TONY MARCUS HAD gone to ground, according to both Vinny Morris’s contacts and Spike’s. Apparently Gabriel Jabari had done the same. Perhaps each was regrouping, and plotting his next move. As always when dealing with any level of thug, I reminded myself I was not dealing with master criminals here. Both of them were smart. Just not nearly as smart as they thought they were.
They still operated off the codes of the streets that had produced both of them. What was happening between them in real time, whoever turned out to be responsible for the murders of the two women, was a variation of a basic street-corner stare-down. You dis me, I dis you. You don’t take a step back? Neither do I. Never show weakness, until only one was left standing. Or neither. But if both of them did go down, two more would step up to take their places. It was the order of things in what my father had always called the world of fuckery.
All of this I contemplated on the long walk back to River Street Place. Had I ever walked eight miles in the same day, at least not when on a sightseeing tour in a city like London? I could not think of a time when I had. Maybe I was in training for the Olympics of fuckery.
When I finally returned home, I walked Rosie and fed her earlier than usual. I still had not heard from Darcy about Jabari’s fingerprints. I had not heard back from Jake Rosen. For this one afternoon, I was about as close with cops I knew as I was with pimps I knew. I wondered what Dr. Silverman would make of symbolic thinking like that.
I walked up to the fourth floor and put on my smock and tried to paint, but could not. So I showered and made myself a cup of strong English tea. I thought about lacing it with some Irish, as a way of bringing the two countries closer, but did not.
I needed to take some sort of action that was not simply reaction. I considered two of my favorite rules of top-flight detecting:
When in doubt follow someone.
Or annoy someone.
I decided to combine them with Natalie. We were, after all, neighbors. So by six o’clock I was about fifty yards from her building on Revere Street, having found a parking spot on the street that gave me a perfect view of the front door. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe my luck was changing. The lights of her apartment were fully lit.
I had no real plan. I was just hopeful, because of the hour, that she might come out the front door at some point and head off to dinner. If she had called a car service, or had a car of her own parked on the street, I would follow in mine. Or follow her on foot if she was walking to a restaurant nearby.
The temperature outside had dropped again. I thought back to the night Spike and I had staked out Suite. Jabari had, at least indirectly, led us to Natalie that night. Maybe she could lead me somewhere tonight.
I was sitting behind the wheel, listening to Eric in the Evening play jazz on WGBH, when a car pulled up in front of Natalie’s building. A woman got out of the backseat, fumbling around in her purse, probably for her keys.
When she had them in hand, she turned just enough in my direction that I got a clear look at her face, and saw that it was Olivia Hewitt.