Chapter
23

I hurry-walk the streets of Manhattan.

I don’t want to be conspicuous by running, but I also want to put distance between myself and that apartment on Twelfth Street. I head north. I pass the Fourteenth Street subway station and then the Twenty-Third Street one, resisting the urge to head down because if there is some kind of manhunt or dragnet, they’ll probably cover all nearby subway stations.

Or not.

The truth is, I have no idea.

I have a destination, of course.

Revere, Massachusetts. My hometown.

The man who blackmailed Hilde Winslow? The one with the forelock? That’s where he lives.

I know him.

I assume the FBI will have someone watching my father’s house, but then again, the police can’t be everywhere all at once. We get used to that viewpoint from television and movies, where every bad guy is quickly brought to justice by unlimited surveillance or a fingerprint or a DNA sample.

I also don’t know what Hilde Winslow may have told the cops. She seemed to genuinely sympathize with my plight, and she had helped me escape. But it’s hard to say for certain. It could have been an act. It could have been that she feared what would happen if the police broke in and I was near her. I don’t know.

But I really don’t have a choice. I have to risk going up to Revere.

When I arrive in Times Square half an hour later, I realize how in over my head I am. I had thought about crowded places like these—the people, the noise, the bright lights, the big screens, the neon signs—but I am ill-prepared for what I’m experiencing right now. I stop. There is too much stimulation. The swirl and onslaught of hums, of hues, of smells, of faces—of life—it all sends me reeling. I’m like a man who has spent five years in a dark room and now someone is shining a flashlight into my eyes. My head spins to the point where I have to lean against a wall or fall down.

The adrenaline that had kept me going isn’t so much ebbing away as turning into smoke and vanishing into the night air. Exhaustion overtakes me. It’s late. The trains and buses to the Boston area are done for the night. I need to be smart about this. I know what I need to do when I’m back in Revere, and I will need full command of my faculties to pull it off. In short, I need to sleep.

There are a lot of subway stops near here—too many for the cops to cover—but in the end I choose to walk. The shaved head should still throw them—Hilde Winslow only saw me with the ditched baseball cap—but I also wear a surgical mask. Not many people are wearing them anymore, so I worry I may stick out with it. But it’s also a great disguise. Should I keep it on? Hard call. So is deciding where to go to sleep. I think about walking north to Central Park. There are plenty of places to hide and make shelter, but again, would that be a place the police might cover? I check my burner phone. Only Rachel, who bought it for me, knows the number. I wait for her to contact me, but she hasn’t yet. I’m not sure what that means, if anything. She probably still feels watched.

I make a plan. I keep the mask on, and I head up to Central Park. I take the path into the lush Ramble, the park’s nature preserve, near Seventy-Ninth Street. The trees are thicker up here. I find a spot as deep and secluded as I can find. I lay out branches everywhere near me and hope like hell that if someone approaches me, I’ll be able to hear and react. I lay down and listen to the babbling stream mixed in with the city sounds. Then I close my eyes and fall into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

At rush hour, when I know Penn Station will be packed, I board an Amtrak to Boston. I have the cleanly shaven head. I wear a mask. Sometime during the ride it hits me that I’ve now been free for twenty-four hours. I am on edge the whole time, but when I go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror, I realize that there is nearly zero chance anyone will recognize me. I don’t know how risky taking this train is, but really, what choice do I have?

When I’m an hour outside of Boston, my burner phone finally rings. I don’t recognize the incoming number. I hit the answer button, but I don’t say anything. I hold the phone to my ear and wait.

“Alpaca,” Rachel says.

Relief washes over me. We came up with seven code words to start every conversation. If she doesn’t open with the code word, it means that it is not safe and someone is forcing her to make the call or listening in. If she reuses a password—if on the next call she says “Alpaca”—I’ll again know someone, somehow, is listening in and trying to fool me.

“All okay?” I ask.

I don’t have a return password or code. I didn’t see a need. There is a fine line between careful and ridiculous.

“As well as we could expect.”

“The cops questioned you?”

“The FBI, yes.”

“They figured out where I was headed,” I say.

“The FBI?”

“Yes. They almost caught me at Hilde’s.”

“I didn’t say anything, I swear.”

“I know.”

“So how?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you got away?”

“For now.”

“Were you able to question her?”

She means Hilde Winslow, of course. I tell her yes and fill her in on some of what I learned. I tell her that Hilde admitted lying on the stand, but I leave out the gambling debt and the connection to Revere. If somehow someone is listening in—man, all of this can make you so damn paranoid—it’s better not to give them the slightest hint of my destination.

“I’m getting as much cash together as I can. I’m going to figure a way to lose any tail that the FBI has on me, just like we talked about.”

“How long will that take?”

“An hour, maybe two. Pin-drop me your location when you get where you’re going. I’ll come to you.”

“Thanks.”

“There’s one other thing,” Rachel says when I finish.

I wait.

“Cheryl visited me last night.”

I can feel the tightness in my chest. “How did that go?”

“I showed her the photo. She thinks we are both delusional.”

“Hard to argue.”

“She also said that my personal issues could be interfering with my judgment.”

“Those being?”

“I’m going to forward you some links, David. Read them. It’s easier than trying to explain.”

*  *  *

Rachel texts me links to three different articles on her proposed me-too article and the subsequent suicide of a young woman named Catherine Tullo. I settle back and read all three. I try to study the situation objectively, as though it does not involve a person I adore as much as Rachel.

But it’s hard to be objective for a lot of reasons.

I have questions for Rachel, but they can keep.

I lay back and close my eyes until I hear the call for North Station in Boston. I look out the window as we pull up to the platform, fearing a huge police presence. There are scattered cops, which is normal, I guess, but they don’t look particularly wary. That doesn’t mean much, but it’s better than seeing a hundred with guns drawn. I head out of the station and into my home city. I can’t help but smile. I head down Causeway Street and hit the Boston-ubiquitous Dunkin’ on the corner of Lancaster Street. I grab half a dozen donuts—two French crullers, two chocolate glazed, one toasted coconut, one old-fashioned—and a large cup of unflavored black coffee because I hate flavored coffee, especially from Dunkin’.

I head down Lancaster Avenue with the Dunkin’ bag in my hand. I’m still wearing the surgical mask, but eventually I will risk that to eat the French cruller. My mouth is watering at the thought. Fifteen minutes later, I’m at the Bowdoin Street subway and on the Blue Line heading toward Revere Beach. I try to flash back to past times when I made this journey in my youth. We had a group of guys back then, all of us in the same class at Revere High. I was closest to Adam Mackenzie, but we had TJ, Billy Simpson, and the man I was on my way to visit, Eddie Grilton.

Eddie’s family owned the pharmacy at Centennial Avenue and North Shore Road, a stone’s throw from Revere Beach station. His grandfather started the place. Everyone I know got their prescriptions filled there, and way back when, first Eddie’s grandfather and then his father ran numbers and books for the Fisher crime family.

The small parking lot behind the pharmacy was completely isolated from the street. Back in the day, it was our main hangout. We drank beers and smoked weed. Of course, that was a long time ago. The crew was mostly gone now. TJ was a physician in Newton. Billy opened a bar in Miami. But Eddie, who had wanted out of this town more than any of us, who hated his grandfather’s life and his father’s life and the teen years he’d been forced to work in the pharmacy too, was still here. He'd ended up going to pharmacology school, just like his old man wanted. After he graduated, he worked that high counter until the old man, like the grandfather before him, keeled over and died of a heart attack. Now Eddie ran the place and waited his turn to keel over.

When I get off at Revere Beach station, I grow wary again, not just because of the possible police presence but because this is my old neighborhood and if anyplace will see through my disguises, it’s here. I am within a thousand feet of my childhood home, the Mackenzie home, Sal’s Pizzeria, Grilton Pharmacy, all of it.

Grilton Pharmacy looks slightly worse for wear, but it had been slowly deteriorating for as long as I can remember. The watered-down brick was barely red anymore. The neon sign above the store was rusting on the edges. When it was turned on, the letters spasmed illumination. I keep my head lowered and move down the alleyway toward our old hangout in the back. There was one parking space. I remember Eddie’s dad always kept his Cadillac back there. It meant something to Eddie’s dad, that car, and he kept it perfectly waxed at all times. Now Eddie kept his Cadillac ATS in the same spot. Things change and yet everything stays the same.

I get deep when I’m tired.

I huddle behind a garbage dumpster. The coffee is still hot. That’s Dunkin’ for you. I inhale a French cruller and slow down midway through the coconut. Prison has its share of abuses, but I guess I’d overlooked the inherent cruelty brought upon my taste buds. I’m giddy from the flavor or the sugar high. Or maybe it’s experiencing freedom. It is so easy to shut down in prison, to make yourself numb, to not let yourself feel or experience anything remotely connected to pleasure. It helps really. It kept me alive. But now I’ve been forced out of that protective shell, now that I’ve let myself think about Matthew and the possibility of redemption, all the “feels” are rushing in.

I check the time. No one uses this back entrance. I know this from the decades we gathered here. It won’t be much longer, I think, and sure enough, the back door opens and Eddie steps out, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. He has the lighter in his hand and the moment the glass door closes behind him, he hits the flame and puts it up to the end of the cigarette. His eyes shut on the deep inhale.

Eddie looks older. He’s skinny and stooped with a paunch. His once-coarse hair is fading now, leaving him somewhere between receding and bald. He has a pencil-thin mustache and sunken eyes. I don’t exactly know how to handle this, so I step into view.

“Hey, Eddie.”

He goes slack-jawed when he sees me. The dangling cigarette falls from his lips, but Eddie grabs it midair. That makes me smile. Eddie had the fastest hands. He was the best ping pong player, the group pool shark, a whiz at video games or pinball or bowling or mini-golf—anything involving hand-eye coordination and little else.

“Holy shit,” Eddie says.

“Do I have to ask you not to scream?”

“Fuck no, you kidding me?” He hurries over to me. “I’m so happy to see you, man.”

He hugs me—that new/old sensation—and I stiffen, afraid that if I give in to this I’ll collapse and never get back up. Still, the hug is welcome. Even the stench of cigarette is welcome. “Me too, Eddie.”

“I saw on the news about your escape.” He points to the top of my head. “You losing your hair too?”

“No, I’m in disguise.”

“Clever,” Eddie says. “Can we get one thing out of the way?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t kill Matthew, did you?”

“I did not.”

“Knew it. You got a plan? Forget it, the less I know the better. You need cash?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Business is in the crapper, but I got some money in the safe. Whatever’s there, it’s yours.”

I try not to well up. “Thanks, Eddie.”

“That why you’re here?”

“No.”

“Talk to me.”

“You still running book?”

“Nah. That’s why business is so bad. We used to do it all in the old days. I mean, my grandfather ran numbers. My dad, he took everyone’s bets. The cops called them both crooks. No offense to your old man.”

“None taken.”

“How is he, by the way?”

“You probably know more than I do, Eddie.”

“Yeah, I guess. Where was I?”

“The cops called your dad and granddad crooks.”

“Right. But you know who finally put us out of business? The government. Used to be numbers were illegal. Then the government called it a lottery and gives shittier odds than we ever did and now, bam, it’s legit. Gambling was illegal too, and then some online assholes paid off a bunch of politicians and now, boom, you click online and your bets are in. Marijuana too, not that my old man ever sold that.”

“But you were booking five years ago?”

“That’s around when it all started to tank. Why?”

“Do you remember a client named Ellen Winslow?”

He frowned. “She wasn’t one of mine. Reggie on Shirley Avenue took her bets.”

“But you know the name?”

“She was in deep, yeah. But I can’t imagine why you’d care.”

Eddie still wears the white pharmacy smock. Like he’s a doctor or a cosmetics salesman at Filene’s.

“So she’d have owed the Fisher brothers?”

Eddie doesn’t love where this conversation is headed. “Yeah, I guess. Davey, why are you asking me all this?”

“I need to talk to Kyle.”

Silence.

“Kyle as in Skunk Kyle?”

“They still call him that?”

“He prefers it.”

That had been his nickname when we were kids. I don’t remember when Kyle moved to town. First grade, maybe second. He had the white forelock even then. With the white streak against the black hair and kids being kids, he immediately got the obvious nickname Skunk. Some kids would have hated that. Young Kyle seemed to revel in it.

“Let me get this straight,” Eddie says. “You want to talk to Skunk Kyle about an old debt?”

“Yes.”

Eddie whistled. “You remember him, right?”

“Yes.”

“Remember when he pushed Lisa Millstone off that roof when we were nine?”

“I do.”

“And Mrs. Bailey’s cats. The ones that kept disappearing when we were like, twelve?”

“Yes.”

“And the Pallone girl. What was her name again? Mary Anne—”

“I remember,” I say.

“Skunk hasn’t gotten better, Davey.”

“I know. I assume he still works for the Fishers?”

Eddie gives his face a vigorous rub with his right hand. “You going to tell me what this is about?”

I see no reason not to. “I think the Fishers kidnapped my son and set me up for murder.”

I give him the abridged version. Eddie doesn’t tell me I’m crazy, but he thinks it. I show him the amusement-park photo. He looks at it quickly, but his eyes stay mostly on me. He drops his cigarette butt to the cracked pavement and lights another one. He doesn’t interrupt.

When I finish, Eddie says, “I’m not going to try to talk you out of this. You’re a big boy.”

“I appreciate that. You can set it up?”

“I can make a call.”

“Thank you.”

“You know the old man retired, right?”

“Nicky Fisher retired?” I say.

“Yep, retired, moved someplace warm. I hear Nicky golfs every day now. Spent his life murdering, robbing, extorting, pillaging, maiming, but now he’s in his eighties enjoying golf and spa massages and dinners out in Florida. Karma, right?”

“So who’s the boss now?”

“His son NJ runs the show.”

“Do you think NJ will talk to me?”

“I can only ask. But if it’s what you think, it’s not like they’re going to confess.”

“I’m not interested in getting anyone in trouble.”

“Yeah, but it’s not just that. If they really wanted to set you up for killing your own kid—and I won’t go into the million reasons why that makes no sense—why wouldn’t they just call the cops on you now?”

“The Fishers calling the cops?”

“It wouldn’t be a good look, I admit. Of course, they might just kill you. That’s more their style than this Count of Monte Cristo tale you’re coming up with.”

“I don’t really have a choice, Eddie. This is my only lead.”

Eddie nods. “Okay. Let me make a call.”