The Guardian (22 page)

“Significant.”

“That means different things to different people. How much?”

Ross paused, making it look like he was considering whether or not he could trust T.S., then said, “The guy’s cut will be damn near a hundred thousand.”

“Holy shit. That’s including your partner?”

“Yeah.”

“What’s he doing on this?”

“Don’t worry about him.” Here Ross lifted his eyes to T.S. and said coolly, “I see your cut if you come up with the guy we’re happy with as twenty grand.”

T.S. immediately began to sing his protests, but Ross could tell the big man was floored by the base offer. Ross haggled with him for a few more minutes, then made a show of giving in at twenty-five.

T.S. looked satisfied and anxious to please.

Ross said, “Tell me more about these guys.”

“Mean motherfuckers, who’ll kill you just as easy as they’ll kill whoever you point them at.” T.S. looked at him carefully. “Fact is, I might be interested myself. One of the reasons I do this pass-along shit is to keep an eye out for the big stuff. You know I got the weapons, and I’ve definitely got the balls.”

Ross tipped his beer back to give himself time to think. When it was gone, he smiled slowly and lifted his chin toward T.S.’s big gut. “Sorry, buddy. That’s why I asked what kind of shape they’re in—I need someone riding behind me on a bike.”

T.S. flushed red.

“Look, I’m going to trust you on this,” Ross said, afraid they were going to lose the whole connection, between T.S.’s greed and wounded dignity. “We’re taking on an armored car. But keep that to yourself.

“I want in.” T.S.’s face set stubbornly.

Ross widened his smile into a grin. “You’re too big, man. You’d bounce me through the armored car window.”

T.S. stared at him. “You’re taking some chances with me.”

“Yeah, drink another beer, and tell me how you’re ready to ride sidesaddle.”

T.S. held Ross’s gaze for a few more beats, before shaking his head and laughing. He reached down into the cooler. “I’ll do that. And someday, me and you’ll go on a job and you can see just how fast I can move. Either that, or someday maybe I’ll just blow you away. How about that?”

“It’s a deal. How soon can I see these guys you were telling me about? I want to see all of them, make up my mind.”

T.S. cracked the beer, downed it, and tossed the empty down onto one of the cars below. He belched quietly and said, “How about now?”

Afterward, Crockett and Ross referred to the man they met as Surfer. He had a top-floor apartment in Southie overlooking the bay. The place was shabby cool: rock posters on the wall, big stereo system. The smell of suntan lotion permeated the apartment. There was even beach sand on the floor, which couldn’t have been that easy to bring up five flights.

“Hey, guys,” he’d said when they arrived on his doorstep. “Let’s do some beers.”

He was tall and blond, and his skin was tanned to a reddish brown hue. He put his feet up on the lobster trap coffee table and said, “So who do we shoot?”

The whole time, Ross was ticking through the details. Surfer was as tall as the gunman, but maybe a little heavier. There was the chilling ease with which he told of his experience, telling stories about robberies without actually mentioning locations or names.

“This black guy behind the counter was looking at me, and I start giving it to him in his own language, saying, ‘Hey, you dissing me? You think you can eyeball me like some fucking gangsta?’ He didn’t say shit, and I said, ‘Hey, I’m talking to you,
boy.’
He keeps staring, this injured noble look, like something out of
Roots.
Ba-boom, I let him have it. No more noble savage.”

Ross watched the man playact through different voices, all of the voices sounding just like what they were: a California dude trying hard to entertain Crockett and Ross for God knows what reason.
 

Ross felt certain this wasn’t the kidnapper, and he interrupted Crockett before he got into the specifics of the supposed robbery. “We’ll be in touch,” Ross said.

Crockett showed his false teeth to the man. “Count on it, dude.”

Byrne followed them away from Surfer’s place and pulled alongside when they parked facing the beach. Another detective was along with him, a young black officer named Jamison.

“You get all that?” Crockett asked.

Jamison held up the earphones. “Oh, I heard it all right. That guy just got to the top of my list.”

Ross had a small mike taped to his breastbone under a Kevlar bulletproof vest. Crockett had the same.

“You two feel all right in there?” Byrne asked. “I hate not being able to control this better.”

“It went fine,” Ross answered. “Which means it was a waste. I’m all but a hundred percent sure that it wasn’t him.”

“Yeah, I guess. I still hate having civilians taking this kind of risk.”

Crockett grinned. “What do you think prison was like? Think about that next time you arrest some poor schmuck.”

The next one was neat. Short clipped hair, neatly pressed jeans, a navy blue cotton shirt. White tennis shoes. A nice studio apartment in the Back Bay lined with books. He offered them soft drinks and soda water before they sat down at the kitchen table.

Though he volunteered little about himself, he gave them most of the information they requested, and worked toward pulling the details of the job from them.

Ross felt that he and Crockett were in substantially more danger just talking with him than they had been with the Surfer. The man’s good manners were brittle and his eyes quick. He was looking for lies, for inconsistencies.

Ross noticed that once the man had sat at the table, his hands never rose above his lap again. Ross was fairly certain there was a gun pointed at his abdomen throughout the entire conversation.

He and Crockett did their best, gave him just enough about the job to appear that they were taking him seriously, but not enough to give away the show. And then they got out of there as soon as possible.

There was no way he was the kidnapper. He didn’t stand more than five foot six.

Chapter 38

Janine couldn’t trust her legs to run. Whatever had been in that drink made her legs feel separate from the rest of her, and she couldn’t move herself away from Natalie as fast as she wanted.

She looked back.

The car was out of sight. That made her happy and it scared her. She was alone. The sun was going down now, and the summer day was turning cool. She pulled up her sweatshirt hood.

Now that she was out of the parking lot, she looked down the road and was startled to see a big ship—bigger than anything she could imagine any one thing could be—right up close. It was as if the ship had driven right up on land. She realized it was sitting in a big hole in the ground. There were men crawling all over it. There was a muddy lot between them and her, surrounded by a fence with wire on top. She couldn’t see how to get around it, where the gate was.

And the idea of going up to them was scary.

It was all too big and noisy. She couldn’t think of who she should talk to and if they would care. Just then, a big man with a beard walked past her. “Hard-hat area, honey. Take a hike,” he said, not really looking at her.

She backed away quickly. She guessed she should talk to another policeman, but that thought was scary, too, because of what happened last time.

Then she thought of her mother’s friend at the museum. The Children’s Museum. Mrs. Cranston. The woman who was in the booth in the middle. Not the one where the ropes were, not where you bought your ticket. But the one in the middle where you asked questions, or were supposed to go if you were lost.

The idea warmed her. Mrs. Cranston was a woman who helped lost children.

Janine turned away from the ship. She looked up a long street that headed toward the big buildings of Boston. She remembered Boston had seemed close from the Children’s Museum.

In fact, a bridge ran right past the museum and if she took that, she would be away from the waterfront area, away from Nat.

But Janine didn’t like the idea of being alone underneath those big buildings.

Instead, she had a sudden thought that seemed too wonderful to believe. Maybe Mrs. Cranston would take her home in her own car, if Janine asked her nicely. “Please take me home?” Janine would ask. And she’d say thank you when she got there.

She yawned mightily before starting up the street, the weight of the gun a cold reminder she wasn’t home yet.

She came to a street she had to cross. Cars were passing back and forth quickly, and there was no light. She stopped, confused. Her mother or father always held her hand at the lights.

She looked around at a man passing behind her and started to ask him—in fact, she did ask him—to hold her hand, but he didn’t seem to hear her. He just kept going, his head down. She knew her voice had been awfully quiet, she’d felt so shy.

She looked to her left, didn’t see any cars. Looked to her right, and didn’t see anything there.

And stepped out onto the street.

She was right in the middle when the cab came around the corner.

The tires screamed, and the whole car rocked to a stop right in front of her. The headlights were right in her face, and she’d put her arm up over her head and was trying to say she was sorry when the driver put his head out the window and yelled, “You want to get killed?”

“Please,” she said, starting to walk around to him.

“You want to get killed?”

“No.”

He asked her again, and she realized didn’t really want her to answer. She started to tell him she was lost, but the man in the backseat said, “Come on, will you?”

“The sidewalk, kid,” the driver said. “Play on the sidewalk.” And his window rolled up, and the car drove away.

She ran across the street from there. She looked back and tried to figure what she’d done wrong. She knew she’d looked right and left, just like her mother always told her. How could she know who was coming around the corner?

Part of her knew she should be able to figure this out, but she just felt so tired. She remembered how she’d felt before, that time with the policeman, and the thought of being that tired was scary.

She didn’t know what time the Children’s Museum closed, but she knew that she wanted to get there before it did. She kept on down the street.

It was all so noisy and … grown-up. There were honking horns, people walking by who talked to each other but ignored her. She kept the gun in the pouch when there were people beside her. She didn’t think about why. It just seemed like the thing to do.

There were smells. She could smell fish. And cooking smells. There were restaurants, and people coming in and out. She wondered if she should stop in one of those.

But she kept on, wanting to see Mrs. Cranston.

Janine found herself sitting on a bench. She hadn’t meant to sit down. She’d just been going along and suddenly she had become so tired she just had to stop.

She knew she’d probably drunk too much of that shake. And the gun was so heavy. Carrying it maybe was a mistake. But the idea of Lee or Nat showing up behind her made her clasp it more tightly.

She got off the bench and stumbled to her knees.

She’d hurt herself there before, and now her leg was bleeding again. Janine decided suddenly that she couldn’t make it to the museum. She decided in a very clear manner for her foggy head that she needed to get some help from some adult soon. Any adult.

She looked around. There were people still walking by. She saw a boy.

This brightened her.

A boy, maybe a little older than her, walking with a man and woman. He was wearing a jacket and tie, and they were on their way into a restaurant.

When the door to the place opened up, Janine was hit by a warm smell of food that made her feel sick to her stomach. She made herself get up anyway.

The door was closing as she got there, and it was heavy to pull open. But she did it.

The man and woman were standing, talking to another man who was behind a tall table and writing something in a notebook. The boy turned as she came in, and she didn’t really like the look of his face. He had the same bossy look that Joey Todd had. But he was close to her age, so she went up to him, anyhow.

“Hi,” she said shyly.

He looked at her, frowning. “I don’t know you.”

“My name’s Janine.”

His eyes focused on her belly. She had both hands in the pouch. When she looked down, she saw that she had pulled the gun out a little ways. She shoved it back in.

“What’ve you got?”

“Nothing.”

“Then go away. You smell bad.”

Janine looked down at herself. Her clothes were filthy, her pants ripped, her sweatshirt stained with the ketchup and chocolate from all those burgers and shakes.