Lie Down with the Devil (6 page)

Dammit, where was it? The miscellany box had summer clothes wedged at the bottom, a pair of sandals, a single flattened house slipper, a pamphlet issued by a consumer group on new methods of identity theft. Aha! Two purses, small date-night purses rather than serious handbags for carrying daily essentials like flashlights and lock-picks. I opened the first, found tickets to a Huntington Theater production of
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
, tissues, lipstick. The second purse jingled promisingly and opened to reveal not money, but the object of my quest: Sam’s spare car key. The key to an indigo Jaguar XK.

Driving in Boston is basically a contact sport, and because it’s a contact sport and because I have a native Detroiter’s love of glossy high-powered automobiles, I made the decision long ago to drive a “sensible” car in this city. When my serviceable Toyota got its first scratch, I left it as a talisman, hoping it would ward off the dings, dents, and bumps to follow. If you’re going to drive in the Commonwealth, your
car’s going to get salt on it every winter and suffer from potholes and acid rain and crazy drivers. It’s going to spend time in the shop, getting retouched and repainted. I’d always shaken my head at Sam’s expensive vehicles, but I’d driven them eagerly whenever he offered, enjoying the speed, the handling, the quick acceleration, racing cheerfully along Route 2 or speeding through the Big Dig tunnels, foot hard on the gas, eyes peeled for state troopers.

If Jonno hadn’t changed the locks at Charles River Park yet, what were the chances he’d gotten around to moving the Jag? Sam had his key with him wherever he was now. I’d noticed it on the nightstand in Cartagena. And I had the spare key, borrowed and forgotten in my little tan purse.

Sam’s Jaguar was fast and agile, a hell of a ride. I could lie way back on the highway, trust the engine to make up time in a hurry. An indigo Jag was a better tail car than a creaky Ford cab any day of the week.

In the summer of 1960, Boston’s West End was bulldozed to rubble. Some called it urban renewal and some called it slum clearance, but when the dust cleared, there was Charles River Park, an eight-building complex that would have looked great in Miami Beach. The tall pale buildings had no ties to New England, so to grab some local flavor, they named the towers after Hawthorne, Whittier, Emerson, Lowell, and Longfellow. I like to imagine those old dead white guys rolling in their graves. Not to mention stogie-smoking Amy Lowell.

The only thing most Bostonians know about CRP is the sign. If you’re stuck in traffic—or should I say,
when
you’re stuck in traffic—on Storrow Drive, there it is, a taunting
IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU’D BE HOME NOW.
The complex occupies almost as much space as Boston Common, but few outsiders enter the grounds. It’s deliberately unwelcoming, cut off, isolated, and fearful, with its own grocery store and its own security patrol. Those who live at CRP use the city, but the city does not use CRP. Visitors are not encouraged.

Charles River Park has barbed wire and fences and twenty-four-hour security guards. They’re looking for
trouble from the outside. Armed gangs, hooded thugs, burglars, car thieves, not a lone white woman like me.

I strolled into the Pace Market and purchased two boxes of Kleenex. Jessie Franklin had been hard on my tissue supplies. I got a couple bottles of water, two bananas, a few other essentials. The clerk may have thought it odd when I asked him to bag the stuff lightly, each tissue box in a separate paper sack, but he did as I asked.

Burdened with my shopping, I walked past the basketball courts, the tennis courts, and the pool. I circled the pool, lingering in the shadows, waiting for the right company. Two women, nurses by their sensible shoes, passed by. Then a teenager, hunched into a hooded jacket. I didn’t have to wait long.

Business suit, overcoat, no briefcase, maybe heading out for a night on the town. Keys jingled in his gloved left hand and he was making a beeline for the back entrance of the Longfellow garage.

“Cold, huh?” I said, swinging into step beside him.

“You bet. Wind whistles between the buildings. Not as bad as Chicago, I suppose.”

“Windy city,” I agreed. I’ve heard that Chicago’s reputed windiness refers to its politicians, but who knows? “You work downtown?”

“Copley Square. Wind around the Pru, that’s bad.”

He was a gent. He didn’t wait for me to use my key on the door. He used his key, then held the door wide for me and my grocery bags. As I always say, why break and enter when you can get a guy to hold the door?

So far so good. Perfect.

Except the Jaguar wasn’t there.

I glanced around the garage, eyeballing dark corners and empty alcoves, just to make sure Sam hadn’t
parked in a spot other than his own, but my first take was the right take: no indigo XK. To say I was disappointed would be to understate. I was dressed warmly for the bitter evening, but my backside had counted on a cushy leather seat for a quick ride home before the evening’s assignment. Jonno San Giordino had been more efficient than I’d bargained for.

I got back in the elevator cube, dropped the grocery bags, and hesitated over the buttons. Did I want to press the penthouse floor, go up to Sam’s place, see Jonno’s handiwork? Did I have time? I consulted my watch, determining the latest time I could leave, beg a cab, and make the rendezvous with Jessie and her fiancé.

Where the hell was the Jaguar? The last time I’d seen Sam, he’d dropped me at Logan. Then, I’d learned later, he’d left town as well, flying to Vegas. No way would Sam have left his car at Logan. The long-term lot at Logan is more like a used car showroom for auto thieves than a parking lot.

I hit the lobby button and hefted the bags.

“Hey, babe, wuzzup?” Raoul, the doorman, glanced up with a wolfish grin. His eyes were sleepy and unfocused. He took note of me only because I’d cleared my throat and made him lose count of his reps. He was using the small weights, the ten-pounders he kept stashed under the desk. Maybe someone had complained about the fifties.

“How are you?” I replied cheerfully.

“Doin’ fine, doin’ fine.”

Raoul, the night doorman, was notorious for paying no attention. That’s not quite true. He paid attention, a great deal of attention, but only to his muscular development. As far as he was concerned, as long as his pecs and abs were in great shape, the lobby could
disappear in a puff of smoke. He put on a good act; he was more than capable of shining on the management company that employed him, but most of the tenants knew. And he was so damned pleasant all the time, greeting everybody with a wide smile and happily carrying heavy packages upstairs for all and sundry, that the tenants didn’t really care that he paid no attention at all. At least he’d smile and say good evening. To anyone and everyone, whether they had any business being in the building or not.

“Mr. Gianelli leave a message for me?” I asked.

Sam had done so in the past. Lubricated with a couple of bills, Raoul’s memory was excellent.

“Uh, Mr. G. Right. Uh, no. Nothing like that, ma’am. Uh, miss.”

Raoul gave me his full attention as I crossed to the elevator. Before the doors had closed, his hand was reaching for the phone.

Had Jonno hired him as a spy: “Anybody goes up to the Gianelli apartment, you give me a buzz and I’ll make it worth your while”?

I took the elevator up to Sam’s floor. My key still fit the lock, but I didn’t venture inside. I knew the place too well. There was no safe concealed behind a picture frame, no secret compartment under the floor. Those improvements were confined to the family’s North End enclave.

When Sam moved into Charles River Park, he’d had two smaller condos knocked into one, making his apartment the sole dwelling on the floor. The outside corridor stretched from the elevator to well beyond the stairwell, ending in a small alcove. I shoved a potted palm slightly to the right and concealed myself and my groceries behind it. Raoul had most likely called Jonno, but I figured I might as well find out if
anyone else had an interest in the goings and comings at Sam’s place.

It took only six minutes.

The man was built like a door, broad through the shoulders and hips, not so much tall as solid. He had a florid face and a drinker’s red-veined nose. Late forties, maybe fifty. His baggy suit jacket made me think cop.

He used a key on Sam’s door. As he entered, I departed, groceries in hand, flying down all twelve flights to the garage, where I exited by the same door I’d entered. Then I circled around to the front of the building to find a late-model Ford Taurus parked in the turnabout. Light brown. An American-made sedan, just like the car Mooney had asked about.

I memorized the license plate. Roz can work wonders with a license plate. I don’t know if she mesmerizes the clerks at the DMV or what. I’ve never asked her to sleep with anybody to gather information, but she may regard it as part of the job.

What was the name of the federal agent Mooney had mentioned? Dailey, I thought. Reilley? Too bad I couldn’t run the description by my old friend.

I took a deep breath and plunged down the path into the cold. The ten-minute trudge to the Science Park T stop seemed to take forever. Honestly, at one point, I thought about stealing a damned car. This city, seems like everybody else does.

The Jag would have been a lousy tail car. Too conspicuous, I told myself, scrunched behind the wheel of another aged Ford cab. The bucket seat in Sam’s car would have put me instantly to sleep, and the heating unit that kept it toasty under your butt, who needed it? The musky smell would have made me nostalgic and I didn’t need that either. The Spartan chill of Gloria’s cab would keep me alert. If I kept the roof lights off outside the city limits, the cab, in the dark of night, would look like any other car.

Right.

Tailing a citizen does not require the same virtuosity as playing the violin, but if it did, I flatter myself I’d be the Isaac Stern of tailing, or at least a concert-master in a decent orchestra. I’m good at waiting. I can amuse myself for hours, tuning my mind to a guitar riff I want to master, wandering through an intricacy of fingering possibilities while my eyes search for movement in the darkness.

There was the possibility I’d lose him: a one-person tail is always risky, but Jessica Franklin hadn’t let my warning deflect her determination to hire me. If I lost him, she’d insisted, I’d have a place, her place on Pomeroy Street in Allston, to wait and pick him up again.
And if he didn’t show at her place, didn’t sleep in the right bed, then she’d know.

So the job was a simple tail, period, full stop, finish. She didn’t want even a cursory background check done on her Ken. I’d recommended one, the whole megillah, tracing the prospective groom back to the day of his birth, making sure he’d done what he said he’d done, lived where he’d said he’d lived, worked where he’d said he’d worked. But no, if the man didn’t commit adultery tonight, my client was willing to spend the rest of her life with him.

How trusting. How quaint.

I’d run through the arguments: This isn’t smalltown America anymore and many less-than-decent people have figured that out. The anonymity of cities lets the cons start over, re-create themselves from scratch. They’re not saddled with their father’s reputation or their mother’s; nobody knows who their family is, so it’s easy as pie to be whoever somebody believes them to be. Private investigators fill the role the family used to take in matchmaking, and why not? Somebody ought to do it. We’re nosy Aunt Bessie with a nephew at Amherst who never met your Ken on campus all those years he said he was there. So, does Ken really have that master’s degree? Was he really born in North Dakota in 1985? Is his dad a big shot in import/export or doing time at Walpole? Most folks are honest, but alas, crooks don’t come with FDA warning labels tattooed across their foreheads.

I glanced for the twenty-seventh time at the photo the bride-to-be had reluctantly parted with, a five-by-seven that told me some of what she saw in the guy. He was a handsome devil, maybe a little too handsome for his own good. Sandy hair, wide eyes, well-shaped freckled nose, nice smile. Good-looking guys; I don’t
know, do they really tell more lies? Is there scientific proof? Did my client’s desire to have him tailed imply that she felt insecure in the relationship, suspected that, behind her back, people were wondering what a guy like that saw in her, asking why he hadn’t hooked up with some supermodel-type instead? I decided to have Roz run the basics on the man, no matter whether Kenny-boy slept at home or not.

The rain started at 7:38. Just what I needed. Jessica had guaranteed that she and the boyfriend would exit the restaurant by the front door at a quarter to eight. The attendant would bring up Ken’s Volvo, which he’d have previously left with valet parking. The Volvo S60 was a plus, a distinctive silhouette with oddly shaped taillights, a relatively easy car to track.

I’d filled up on gas, checked the oil and the wiper blades. The cab was old, but the engine was sound; it didn’t snort or stall. I’d be paid more than cabbie wages. Nothing to beef about, just rain-slicked roadway and no idea where the man might be headed. Maybe he’d head straight to Jessica’s like a homing pigeon and sleep peacefully in his own bed. Maybe the printed message was a lie delivered by a jealous coworker of Jessica’s or a spiteful ex-girlfriend of Ken’s.

I’d tried to get the names and addresses of Ken’s former gal pals, but Jessica wasn’t having any. She’d behaved as if naming her suspicions would make them real. Just tail the man and tell her where he goes, write down any addresses.

Maybe he had a whole harem. His looks, it was possible.

The door to Mamma Vincenza’s opened, a slice of yellow light in the dark. My client led the way out. I watched her closely, but she didn’t glance around. I’d warned her about that. Don’t look for me; don’t give
the show away. She smiled and chatted with Ken like a good little actress.

He wore a camel-colored overcoat that had set him back several hundred, a maroon scarf neatly twisted at his throat. He didn’t touch her as they got into the car. The Volvo was silver, with a moonroof.