“You guess? Your left foot is pumping like a heavy-metal drummer.”
“Okay, I feel it.”
“Don’t fight it, use it.”
“I know.”
“You need to go over the guns again before we meet Frank and Victor?”
“I’m good. Your in-room seminar was excellent.”
We met Frank and Victor at a Chinese restaurant on Brookline Avenue. Easy for us out-of-towners to find; plenty of on-street parking. Ryan made sure my gun was in my back waistband before we went in. But no one pulled on us when we walked in. We were shown to a table where the boys were waiting. They didn’t pull either. No one poisoned the spring rolls or the hot-and-sour soup; all it did was make my nose run.
Everything had gone smoothly with Riklitis, Frank said. “I mean, he was disappointed and everything that he wasn’t going to be collecting the rest of his payment, but when I told him it was that or get a bullet up his ass, he calmed down.”
“How much were they paying him?”
“Fifty large. When Victor heard that, he was ready to sign up himself.”
“Why the fuck not,” Victor said. “One kidney is all you need. It was right there in the pamphlet.”
“I can’t even tell if he’s kidding,” Frank said.
We drank tea and Cokes as we went over the details again, then Frank left in Riklitis’s car. Victor guided us south out of Brookline and along the Jamaicaway.
“See that dark spot on the right?” Victor said. “That’s Jamaica Pond. Me and Frank go fishing there sometimes.”
“For what?” Ryan asked.
“Pickerel, bass, hornpout, perch. Those are all natural to the place. Plus they stock it with salmon and trout.”
“Can you eat any of it?” I asked.
“Hell, yeah, that’s clean water. Cleanest around here, anyway. Spring-fed, Frank told me. You guys come down in the summer, we’ll grab a rod and some six-packs.”
“Can’t wait,” Ryan said.
Stayner had told us to meet him in the administration parking lot at Forest Hills Cemetery; from there, we’d all go in his car, from a cemetery above Mattapan to the mortuary down below. There were no other cars when we got there so I pulled in and shut off the engine. Darkness shrouded us; a steady rain was visible in the glare of tungsten lights. While we waited, Victor and Ryan applied shoe polish to whatever skin wasn’t covered by their balaclavas. I sat with my eyes closed, breathing in the smell of the polish; I realized we were just on the other side of Franklin Park, where Carol-Ann Meacham’s battered body had been found. A cemetery, a mortuary, a dumping ground for the murdered. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Jonah Geller’s Boston. Maps and guidebooks sold here. Don’t mind the bloodstains, folks. A little soda water will lift those right up.
Headlights swept across my field of vision as Chuck Stayner drove a champagne-coloured Cadillac CTS sedan into the lot and pulled up beside us. We transferred a gym bag containing our guns and other supplies to his trunk, then locked up the Charger. The worst that could happen to it here was it would be towed away. Better that than having it stripped and stolen in Mattapan and having to file a police report-or have Ryan make another rental-car clerk wet his pants.
I sat in the front, Victor and Ryan in the back. I didn’t introduce Victor. I figured both he and Stayner would feel better that way.
“You ready?” I asked Stayner.
“I will be,” he said. “Right now, you might say I’m shitting a brick of considerable dimensions, but I am also known to have a high degree of self-control.”
“What do you usually bring in with you from the car?”
“Most of the equipment will already have been laid out by the nurses and Jim Reimer. But I do bring a medical bag in with me that has a few favourite instruments.”
“The gun will go in there then. On top.”
“Do I have to-”
“Yes, you do. Take it out first chance you get and hide it under the table the donor will lie on. Got that? The table is draped, right?”
“Of course.”
“Set the bag down at your feet. Relax. Undo your tie. Loosen your collar. Drop something, kneel down to tie your shoe, whatever, and put the gun under that table. That way we’ll all know where it is if we need it.”
“All right.”
“We have a man inside posing as the donor. He’ll choose the moment to send out Reimer.”
“When do you think that will that be?”
“When everyone is in place and there’s the least security around.”
An overgrown laneway ran behind Halladay’s and its neighbouring storefronts. DeMaurice Simms had taken photos of it, had shown us how to access it through one of the abandoned storefronts. “None of them’s alarmed,” he had said, “and none have locks worth shit.” Stayner went past the entrance to Halladay’s and pulled up to the curb when I told him to. We each took two sets of latex gloves from a box Stayner had on the console between the seats and put them on, one over the other in case they tore. Ryan and Victor headed out into the darkness, Ryan melting into the storefront that would take him to the rear laneway where he’d begin work on the hoarding at the rear. Victor crouched in another lane to wait for the anesthesiologist’s big Lincoln to arrive. I slipped green hospital scrubs over my track suit, then put on a cap and mask and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses like the ones Reimer wore, bought at a drugstore in the mall. I threaded the suppressor onto the barrel of my Beretta and placed the Colt M4 in a small gym bag with a shoulder strap.
I closed the trunk in on myself and Stayner pulled away, circled the block, made one more turn and braked and honked.
He was at the gate of Halladay’s.
It took a moment for the sound of footsteps to reach me in the trunk. They got louder as a man approached the gate. I leaned my head into the deepest part, behind the upholstery of the rear seat. I heard Stayner’s window buzz down. A man said, “Okay, Doc, go around and park in the back.”
Stayner paused.
Say it, I thought.
“Tell them I want to park inside the bay,” Stayner finally said.
“No one parks-”
“I am the one doing this goddamn surgery, and I’m not feeling well and don’t wish to develop a chill that would affect my ability to work tonight, which would cost your boss a million dollars and you your miserable life. Tell whoever is on the other end to open the goddamn door. Now!”
This was the E. Charles Stayner who ruled the operating theatre. What had his assistant said?
The guard stepped away and spoke into a radio, listened, then told Stayner to go ahead, the door around back would be open. The window went up and Stayner took his foot off the brake and we rolled slowly ahead, grinding over the wet pavement. Then he made a wide turn and went forward until the sound of the rain hitting the trunk stopped suddenly. We were inside the bay. The engine stopped, the transmission went into park and his door opened. He got out and slammed it shut. Locked it with the fob. His footsteps went forward along the front of the car, then turned right for about ten steps. He climbed what sounded like three metal stairs. Then a door opened and his footsteps faded away as it shut. A motor kicked in above me and the garage door wound down and clanged shut against the asphalt.
I lay there with my head throbbing where Ryan and I had clocked melons. I knew it was superficial, just a bump like half a walnut, but it reminded me of how vulnerable I still was. I pushed that thought away and replaced it with a vision of me levelling the Colt at Sean Daggett.
So close now to Jenn. If she wasn’t here already, she’d arrive sometime tonight. So hard to wait. I kept going over the plan, all the ifs and assumptions-would Reimer carry off the switch with me, would Ryan and Victor make it in? I went over the Colt’s switch from short burst to full auto, where the safety was on the Beretta. What I’d do if
