“Which?” he said absently, his eyes on the Xerox.
“Beirut.”
He turned his huge head, smiled at her. “Lights went out, things went boom. I lost my sense of smell for three years. Now I’ve talked about it.”
She backhanded his chest with her fingers. “Bastard.”
He chuckled, looked back at the Xerox. “That’s wrong.”
“What?”
He lifted the magnifying glass we’d brought, held it over the grid. “That.”
Angie and I looked over his shoulder through the glass. All I could see was a clump of green, a bush photographed from two thousand feet.
“It’s a bush,” I said.
“Ah, duh,” Bubba said. “Look again.”
We looked.
“What?” Angie said.
“It’s too oval,” he said. “Look at the top. It’s smooth. It’s like the top of this magnifying glass.”
“So?” I offered.
“So bushes don’t grow like that, ya fucking slug head. They’re bushes, you know? That makes them, ah, bushy.”
I looked at Angie. She looked at me. We both shook our heads.
Bubba thumped his index finger down on the bush in question. “See? It’s curved perfectly, like the top of my fingernail. That’s not nature. That’s fucking man, dude.” He dropped the magnifying glass. “You want my opinion, it’s a satellite dish.”
“A satellite dish.”
He nodded, walked to the fridge. “Yup.”
“For what purpose? To call in air strikes?”
He pulled a bottle of Finlandia from the freezer. “Doubtful. I’m guessing so’s they can watch TV.”
“Who?”
“The people living under that forest, stupid.”
“Oh,” I said.
He nudged Vanessa’s shoulder with the vodka bottle. “And you thought he was smarter than me.”
“Not smarter,” Vanessa said. “More articulate.”
Bubba took a swig of vodka, then belched. “Articulatedness is overrated.”
Vanessa smiled. “You do make that case, baby. Trust me.”
“She calls me ‘baby.’” Bubba took another shot from the bottle, winked at me.
“You said this used to be some kind of army nuthouse? My guess is there’s still a basement under those woods. A big one.”
The phone by his fridge rang and he picked it up, cradled it between his ear and shoulder, and said nothing. After about a minute, he hung it back up.
“Nelson lost Pearse.”
“What?”
He nodded.
“Where?” I said.
“Rowes Wharf,” he said. “That hotel there? Pearse walks in, stands around on the pier. Nelson stays inside, you know, hanging back, being cool. Pearse waits till the last second, jumps on the airport ferry.”
“So why didn’t Nelson drive out to the airport, meet him on the other side?”
“He tried.” Bubba tapped his watch. “It’s five o’clock on a Friday, man. You ever try the tunnel then? Nelson gets over to Eastie, it’s five-forty-five. The ferry docked at five-twenty. Your man is gone.”
Angie buried her face in her hands, shook her head. “You were right, Patrick.”
“How?”
“Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it now.”
Fifteen minutes later, after I’d called Carrie Dawe, we stood by Bubba’s door as he carried a black duffel bag across the floor to us and dropped it by our feet.
Vanessa, so tiny in comparison to the mountain that was Bubba, stepped up close to him and put her hands on his chest.
“Is this where I’m supposed to say, ‘Be careful’?”
He jerked a thumb back at us. “I dunno. Ask them.”
She looked out from under his arm at us.
We both nodded.
“Be careful,” she said.
Bubba pulled a.38 from his pocket, handed it to her. “The safety’s off. Anyone comes through that door, shoot ’em. Like a bunch of times.”
She looked up at the greasepaint on his forehead and under his eyelids, the smatterings on his cheekbones.
“Can I get a kiss?”
“In front of
Angie whacked my arm. “We’re looking at the door.”
We turned to the door, stared at the metal, the four locks, the reinforced steel bar.
Even now, I don’t know if they kissed or not.
Christopher Dawe was where his wife had told us he’d be.
He backed his Bentley out of the Brimmer Street garage and we blocked him in from the front with Bubba’s van and from the back with my Porsche.
“What the hell are you doing?” he said as he rolled down his window and I approached.
“There’s a gym bag in your trunk,” I said. “How much is in it?”
“Go to hell.” His lower lip quivered.
“Doctor,” I said and leaned my arm on the hood, looked down at him, “your wife told us you received a phone call from Pearse. How much is in the bag?”
“Step back from the car.”
“Doctor,” I said, “he’ll kill you. Wherever it is you think you’re going, whatever it is you think you’re walking into, you won’t walk back out.”
“I will,” he said, and his lower lip quivered even more and a fragmentation found his eyes.
“What does he have on you?” I said. “Doctor? Please. Help me end this.”
He stared up at me, trying for defiance, but losing the battle. He clamped his teeth down on his lower lip, and his narrow face seemed to turn concave, and then tears rolled from his eyes and his shoulders shook.
“I can’t…I can’t…” His shoulders jerked up and down, up and down, like he was riding whitewater rapids and had lost his oar. He sucked in a high-pitched breath. “I can’t take another second of this.” His mouth formed a plaintive O and his cheeks turned to rubber, formed riverbeds for the tears.
I placed my hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to. Give me the weight, Doctor. I’ll carry it.”
He closed his eyes tight and shook his head repeatedly and the tears stained his suit like white rain.
I knelt by the door. “Doctor,” I said softly, “she’s watching.”
“Who?” It came out strangled, but loud.
“Karen,” I said. “I believe that. Look in my face.”
His head turned tightly, as if pushed to its left, and he opened his bleary eyes, looked into my own.
“She’s watching. I want to do right by her.”
“You barely knew her.”
I held his eyes. “I barely know anyone.”
His eyes widened, then immediately closed again, and he tightened them to slits, the tears sprouting out hot and barren.
