The City Below (63 page)

She didn't imagine he would turn to her with, "Joan, there's been a robbery." He was cupping the phone, holding it away from her. He was as naked as she was, which made the words even more absurd, impossible. "A robbery at the Fogg. They ransacked your office. They took a print A Michelangelo."

***

In the pitch dark, on foot, Squire easily slipped away from Tucci's estate. Without streetlights, the road along which he found himself running was like an endless black tunnel. He was aware of passing other driveways, but they would lead to houses whose garages had alarms and where dogs slept lightly. He felt the threat of rain in the air, which increased his sense of urgency, and it was only by a calculated act of will that he was able to pace himself. He trusted that what he needed, he would find.

A car.

He heard the noise of a car approaching from behind, and he plunged into the bushes just before the headlights came rushing around a curve. He crouched and watched it pass, then went onto the road again, feeling no calmer. He lit a cigarette, took a few quick drags, then tossed it into a small puddle. He forced himself to walk instead of running. He pictured the coming rain as an ocean liner, its huge bow steaming toward him without knowing he was there, a sole survivor in the night sea. He did not know why the weather should be such a threat.

It seemed a long time, but it was only ten or fifteen minutes before the road wound down into a valley across which a developer had spread a quilt of lots and houses, modest and tidy, with lights left on over front doors and in hallways to discourage burglars. These households would have dogs too, but Squire also knew that, along the road soon, he would find businesses that served the people who lived in the tract houses.

He felt lucky that it wasn't raining yet.

Around another curve he came to a Getty station, closed up for the night The whiff of gasoline was strong. The car he needed, a dark, late-model sedan, like a cop car, was parked between the station office and a Dumpster. Before using his wire-and-hook, he froze one last time, to listen. The first crickets of spring, a stream running in the nearby woods, but otherwise not a sound. He had forgotten that he was wearing rubber gloves, and realized it now with satisfaction. Fucking A. He was infallible.

In quick order, he had the door unlocked, the ignition wires out from their casing beneath the dash, the wires hot together, and the motor running. He put the car in gear and took off. The headlights he did not snap on until he was half a mile down the road, approaching, miraculously, the ramp for Route 128, which would take him quickly to the brightly lit Mass. Pike. With the sky open and illuminated by the roadway lights and the lights of many buildings, even at that hour, he saw that the weather front was not an approaching ocean liner but a city, and he said its name aloud, as if reading stenciled letters on a prow. "Cambridge," he said, "to the rescue." When it started raining then, he began singing "American Pie," drumming the steering wheel.

Within a few minutes, his manic mood had evaporated. He was pulling slowly through the college streets toward Harvard Square. "And the three men I admired most..." By now he was reciting the lyric, quietly, without inflection, unaware that he was doing so. "They took the last train for the coast..." His eyes clicked from car to car, from building to building, as he drove, looking for signs of anything that could stop him.

At Mt Auburn Street he saw the Florentine tower of the Catholic church, and on instinct he pulled into its parking lot. He got out of the car and, hunched against the rain, jogged across the lot to the rectory, as if he'd planned to do so all along. He peeled off the surgeon's gloves, pocketed them, and rang the rectory doorbell once. A few minutes passed, and he rang it once more.

The door opened. A stout, bald man in a bathrobe showed himself.

"Father?"

"Yes?"

Doyle held up Jackie's badge. "I'm Detective Mullen. May I come in?"

The priest looked wary, but he stepped aside.

"I apologize for the hour," Doyle said, entering, "but it's an emergency. I need you."

"But what—?"

"A suicide. A would-be suicide. I got him to agree to talk to a priest."

"A suicide!" The priest shrank back. "You should call the counseling center, the health service."

"Father, the kid is a Catholic. We don't have time. Would you get dressed, please? In your clericals. It's important you wear your collar."

The priest stared at Doyle for a moment, as if he were trying to wake up. But then all his years of conditioning worked their trick, and he nodded. "I'll be right back."

"Do you have a phone I can use?"

The priest opened an adjacent door and turned on a light, an office. Then he rushed back into the dark, tamed reaches of the residence, up a set of unseen stairs.

In the office, beyond a Xerox machine, Squire opened the one door, a closet. Reams of paper were stacked to one side. A set of shelves held office supplies, including, he saw, heavy twine and plastic packing tape. He closed the door, noting that an old-fashioned rod key protruded from the keyhole. He turned it, click, and the bolt said out of the door's edge like a tongue. He turned it back.

A phone sat on the desk. Three steps took him to it A card attached to the phone listed numbers, and when he saw one labeled
Harvard Security,
he did a little dance step; it's a gift to be simple. He dialed the number. He pictured the pimply faced night-shifter, a graduate student, awkward in the blue monkey suit, the kid who said, "Security."

"This is Father Collins at St. Paul's," Squire said quickly. "I don't have time to say more than, I need a car here. I need you now. I have a student on the other line who's threatening to kill himself. He won't say which dorm he's in, but he's Harvard."

"Father, we—"

"He
may
deal with you. He most certainly
won't
deal with Cambridge Police."

"But we—"

"Who is this?"

"Private Simpson."

"Are you in charge?"

"I'm the night dispatcher."

"Well, get a car over here now, to St. Paul's rectory, Mt. Auburn."

"All right, Father."

"Don't call Cambridge. No siren. No lights. Do you hear me?"

"Yes, Father."

"I hope he'll tell me where he is, then your people will take me to him. Tell your people that."

"Yes, Father. Right away."

Squire hung up. He heard the priest clumping hurriedly down the stairs. Squire picked up a mammoth black volume the size of a telephone book, but bound in stiff boards. He went behind the door. The priest rushed into the room.

"All set," he began, and never saw it, or felt it for that matter, when Squire brought the book smashing down on his head. He collapsed unconscious.

Squire looked at the book. "Missal," he read. And he said, "You bet."

By the time the Harvard police car pulled up in front of the rectory, Squire had stripped the unconscious priest, bound him, taped his mouth shut, and locked him in the supply closet He was just closing the collar on the black clerical shirt The suit coat would be too short, but it didn't matter. He put on the priest's baggy raincoat as he hurried out into the teeming night.

"I have it," he said to the Harvard cop who'd just gotten out of the car. "Let's go."

Only one cop. Beautiful. No stripes on his shoulder, and no gun at his belt, a kid. Good old fucking Harvard liberals.

The young policeman's agitation was apparent when the engine died on him. He croaked, "Christ, I'm sorry, Father. Oh, Christ" But then he got the car going and dropped the lever into Drive. "Where is he?"

"At the Fogg," Squire said. "Don't ask me more. He's the night security man, and he says he's going to shoot himself."

"The Fogg!"

"Are they yours? The security people at the Fogg? Are they Harvard Police?"

"No, they're separate."

"Are they armed?"

The cop was driving fast now, heading up Arrow Street The museum was only two blocks away. "I don't think so. I mean, if they don't let us carry guns ..." The kid's voice shook, and his hands trembled on the wheel.

He reached to the radio handset on the dash and was drawing it toward his mouth when Squire roughly grabbed it away.

"Didn't they tell you? It's just
me.
Your job is to get
me
there, no one else. Otherwise, he's dead."

The cop cringed at the rebuke, but didn't resist. The car bounced through a pothole on Mass. Ave. and cut into Quincy Street, passing the staid colonial buildings that formed one wall of Harvard Yard. Doyle thought of her, coming out of the pristine church, her bright green dress and the straw hat she carried, her loose blond hair, the movement of her thighs under the flowing fabric of her dress. That memory had shaped his fantasy more even than the image of her under him, those clothes wrecked, when, after all, she'd been like the others.

The car stopped. "You come with me," Squire ordered. "The other museum guards don't know what's going on. You have to tell them." Doyle's authority was absolute. He got out of the car knowing the young cop would follow, and of course, grabbing his nightstick from its clip on the door, he did. The doctrine of infallibility. Otherwise, the cop might have wondered how this priest knew to go down the side of the building instead of to the front.

Doyle had cased the Fogg, dreaming of this, years before. A way to get her; a way to get him. On the side was the unornamented staff door with the only buzzer. Doyle pressed it three times, urgently, then stood back. He swept his hand in front, so that the Harvard cop took his place exactly where Doyle wanted him. In the light, Doyle saw how drained of color the kid's face was. The rain, dropping from the beak of his hat, made it seem that he was crying. Jesus.

The door opened, but only a crack, the width of a security bolt "What," a voice said gruffly.

The young cop put his stick in the opening. "Let us in," he said. "Hurry."

"You can't."

"It's an emergency. You've got a suicide in there. Somebody's trying to kill himself."

"There's nobody in here."

"I've got a priest here. Somebody in there called the priest."

Squire came forward. "How many are you?"

"What?"

"Night watchmen, security. How many?"

"Two."

"When did you last see the other one?"

"Half an hour ago. He's in the other wing."

"I've been talking to him on the phone. He's—"

The door opened suddenly, all the way. The guard was black, and hatless. On the shoulder of his uniform, a patch said
WACKENHUT
. A pistol rode on his hip. Doyle pointed at it and turned on the Harvard cop. "You said they weren't armed." He spoke as if this proved the suicide threat was real.

The Harvard cop, with abrupt authority, said, "Take us to him."

The guard hesitated, but one more careful look at the priest convinced him, and he turned to lead the way. Doyle followed immediately behind. The moment that the Harvard cop drew the outside door closed, Doyle smoothly reached to the guard's holster, unsnapped it, and yanked the pistol out. "That's it," Squire said.

"Oh shit." The guard fell against a radiator. He understood at once, and was now raising his hands.

But the young cop stood with his back to the door, aiming the nightstick as if it were the gun he had obviously been wishing for, and he kept repeating, "What? What?"

Squire aimed at his face. "Drop the stick." The kid did so, its clatter echoing in the closed corridor. "Over here, with him."

As the policeman passed in front of him, Squire grabbed his handcuffs from his belt and threw them at him. "Put one on," he said.

The kid had trouble opening and shutting the cuff on his wrist, but he managed it Squire ordered him to push the other half through the protruding radiator pipe and to cuff the Wackenhut guard. They cooperated nicely.

"I won't be long, gentlemen. If you cry out, I'll hear. And then, when I come back I'll kill you. Okay?"

The guard refused to look at him, but the Harvard cop nodded.

Doyle knew from a dozen visits, when he'd played museum-goer and she'd never seen him, where Joan's office was. He went there now, through dimly lit stairways and halls, to the second floor, off the atrium, without a thought for the other guard, the pretend suicide. Things were going too well to run into him—that was Doyle's conviction, and it seemed right.

The door to her office was locked. Shit How could it be locked? He stood back raised his foot, and punched it firmly against the door. But the door did not budge.

Easy does it One day at a fucking time. Let's do this.

Squire knelt and studied the lock picturing its notched traps and cylinder bars snapping into alignment An old lock a simple one. If he could just...

He straightened up and went down the corridor to the small table at the top of the stairs. It held tidy stacks of floor plans and exhibit brochures. There was a small drawer, which he opened. And there they were, fucking A. The dish of rubber bands and paper clips. He took a paper clip and returned to Joan's door, and only moments later he had picked the lock He went inside.

As quietly as he could, he proceeded to empty the contents of drawers and files onto the rough-edge tile floor. He upended chairs and removed prints and paintings from the walls. He found an ink bottle and splashed its contents everywhere. And that was all. He left her ruined office as silently as he'd come. Message number one.

In the corridor again, he stood against the wall, not moving, listening for the guard. Nothing.

He went down to the first floor, took two quick lefts and a right, and, that simply, found himself in a room which, even in the darkness, seemed more charged than the others.
Terribilità,
she'd called it.

He waited for his eyes to adjust. Like the bow of that ocean liner appearing out of the mist, the huge statue gradually took form in front of him and above him.
The Dying Slave.

"Don't touch," he remembered her telling him. The genitals came into focus at the level of his eyes. "Don't touch." But that had been the other statue down the hall, the naked woman. He
had
touched. The bronze lady had touched him. His bronze medal. His all-time hit.