Brothers and Bones (27 page)

Dawn was breaking on a new day. I didn’t think it had much chance of being any better than the old day. Behind us, we’d left two cops—one of them unconscious—in their own handcuffs. Farther behind us, we’d left a dead body in my apartment. Ahead of us, I saw nothing but trouble.

TWENTY-NINE

The first thing we did after leaving the Belmont cops we’d handcuffed was to steal another vehicle, adding yet another offense to my growing list of crimes. Because the cops got a look at the Ford F-150, we had to dump it. Before it could have been tied to us, it likely would have been just another stolen truck. But once it was known that we had it—a suspected murderer and his cohort, as well as the guys who jumped two cops—law-enforcement officers throughout the state would be focused on finding it. So we drove with our captive for a while, to put some distance between us and Belmont, and ended up in Somerville, where we finally caught a break. Fairly quickly we found a late-model Dodge Ram pickup, unlocked, with the keys dangling from the ignition. The owner probably weaved his way home from a bar or party, drunk behind the wheel, and staggered up to bed without thinking to take his keys with him, or even to lock his truck.

“Looks like our lucky night,” Bonz said.

I almost reminded him that there was a corpse in my apartment and a killer after us, and I was certainly wanted for murder, and would soon be wanted on a variety of other, lesser charges, and that all this happened on “our lucky night.” But I kept all that to myself as I followed Bonz for several blocks until we found a quiet street on which to transfer our captive to the new truck and dump the Ford.

“We should hole up somewhere for a little while,” Bonz said as we left Somerville, heading east.

“I know. I’m exhausted. If we’re going to stay ahead of the cops, the mob, everyone who’s looking for us, we need some rest. At least I do. Plus, if I want to have any chance of figuring out Jake’s clue about where to find—”

“Hold it,” Bonz said. “Cover his ears.”

I looked at the guy we had taped up and lying across the back seat of the truck. I turned, reached back, and pressed my hands over his ears.

I said, “I’ll need a clear head if I’m going to have a chance of figuring out Jake’s clue and finding that tape.”

Bonz nodded. “Sounds good to me. I know a place we can spend the night.”

“Not that drainage pipe.”

“No, not there. We should pick up some supplies on the way. There’s a twenty-four-hour Walgreens not far from here. We can get the supplies as well as some food. I’m starving.”

“I am, too,” I said. “What about this guy?”

“Fuck him. Who cares if he’s hungry?” Bonz’s head gave one of his involuntary little twitches.

“No, I mean, what are we going to do with him?”

“We’ll dump him right after you question him.”

“After
I
question him? I thought you were going to do that.”

“From what little I got from him before I stuck him in your trunk, I think you’re gonna be more interested in his answers than I will.”

“What do you mean?”

“Take off the tape and find out.”

I took my hands off the guy’s ears. “Can you sit up?”

He tried to wriggle to a sitting position but couldn’t do it without help. I reached back and tugged him up by his shirt until he sat upright.

“This might hurt a little,” I said.

He nodded. I dug my fingers under the tape at one side of his mouth, paused, then pulled quickly. The tape came off with, I’m afraid, a fair amount of skin. The guy yelped in pain.

“Shit, oh shit, that hurt!” The man’s raspy voice sounded like a cat’s scratching post. “Guys, how about some water? I’m dying of thirst.”

“We’ll see what we can do,” Bonz said, “after you tell my friend here everything he wants to know.”

“You gonna kill me?” he croaked.

“Depends on you, I guess,” Bonz said.

The guy looked like he wanted to believe us but wouldn’t commit to that yet. He nodded, though, then coughed dryly. “You’re gonna kill me.” He said it sadly, matter-of-factly. A statement, not a question.

“If we were going to kill you,” I said, “would I have bothered to cover your ears so you wouldn’t hear our plans?”

He thought about that for a moment, then looked hopeful but still not completely convinced.

“So, Charlie,” Bonz said, “he look familiar to you or not?”

I looked at the man’s face. He dropped his head a little. Bonz saw this in the rearview mirror. “Hey,” he said.

The man lifted his face again. I stared at it. I still thought he might have been the guy lying in the alley the night before, but there was more. As I looked at his face, strange images flashed through my mind. This guy’s face with a mustache, him in a baseball cap, with sunglasses on, with a beard…it didn’t make sense. But I
saw
those images of him in my mind. Why would that be?

“You do look familiar,” I said to him. “Why?”

The man was silent.

Bonz said, “Look, I’ve got a shitload lot of tension stored up. I could use an outlet. You should know I was fully prepared to blow that cop’s kneecap to tiny bits of bone. Imagine what I’d do to you. So you might want to rethink your silence. Besides, you already told me part of the story when I first stuck you in that trunk, you dumb bastard. You might as well catch Charlie up, and then fill us both in on the rest. Or would you rather I find a nice place to pull over and work out some of my tension?”

Bonz turned to look over his shoulder. What the guy saw would have scared anyone—Bonz, wild-haired, wild-eyed, and scar-faced. His hair flew in all directions, his thick beard was dirty and unkempt. He seemed to care about nothing, which was frightening, if you gave it any thought. Then, to top it off, a violent tic jolted his face. When it was gone, he said, “So, what’s it gonna be?”

“All right, all right,” the man said quickly. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, first, what’s your name?” I asked.

“Why?”

“I’m pulling over,” Bonz said as he jerked the wheel and hit the brakes. The truck swerved to the side of the road and screeched to a stop.

“No, Jesus, no! Okay, okay, my name’s Deacon. Randall Deacon.”

“People call you Randy?” Bonz asked.

Randy nodded.

“Okay, Randy. Charlie’s gonna take over again. You be a good boy.”

Bonz pulled away from the curb. Randy looked at me, his face pale. He seemed like he was indeed going to be a good boy.

“Look, Randy,” I said, “I don’t know exactly what to ask here, so why don’t you just tell me what you think I’d want to know, okay?”

He nodded. “I’ve been following you.”

“What? Following me? For how long?”

“A long time.”

“How long?” I repeated with more edge in my voice.

He swallowed nervously. “Off and on? Thirteen years.”

I couldn’t have heard him right. Maybe he said thirteen
days
. Or maybe even thirteen weeks. “Thirteen years?” I asked. He nodded.
Holy shit.
“Thirteen years?”

“Uh-huh. And I wasn’t alone.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was part of team. I’m a private investigator. We all are. There are four of us in our firm now. We’ve been following you in shifts.”

“Following me in shifts,” I repeated. “What about your other cases?”

“We don’t have many other cases. We used to, but when we took on this job we agreed to drop almost everything else. You were our full-time job for a while there.”

“For thirteen years?” I said.

“Most of it.”

Bonz said, “Charlie, I think you’ve established the thirteen years part. You might want to move on.”

Easy for him to say. Sure, I was fixating on that, but who wouldn’t in my position? Still, he had a point.

“Let me see if I’ve got this right. Your firm was devoted to nothing for the last thirteen years other than following my every move, following me around the clock?”

“Well, not quite.”

Randy explained that, at first, that was indeed the way it was. He and his partners would each take an eight-hour shift, with the fourth guy having the day off. They followed me during the day, going wherever I went, pretending to shop while I shopped, seeing the movies I saw.

“We even went on dates with you,” Randy said a little sheepishly.

“What?!”

“If you were in a restaurant, we sat in the bar, if they had one, or watched from the street, sometimes from a few tables over, even. And every night, we watched your apartment.”

I asked how they could have kept me under constant surveillance for all those years and Randy admitted that they had lost me now and then but, he added with a touch of pride, very rarely and never for long. I noted that I went on vacations and Randy noted that two of them went with me. Randy enjoyed Disney World but his partners’ favorite was Martha’s Vineyard.

I shook my head in disbelief. “You said it was round-the-clock surveillance ‘at first.’ I take it that changed at some point.”

With me providing the questions and Bonz providing the incentive to answer, Randy talked. Two years into the surveillance, Randy and his people were told they could cut back a little. So some nights they’d drop the night shift completely, sometimes they’d cut it short after it looked like I’d gone to bed for the night. The years went by and they were allowed to watch me less and less. They were even allowed to take on a few other cases. For the past few years the surveillance on me had been just the day shift and three nights a week, with the assigned night changing week to week. Randy noted, however, that from time to time they would get a call instructing them to step it up for a bit, but usually they’d be told they could drop back again after only a few days.

“Why would they sometimes want you to step it up?” I asked.

“I assume you did something that made them suspicious.”

“And tonight? Why were you watching my place tonight? Were you asked to step it up again?”

“No, tonight was just one of our regularly scheduled night shifts.”

Son of a bitch. As hard as this was to believe, it all made sense now. All the images I saw of this guy in my head, in various garbs, looking different each time. “You wear disguises,” I said.

“Sometimes. To mix it up a little. We all do.”

“Did,” Bonz said. “Past tense. You’ll be looking for new work now.”

“Shit, as long as I’m alive to do so, that’s okay. I had a lot of time to think in that trunk. I’d like to live.”

“We’ll see,” Bonz replied.

“I saw you in the alley outside my apartment the other night,” I said, “lying on the ground, like you were sleeping off a bender.”

“I was unconscious.”

“I did that,” Bonz said. It was always hard to tell, but he might have been smiling. “I saw him watching your building. Didn’t know who the fuck he was but I didn’t like him watching a building I was about to enter, so I took him out. And when I saw him there again tonight, I figured he knew something. I took him out again and asked a few questions as I dragged him back to your car. He told me a little of what he just told you. Also told me about some big ugly bastard slipping into your building right before I got there, someone he hadn’t seen in all his years watching the building. There was something about his description of the guy, I don’t know, I wasn’t sure, really, until I busted into your place and saw Grossi. Anyway, before I went up I dropped Randy here in your trunk.”

My mind was racing. This was too much. “It was you, you son of a bitch,” I said. “All this time.” The footsteps, the eyes, the feeling that I was being watched. All those years, it was Randy and his partners. I
was
being followed. I
was
being watched. I’m not paranoid and never was. It was all true. Damn, I wasted a lot of money on my therapy with Dr. Fielding.

“Randy,” I said, “this is an important question. I advise you to be honest. We’ll know if you’re lying and we won’t like it. Particularly this gentleman here.” I nodded at Bonz.

“Okay,” Randy said nervously.

“Who hired you to follow me?”

“Shit,” he said in a frightened voice. “I knew that was gonna be your question.”

“So answer it,” Bonz said.

Randy swallowed. Both Bonz and I were silent. Randy wasn’t. I heard a small whimper escape from him. He wasn’t a small guy. Probably stood over six feet tall and tipped the scales at maybe two hundred pounds. Plus, he just looked tough. But as tough as he seemed, he’d just whimpered. Bonz could have that effect. Or maybe it wasn’t Bonz this time.

“We’re waiting,” Bonz said.

Randy’s bottom lip trembled.

“Let me make this easy on you,” I said. “Was it someone working for Carmen Siracuse?”

Randy closed his eyes. When he opened them a moment later he looked a little relieved that we already knew. He nodded. “We didn’t have a choice, the guy said. Drop all our other clients, keep an eye on you, and be paid fairly for it, or refuse and bad things would happen to us, all of us, including our families. At first we turned him down. Then Kevin, one of the guys in our office—well, he used to work with us—he winds up with two nails in his skull. He’s blind now.”

I met Bonz’s eyes for a moment.

Randy turned to me with desperate eyes. “We didn’t have a choice.”

“What were your instructions?” Bonz asked.

Randy swallowed nervously again and told us. They were instructed to follow me everywhere and report on every place I went, everything I did, every person I met, and to take photographs when practicable. Every week someone came to their office and picked up an envelope containing the log and the photos. I asked whether they were told to watch for anything in particular, and Randy shook his head. He said it was obvious that Siracuse was looking for something specific, and they figured he was hoping I’d lead them somewhere or to someone in particular and that Siracuse or whoever was reading their weekly reports would know what they were looking for. Randy and his partners didn’t question their instructions, not after Kevin got nailed and went blind.

I kept up my cross-examination and learned that Randy had illegally planted bugs in my apartment, which really pissed me off. It wasn’t so much that he had broken several laws to so invade my privacy—I mean, not only is breaking and entering a crime, but in Massachusetts, the mere taping of communications between people without their knowledge is illegal—but I realized that Randy and his partners must have heard, on occasion, Jessica and me making love. And I wasn’t the least bit mollified when Randy said that it was okay because it sounded like I knew what I was doing in the sack. They also bugged my car and my office phone and apartment phone.