missing pieces. They have all the whys.”
“What makes you think Billingham will talk to you?”
“I don't,” I smiled. “But something tells me they'd like to poke a stick in Tinkerton's eye as much as we would.”
The dark walkways that wound through the Common eventually brought us to Tremont and Park Streets at the far southeast corner of the park, where we saw another of those round, white signs with the big blue “T” on it. We hung back and circled the station, but I saw no one loitering around the front entrance. No two-way radios. No jackets with too many bulges. So we pushed on through the double doors and took the steep flight of stairs down. This was Park Street, one of the T's main line crossings. We slipped into the restrooms and washed off the worst of the mud, then met near the ticket booths in front of a colorful route map of the city.
I studied the big map and ran my finger across the subway routes. “We could take the Red Line to the South Railroad Station and maybe catch the Amtrak to New York.”
“The train? You're becoming a one-trick pony.”
“One trick? I thought you complemented me for my inventiveness.”
“Good one! And, bite my tongue, yes I did, more like a stallion than pony, as I recall,” she smiled. “But your ego aside, we've got to do something about these clothes. I brushed some of the loose mud off, but we can't go anywhere looking like this.”
We continued east through the Common until we reached Tremont, then took the smaller side streets southeast past the Old South Meeting house until we saw the big gray facade of South Station in the distance. It was another of those huge, old granite caverns dating to the 1920's, built for the era of long-distance train travel. From two blocks away, I saw Boston cop cars parked all around the station at odd angles, doors open, with cops standing around smoking and laughing. Other police cars were racing by on Atlantic Avenue with their flashers on.
“Looks like they caught on to our train thing,” Sandy said. “How sad.”
“Yeah, I was looking forward to getting you into the upper bunk this time.”
“The upper? That has a
“Yeah, but anybody can get laid in a lower. Been there, done that.”
She looked me up and down and smiled. “I'm liking this. You've been with me three days now, and you're actually developing a budding sense of humor. Not much of one yet, but keep on trying. I have hope for you yet.”
We turned around and found one of the darker side streets, heading north and east and away from the South Station. “Okay, what's the new plan,” she asked.
“I'm putting the final touches on it as we speak.”
“You don't have a clue, do you?”
“Nope, but I will.”
We walked on past the Old State House, trying to blend into the evening crowd around the restaurants, bars, and shops near the Quincy and North Markets and Faneuil Hall. We continued under the elevated I-93 into the North End and on into Little Italy. This was old Boston and residential. We walked up Salem, with her arm around my waist and my arm around her shoulders, wandering the back streets until I saw what I was looking for –- a brightly lit self-service laundromat.
“You think we can stand around in our underwear waiting for the clothes to dry?” Sandy poked me. “I'm game if you are, but we might be noticed.”
“Well, I might be.”
“Talbott, you must love bruises, don't you?”
“No offence meant, ma'am.”
“Don't you know, petite women don't like being teased about sizes and physical inadequacies? Especially by someone who took so much delight from them just a few short hours ago,” she said, as her right claw dug a painful inch into my side.
The laundromat was painted stark, institutional white and it was lit as bright as day. The only customer was a dumpy, older woman in a housedress who sat in a chair in front of the washers, knitting. She had three large, empty laundry baskets on the floor, and a half-dozen tall stacks of clothes on the table in front of her. Behind her there was another load thumping around in a drier.
We walked up to the woman arm in arm and I gave her my friendliest, most pathetic smile. “Pardon me; I wonder if you could help us out?”
She looked at us and our clothes and the dried mud smeared on Sandy's legs and probably thought we were homeless. “I ain't got no money, Mister,” she said.
“Money isn't our problem,” Sandy said as she looked down at our muddy clothes. “We were walking in the Common and got chased by some kids, some muggers. We got away, but we took a tumble down a big hill. Look at us,” she laughed. “I am humiliated.”
“Yeah, humiliated. I can see that,” the woman looked at her, still wondering.
“If I take her home like this,” I added. “Her old man will kill me.”
“Yeah, I got girls. I'd kill you too,” the woman said, starting to laugh. “So, what do you want? You want to use a washer?”
I looked at the piles of clothes on the table. “I've got a better idea. That's your kids stuff, right? How old are they?”
The woman frowned. “I got five — three girls and two boys, sixteen to twenty-four, and my husband Theo. You can add him to that list too. But why do you care?”
“Are any of them about our sizes?” Sandy asked.
The woman looked us both over, up and down. “Yeah. Maybe. Why?”
I pulled out the money I had taken from the goon's wallet and peeled off three crisp, new one-hundred dollar bills. “How about you sell us some of your kid's stuff — we'll pay double what you paid for them — and you can have our dirty clothes. It's all new. Deal?”
The woman plucked the three hundred from my fingers, and tucked it into her bra. “Lena's Clothes Emporium is now open for business, Mister. Show me what you want.”
It took less than a minute to pick out some jeans and a maroon pullover shirt for me and some faded blue jeans and a dark-blue MIT sweatshirt for Sandy. None of it was exactly our size, but it was close and that would be good enough to get us out of town. I even got her to trade her kid's nylon windbreaker for my gray herringbone sports coat plus ten dollars to have it dry cleaned.
We slipped into the restrooms to wash up and change. When I came out, Lena was standing by the washing machine pushing our stuff in, adding the soap. I waited by the restroom door for Sandy. When she came out, I noticed there was a pay phone on the back wall. “I'm going to call Billingham.”
“At this hour? You don't think he's still there, do you?”
“No, but I can leave him a message and that might start him thinking.” I dialed Area 212 Information and asked for the phone number of Steiner, Ernst, and Billingham. Before they shunted me off to the computer, I even got the NYNEX operator to give me the firm's address, not a small task when you are dealing with trained, phone company, customer service representative. Through years of illegal lab experiments, secret in-breeding, drugs, chemicals, and electro-shock therapy, call centers had elevated rude and dumb to near-Darwinian perfection.
When they connected me to the law firm's phone number, I found myself trapped in one of those multi- layered answering machines that let me dial the first four letters of the last name of whomever it was I was foolish enough to be calling. I punched B-I-L-L and after the Beep, I said, “Charlie? This is Peter Talbott. A mutual friend, Gino Parini, told me you had Jimmy's ear. To be perfectly frank, I need some help. I'm in the City and I'll call you tomorrow. Maybe we can get together and talk things over. Ciao. Who loves ya, Baby?”
“You had to say that, didn't you?” I smiled, embarrassed. “But what did calling him accomplish?” Sandy asked.
“Well, now we know he's real and that he hangs his hat there. And now he knows I'm real too.”
We turned and walked out the front door. “Thanks, Lena,” I waved.
“Hey, Mister, she's a cute little thing. Next time you get her dirty, you come back here and see old Lena.” She waved.
We walked back to Hanover along the dark, twisting neighborhood streets of the North End. Many of the
