around the complex as Ryan snapped away with a flash that was nowhere near up to the job, but I doubted the guard would know that. On the right the driveway circled around to the lobby entrance; on the left it sloped deeply toward a door to an underground garage.
We traded places and I took four pictures of Ryan, letting him look around. Then we waved to the security guard and got back in the car. He unleashed one arm to wave back, then refolded it and continued to watch us until we had turned around and headed back out to the street.
“No way he has Jenn in there,” I said. “Not with that security.”
“He could have direct entry from the garage.”
“Still. It’s too public a place. Other tenants below. Cameras over the lobby and garage entrance.”
“I saw.”
“Which also means it’s impossible for us to get in. We’re not going to fool anyone pretending to deliver flowers or pizza.”
“I used to hang around the North End with the locals when I did business here,” Ryan said. “There’s a couple of places up the corner we can watch from. We’ll see if he comes in or out.”
“If he does,” I said, “then what? This isn’t much of a place for a gunfight.”
“Few places are. But they still happen.”
We found an Italian cafe called Troppo that promised more of everything, including endless coffee refills. We took a window table and spent an hour eating dishes Ryan ordered, though I barely took note of what I ate. We watched fine vehicles enter and exit the driveway into the Wharves. We kept a running track of European, Asian and American luxury sedans, hybrids, crossovers and SUVs. We debated the plural of Lexus.
We didn’t see Sean Daggett come or go.
“These Irishmen,” Ryan said, “they’re crazy fuckers, you know that. In New York, back in the day, half of them weren’t even five-foot-seven, a hundred and fifty pounds, they still gave the families a run for their money. Pound for pound the most fearless guys out there, they’d go in anywhere blasting. The Gambinos, among others, used them for certain hits and muscle jobs because it was better to have them with you than against you.”
The waiter came and asked if there’d be anything else. A line was forming past the door and the table was in demand. We couldn’t drink any more coffee or water so we paid up and walked back to the car in darkness.
Halladay’s Funeral Home was in a Mattapan neighbourhood called Wellington Hill. It sounded Colonial or British but was all twenty-first-century urban blight. Half the stores were boarded up and the bus shelters advertised great deals on new foreclosures. The elderly clutched their purses and belongings tightly and put what little threat they could into the thrust of their canes. Single men gathered in tight-moving knots under canopies as a light rain drifted through.
The mortuary was surrounded by white hoarding with a gated entrance. The front half was two storeys and covered with light stucco. The back half was a long one-storey brick extension. Through the fence I could see two cars near the front door, none in the expansive lot on the west side. Signs on the hoarding said an application to turn the facility into a night club was before the zoning board. Graffiti was scrawled here and there denouncing the proposed club. As we cruised down the street we saw posters calling for a residents’ meeting to stop the zoning application.
“He’s smart,” I said. “He buys a place that suits his purposes, applies for a usage the residents don’t want, and it can sit tied up for years while he makes a fortune off it.”
“Think Jenn is in there?”
“Even if she is,” I said, “we’re not ready to storm it.”
“We’re all we got.”
“Do you know anyone in Boston?”
“No one I’ve seen in years. Back in the day, mind you, I came a few times. My old crew back home was hooked up with the Patriarcas. I mingled with them a few times.”
“Anyone you could ask for help?”
“There’s one guy here I got out of a jam. He might be a chip I can cash.”
“Think he’d accept an invitation to a gunfight?”
“Him personally, no. But he might know some guys who would. When do we need them?”
“Soon as you can.”
“Anything we can do in the meantime?”
“Go see our congressman.”
Back in my hotel room, I showed Ryan a page I had found and bookmarked during an earlier search. The architect who redesigned McConnell’s house had posted photos and a video tour of the outside on his website. “It’s on Louisburg Square,” I said. “Steps from the historic State House in the heart of Beacon Hill. The one with the black shutters and the Stars and Stripes fluttering bravely in the wind.”
Ryan took a look at the four storeys of solid red brick, the black shutters and trim. “Must have cost a fortune, that location.”
“It did,” I said. “Fortunately his wife has one, because it was way beyond his means. He took a few hits in the House when they bought it, got razzed about living off the avails of his wife while pretending to understand the common man, yada yada. I want to be there by nine, nine-thirty, approach him as he’s leaving for church.”
“How do you know he goes to church?”
“An Irish politician in Boston? I’ll bet you breakfast I can find an image of him toting a Bible in under one second.”
It took 0.63 seconds to come up with photos of the congressman and the heiress entering a historic church downtown, not far from where Rabbi Ed Lerner was striving to open his shul.
“What time do Catholics attend church on Sunday?” I asked Ryan.
“Ask someone who goes. Hey, zoom in on this corner,” he said, pointing to the lower left.
“What?”
“The front of the car parked there. Yeah, that’s a Crown Vic parked there. Preferred car of the Secret Service. Might make approaching him tricky.”
“But not impossible.”
“Not for us.” He looked at his watch and said, “I’m going to go down to the lobby, use a pay phone to call my friend.”
“Give it everything you’ve got.”
“You know me,” he said. “Mr. Persuasive.”
After he left, I kept looking at different angles of the McConnell house, zooming in on details like the coal chute and the wrought-iron fixture servants would have used to scrape manure off their shoes before entering the side door.
When the phone rang, I assumed it was Ryan calling from the lobby but it wasn’t.
“Hi,” she said. “It’s Sandy Lerner.”
“Hi.”
“We just got your message. I wish I’d listened to it sooner but we never do until Shabbos ends.”
“I figured as much.”
“Dad and I are both so sorry about your partner.”
“Sorry enough to tell me the truth?”
CHAPTER 25
The knock on my door came half an hour later. Ryan had already come back up from the lobby, saying the man who owed him a favour was going to see what he could do on our behalf. I told him Sandy was coming over to talk about David, and that I was sure she knew where he was. He retired to Jenn’s room to give me the space I needed to get it out of her.
When I opened the door, Sandy was standing in the halo of light from the hall lamp, holding a bottle of wine and a corkscrew.
“I think I might need a glass of this,” she said.
