Once we were all inside the compound, we’d wait for Frank to advise the surgical team of what was happening. Stayner would send Jim Reimer out on a phantom errand, say to pick up some crucial piece of equipment that had been left behind. No surgeon would ever do that because they’d no longer be sterile but we doubted anyone inside would know that. I’d be waiting in the trunk, in a surgical outfit identical to Reimer’s. Reimer and I would switch places. I’d let Ryan and Victor into the loading area. Inside, in the improvised operating room, Frank would be reaching for his gun.
We would take down anyone in our path, find Jenn and bust out in Reimer’s SUV.
That was the plan; that was my promise to Jenn, sure and silent in my heart.
Jews say that when man plans, God laughs. Even though I’m an atheist, I kept an ear cocked for the sound of faraway laughter.
Kieran was driving Sean crazy. He had slept all day, drugged to the tits, but now he was awake and restless and up Sean’s ass. He couldn’t pace because of his leg, so he sat on a stool at the
kitchen island, swivelling it this way and that to keep Sean in his field of vision as Sean moved back and forth trying to get dinner together for the kids. Bev was upstairs getting ready for a night of cosmetic sales with a dozen fortysomething women, something she did to make her own spending money, or at the very least get all this high-end facial shit for free. Unbelievably expensive little tubes and jars full of Dead Sea mud.
Sean was putting salmon fillets in the oven, rinsing lettuce for their salad, setting out juice and cut-up celery and carrots. He didn’t want his kids eating junk and getting fat like some of their friends, barely into their teens and already out of shape, out of breath, with the same prison pallor as guys at Cedar Junction. He wanted them strong and straight. No one, especially Michael, would ever go near his business. They’d go to school and find their own lives and careers.
“Can’t these kids feed themselves?” Kieran said. “Christ, when we were their age, we were getting drunk and stealing cars.”
“I told you when we’re leaving, okay? Be patient. You’ll have plenty of time—four, five hours till they’re ready for her. Jesus, how much do you think she can take?”
“We’ll find out.”
“We who? This is your thing, pal, not mine.”
“Like you’ve never taken anyone out to the garage, tuned them up until they would talk or deal.”
“Not for fun, I didn’t. And never a woman.”
“She destroyed my fucking leg. If it was a guy who done it, believe me, he’d have the same shit coming. Worse. Except I wouldn’t plan to fuck him. She looked real nice, what I saw.”
“She’s even better up close. A real honey.”
“Now that’s unfair, man. You’re teasing me.”
Daggett sighed. “Okay, we can go in fifteen minutes.”
“How long to get there?”
“Half an hour.”
“And how long till she’s clear-headed?”
“Also half an hour.”
“Then call Freddie now, tell him to take her off the drip. I want her up before we get there. Wanna call her on the phone and tell her what she’s in for.”
Damn it. Sean had called Freddie from the road and told him they were on their way. Take her off the drip, Sean had said, even though the girl wasn’t scheduled to go under the knife for another few hours. Freddie knew why. Kieran was pissed about his leg and wanted to take it out on her. Freddie could understand that, sympathize with it, but it still pissed him off. The girl’s body was fucking magnificent.
Playboy
material. And now he had to put the catheter back in so Sean wouldn’t know he’d been into the goods. Wipe her up. Work the gown back over her limbs.
What a waste, he thought. A first-class piece of ass she was, even asleep and unresponsive. But when Kieran got through with her, pieces was all she would be. He took one more long look at her, wishing he had a better camera than the one in his phone. He took a few more snaps.
Look at her
.
If he stopped the drip right now, she’d still stay out for at least fifteen minutes or more. And Sean and Kieran would take at least that long to get there from Framingham. He decided he had enough time to play one more game, nothing long and drawn out, just a quick little sketch that was forming in his mind.
Freddie and the Maiden, part three.
A
light rain began to fall as we drove along Huntington Avenue past Northeastern University. Keep it coming, I thought. Rain would obscure vision, make guards hurry in and out of doorways that much faster. Make them hunch, maybe jam on a ball cap, make it harder for them to see.
“Feel it?” Ryan asked.
“What?”
“The adrenalin.”
“I guess.”
“You guess? Your left foot is pumping like a heavy-metal drummer.”
“Okay, I feel it.”
“Don’t fight it, use it.”
“I know.”
“You need to go over the guns again before we meet Frank and Victor?”
“I’m good. Your in-room seminar was excellent.”
We met Frank and Victor at a Chinese restaurant on Brookline Avenue. Easy for us out-of-towners to find; plenty of on-street parking. Ryan made sure my gun was in my back waistband before we went in. But no one pulled on us when we walked in. We were shown to a table where the boys were waiting.
They didn’t pull either. No one poisoned the spring rolls or the hot-and-sour soup; all it did was make my nose run.
Everything had gone smoothly with Riklitis, Frank said. “I mean, he was disappointed and everything that he wasn’t going to be collecting the rest of his payment, but when I told him it was that or get a bullet up his ass, he calmed down.”
“How much were they paying him?”
“Fifty large. When Victor heard that, he was ready to sign up himself.”
“Why the fuck not,” Victor said. “One kidney is all you need. It was right there in the pamphlet.”
“I can’t even tell if he’s kidding,” Frank said.
We drank tea and Cokes as we went over the details again, then Frank left in Riklitis’s car. Victor guided us south out of Brookline and along the Jamaicaway.
“See that dark spot on the right?” Victor said. “That’s Jamaica Pond. Me and Frank go fishing there sometimes.”
“For what?” Ryan asked.
“Pickerel, bass, hornpout, perch. Those are all natural to the place. Plus they stock it with salmon and trout.”
“Can you eat any of it?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah, that’s clean water. Cleanest around here, anyway. Spring-fed, Frank told me. You guys come down in the summer, we’ll grab a rod and some six-packs.”
“Can’t wait,” Ryan said.
Stayner had told us to meet him in the administration parking lot at Forest Hills Cemetery; from there, we’d all go in his car, from a cemetery above Mattapan to the mortuary down below. There were no other cars when we got there so I pulled in and shut off the engine. Darkness shrouded us; a steady rain was visible in the glare of tungsten lights. While we waited, Victor and Ryan applied shoe polish to whatever skin wasn’t covered by their balaclavas. I sat with my eyes closed, breathing in the smell of the polish; I realized we were just on the other side
of Franklin Park, where Carol-Ann Meacham’s battered body had been found. A cemetery, a mortuary, a dumping ground for the murdered. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Jonah Geller’s Boston. Maps and guidebooks sold here. Don’t mind the bloodstains, folks. A little soda water will lift those right up.
Headlights swept across my field of vision as Chuck Stayner drove a champagne-coloured Cadillac CTS sedan into the lot and pulled up beside us. We transferred a gym bag containing our guns and other supplies to his trunk, then locked up the Charger. The worst that could happen to it here was it would be towed away. Better that than having it stripped and stolen in Mattapan and having to file a police report—or have Ryan make another rental-car clerk wet his pants.
I sat in the front, Victor and Ryan in the back. I didn’t introduce Victor. I figured both he and Stayner would feel better that way.
“You ready?” I asked Stayner.
“I will be,” he said. “Right now, you might say I’m shitting a brick of considerable dimensions, but I am also known to have a high degree of self-control.”
“What do you usually bring in with you from the car?”
“Most of the equipment will already have been laid out by the nurses and Jim Reimer. But I do bring a medical bag in with me that has a few favourite instruments.”
“The gun will go in there then. On top.”
“Do I have to—”
“Yes, you do. Take it out first chance you get and hide it under the table the donor will lie on. Got that? The table is draped, right?”
“Of course.”
“Set the bag down at your feet. Relax. Undo your tie. Loosen your collar. Drop something, kneel down to tie your shoe, whatever, and put the gun under that table. That way we’ll all know where it is if we need it.”
“All right.”
“We have a man inside posing as the donor. He’ll choose the moment to send out Reimer.”
“When do you think that will that be?”
“When everyone is in place and there’s the least security around.”
An overgrown laneway ran behind Halladay’s and its neighbouring storefronts. DeMaurice Simms had taken photos of it, had shown us how to access it through one of the abandoned storefronts. “None of them’s alarmed,” he had said, “and none have locks worth shit.” Stayner went past the entrance to Halladay’s and pulled up to the curb when I told him to. We each took two sets of latex gloves from a box Stayner had on the console between the seats and put them on, one over the other in case they tore. Ryan and Victor headed out into the darkness, Ryan melting into the storefront that would take him to the rear laneway where he’d begin work on the hoarding at the rear. Victor crouched in another lane to wait for the anesthesiologist’s big Lincoln to arrive. I slipped green hospital scrubs over my track suit, then put on a cap and mask and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses like the ones Reimer wore, bought at a drugstore in the mall. I threaded the suppressor onto the barrel of my Beretta and placed the Colt M4 in a small gym bag with a shoulder strap.
I closed the trunk in on myself and Stayner pulled away, circled the block, made one more turn and braked and honked.
He was at the gate of Halladay’s.
It took a moment for the sound of footsteps to reach me in the trunk. They got louder as a man approached the gate. I leaned my head into the deepest part, behind the upholstery of the rear seat. I heard Stayner’s window buzz down. A man said, “Okay, Doc, go around and park in the back.”
Stayner paused.
Say it, I thought.
Say it
.
“Tell them I want to park inside the bay,” Stayner finally said.
“No one parks—”
“I am the one doing this goddamn surgery, and I’m not feeling well and don’t wish to develop a chill that would affect my ability to work tonight, which would cost your boss a million dollars and you your miserable life. Tell whoever is on the other end to open the goddamn door. Now!”
This was the E. Charles Stayner who ruled the operating theatre. What had his assistant said?
Some of them grow up to be Napoleon
.
The guard stepped away and spoke into a radio, listened, then told Stayner to go ahead, the door around back would be open. The window went up and Stayner took his foot off the brake and we rolled slowly ahead, grinding over the wet pavement. Then he made a wide turn and went forward until the sound of the rain hitting the trunk stopped suddenly. We were inside the bay. The engine stopped, the transmission went into park and his door opened. He got out and slammed it shut. Locked it with the fob. His footsteps went forward along the front of the car, then turned right for about ten steps. He climbed what sounded like three metal stairs. Then a door opened and his footsteps faded away as it shut. A motor kicked in above me and the garage door wound down and clanged shut against the asphalt.
I lay there with my head throbbing where Ryan and I had clocked melons. I knew it was superficial, just a bump like half a walnut, but it reminded me of how vulnerable I still was. I pushed that thought away and replaced it with a vision of me levelling the Colt at Sean Daggett.
So close now to Jenn. If she wasn’t here already, she’d arrive sometime tonight. So hard to wait. I kept going over the plan, all the ifs and assumptions—would Reimer carry off the
switch with me, would Ryan and Victor make it in? I went over the Colt’s switch from short burst to full auto, where the safety was on the Beretta. What I’d do if shooting started.
If the ball comes to me, where will I throw?
Waiting. Breathing. Envisioning. More waiting. Throbbing in head. Going to see Jenn. Going to see Jenn. Any minute now. Going to get her …
“I told you we should have left earlier,” Kieran said.
They had gotten completely swamped by traffic on the road into Boston. They had heard on the radio that the southbound I-95 was bumper to bumper, so Sean had tried Route 3 south toward Arlington, which would take them into the city via East Cambridge. It wasn’t moving any faster, and seemed to be slowing as they went. Kieran was hyper and restless as a terrier, and about as amusing to have in the front seat of the car. If it wasn’t for the poor fucker’s bad leg, Sean would have backhanded him by now.
“Think she’s awake yet?” Kieran asked.
“She wasn’t five minutes ago.”
“Come on, it has to be twenty minutes since we called.”
“It was five.”
“Then switch lanes. The right is moving faster.”
“Shut up, man. I need you to understand something,” Sean said. “And I don’t know if you can right now, with whatever the fuck you’re on, but you have to start thinking less street and more, I don’t know, avenue. You know what I mean? You know the difference between a street and an avenue?”
“What?”
“No, I’m asking you. What’s the association, what’s the first thing you think when you think street and avenue?”
“I don’t know.”
“Guess.”
“I guess an avenue is kind of fancier than a street.”
“There you go. Even in your fucked-up condition, you get it. An avenue is fancier. This new racket of mine, it’s fancier than anything I ever done before. I’m dealing with suits now, and I don’t mean track suits. I’m dealing with top dogs. Rubbing shoulders with the best. I know Bev is gonna love it, running in a different pack. I think I might too. Now we have to maintain our street side if anyone tries to butt in on us, crowd us, but in general, I need you to start thinking a little more like a businessman and less like Jack Nicholson busting through a door with an axe.”