IT WAS PAST eleven o’clock when I got back. I was still too keyed-up for sleep, so I sat at the kitchen table with a glass of whiskey and my trusty yellow legal pad, writing down what Tony had told me about Lisa Morneau and writing down things that Gabriel Jabari had told me and wondering which one of them was having me followed, because they were the only two players in the game that I knew about.
Each said they wanted to find her for a different reason. Perhaps each thought I might actually lead one of them to her.
But which one?
And why had she run in the first place?
Did she really know everything about Tony’s operation, or just everything he allowed her to know? Did she know things that Tony would kill to keep secret?
And if she’d told Callie Harden these things, was that why Callie Harden had died?
I sipped whiskey. Rosie slept at my feet. I was working for the most powerful pimp in the city, whatever I told myself about our current arrangement. I had been threatened by someone who sounded like he wanted to be the most powerful pimp in the city. I was looking for an ex-hooker and had likely gotten another ex-hooker killed. But this was the life I had chosen, trying to answer questions like these about people like this, no matter how righteous my motives were.
I sipped more whiskey, picked up my pen, and wrote in big, cursive letters:
Is she gone for good?
A possibility that could not be ignored.
I looked down at Rosie, snoring at my feet, and said, “Where’s Lisa?”
Rosie looked up, but clearly had nothing.
Made two of us.
I kept replaying my conversation with Callie, as best I could, wondering if I had missed something, if she might have dropped her guard enough to indicate she knew more about Lisa, or where Lisa might be, than she had told me.
But what?
I thought about calling Richie. I sometimes called him late at night after he’d closed up the saloon, the phone calls making me feel the way I did when we had first started dating and would talk on the phone into the night, neither wanting to be the first to hang up. Now it was all this time later and he was about to become a dad, really, for the first time in his life. In his life and our life together.
But if I talked to him tonight I would have to tell him about what had happened at Harvard Stadium, and I knew what his reaction to that would be. He would be less happy about that than he was that I was working for Tony Marcus. So I did not call him, nor Spike, knowing his reaction would be roughly the same as Richie’s. I felt myself smiling. One thing I had learned with Dr. Silverman. I could project with the best of them.
Having gotten nowhere and decided nothing, it was time for me to go to bed. I got my parka out of the closet, got the .38 from the desk in the foyer, grabbed Rosie’s leash, took her out for her final ablutions of the evening, congratulated her so profusely when she completed both of her tasks as if she’d won Best in Show. I looked out at River Street Place and in the direction of the Charles Street Meeting House and wondered if I was still being watched, and by whom, and from where.
I locked the door, set the dead bolt, set the alarm, gathered Rosie into my arms, was about to go up the stairs until I remembered I’d left my phone in the living room before taking Rosie outside.
There was one missed call, from an unknown caller, one new voice message.
I played it.
“This is Lisa,” the voice said. “I need to talk to you.”
A pause.
I could hear voices in the background. It sounded as if she had dropped the phone and picked it up.
“Nobody had to die over this!” she said.
That was all. I kept replaying the message. No matter how many times I did, it ended the same way every time.