Measure of Darkness

“Yeah, I did. But once an arrest is made it should follow the rules.”

“A suspect confined to a hospital bed is hardly against the rules, Glenn. Half the Mafia dons spent years in hospitals, in their silk pajamas, awaiting trial. If you’d seen the guy, okay? They beat the crap out of him, shot him full of some kind of designer truth serum. For a while he thought they drilled a hole in his head, scrambled his brains. He needs to be under a doctor’s care. That would be true even if he was guilty, and he’s not.”

“That’s the point,” the trooper says, truculent. “We never saw him. Cut off at the pass by lawyers. They all stick together no matter what side they’re on.”

“Okay, we can agree on something.”

Tolliver clinks his glass to Jack’s and makes a toast. “Dead lawyers.”

“Dead lawyers.”

They drain their glasses.

Kidder leaves his rental at a metered space on Newbury Street, feeds his quarters in the slot like a good doobie and places the receipt on the dash, as instructed. Sometimes it makes sense to play by the rules. Son of Sam got caught because he failed to pay the meter. Save a dime and spend the rest of your life in a concrete pod? Dumb ass. Not that Kidder is really afraid of the local flatfoots, who arrested that moron Shane, exactly as intended, on evidence so planted it practically sprouted.

Randall Shane being a moron in Kidder’s opinion because he could have made millions but didn’t. What’s wrong with a little reward for your efforts, all the years spent learning your craft? Which is why Kidder left the military and went mercenary, because that’s where the money was-the private sector- and because he was sick of higher-ranking officers treating him like a three-year-old. He still had his bosses-lately just the one-but no one can assign him to the burn detail, where drums of human waste get drenched in diesel fuel and then torched. A stench he can never quite erase from his mind.

First stop, a Starbucks. Love that Mocha Frappuccino, dude. Kidder hums to himself as he stands in line. For some reason Aerosmith’s “Walk This Way” is sticking in his brain this evening. A song so freaking ancient that he was barely born when it first came out. Still, when in Rome, or in this case Bean Town.

“Here you are, sir.”

Lost in thought, Kidder looks up to see a chickee holding out the tall plastic cup. Trying out a tentative smile.

“Beautiful,” Kidder says, taking the glass. “You know what they say?”

“What’s that?”

“You ain’t seen nothing ’til you’re down on a muffin,” Kidder intones, staring into her little brown eyes as his mouth finds the straw.

Back on the street he strolls, enjoying the season. Five in the evening with hours left of daylight. Oodles of time to kill.

Kidder laughs.

On the sidewalk a young couple, arm in arm, register a brutal-looking, steel-built man chuckling to himself, and instinctively move away. He gives them a wink- Son of Sam never had such style! — and takes the vacated space with a jaunty sense of entitlement.

“Gimme a kiss,” he says to the shying-away couple. “Like this!”

He heads north on Exeter Street, bringing himself one block closer to the Naomi Nantz residence. Thinking it’s about time he checked it out with his own eyes, instead of relying on images taken by a circling drone.

Street level is always best. You never know when you might want to make a personal visit, arriving unannounced, in the dark of night, with a properly silenced weapon. And before that can happen, he’ll have to find a way in.

Chapter Forty-One

Facts as We Know Them

When the door chime sounds at nine-fifteen I’m in the library, updating the timeline. So far as I’m aware we’re not expecting guests at this hour. Boss lady had declared a pizza night, releasing Mrs. Beasley from her duties. We, that is all those currently in the residence, happily chowed down on slices from Regina’s, picked up curb-side by yours truly, and then called it a day. Milton, understandably uneasy about returning to his home, has been offered a guest room, for which he seemed pleased and grateful. Dane has returned to her own residence, located a few blocks away, and promises to be available at a moment’s notice. Jack called from some bar, sounding more stressed than he usually lets on, and announced he would be returning to Gloucester for the night and would report first thing in the morning. Apparently his thrilling escape from the woods of New Hampshire left him in need of quality time with his current spouse, although he didn’t say so, not in those words. Teddy, dismayed by his failure to discover the now-obvious connection between Randall Shane and Taylor Gatling, Jr., retreated to his bat cave (others might call it a bedroom, but bat cave is more illustrative, believe me) where he’s currently sucking down energy drinks and playing the latest version of “God of War,” which is his form of sulking. No doubt he’ll slay a few thousand adversaries before daylight and return to the real world renewed if not exactly refreshed.

Boss lady, believe it or not, is watching a baseball game. When I left her she had the sound down and was staring rather listlessly at the screen-the Sox struggling in Toronto-obviously lost in her own thoughts.

“I’m missing something,” she said, and refused to elaborate.

Which is why I’d returned to the timeline and my notes, looking to find something that had been overlooked, something that might be useful. No matter how I fiddle and push, and even including the rather tumultuous revelations of the past twenty-four hours, there are still way more unknowns than knowns. By far the most important being the location of Kathleen Mancero and Joey Keener.

Responding to the door chime happens to be one of my many duties. In this particular instance whoever is pushing the button won’t stop, so I’m more than ready to read whoever it is the riot act.

The security camera reveals a tall, middle-aged female with the build of a college linebacker. Unknown to me. For all I know she could be lost, or selling something, or intending to murder us all. So I press the intercom and request that she state her name clearly and into the microphone. “Mon-i-ca Bevins. B-e-v-i-n- s,” she says, spelling it out. “F-B-I. Clear enough? Now open the damn door!”

She really gets pissed when I make her show ID, but it can’t be helped, those are the house rules.

We convene in the library. We being me, Teddy, Naomi and Dane. Our intrepid attorney having arrived in less than five minutes, so she obviously wasn’t fibbing about being at home for the evening. Milton Bean, sound asleep in a guest room, has not been awakened, by instructions of the boss. This could be a need-to-know kind of deal and she’ll make that determination when the facts are in place.

Although neither as tall nor as large of frame as Randall Shane, Monica Bevins is nevertheless imposing in a similar manner, and it doesn’t help that she seems to be in foul temper. She strides around the room as if looking for something to hit, which may explain why Teddy cringes slightly whenever she veers in range.

“First, I want your assurance that what I have to say will not be taped or in any way recorded,” she demands.

“You have it,” Naomi responds instantly.

“If anybody gets wind of this, I’m finished. Ruined. I’d be prosecuted for sure.”

One of boss lady’s best traits is that the more difficult the situation, the more calm she exudes. Maybe it’s a Zen thing, but wherever she gets it from, it works. Faced with Naomi’s utter calm, Bevins’s rage slowly subsides and she eventually begins to circle one of the larger armchairs and finally perches like some great bird of prey, ready to plummet from on high if a target presents itself.

She says, in a calmer tone, “The only reason we can do this at all is because I happen to know this place, this building, is secure from wiretapping. Because you are under surveillance, you know