Styling.
I unzipped my fly as I stumbled across Washington Street and poured the rest of my morning coffee down my chest. People saw me coming and sidestepped my lumbering steps and swinging arms, and I mumbled a whole stream of words I’d never learned from my mom and pushed through the gilt-edged front doors of Devonshire Place.
Boy, did the security guard look psyched to see me.
So did the three people who exited the elevator and cut a wide swath around me on the marble floor. I leered at the two women in the trio, smiled at the cut of their legs dropping from the hems of their Anne Klein suits.
“Join me for a pizza?” I asked.
The businessman steered the women even farther away as the security guard said, “Hey! Hey, you!”
I turned toward him as he came out from behind his gleaming black horseshoe desk. He was young and lean, and he had a finger rudely pointed in my direction.
The businessman pushed the women out of the building and pulled a cell phone from his inside pocket, extended the antenna by gripping it between his teeth, but kept walking up Washington.
“Come on,” the security guard said. “Turn around and go out the way you came in. Right now. Come on.”
I swayed in front of him and licked my beard, came back with eggshell. I left my mouth open as I chewed on it and it crackled.
The security guard set his feet on the marble and placed a hand on his nightstick. “You,” he said, like he was talking to a dog. “Go.”
“Uh-ah,” I mumbled, and swayed some more.
The elevator bank dinged as another car reached the lobby.
The security guard reached for my elbow, but I pivoted and his fingers snapped at air.
I reached into my pocket. “Got something to show you.”
The security guard pulled his nightstick from its holster. “Hey! Keep your hands where I can see—”
“Oh, my God,” someone said as the crowd exited the elevator and I pulled a banana from my trench coat, pointed it at the rent-a-cop.
“Jesus Christ, he’s got a banana!” The voice came from behind me. Angie.
Always the improviser. Couldn’t stick to the script.
The crowd from the elevator was trying to cross the lobby, avoid eye contact with me, and still see enough of the incident to have the day’s best story at the watercooler.
“Sir,” the security guard said, trying to sound authoritative and yet polite, now that several tenants bore witness, “put the banana down.”
I pointed the banana at him. “Got this from my cousin. He’s an orangutan.”
“Shouldn’t someone call the police?” a woman asked.
“Ma’am,” the security guard said, a bit desperately, “I have this under control.”
I tossed the banana at him. He dropped his nightstick and jumped back as if he’d been shot.
Someone in the crowd yelped, and several people jogged for the doors.
At the elevator bank, Angie caught my eye and pointed at my hair. “Very hot,” she mouthed, and then she slipped into the elevator and the doors closed.
The security guard picked up his nightstick and dropped the banana. He looked ready to rush me. I didn’t know how many people remained behind me—maybe three—but at least one of them could be thinking about heroically rushing the vagrant as well.
I turned so that my back was to the horseshoe desk and elevators. Only two men, one woman, and the security guard remained. And both men were inching toward the doors. The woman seemed fascinated, however. Her mouth was open, and one hand was pressed against the base of her throat.
“Whatever happened to Men at Work?” I asked her.
“What?” The security guard took another step toward me.
“The Australian band.” I turned my head, locked the security guard in a kind, curious stare. “Very big in the early eighties. Huge. Do you know what happened to them?”
“What? No.”
I cocked my head as I stared at him, scratched my temple. For a long moment, no one in the lobby moved or even breathed it seemed.
“Oh,” I said eventually. I shrugged. “My mistake. Keep the banana.”
I stepped over it on my way out, and the two men flattened against the wall.
I winked at one of them. “First-rate security guard you got. Without him, I’da busted up the place.” I pushed open the doors onto Washington Street.
I was about to give a covert thumbs-up to Poole, who sat in the Taurus on the corner of School and Washington, when the heels of two palms hit my shoulder and chucked me into the side of the building.
“Out of my way, you fucking derelict.”
I turned my head in time to see Chris Mullen walk back through the revolving doors, gesture toward the frozen security guard in my direction, and keep walking toward the elevator bank.
I broke into the stream of pedestrians filling the street, cleared the walkie-talkie from my pocket, and turned it on.
“Poole, Mullen’s back.”
“Affirmative, Mr. Kenzie. Broussard’s contacting Ms. Gennaro as we speak. Turn around, go to your car. Do not blow our covers.” I could see his lips move behind his windshield, and then he dropped his walkie-talkie back onto his seat and glared at me.
I turned in the crowd.
A woman with coke-bottle glasses and hair tied back so tightly off her forehead her face looked like a bug’s stared up at me.
“Are you some kind of cop?”
I raised a finger to my lips. “Sssh.” I put the walkie-talkie back in my trench coat, left her standing there, mouth open, and walked back to my car.
As I opened the trunk, I saw Broussard leaning against the window of Eddie Bauer. He held his hand up by his ear and spoke into his wrist.
I tuned to his channel as I leaned under the open trunk.
“…say again, Miss Gennaro, subject en route. Abort immediately.”
I brushed all the eggshell from my beard and put a baseball cap over my head.
“Say again,” Broussard whispered. “Abort. Out.”
I tossed the trench coat in the trunk, removed my black leather jacket, placed the walkie-talkie in the pocket, and closed the jacket over my soiled T-shirt. I closed the trunk and cut back through the crowds to Eddie Bauer, stared through the window at the mannequins.
“She respond?”
“No,” Broussard said.
“Was her walkie-talkie working?”
“Couldn’t tell. We have to assume she heard me and clicked off before Mullen could hear it.”
“We go up,” I said.
“You take a move toward that building, I’ll blow your leg off at the knee.”
“She’s exposed up there. If her walkie-talkie was on the fritz and she didn’t hear your—”
“I won’t allow you to queer this surveillance just because you’re sleeping with her.” He came off the window and passed me in a loose, loping, post-jog stride. “She’s a professional. Why don’t you start acting like one?”
He walked up the street and I looked at my watch: 9:15 A.M.
Mullen had been inside four minutes. Why’d he turn around in the first place? Had Broussard blown the tail?
No. Broussard was too good. I’d only seen him because I knew to look for him, and even then he blended into crowds so well my eyes had skipped over him once before I’d identified him.
I looked at my watch again: 9:16.
If Angie had gotten Broussard’s message as soon as he’d realized Mullen was headed back to Devonshire Place, she would have been in the elevators, or possibly have gotten as far as the outside of Mullen’s door. She would have turned and headed right for the stairwell. And she’d be down by now.
9:17.
I watched the entrance to Devonshire Place. A pair of young stockbrokers stepped out in shiny Hugo Boss suits, Gucci shoes, and Geoffrey Beene ties, hair so thick with gel it would take a wood-chipper to muss it. They stepped aside for a slim woman in a dark-blue power suit and a matching
pair of wafer-thin Revos over her eyes, checked out her ass as she stepped into a taxi.
9:18.
The only way Angie would still be up there was if she’d been forced to hide in Mullen’s apartment or if he’d caught her, either inside or at his door.
9:19.
She’d never have been dumb enough to hop back in the elevators if she had, in fact, gotten Broussard’s message. Stand there and see the car door open to Chris Mullen on the other side…
Hey, Ange, long time no see.
You too, Chris.
What brings you by my building?
Visiting a friend.
Yeah? Aren’t you working that missing girl case?
Why do you have a gun pointed at me, Chris?
9:20.
I glanced across Washington to the corner of School Street.
Poole met my eyes, shook his head very deliberately.
Maybe she had reached the lobby but was being harassed by the security guard.
Miss, hold on. I don’t remember seeing you in here before.
I’m new.
I don’t think so. His hand goes to the phone, dials 911….
But she’d be out the door by then.
9:22.
I took a step toward the building. Took another one. Then stopped.
If nothing had gone wrong, if Angie had simply turned off her walkie-talkie so the squawk wouldn’t alert anyone to her presence and was, as I stood there, standing on the other side of a fifteenth-floor exit door, watching Mullen’s apartment door through a small square of glass, and I stepped in front of the entrance just as Mullen walked out, recognized me…
I leaned back against the wall.
9:24.
Fourteen minutes since Mullen had shoved me into the wall and entered the building.
The walkie-talkie in my jacket purred against my chest. I pulled it out and there was a quick low bleat, followed by: “He’s coming back down.”
Angie’s voice.
“Where are you?”
“Thank God for fifty-inch TVs, is all I can say.”
“You’re inside?” Broussard said.
“’Course. Nice place, but easy locks, man, I swear.”
“What brought him back?”
“His suit. It’s a long story. Tell you later. He should be reaching the street any second.”
Mullen exited the building wearing a blue suit instead of the black one he’d worn on the way in. His tie was different, too. I was staring at the knot when the head above it swung my way and I glanced down at my shoes without moving my head. Quick movements are the first thing your paranoid drug dealer types notice in a crowd, so I wasn’t about to turn away.
I counted down from ten very slowly, thumbed down the volume on the walkie-talkie in my pocket, and barely heard Broussard’s voice. “He’s moving again. I got him.”
I looked up as Mullen’s shoulders moved in front of a young girl in a bright yellow jacket, and I turned my head slightly and picked up Broussard sliding through the crowd where Court became State Street as Mullen turned right before the Old State House and cut through the alley again.
I turned back to the window of Eddie Bauer, met my reflection.
“Whew,” I said.
15
An hour later, Angie opened the passenger door of the Crown Victoria and said, “Wired for sound, man. Wired for sound.”
I’d moved the car to the fourth story of the Pi Alley garage and pointed it toward Devonshire Place.
“You bugged every room?”
She lit a cigarette. “The phones, too.”
I looked at my watch. She’d been in there an hour flat. “What’re you, CIA?”
She smiled around her cigarette. “I tell you, I might have to kill you later, babe.”
“So what was up with the suit?”
She had a far-off look in her eyes as she stared through the windshield at the facade of Devonshire Place. Then she shook her head slightly.
“The suits. Right. He talks to himself.”
“Mullen?”
She nodded. “In the third person.”
“Must have picked it up from Cheese.”
“He comes in the door going, ‘Great fucking choice, Mullen. A black suit on a Friday. You out of your fucking mind?’ Like that.”
“I’d like Inane Superstitions for three hundred, Alex.”
She chuckled. “Exactly. So then he goes in his bedroom and he’s thrashing around in there, ripping his suit off, slamming hangers together in the closet, ya ya ya. Anyway, it takes him a few minutes, and then he selects a new suit and he puts it on, and I’m thinking, Good, he’s outa here, because I’m getting real cramped behind that TV, piles of cables back there like snakes….”
“And?”
Angie can get lost in moments like these, so sometimes a gentle prodding helps.
She scowled at me. “Mister Cut-to-the-Chase, over here. So…then suddenly I hear him talking again. He’s going, ‘Fuckhead. Hey, fuckhead! Yeah, you!”
“What?” I leaned forward.
“Interested again, are we?” She winked. “Yeah, so I think he’s spotted me. I think I’m bagged. Cooked. Right?” Her large brown eyes had grown huge.
“Right.”
She took a drag off her cigarette. “Nah. Talking to himself again.”
“He calls himself ‘fuckhead’?”
“When the mood strikes him, apparently. ‘Hey, fuckhead, you’re going to wear a yellow tie with this suit? That’s good. Real good, fuck face.”
“Fuck face.”
“I swear to God. A bit limited on the vocabulary, I’d say. So then there’s more thrashing around as he gets another tie, puts it on, mumbles under his breath the whole way. And I’m thinking, He’ll get the tie right, be halfway out the door, and decide the shirt’s wrong. I’ll be so cramped, I’ll need traction to get out from behind his TV.”
“And?”
“He left. I called you guys.” She flicked her cigarette out the window. “End of story.”
“Were you in the apartment when Broussard walkie-talkied he was on his way back?”
She shook her head. “At Mullen’s door with picks in hand.”
“You kidding me?”
“What?”
“You broke in after you knew he was coming back?”
She shrugged. “Something came over me.”
“You’re nuts.”
She gave me a throaty chuckle. “Nuts enough to keep you interested, Slick. That’s all I need.”
I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to kiss her or kill her.
The walkie-talkie squawked on the seat between us, and Broussard’s voice popped through the speaker. “Poole, you got him?”
“Affirm. Taxi moving south on Purchase, heading for the expressway.”
“Kenzie.”
“Yeah?”
“Miss Gennaro with you?”
“Affirm,” I said in my deepest voice. Angie punched my arm.
“Stand by. Let’s see where he’s going. I’m going to start walking back.”
We listened to a minute or so of dead air before Poole came back on. “He’s on the expressway and heading south. Ms. Gennaro?”
“Yeah, Poole.”
“Are all our friends in place?”
“Every last one.”
“Turn on your receivers and leave your position. Pick up Broussard and head south.”
“You got it. Detective Broussard?”
“I’m heading west on Broad Street.”
I put the car in reverse.
“We’ll meet you at the corner of Broad and Batterymarch.”
“Copy that.”
As I left the garage, Angie turned on the boxy portable receiver in the backseat and adjusted the volume until we heard the soft hiss of Mullen’s empty apartment. I cut through the parking ramp under Devonshire Place, took a left on Water, rolled through Post Office and Liberty squares, and found Broussard leaning against a street lamp in fro
nt of a deli.
He hopped in the car as Poole’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Getting off the expressway in Dorchester by the South Bay Shopping Center.”
“Back to the old neighborhood,” Broussard said. “You Dorchester boys just can’t stay away.”
“It’s like a magnet,” I assured him.
“Scratch that,” Poole said. “He’s taking a left on Boston Street, heading toward Southie.”
I said, “Not a very strong magnet, however.”
Ten minutes later we passed Poole’s empty Taurus on Gavin Street in the heart of Old Colony Project in South Boston and parked half a block up. Poole’s last transmission had told us he was following Mullen into Old Colony on foot. Until he contacted us again, there wasn’t much to do but sit and wait and look at the project.
Not a bad-looking sight, actually. The streets are clean and tree-lined and curve gracefully through red-brick buildings with freshly painted white trim. Small hedges and squares of grass lie under most first-floor windows. The fence encircling the garden is upright, rooted, and free of rust. As far as projects go, Old Colony is one of the most aesthetically pleasing you’re apt to find in this country.
It has a bit of a heroin problem, though. And a teen suicide problem, which probably stems from the heroin. And the heroin probably stems from the fact that even if you do grow up in the prettiest project in the world, it’s still a project, and you’re still growing up there, and heroin ain’t much but it beats staring at the same walls and the same bricks and the same fences your whole life.
“I grew up here,” Broussard said, from the backseat. He peered out the window, as if expecting it to shrink or grow in front of him.
“With your name?” Angie said. “You can’t be serious.”
He smiled and gave her a small shrug. “Father was a merchant marine from New Orleans. Or ‘Nawlins,’ as he called it. He got in some trouble down there, ended up working the docks, in Charlestown and then Southie.” He cocked his head toward the brick buildings. “We settled here. Every third kid was named Frankie O’Brien and the rest were Sullivans and Sheas and Carrolls and Connellys. And if their first name wasn’t Frank, it was Mike or Sean or Pat.” He raised his eyebrows at me.