Nelson looked back over his shoulder at the glittering mass of brass shells. “Who loaded the mags?”
“Bubba.”
He nodded. “They’re clean, then.”
We boogied across the roof and down the dark fire escape. Nelson tossed me the rifle and hopped into his Camaro, tore off out of the alley without a word.
We climbed in the Jeep, and I could hear distant sirens ring up Congress from the piers down the other end of the waterfront.
I spun out of the alley and banged a right on Congress, crossed over the harbor and into the city proper. I took a hard right at the yellow light on Atlantic Avenue, slowed as I cut into the left lane, and took the reverse curve, headed south. I felt my heart return to a normal rate as I reached the expressway.
I picked up the cell phone Bubba had given me as I descended the on ramp, pressed redial, then send.
Scott Pearse’s “What?” sounded hoarse, and in the background, I could hear sirens bleating into abrupt silence as they reached his building.
“Here’s how I see it, Scott. First-this is a clone phone I’m using. Triangulate the signal all you want, it won’t mean shit. Second-you finger me for redecorating your loft, I finger you for extortion of the Dawes. Clear so far?”
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Terrif. Just so you know, Scott, that was a warm-up. Care to know what we have in store for you tomorrow?”
“Do tell,” he said.
“Nah,” I said. “You just wait and see. Okay?”
“You can’t do this. Not to me. Not to me!” His voice rose over the hard knocking I could hear at his front door. “You can’t fucking do this to me!”
“I’ve already started, Scott. Know what time it is?”
“What?”
“It’s look-over-your-shoulder time, Scottie. Have a nice night.”
The police were kicking in the door behind him when I hung up.
32
The next morning, as Scott Pearse loaded mail into a box on the corner of Marlboro and Clarendon, Bubba hopped in his truck and drove away with it.
Pearse didn’t even realize it until Bubba turned onto Clarendon, and by the time he dropped his bag and gave chase, Bubba was turning onto Commonwealth and stepping on the gas pedal.
Angie pulled her Honda up beside the mailbox and I left the passenger door open as I jumped out, grabbed the canvas mailbag off the sidewalk, and got back in the car.
Pearse was still standing on the corner of Clarendon and Commonwealth, his back to us, as we drove away.
“By the end of this day,” Angie said as we turned onto Berklee and headed for Storrow Drive, “what do you think he’ll do?”
“I’m kinda hoping for something irrational.”
“Irrational can mean bloody.”
I turned in the seat and tossed the mailbag in back. “This guy’s proven, he has time to think, it ends up bloody anyway. I want to take thinking out of the equation. I want him to react.”
“So,” Angie said, “his car next?”
“Uh…”
“I know, Patrick, it’s a classic. I understand.”
“It’s
She put her hand on my leg. “You said we’d be mean.”
I sighed, stared through the windshield at the cars on Storrow Drive. Not one of them, even the obscenely expensive ones, could hold a candle to the ’68 Shelby.
“Okay,” I said, “let’s be mean.”
He kept it parked in a garage on A Street in Southie, about a quarter mile from his loft. Nelson had seen him take it out one night, not for any particular purpose, just to open it up along the waterfront, take a spin around the harbor, and then return it to its roost. I know a lot of guys like that, ones who visit their cars in the storage garage like they’re pets in a boarding kennel, and then illogically feel pity for the lonely beast, strip off the car cover, and drive it around the block a few times.
Actually, I’m one of those guys. Angie used to say I’d grow out of it. More recently, she’s said she’s given up hope on that score.
We took a ticket at the booth, drove up two levels, and parked beside the Shelby, which, even under a thick car cover, was instantly identifiable. Angie gave me a pat on the back to buck me up and then took the stairs down to ground level to keep the attendant occupied with a city map, a tourist’s confusion, and a black mesh T-shirt that didn’t completely reach the waistband of her jeans.
I pulled the cover off the car and almost gasped. The 1968 Shelby Mustang GT-500 is to American automobiles what Shakespeare is to literature and the Marx Brothers are to comedy-that is to say, everything that came before was, in retrospect, a teaser, and everything that came after could never live up to the standard of perfection achieved in one brief blink of time.
I rolled under the car before my knees buckled from the wanting, ran my hand up under the chassis between the engine block and the fire wall, and felt around for a good three minutes before I found the alarm receiver. I yanked it free, rolled back out, and used a slim jim to open the driver’s door. I reached in and popped the hood, came around the front of the car, and stared in a near-trance at the word COBRA stamped in steel atop the filter cover and again along the oil tank, the sheer sense of compressed but certain power that emanated from the gleaming 428 engine.
It smelled clean under the hood, as if the engine and radiator and drive shaft and manifold had just been lifted off the assembly line. It smelled like a car that had been slaved over. Scott Pearse, whatever his feelings for the human race, had loved this car.
“I’m sorry,” I told the engine.
Then I went around to Angie’s trunk for the sugar, the chocolate syrup, and the rice.
After we dumped the contents of Pearse’s mailbag in a box on our side of the city, we returned to the office. I called Devin and asked for any data he could find on Timothy McGoldrick and he wrangled two tickets to October’s Patriots-Jets game out of me as a service fee.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve been a season-ticket holder for thirteen years while they camped in the basement. Don’t take that game from me.”
“How do you spell that last name?”
“Dev, it’s a Monday night game.”
“Is it M-A-C or just M-C?”
“The latter,” I said. “You suck.”
“Hey, I noticed on the sheets this morning that someone shot the ever-living shit out of some guy’s loft on Sleeper Street. The vic’s name struck me as familiar. Know anything about that?”
“Pats versus Jets,” I said slowly.
“Tuna Bowl,” Devin cried. “Tuna Bowl! Seats still on the fifty?”
“Yup.”
“Rocking. Talk to you soon.” He hung up.
I leaned back in my seat, propped my heels on the belfry window.
