't at least pulled her chain a few times over her zealous determination to offer
her services as extra security for Vice President Tom Bradshaw's campaign dinner at the five-star Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel.

For most of the gang in homicide, Chief Joe Mannix included, details like this were a pain in the butt. But she saw them as ‘opportunities' and Christ only knows, Susan was not one to miss an opportunity. Never had, never would.

The truth was, she couldn't give a shit about the ribbing. She was only twenty-six, the youngest detective in homicide, and a skirt at that. Maybe, if they took a few minutes to work out why she was climbing the ladder at ten times the speed of most of the other penises in the department, they might realise volunteering for jobs like this was a no brainer.

Mannix would be there. He was even bringing his wife Marie, who Leigh had never met – which was no surprise given Lieutenant Mannix worked 24/7 and had a definite aversion to anything remotely resembling a social gathering. Word had it Marie Mannix was some sort of natural Italian-American beauty – with the patience of a saint and the organisational skills of an army captain, given the Mannixes had four boys all under the age of twelve.

The Commissioner was going, and Mayor Moses Novelli, not to mention all the heavies from Washington; the Vice President, the Director of the CIA, the Attorney General. She'd even heard a rumour Maxine Bryant, the US Chief of Staff was on a night flight from DC to be at the dinner. Which was not such a stretch given her daughter, Melissa Bryant Bradshaw, was married to the Vice President.

Bottom line, all those jocks at HQ could go screw themselves. She was smart, looked damn fine in a long black evening dress, her dark hair slicked back into a classic French chignon, and nothing, not even Frank McKay's ridiculous over-simplifications, were going to dampen her enthusiasm tonight.

‘C
an you give us a moment, Dan?'

‘Yes, sir, Mr Vice President.'

Secret Service Agent Daniel Kovac slipped quietly from the appropriately named Presidential Suite of Boston's Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel, a four-star institution in Boston's historic Back Bay.

‘How do you do that?' Melissa Bryant Bradshaw asked her husband.

‘Do what?'

‘Remember all their names.'

‘Whose names?'

‘You know what I am talking about, Tom,' she smiled. ‘Everyone's names – your entire Secret Service detail, every person on your staff, everyone you have ever had the pleasure or displeasure of meeting in your whole entire life?'

‘I don't know,' Tom Bradshaw replied, a look of mock amusement on his face. ‘Doesn't everyone do that, Gladys?'

‘Very funny.' She walked across the expansive Presidential Suite living area, stopping briefly at the plush-covered sofa to kiss him lightly on the cheek, before continuing into one of the two marble bathrooms, passing under at least three Waterford crystal chandeliers on her way.

He watched her as she moved, her fashionable but appropriately
conservative Calvin Klein evening gown caressing her frame with every step, its slick white fabric accentuating her perfect figure, its slightly lowered backline framing the fall of her long, sleek, ice-blonde hair.