Lee meets me in Zero’s office. There was no need to give him directions, he’s been here before.
I take out Lee’s phone and place it on Zero’s desk as Zero drives his thumb below his eyebrow to dissipate the headache I’m causing him. Lee looks starched. Straight-up stiff in a suit.
“I’m surprised you didn’t get rid of it.” Lee looks at the phone, but doesn’t touch it.
“What’s the point, right? You can ping my locations anyhow, figure out where I’ve been. Is there anything else that phone can do?”
“No,” Lee says. “It’s just a phone.”
“A phone that doesn’t fucking exist.” Zero gives up on his self-healing touch, opting as he usually does to embrace the pain. Or at least the annoyance, the prophecy of the other shoe falling coming to immediate fruition.
“That’s correct,” Lee confirms. “A phone that doesn’t exist and doesn’t have Zesty at the site of a double homicide, though nearby, which can be explained by his appearance onstage at the Hong Kong. By the way, how did your set go?”
“Were you there?” I ask.
“No.”
“I killed,” I say.
“Jesus Christ!” Zero exclaims.
“No, it’s a good thing, I think,” Lee addresses my brother. “Hasn’t this always been the way he has coped?”
Partners in suffering, Zero and Lee finally find something to agree on. It’s enough for Zero to swivel in his chair and spin the dial on the safe a few times before opening the heavy door. He sets a small wrapped bundle down next to the phone and uncovers it for Lee to see.
“You ever go scuba diving, Lee? Florida? The Caymans?” Zero tilts his head toward the scuba gear in the corner. “I could give you a good deal on the suit.”
“No, thank you.”
“I don’t blame you. After seeing all the shit that was still down there in the channel…” Zero shakes his head. “It’s practically an entire neighborhood, parked cars, half a building, I swear. If Atlantis had a ghetto, I just found it. And fuckin’ Gillette oughta be tarred and feathered for what they done.”
“You strike me as an unlikely environmentalist,” Lee says.
“What are you talking about? My boxes are made from recycled cardboard. Those giant rubber bands? Cut from old tire tubes. And my trucks, I’m having them converted to biodiesel.”
“Interesting.” Something recalibrates in Lee’s eyes. A momentary pause like a GPS that’s just steered itself into a dead end.
“Well, I got a kid now,” Zero explains. “It makes you see shit differently. We good?”
“We are.” Lee rewraps the rusted Glock and places it in the briefcase by his feet. “Don’t be surprised if Cambridge Homicide shows up to ask you a few questions. It’s just due diligence. They know nothing, will learn nothing, from the Bureau, from me.”
“Powers and McGowan?” I ask.
“Possibly. Depending on what Cambridge Internal Affairs already has on them or whether they want to own the stain of two corrupted Homicides. Anyhow, even if it is McGowan and Powers riding shotgun, it would not seem to be in their own best interest to solve this case, seeing how they are off their master’s chain now.”
“That’s a good thing?” Zero looking at it from every conceivable angle, not entirely convinced. I want him to be convinced. Like both my parents, I made a choice that I thought was right, that was just. And in the heat of the moment.
Zero really was more like my father, more calculating. Would he take out two dirty cops if he thought that was the play? I don’t doubt it for a second. I even believe Jhochelle would do it, trained Israeli sniper as she is. Who knows, maybe even the Rabbi would assist. Powers and McGowan wouldn’t even know they were dead.
“I don’t believe they are smart enough to put all the pieces together, if that’s what you’re asking. But I do think that they’re intelligent enough in a self-serving manner to not look so hard. The same applies to the Russian Mob, what is left of it. We’ve picked up talk that perhaps Boston is not such a hospitable place to set up shop. The cost of everything is too high. Zesty is safe. Cambridge will make a big deal of the Nikita Kucherov and Antti Voracek killings, the papers as well. But wait for a little time to pass; Harvard will lend their considerable weight to convincing CPD to move on quietly since it was so close to their campus. After all, there are no mourners clamoring for justice in this case and remember, as far as statistics are concerned, Rambir falls under unsolved for Boston Homicide, not Cambridge.”
“And what if Rambir does get solved?” I say. Knowing Wells, I could have said when Rambir gets solved.
Lee is quiet for a long time as he plays the scenario out in his head. “That is entirely up to Detective Wells, I imagine.” Lee stares hard at me, letting me know that he knows I wasn’t alone on Bow Street. After all, there were two different guns used in the killing of Voracek and Kucherov, two different caliber bullets, which points to two shooters. “If he solves the Rambir murder, I suspect that he will control the narrative as best he can.”
“You’re talking about Anitra Tehran,” I say.
“Yes.”
“I think she’ll cooperate,” I say. “Though I doubt she’ll let him write the story himself.” By which I mean, she’ll have the inside track on her scoop and write her piece and collect her accolades and never really learn what Wells and I did for her. For Sam Budoff. For all of us.
MIT won’t like it, whatever it turns out to be. But they have the machinery in place to limit the damage and someone more than capable of doing it in Rosalinda Worth. At least until she figures out it might be her conscience that’s bothering her, her name-memory issues maybe manifesting themselves out of guilt. But what the fuck do I know? Worth didn’t say she was losing sleep and we can justify just about anything when our backs are to the wall.
“And what about you?” Zero looks to close the loop. “Your people?”
“We will follow up on the files and see where they lead, but these are financial crimes we’re looking at, movement of money, wire fraud, perhaps money laundering. Essentially work for lawyers over expensive lunches and riverfront views.”
“Tawdry,” I say, because it is tawdry and because it’s a classic word to be spoken in a heavy Boston accent, like cahs, and buhrds, and no holds bahhed.
“Yes,” Lee agrees. “Tawdry to the extreme. Boston is awash in money. Real estate money. High-tech money. Though there is very little out there on the streets.”
“Except for the nearly million in poker chips Sam has,” I remind Lee. “Rambir’s chips. Maybe Yuki Fuji’s chips.”
“Like I said before, Zesty. That is Detective Wells’s call. As far as I know there were only two poker chips from Mr. Roshan’s socks and they are worthless. And that is all that I am putting in my report on the matter.”
Which actually causes Zero to smile. “It’s a pleasure doing business with you, Agent Lee.” Zero brings the meeting to a close. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but unless you need someone to move you out of town I hope I never run into you again.”
“Likewise.” They shake hands and look at me like a stain on the carpet they can’t get out.