Strangled (24 page)

“Count me in,” I said. And with that, I secured another first class upgrade and boarded the plane bound for Boston. If there were air-traffic controllers who had any idea of the metaphorical storm I was about to fly into, they never would have let the flight leave the ground.

As
predicted, Buck wasn’t awaiting my arrival at Logan International Airport when my flight landed at twelve-thirty. Or if he was, he was pretty effectively undercover.

Didn’t matter. My man Hank Sweeney, attired in a blue blazer and a freshly pressed pair of khaki pants, stood at the airport end of the jetway, casually sipping on a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, as I got off the plane.

“You strike it rich out there?” he asked, his voice the damnedest combination of silkiness and raspiness that I’d ever heard.

“So to speak,” I replied, and the two of us immediately began walking with the flow toward the baggage claim and the parking lot.

I hadn’t seen Hank since that Tuesday dinner we had at Locke-Ober, four days before, when he tipped me off as to the importance of the knife and the potential help of his former colleague Bob Walters. I was no closer to finding the knife, and Detective Walters was dead. All in all, things still weren’t going as hoped or as planned.

He expressed condolences about Edgar’s death. I thanked him, and we walked for a stretch in silence.

Finally, I said, “Your advice on Bob Walters was good. The big problem is, he died the day I spoke to him.”

Hank nodded as if he knew this already, but didn’t say whether he did or he didn’t.

So I said, “And obviously Edgar was killed last night in a supposed robbery that I don’t think was a robbery at all. I remind you of this because I’m going to head into this men’s room here. While I’m in there, you might be smart to just keep walking down this corridor, get in your car, head home, and watch
Wedding Crashers
on pay-per-view. People around me have a way of dying lately, and I really don’t want that to happen to you, Hank.”

Cutting through my minidrama, Hank asked, “Then why’d you call me?”

It’s true, I had. I’d called him just before I got on the plane in Vegas, explaining some of my predicament, laying out the dangers, and asking for his help. I needed an able-bodied, street-smart guardian angel — to use Edgar’s term — over the next day or so, and so what if he happened to be about seventy years old.

“I might have been too rash. I’ve been thinking more about it on the airplane. I don’t want to see more people dead because of me. I really don’t.”

“Go use the men’s room.”

I did, looking around suspiciously at the other men in there, not alone because of how few of them took the time to wash their hands on their way out the door. I was starting to wonder who was following me, monitoring my moves, waiting constantly for the opportunity to strike.

When I got back outside, Hank was still standing there, virtually in the same place and position as he was when I went inside. “There,” he said, “now that we’ve got that little episode out of your system, maybe we can go find ourselves a strangler.”

And we were off.

Hank had a black Ford four-door idling at the curb with a state police trooper watching guard. Normally these troopers are hassling harried travelers to get their cars out of the no-parking zones, not necessarily in the nicest or politest way. This trooper said to Hank, “That was fast.”

“Life is fast,” Hank replied, opening the driver’s-side door. “Look at me. I feel like I’ve just begun, but I probably only have one bullet left in my gun — and I was never that good a shot to begin with.”

The trooper nodded and laughed. He looked over at me and said, “Good luck with the story.”

I thanked him, and Hank called out, “Trust me, Teddy, the whole damned thing just flies by.”

On the ride into the city, we went over a quick plan, which was barely a plan at all — basically what Hank described as a “lurk and listen strategy.” He was going to drop me off a block away from my meeting destination. He gave me a cellular phone with a two-way radio, which he had programmed to remain on at all times. He would be ready to descend on the scene if needed, but would stand down otherwise.

Me, I had an odd sense of faith in this situation, don’t ask me why. The Phantom Fiend was trying to get me information, lurid as that information inevitably ended up being. He didn’t want me dead, because then his conduit to the public at-large no longer existed. No, it was someone else who wanted me dead, but on this night, given that the e-mailer had known about the manifesto, I had faith that it was indeed the Phantom Fiend. Of course, I’ve been wrong about less important things in my life, which might explain why my extremities felt like they were going numb.

My phone rang — my real phone, not the Hank-issued one — and I almost jumped through the moonroof. And the moonroof, by the way, was closed.

“Easy there, tabby cat,” Hank said.

When I answered the call, it was Peter Martin, making sure I was safe and sound and in the company of the security agent named Buck. I explained that I was the former, but not the latter, and that Hank Sweeney was my chaperone and chauffeur.

“Hold on,” he said. I heard him pick up another line and say, “Hey, Buck, why aren’t you with Jack?”

Pause.

“You’re waiting for his flight? Where? Hold on.” Then, to me, “What airline did you come in on?”

I told him.

To Buck, “That’s US Airways, not United.” Pause. “No, it’s Las Vegas, not Los Angeles.” Pause. “No, he’s off property. Never mind, just come back here.”

“Why don’t you put him on the copy desk,” I said to Peter.

“He’d probably fit right in.”

He didn’t appreciate that. Instead he told me, “Be careful. Next time I see you, I don’t want to be paying my final respects.”

At one o’clock on a Sunday morning, the Downtown Crossing side of Boston Common isn’t a place most normal people want to be. Abnormal people, yes, which probably explains all the punked-up Mohawks, the various body piercings, and the bizarre Gothic fashion sported by the dozens of early twentysomethings who gathered in formless clusters near the corner of Tremont and Park Streets, where I stepped out of Hank’s car. I’m not sure what they were waiting for, but I had a feeling it wasn’t coming anytime soon.

“Be calm, be cool, remember I’m armed, we’ll get out of this just fine.” That was Hank’s last bit of advice to me as I shut the door and walked toward the meeting site.

I didn’t take the time to tell him that Edgar Sullivan was armed as well.

Once off Tremont, Winter Street was dead, and again, I don’t use that word loosely anymore. The doors and front windows of the various discount stores were sheathed in steel grating — dark, hulking structures that repelled the vague light from the street-lamps. Even on a gorgeous June afternoon, Downtown Crossing isn’t exactly Piazza Navona, if you know what I mean. In the post-midnight hush of an early spring night, it took on the look of a stage set from the type of horror movie I’d never bother to see.

Winter Place was little more than a dead-end alley halfway down the block, known only because it is the home of the Locke-Ober, where Hank and I recently dined on that dreamy bisque and those delicious steaks. When I pulled up to the corner, there wasn’t another person around, or at least not within my view. I had a moment where fear dripped into awkwardness because I didn’t know what to do. What I really wanted was a shot of whiskey from the Locke-Ober bar, and I don’t even drink whiskey. But the place was dark for the night, so that wasn’t really an option.

Instead, I stood in the middle of the street, away from any buildings where a predator might emerge from the shadowy entrances without me having time enough to fight back. Mrs. Flynn of South Boston didn’t raise any fool. I put my hands in my pockets. I took them out. I shuffled my feet. I stood completely still. It felt like an hour; it was really about five minutes. And that’s when my cell phone rang.

It was as quiet as the country out there, and by country I don’t mean Prague or Helsinki, though I’m not sure those are even countries. Regardless, I mean the American country, like the middle of the country, a wheat farm in Nebraska, where the only sounds in the distant fields are the crops whistling in a summery breeze.

Which is a long way of saying the chime of my phone sounded not unlike a car crash for the noise it made. I all but leapt off the ground as I yanked it from my pocket. The caller ID said “Unavailable.” I flipped it open and said, “Jack Flynn here.”

“Pick up the envelope halfway down the walkway at the end of Winter Place.”

That was followed by a click, which was followed by silence.

“Who is this?” I asked, a question that admittedly lacked even a hint of originality. But as I suspected, there was no one on the line to respond. So thinking quickly, as I rarely do anymore, I said, “Okay, the walkway at the end of Winter Place.” I said this for Hank Sweeney’s benefit, and ultimately mine as well.

That one spare directive had been delivered in a monotone, emphasizing neither words nor syllables. It was a man’s voice, gravelly yet pointed, indiscernible in age. He could have been thirty, he could have been sixty. I truly had no idea, though for some reason I pictured a guy with two days’ of growth on his cheeks and an old ball cap on his head speaking into a pay phone somewhere nearby.

It was the pickup spot that bothered me more than the voice. The walkway at the end of Winter Place is a long, narrow passage that links on the other side to a short side street called Temple Place. The walkway is effectively a single-file space that exists between two old buildings, another only-in-Boston kind of place. A person walking within it is essentially sitting prey, and no one in their right mind uses it as a shortcut anytime after dark, Arnold Schwarzenegger aside, though I’m not sure he fits into the category of right-minded people.

With no great enthusiasm, I turned toward Winter Place, which is about forty yards long, and looked suspiciously toward the end. I could disappear within that passageway and never be seen alive again, bound for that celestial place where Bob Walters and Edgar Sullivan were already holding court, not to mention a collection of young women formerly of Boston. I wondered if they’d appreciate my meager efforts on their behalf.

I reminded myself of my belief that the Phantom didn’t want me dead. Problem was, I was also reminded of the fact that the last time I showed up at a meeting supposedly created by the Phantom, someone ended up dead on the Public Garden. I put that out of my mind, perhaps out of desperation, maybe ignorance, probably both.

And I began walking, slowly, buying time, but for what I wasn’t sure. Probably for Hank Sweeney to get himself in better position. I walked past the door to an office building on my right, then the darkened entrance to Locke-Ober on my left. Inexplicably, the thought occurred to me that thousands of patrons of that restaurant, given its two-century tenure, had left this material world, and I wondered if I was about to join them. My thoughts, my mood, my expectations were of little more than death.

Or were they? One more time, I reminded myself that the Phantom wanted me alive. Very, very much alive. I was his mouthpiece for a message he hadn’t yet gotten out, and I don’t think he was about to kill me out of spite. Maybe somebody else was, but not the Phantom.

I arrived at the passageway, every bit as long and narrow as I had envisioned, and even darker than I had imagined. There wasn’t a single light along the way, which was a metaphor for something in my life, but damned if I could conjure up what.

This was really stupid, I realized, arguably the stupidest thing I had ever done, not just putting myself in harm’s way but voluntarily walking, unarmed and barely protected, into the most vulnerable crevice in all of Boston.

And yet I took that first step. And then another. And another yet.

They were slow steps, cautious and methodical. Pretty soon, it was as dark behind me as it was ahead — so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. I heard a dull squeak, and felt a swoosh along the pant leg at my shin. A rat, though, was the least of my worries. The passage was so narrow that I kept brushing against one of the cement sides with my shoulders.

After each step, I paused, looking for something that I couldn’t see, trying to hear something that perhaps wasn’t there, feeling for something that didn’t exist. I didn’t know. I only knew what my gut told me to do. There are thousands of newspaper reporters in this great country of mine, good reporters and bad, curious and incurious, ambitious and lazy, and I was the one, the single one, who was a big enough jackass to be meeting a killer in a tiny, blackened, concrete-enclosed sliver of downtown Boston tonight.

I got what I estimated was about 40 percent of the way through the walkway when I thought I heard a noise emanating from the other end. It was a vague scraping, shuffling noise, and I stopped, held my breath to stifle my own sounds, and strained to figure out what it was.

Scrape, scrape.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

My voice ricocheted off the walls, magnifying along the way, then echoing mournfully toward the end.

Silence.

But only for a moment. Then the scraping resumed, and the scraping was accompanied by hard breathing. I had a terrible picture in my mind of one of the Phantom Fiend’s victims lying on the passageway floor, not quite dead but barely alive, searching for help that maybe I was there to give.

So, frantically, I shouted again. “Who’s there? Say something! Who’s there?”

A panting noise now, and more scratching. I surged forward, perhaps in vain, maybe in stupidity. With each step, I poked ahead with my foot and pushed at the air with my outstretched arms. I took maybe four steps this way, looking not dissimilar to the way Frankenstein looked when he lurched across wherever it was that he lurched.

And that’s when the collision occurred.

Whatever it was, it was low to the ground, where I pictured the injured woman to be. I hit it with my knee and my foot at the same time. It was solid and resilient, very much alive. As I pushed against it, I heard a guttural noise, and whatever it was pushed back against me, knocking me off balance, toppling me against the side wall, and then to the ground.

I thrashed on the pavement, making contact with whatever it was, pushing against it while it pushed back at me.