“Thanks, sweetie.” Poole turned to Doyle. “We found two hundred thousand dollars in the backyard of David Martin and Kimmie Niehaus.”
“The bloaters in C-Town,” Doyle said.
“Yes, sir.”
“And this two hundred thousand—it’s been tagged as evidence, of course.”
Poole swung his hand in Broussard’s direction.
Broussard looked at his shoes. “Not exactly, sir.”
“Really.” Doyle picked up a pencil, jotted something in the notepad by his elbow. “And after I call Internal Affairs and you’re both summarily fired by this department, which security firm do you think you’ll work for?”
“Well, you see—”
“Or will it be a bar?” Doyle smiled broadly. “Civilians love that—knowing their bartender’s a former cop. Get to hear all those war stories.”
“Lieutenant,” Poole said, “with all due respect, we’d love to keep our jobs.”
“I’m sure you would.” Doyle wrote some more on the notepad. “Should have thought of that before you misappropriated evidence in a murder investigation. That’s a felony, gentlemen.” He picked up the phone, punched two numbers, waited. “Michael, get me the names of the investigating officers on the David Martin/Kimmie Niehaus homicides. I’ll hold.” He tucked the phone against his shoulder, tapped the pencil eraser against the desktop, and whistled lightly through his teeth. A small, tinny voice emanated from the receiver, and he leaned into the phone again. “Yeah. Got it.” He scribbled on the notepad and hung up. “Detectives Daniel Guden and Mark Leonard. Know ’em?”
“Vaguely,” Broussard said.
“I can assume then that you failed to let them know what you found in the backyard of their victims.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir, you let them know? Or yes, sir, you failed to let them know?’
“The latter,” Poole said.
Doyle placed his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair again. “Run it down for me now, gentlemen. If it doesn’t smell as bad as it does at the moment, maybe—and I mean only maybe—you’ll have jobs next week. But I promise you this: They won’t be with CAC. I want fucking cowboys, I’ll watch Rio Bravo.”
Poole told him everything, from the time Angie and I had spotted Chris Mullen on the newscast videos until now. The only thing he left out was the ransom note they’d found in Kimmie’s underwear, and once I replayed the tape of Lionel’s conversation with the woman in my head, I realized that without the note there was no hard evidence that Lionel’s caller was demanding money for a child. No evidence of kidnapping: no Feds.
“Where’s the money?” Doyle asked, when Poole finished.
“I have it,” I said.
“You do, do you?” he said, without glancing in my direction. “This is very good, Sergeant Poole. Two hundred thousand dollars in stolen money—and stolen evidence, I might add—in the hands of a private citizen whose name has been brought up over the years in connection with three unsolved homicides and—some say—the disappearance of Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy.”
“Not me,” I said. “Must be confusing me with that other Patrick Kenzie guy.”
Angie kicked my ankle.
“Pat,” Doyle said, and leaned forward in his chair, looked at me.
“Patrick,” I said.
“’Scuse me,” Doyle said. “Patrick, I have you dead to rights on receiving stolen property, obstruction of justice, interfering in a capitol felony investigation, and tampering with evidence in the same. Care to fuck with me some more and see what I can dig up if I really don’t like you?”
I shifted in my chair.
“What’s that?” Doyle said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“No,” I said.
He put his hand behind his ear. “Again?”
“No,” I said. “Sir.”
He smiled, slapped the desk with his fingers. “Very good, son. Speak when spoken to. Otherwise, keep it zipped.” He nodded at Angie. “Like your partner there. Always heard you were the brains of the operation, ma’am. Seems to be holding true here.” He swiveled back toward Poole and Broussard. “So you two geniuses decided to play at Cheese Olamon’s level and swap the money for the kid.”
“Pretty much, sir.”
“And the reason I shouldn’t turn this over to the Feds is?” He held out his hands.
“Because there’s been no official ransom demand,” Broussard said.
Doyle glanced down at the tape recorder. “What did we just listen to, then?”
“Well, sir.” Poole leaned across the desk, pointed at the tape recorder. “If you listen to it again you’ll hear a woman suggesting a trade of ‘something’ found in Charlestown for ‘something’ found in Dorchester. That woman could be discussing the trade of stamps for baseball cards.”
“The fact that she called the mother of a missing child, that wouldn’t intrigue our federal law enforcement brothers?”
“Well, technically,” Broussard said, “she called the brother of the missing child’s mother.”
“And said, ‘Tell your sister,’” Doyle said.
“Yes, true, but still, sir, no hard evidence that we’re talking about a kidnapping. And you know the Feds, they fucked up Ruby Ridge, Waco, cut insane deals with the Boston mob, they—”
Doyle held up a hand. “We’re all aware of recent Bureau transgressions, Detective Broussard.” He looked down at the tape recorder, then at the notes he’d jotted by his elbow. “The Granite Rail Quarry is not our jurisdiction. It’s shared between the State Police and the Quincy P.D. So…” He clapped his hands together. “Okay.”
“Okay?” Broussard said.
“Okay means no explicit mention of the McCready kid means we propose a joint effort with the Staties and the Quincy blues. Leave the Feds at home. The caller said no cops besides you two on the Granite Rail Quarry trail. Fine. But we’re going to lock down those hills, gentlemen. We’re going to tie a rope around the Quincy quarries, and as soon as that kid’s out of harm’s way, we’re going to throw a lead blanket over Mullen, Gutierrez, and whoever else thinks he’s going to have a two-hundred-grand payday.” He slapped his fingers on the desktop again. “Sound good?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Yes, sir.”
He gave them that broad, icy smile of his. “And once that’s done, I’m transferring you humps out of my division and out of my precinct. Anything goes wrong at that quarry tomorrow night? I’m transferring you to the Bomb Squad. You get to mark time till your retirements climbing under cars and hoping they don’t go boom. Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“No, sir.”
A swivel back our way. “Mr. Kenzie and Miss Gennaro, you are civilians. I don’t like your being in this office, never mind going up that hill tomorrow night, but I don’t have much choice. So here’s the deal: You will not engage the suspects in any exchange of gunfire. You will not speak with the suspects. Should there be a confrontation, you will drop to your knees and cover your heads. When this is over, you will not discuss any aspects of the operation with the press. And you will not write books about the affair. Clear?”
I nodded.
Angie nodded.
“If you fail me on any of these points, I’ll have your licenses and gun permits revoked, and I’ll put the Cold Case squad on the Marion Socia homicide, call my friends in the press, and have them do a retrospective on the strange disappearance of Jack Rouse and Kevin Hurlihy. Understood?”
We nodded.
“Give me a ‘Yes, Lieutenant Doyle.’”
“Yes, Lieutenant Doyle,” Angie murmured.
“Yes, Lieutenant Doyle,” I said.
“Excellent.” Doyle leaned back in his chair and held his arms out wide to the four of us. “Now get the fuck out of my sight.”
“Swell guy,” Angie said, when we reached the street.
“He’s just an old softie,” Poole said.
“Really?”
Poole looked at me like I was sniffing glue and shook his head very slowly.
“Oh,” I said.
“The money is safe, isn’t it, Mr. Kenzie?”
I nodded. “You want it now?”
Poole and Broussard looked at each other, then shrugged.
“No point,” Broussard said. “There’ll be a war room meeting sometime tomorrow between us and the Staties and the Quincy boys. Bring it then.”
“Who knows?” Poole said. “Maybe, with all the manpower we have staking out Olamon’s people, we’ll catch one of them leaving the house for the quarries tomorrow with the child in tow. We’ll drop ’em then and this whole thing’ll be over.”
“Sure, Poole,” Angie said. “Sure. It’ll be that easy.”
Poole sighed and rocked back on his heels.
“Man,” Broussard said, “I don’t want to work for no Bomb Squad.”
Poole chuckled. “This,” he said, “is the Bomb Squad, boy.”
We sat on the steps of Beatrice and Lionel’s front porch and gave them as much of an update and recent case history as we could, fudging any details that could possibly put them under federal indictment if this blew up in our faces at a later date.
“So,” Beatrice said when we finished, “this all happened because Helene pulled one of her fucked-up schemes and ripped off the wrong guy.”
I nodded.
Lionel picked at a large callus on the side of his thumb, blew air out of his mouth in a steady rush. “She’s my sister,” he said eventually, “but this—this is…”
“Unforgivable,” Beatrice said.
He looked back at her, then turned back to me as if he’d had tonic water splashed in his face. “Yeah. Unforgivable.”
Angie came over to the railing and I stood up, felt her warm hand slide into mine.
“If it’s any consolation,” she said, “I doubt anyone could have seen this coming.”
Beatrice crossed the porch and sat on the steps beside her husband. She took both his large hands in hers and they looked far off down the street for a minute or so, their faces drawn and empty and angry and resigned all at the same time.
“I just don’t understand,” Beatrice said. “I just don’t understand,” she whispered.
“Will they kill her?” Lionel looked over his shoulder at us.
“No,” I said. “There’s no sense in that.”
Angie squeezed my hand to hold me up against the weight of the lie.
Back at the apartment, I took the first shower to wash off four days of sitting in cars and following scumbags around town, and Angie took the second.
When she came out, she stood in the living room doorway, the white towel wrapped tightly around her honey skin, and ran a brush back through her hair, watching me as I sat in the armchair and jotted notes of our meeting with Lieutenant Doyle.
I looked up, met her eyes.
They are amazing eyes, the color of caramel and very large. I sometimes think they could drink me if they wanted to. Which would be fine, believe me. Perfectly fine.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
“We’ve been locked in a car for three and a half days. What was to miss?”
She tilted her head slightly, held my gaze until I got it.
“Oh,” I said. “You mean you’ve missed me.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded. “How much?”
She dropped the towel.
“That much,” I said and something caught in my throat. “My, my.”
After making love, I live for a time in a world of echoes and snapshot memories. I lie in the damp dark with Angie’s heart beating atop my own, her spine pressed against my fingertips or her hip warming my palm, and I can hear the echo of her soft groans, a sudden gasp, the low, throaty chuckle she emits after we’re spent and she tosses her head back for a moment and her dark hair falls from her face and down her back. With my eyes closed, I see in close-up the bite of her upper teeth on her lower lip, the cut of her calf on the white mattress, the press of a shoulder blade against her flesh, the wisps of dream and appetite that suddenly cloud and moisten her eyes, the points of her dark pink nails sinking into the skin above my abdomen.
After making love with Angie, I’m no good for anything for half an hour or so. Most times, I need someone to draw me a diagram just to dial a phone. All but the most basic motor skills are largely beyond me. Intelligent conversation is out of the question. I just float in echoes and snapshots.
“Hey.” She drummed her fingers on my chest, tightened her thigh against the inside of my own.
“Yeah?”
“You ever think—”
“Not at the moment.”
She laughed, hooked a foot around my ankle, and rose up my chest a bit, ran a tongue along my throat. “Seriously, just for a sec.”
“Shoot,” I managed.
“You ever think, I mean, when you’re inside me, that what we’re doing could, if we let it, produce life?”
I tilted my head and opened my eyes, looked into hers. She stared back calmly. A smudge of mascara under her left eye looked like a bruise in the soft dark of our bedroom.
And it was our bedroom now, wasn’t it? She still owned the house she’d grown up in on Howes Street, still kept most of her furniture there, but she hadn’t spent a night there in almost two years.
Our bedroom. Our bed. Our sheets tangled around these two bodies lying together, heartbeats drumming, flesh pressed together so tightly it would be hard for an observer to decide where one of us ended and the other began. Hard for me sometimes, too.
“A child,” I said.
She nodded.
“Bring a child,” I said slowly, “into this world. With our jobs.”
Another nod, and this time her eyes glistened.
“You want that?”
“I didn’t say that,” she whispered, and leaned in and kissed the tip of my nose. “I said, ‘Did you ever think about it?’ Did you ever think about the power we have when we’re making love in this bed and the springs are making noise and we’re making noise and everything feels…well, wonderful, and not just because of the physical sensation, but because we’re joined—me and you—right here?” She pressed a palm against my groin. “We’re capable of creating life, baby. Me and you. One pill I forget to take—one chance in, what is it, a hundred thousand?—and I could have life growing in me right now. Your life. Mine.” She kissed me. “Ours.”
Lying like this, so close, so warm with the other’s heat, so deeply, deeply enthralled with each other, it was easy to wish life was beginning at this moment in her womb. All that was sacred and mysterious about a woman’s body in general and Angie’s in particular seemed locked in this cocoon of sheets, this soft mattress and rickety bed. It all seemed so clear suddenly.
But the world was not this bed. The world was cement-cold and jaggedly sharp. The world was filled with monsters who’d once been babies, who’d started as zygotes in the womb, who’d emerged from woman in the only miracle the twentieth century has left, yet emerged angry or twisted or destined to be so. How many other lovers had lain in similar cocoons, similar beds, and felt what we felt now? How many monsters had they produced? And how many victims?
“Speak,” Angie said, and pushed the damp hair off my forehead.
“I’ve thought about it,” I said.
“And?”
“And it awes me.”
“Me too.”
“Scares me.”
“Me too.”
“A lot.”
Her eyes grew small. “How come?”
“Little kids found in cement barrels, the Amanda McCreadys who vanish like they’d never lived, pedophiles out there roaming the streets with electrical tape and nylon cord. This world is a shit hole, honey.”
She nodded. “And?”
“And what?”
“And it’s a shit hole. Okay. But then what? I mean, our parents probably knew it was a shit hole, but they had us.”
“G
reat childhoods we had, too.”
“Would you prefer never to have been born?”
I placed both hands on her lower back and she leaned back into them. Her body rose off mine and the sheet fell from her back and she settled on my lap and looked down at me, her hair falling from behind her ears, naked and beautiful and as close to sheer perfection as any thing or any person or any fantasy I’d ever known.
“Would I prefer never to have been born?”
“That’s the question,” she said softly.
“Of course not,” I said. “But would Amanda McCready?”
“Our child wouldn’t be Amanda McCready.”
“How do we know?”
“Because we wouldn’t rip off drug dealers who’d take our child to get the money back.”
“Kids disappear every day for a lot less reason than that, and you know it. Kids disappear because they were walking to school, on the wrong corner at the wrong time, got separated from their parents at a mall. And they die, Ange. They die.”
A single tear fell to her breast, and after a moment it slid over the nipple and fell to my chest, already cold by the time it hit my skin.
“I know that,” she said. “But be that as it may, I want your child. Not today, maybe not even next year. But I want it. I want to produce something beautiful from my body that is us and yet a person completely unlike us.”
“You want a baby.”
She shook her head. “I want your baby.”
At some point we dozed.
Or I did. I woke a few minutes later to find her gone from the bed, and I got up and walked through the dark apartment into the kitchen, found her sitting at the table by the window, her bare flesh paled by the fractured moonlight cutting through rips in the shade.
There was a notepad by her elbow, the case file in front of her, and she looked up as I came through the doorway and said, “They can’t let her live.”
“Cheese and Mullen?”
She nodded. “It’s a dumb tactical move. They have to kill her.”
“They’ve kept her alive so far.”
“How do we know? And even if they have, they’ll only do so, maybe, until they get the money. Just to be sure. But then they’ll have to kill her. She’s too much of a loose end.”