The Boyfriend (17 page)

He resumed his observation of the apartment building. By the end of the third day he had still not seen a woman who could be Kelly leave the building. He had not spotted anybody he thought was the Boyfriend either. He supposed it was possible the Boyfriend used a disguise of some kind, but that seemed unlikely.

Till decided he couldn’t wait any longer to talk to her. He couldn’t just watch the apartment until the Boyfriend killed her too. The curtains were open, so he aimed his spotting scope and dialed the phone number from her ad. The voice was soft and feminine, but utterly false. “This is Kelly.”

“Hi,” he said. “I saw your ad online.”

“Hi. What’s your name?”

“Jack,” he said. “I wondered if there was a way you and I could get together.”

“That’s what the ad is for, Jack. But you should know that I have to charge for my time. If anything happens between us, that would be up to us, since we’re both grown-ups. But I’m not offering or contracting to perform any illegal acts. You understand that, don’t you?”

“I understand.”

“An hour of my company is two-fifty, and four hundred for two hours.”

“Okay. Do you have any free time tonight?”

“You pick the time.”

“How about eight o’clock?”

“Eight is fine. My address is 909 Main Street in Woburn, apartment five.”

He repeated the address. “You’re independent, right? There won’t be some big guy standing by the door?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I work alone.” Her throat held a laugh captive so it couldn’t escape. “If you want a big guy too, you’ll have to be the one to call him.”

“See you at eight.”

“I’ll be waiting,” she said.

After she hung up, she called Joey’s cell phone.

“Hello,” he said.

“Hi, baby,” she said. “Where are you?”

“I’m working in the office I rented, trying to get it ready. What’s up?”

“I’m working tonight. I just made a date for eight o’clock.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t be in your way. I’ll be here in the city until nine or so anyway. Should I bring some take-out dinner home with me around ten?”

“Could you? That’d be great.”

“What would you like?”

“Surprise me.”

“You got it.”

“Love you.”

“Love you.” Joey hung up, set his phone alarm for nine to remind him, and put the phone back into his pocket. Then he looked out the window into the distance.

Joey Moreland was working on the Luis Salazar problem. When he had first seen the name on the list it had meant nothing to him. There had been all sorts of names on the Broker’s lists from the beginning—Italian, English, Polish, German, Spanish. The Broker’s contacts—according to Dick Holcomb a collection of lawyers, fences, fixers, and go-betweens—were in all kinds of businesses and neighborhoods in lots of cities, and he would never know who they were. Moreland had the impression that some of them were people who had done an occasional hit themselves. Some of them were probably still willing to take on a really easy job, but they passed the hard ones to the Broker.

It wasn’t until after he had taken the job that he learned Salazar was worse than a hard one. He was a foreign government official. Moreland had to assume that Salazar would arrive with at least a few Mexican bodyguards. They would be hard little guys with black, suspicious eyes scanning the crowd for threats. There would also be some kind of American law enforcement, spread wider than the Mexicans because only the Americans would be expected to deal with the American public. The officers that Moreland would need to fear most were the ones who would be stationed far from Luis Salazar, probably up high to control the area with sniper rifles and radios.

Moreland would have liked to do this job a different way. But there was only one way he could think of, and that was to reach out from so far away that the cops—even if they spotted him—would need several minutes to reach him. And if they fired at him, their rounds would fall hundreds of feet short. If he felt inclined to, he could even disable any police cars headed his way. The .50-caliber projectiles were made to pierce lightly armored vehicles in battle.

Moreland had only a couple of days left before Luis Salazar would appear in Boston. There had been no public announcement that he was coming. Moreland hadn’t been surprised by that. Salazar was coming to speak to local officials in Boston, not with the general public, and he was a prosecutor who had made his reputation cracking down on Mexican drug cartels. But the published schedule of the mayor and the city council agenda were curiously light beginning at three p.m. on Thursday. The mayor’s office said he was taking no appointments, and the city council planned to be in session, but would consider nothing new.

Joey had spent this afternoon in the office. He had leased the space under the name ProPlay Sports after he had arrived in town. He had spoken to the rental agent on the phone, and signed the lease by mail. Today he had brought his Barrett long-range .50-caliber rifle and ammunition. They were in the hard-sided case, which he had put inside a long, narrow cardboard carton and loaded onto a two-wheel dolly. They had looked to any observer like furnishings for the office.

He had used the desk he’d rented to stand on and propped the gun case and ammunition above the false ceiling on the intersection of a set of pipes that held the fire sprinkler system. But since Kelly’s call, he knew he had some extra time to spare. He locked the door to his office, took down the gun, and removed it from its case. He put it on the desk and aimed it through the big window a few feet away.

About a mile away he could see the entrance to City Hall at City Hall Plaza, a vast expanse of redbricks at Congress and North streets. He studied the building through the rifle scope. City Hall didn’t look like any of the graceful older buildings in the city. It looked squat and formidable, like an alien fortress. He studied the front of the building carefully and adjusted the scope as he looked. The only place he could be sure that Luis Salazar would be visible during his visit was the one he was looking at—the entrance to City Hall at Congress and North.

When Moreland had gone to City Hall to look at the place and walk on the bricks he had needed to park in a lot four blocks away. There was no way to place a getaway car, nothing to hide behind to conceal his presence, no way to elude the police who would be on the plaza and around the building. He knew that the way he planned to do this was the only way that gave him a reasonable chance of survival. He was sure that if a government official from Mexico was shot in Boston, the police would automatically begin looking for a Hispanic with a gun. Nobody in Boston even knew who Salazar was, and certainly no one had anything against him. He was an expert on the methods of the drug cartels, coming to speak with other authorities. If anybody killed him, the police would assume it was another Mexican.

Joey had repeatedly tested his route from this office to the apartment building in Woburn. On surface streets it was about ten miles, and he’d had little trouble getting there in thirty minutes. If he wished, he could take either I-93 or I-95, and reach Woburn in fifteen minutes.

Moreland was going to do this job in a conservative suit and a tie. When it was done he would put the rifle in its case, put the case inside the cardboard carton, and wheel it to his car on the dolly. As a precaution, he would have his fake police badge with him and a Beretta 92F in a shoulder holster like a cop. In the confusion and chaos after the shooting, witnesses might report anything, but it was unlikely they’d complain because they’d seen a cop.

When Till arrived at the front door of the apartment building in Woburn he had already packed everything into his car. He had the two Ruger pistols—one in his pocket and one in the car under the driver’s seat. He had parked a block away on Main Street near the place where I-93 and I-95 met. This time what he was after was the girl, Kelly. Once she was safe, he would turn his attention to the Boyfriend.

He pushed the button beside the door that said “K. Allen, Apt. 5,” heard the buzz, opened the door, and entered the lobby. He climbed the stairs and found himself in another hallway like the one downstairs; it had light blue walls and carpet, and doors painted dark blue. The first door on the left was apartment 5. He raised his left hand to knock, but the door opened partway.

He recognized her face in the opening. She smiled at him and said quietly, “Jack?”

He nodded, and she opened the door farther, staying behind it, and let him step in. She closed the door and leaned her back on it. She was wearing an outfit that was very similar to the one she had worn for the photographs in her ad—black thigh-high stockings, a garter belt, and a bustier that was cinched to accentuate her thin waist and the white skin of her hips.

“You’re more beautiful than your pictures. I didn’t think that could happen.”

“Thanks. Do you have something for me?”

He reached into his inner coat pocket and produced an envelope. He watched her take it. She reached in, took the money between her thumb and forefinger, fanned it so she could see the denominations of the bills, then placed it in a desk that had a lock, and palmed the key.

She led him down a short hallway to a bedroom. He could see another closed door farther down, which he decided must be her actual bedroom, where she slept with the Boyfriend. He pointed at it. “Are we alone, or is your boyfriend or somebody in there?”

She smiled and made a small production of stepping to the second door and opening it so he could see. The room was very sedate and conventional, like the room of an older woman—a dark gray bedspread, a pile of about six pillows with very clean white pillowcases. There was a woman’s dresser with a big mirror, and a full-length mirror on the closet door. He saw nothing to indicate the presence of the Boyfriend, so he assumed his clothes were in the closed closet. “See? I told you before, if you’re looking for a big guy, you’ll have to bring him. I have a boyfriend, but you won’t see him.”

It occurred to Till that all the mirrors must have been comforting to a girl who looked the way she did. No matter what else happened the mirrors never had any bad news for her. She shut the door firmly. They moved into the other bedroom, which was more like what he had expected. On a platform was a king-size bed, with bright blue satin sheets and matching satin pillowcases. There were two nightstands. One held a blue china bowl filled with condoms. Behind it was a row of plastic bottles and tubes.

Kelly put her arms around him and said, “Just relax and give me a nice hug.”

He complied, then sat on the bed. As he expected, she sat next to him. He said, “Can we just talk for a few minutes?”

“Sure,” she said. “Talking about boyfriends has got to be a turnoff, but I’ll bet you knew you’re not my first date, right? When we get to know each other we’ll get along fine.”

“I paid to come and see you because I needed to talk to you, and to show you some things.”

She was unperturbed, but confused. “Is this something special you like to do?”

He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, where he’d had the money. “No.” He removed a sheaf of folded printouts, unfolded one, and handed it to her. “This is Catherine Hamilton, in Los Angeles.”

“Wow. She looks a lot like me, doesn’t she? Do you always look for the same type of girl?”

“No. Your boyfriend does.”

She looked irritated. “What?”

“He always seems to find a girl who has strawberry blond hair, very light skin, and blue or green eyes, between five feet seven and five ten, and thin.”

“Why would you come here and tell me this?” she said angrily. “What are you?”

He held the second picture of Catherine Hamilton he had printed. “See the necklace? The anklet?”

She snatched the print and glared at it, then let it drop onto the bed.

He handed her the next picture—another tall, thin girl with strawberry blond hair. “This is Rebecca Coleman.” She tossed that one aside, too, but he knew she had looked at it. He handed her another. While she held the picture she couldn’t help seeing the next one he held ready. She snatched it from his hand and threw it onto the bed with the others. He said, “All of these girls were working as escorts, and three were wearing that necklace.”

She stood up. “You’re a creep. Get out.”

“I’m here because they’re all dead.”

“I told you to get out.”

“Your boyfriend charmed them into letting him live with them, and when he was ready to move on, he killed them.”

She raised her voice. “I asked you nicely, and now I’m going to scream for the police.”

“Please,” he said. “Please listen to me. I’m trying to save your life. The way he’ll do it is wait until you’re looking the other way and put a gun to the back of your head, so you won’t see it coming. Then he’ll take everything you have—money, jewelry—and go to the next city.”

“He doesn’t need my money,” she said. “He has plenty of his own.”

“No, he doesn’t need your money. He’s got the money he stole from all of these girls after he killed them. But he’ll take yours too, because that makes it look like a john robbed you and killed you. Honestly, I don’t get anything for warning you. I just can’t stand by and wait for him to get you too.”

She stood and scowled at him with her arms folded in front of her. “You could be trying to get me to leave with you so you can kill me yourself.”

“I could be, but I’m not. I trailed your boyfriend from Los Angeles to Phoenix, and both those girls are dead. I trailed him to you, and this is your chance to save yourself. Right now, tonight, while he’s off somewhere, is the only chance you may get.”

She had begun to look uncertain. “How can I believe you?”

“Pick up the phone, get an operator, and ask to be connected with police headquarters in Los Angeles, then ask for Sergeant McCann in Vice. Tell him what I said and ask if it’s true. If you have the operator do it, I can’t be faking it.”

She stared at him for a second, then seemed to realize he couldn’t be lying. “Oh my God. What am I supposed to do?”

“Grab whatever is valuable to you, get in your own car, drive away, and don’t come back.”