I TOOK A SHOWER when I got home, trying to wash away the stink of the day. Then I poured myself a glass of chardonnay and ate some leftover chicken and thought more about the sad life and death of Callie Harden.
I did not know for sure that someone had followed me to my meeting with her. If Tony knew that Lisa and Callie had been friends, it wasn’t much of a leap to think that others did, too. Jabari said he wasn’t having me followed. He could have lied. Pimps lied. Callie had said it herself.
But if I had led him to her, did that mean he’d killed her, or had her killed? Why, because she might have information that might make it easier for Jabari to hire Lisa away from Tony Marcus? Kill someone who was best friends with the woman you say you want to hire?
And what possible gain would there be for Tony to have me followed to a meeting with Callie Harden? Clearly, he had her phone number. If he didn’t know where she lived now, it would be no great challenge for him to find out.
Was I being followed?
If somebody had followed me on foot back to River Street Place after Gabriel Jabari had dropped me off, the person was very good, because I hadn’t spotted him, or her. I looked out the front window now. As always, there were cars parked on both sides of the street. It was dark at this hour. If there was somebody in the front seat of one of those cars, I was unable to spot them.
One of the reasons I had taken this case was so I wouldn’t have to look over my shoulder, but that’s exactly what I was doing now. I didn’t like the feeling that someone might be following me. I didn’t like that I had made no progress finding Lisa Morneau.
And I hated what had happened to Callie. In a surprising and visceral way, and not for the first time, I hated feeling like a victim of life’s circumstances.
If someone was following me, I was going to find out.
I went upstairs and put on a BU sweatshirt and a pair of jeans and some waterproof Merrells I wore for walking around in wet weather. I took the Glock out of my bedside table and brought it back downstairs and put it in my purse, replacing the .38 I’d been carrying. I put on a parka and a baseball cap with Spike’s on the front, locked the door, set the alarm, and walked around to the back of the house where residents of River Street Place were allowed to park their cars. I drove around to Berkeley and got on Storrow Drive heading west. It had begun to snow again. After about a mile I picked up the black Nissan, no plates in front, about five cars behind me, keeping that distance no matter how much I slowed down or sped up, occasionally changing lanes. But always staying with me.
I took the ramp for Soldiers Field Road, finally made a left on North Harvard Street, and pulled into the lot at Harvard Stadium. The previous November I had attended the Harvard–Yale game here with Spike, “The Game,” as it was called, with typical Ivy League understatement. Spike wasn’t much of a football guy, but happened to be dating one of the Harvard assistant coaches at the time.
We’d had good seats, at midfield. I remember saying “Boola Boola” as we’d made our way to them, before he shushed me and told me that was a Yale song.
Before I got out of the car I removed the Glock from my purse and put it into the side pocket of my parka. I knew I was being emotional, borderline irrational, and didn’t care. If you couldn’t get emotional and irrational once in a while, what was the point of being female? There. I’d said it.
I knew that the root of my anger was that men, once again, seemed to feel as if they could set the rules of engagement in my life. But it was more than that roiling me, and I knew that, too. I should never have taken this case. I shouldn’t be working for Tony Marcus, in any capacity. Spike was right. Richie was right. I should quit.
Only I hated quitting.
So now here I was, pretending to talk on my phone as I got out of the car, looking around as if confused, wanting whoever had been tailing me in the Nissan to think I was here to meet someone. The snow came harder.
I walked through Gate 1, out of the snow and into the bowels of the stadium, and immediately began sprinting toward Gate 2, hoping its gates weren’t closed, wanting to see if the Nissan was in the lot and how close it might be to where I’d parked.
Just like that I was the one doing the following, as snow suddenly came blowing at Harvard Stadium from the west.
I poked my head out and saw the car, motor running, perhaps fifty yards from my car, closer to North Harvard than where I’d parked.
I couldn’t see how many people were inside. Maybe it was only the driver. If so, I didn’t know if he had yet followed me inside the stadium. The snow came harder, starting to blow sideways.
I inched along the outside of the stadium and saw the driver get out of the car. The headlights hadn’t yet gone off, so I saw that he was black and skinny, and wearing some kind of sleeveless parka and a baseball cap. At first I thought it was Ty Bop, except that this guy was heavier. But then, almost everybody was heavier than Ty Bop.
He lowered his head and leaned into the snow and walked toward Gate 1. I moved more quickly along the outside walls, Glock in my hand, not really having played this all the way out in my head, not having known I was coming here until I started driving.
I just knew this: Whoever they were, they thought they were the ones in control. They didn’t realize I’d flipped the script. What was the rallying cry for we modern women, and all the men who had ever tried to push us around, or worse?
Time’s up?
The guy was standing a few feet inside Gate 1, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, trying to make himself warmer, perhaps wondering if I had even made my way to the field, when I came up behind him and put my gun into the small of his back.
I heard him grunt and then say, “Shit.”
“Hands up,” I said. “And if you try anything, I will shoot you.”
“For what? Following you?”
“I’ve had a bad day,” I said. “There’s no telling how agitated I might get.”
Then I said, “You got a name, tough guy?”
“Don’t matter,” he said.
I poked him harder with my gun.
“What, you gonna shoot me in the back?” he said.
“Who said it would be in the back?” I said. “Maybe in the ass, just for sport.”
“Go ahead,” he said. “Been shot before.”
“Who told you to follow me?” he said.
“I tell you that,” he said, “might as well let you shoot me.”
We were at a standoff, and both knew it. I stepped away from him, in case he tried to wheel suddenly on me, with an elbow or backhand slap at my gun, or even one of the kickboxing moves I’d once learned from a trainer myself. I asked if he was carrying. He said he’d left his piece, he didn’t get out of the car expecting no damn shootout at Harvard Stadium.
“You could pat me down, you want,” he said. “Might like it.”
I noticed an almost imperceptible drop of his hands.
“Don’t even think about it,” I said.
He shook his head.
“This shit is fucked up,” he said. “Letting some little girl get the drop on me.”
I racked the slide of my gun for effect. But he had to already know the magazine was loaded.
“I hate being called that,” I said.
“What?”
“Little girl.”
“Fuck you,” he said.
“Who hired you?”
“Fuck you,” he said.
“You got any ID on you?” I said.
He snorted. “Oh, hell yeah. I got my driver’s license in my pocket along with my Starbucks card.”
He made a snorting noise.
“You think you so bad.”
“I read in a book one time,” I said, “that the badass is generally the one holding the gun.”
He shrugged and turned and spit.
“Give me a name,” I said. “I have a couple of hundred dollars in my car. Tell me who hired you and it’s yours.”
“Then what? I spend it when I’m dead?”
I moved around in front of him now, keeping the gun pointed at him, still careful to stay out of his reach. If he’d been lying to me about his own gun, and did have it on him, it was going to take some time and effort to clear it. And I didn’t believe he wanted a shootout at Harvard Stadium any more than I did.
“What we do now?” he said. “You know you ain’t gon’ shoot me.”
“What you do is go tell the guy who hired you to tell whoever hired him to stop following me. Because if he doesn’t, I’m pretty sure somebody who does like to shoot people will be coming up behind him.”
“Like who?”
“Like somebody working for Desmond Burke.”
“Who the fuck is Desmond Burke?”
“Trust me,” I said. “Someone in your crew will know. Or your boss will. Or his boss.”
He shrugged.
“That car outside yours?” I said.
“No,” he said.
“Stolen?”
“What the fuck difference it make, anyway? Ain’t no plates on it.”
“Start walking,” I said. “And don’t turn around until you’re back inside the car. And if you decide to come back to my house tonight as a way of rolling things up, you’ll see a cop car in front of it.”
He hesitated, as if briefly considering his options, then said “Fuck it” as he headed in the direction of Gate 2. I watched him go, slowly began backing toward Gate 1. By the time I got outside, my car was the only one in the lot. Then I was inside my car and heading back toward North Harvard, and Soldiers Field Road, and Storrow Drive, without ever looking back myself.
I knew what I’d done fell into the category of what I called dumb-guy stuff. I had solved nothing and learned nothing and come no closer to finding Lisa Morneau. I had likely made more trouble for myself, even though I did not know with whom.
I still didn’t know who’d had me followed.
But, damn, it had felt good.
“Boola Boola,” I said, not caring whether it was the other school’s song or not.