We were sitting in the McDonald’s parking lot when my phone rang. It was the 302 number again.
“This is Joe. Who’s this?”
“It’s the Mayor. I’m at a pay phone, so I don’t have much time. I didn’t want to say too much yesterday, because you never know who’s listening. You dig me?”
“Yeah,” I said, stepping out of the car to take the call. I needed to walk off the two Egg McMuffins I’d obliterated.
“I told you about our card games, but what I didn’t tell you was that Finn had stopped coming to them. I think he knew that we knew he’d become mixed up in something bad.”
“Drugs?”
“I don’t know the specifics. He kept quiet about it. But we could all tell he was hiding something. At first we thought it might have something to do with his wife down at Baptist Manor, because he never said a word about her being sick, even though we all knew it. But it wasn’t that. Like I said, we didn’t have any idea of what exactly he’d become mixed up in. What we did know was that it was nothing good. The last time he was over for cards, we got a look at the inside of his wallet. We’re not high stakes. When he pulled a few bills out, though, we all saw the cash he was sitting on.”
“You’re saying he was loaded.”
“Like a mother,” the Mayor said.
“Maybe he just cashed out his savings…”
“Or something else. None of us said a word then, but later on we talked. Alvin swore he didn’t know nothing.”
“Alvin Harrison?”
“His engineer, yeah. Anyway, Finn had too much cash for somebody in his situation, with a sick wife and a daughter in school. Maybe if he worked in a cash business, like I do, it would make sense.”
“Maybe.”
“But later on, when I went to use one of the tens I’d won that night, I noticed something about it. It was dirty.”
“All cash is dirty,” I said. In fact, I once read that ninety percent of all U.S. currency tested positive for cocaine. You don’t want to know how much tests positive for fecal matter.
“I don’t just mean dirty, I mean dirty. There was a tiny highlighter mark in the corner of the bill. It had been marked by a cop, or the FBI. I wouldn’t bet my life on it, but I’m pretty sure it was drug money.”
“You think he was on heroin?” I asked.
“If you’re getting high, the cash usually flows out of your wallet, not the other way around. Plus, I seen enough people doped up in my time to know what it looks like. You can’t hide that faraway look in your eyes.”
“Have you told the police any of this?”
The laugh at the other end was so loud and shrill I had to hold my phone away from my ear. “Stop by next time you’re in the station,” he said, “but don’t mention this conversation, because it never happened.”
It wasn’t until I’d hung up that something hit me. Something the Mayor said…Alvin Harrison. His engineer.
His engineer.
Of course. Alvin was the engineer Finn worked in tandem with on the 7:46 a.m. Acela Express. I knew he’d been driving the train that hit Finn, but hadn’t put two and two together. I should have realized earlier that he was also the same engineer who’d worked beside Finn every day. No wonder he was so shaken by the accident. Finn hadn’t just been a coworker. Finn had been Alvin’s closest coworker.
I returned to the backseat and told Barack what I’d learned from the Mayor. Barack listened from the front passenger seat, watching me in the rearview. He was on his third package of apple slices, which were the only things on the McDonald’s menu he’d found acceptable. Steve pretended not to listen to us, but I could tell he was interested. He’d been surprisingly nonchalant about our ditching him last night. We all agreed to let bygones be bygones. There was too much on the line for personal feelings to get in the way.
I didn’t have Alvin’s phone number but I didn’t need it. I knew where he lived because Grant and I had dropped him off at his apartment. “Start the car,” I told Steve. “We need to talk to the engineer.”
Barack craned around to see if I was serious. “You sure we shouldn’t wait for Esposito?”
“The cops and the transportation board have raked this guy’s chestnuts over the open fire. But if there’s even the slightest chance he’s holding something back, who’s he going to talk to? Another cop, or Amtrak Joe?”
“You make an excellent point.”
“Maybe they haven’t asked the right questions. He knows something. He has to. Two men work that closely for that long, they’re bound to open up to each other. They’re bound to forge a close bond.”
“Hey, Steve, that sounds like us, right?” Barack said, patting Steve on the back.
Steve started the car. I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes. We started backing up, then abruptly stopped.
“We have company,” Barack said.
I opened my eyes. Red and blue lights were flashing in the rearview mirror. A police car was blocking our exit; on either side of us were more police cars. We were boxed in.
“Nobody has anything illegal, do they?” I asked. “No guns, no…”
“We’re clean,” Barack said.
“No marijuana cigarettes? I know that stuff is legal in DC now, but this isn’t DC.”
“They’re called joints, Joe,” Barack said. “And, no, I don’t have any on me. I left all my pot back in my man cave.”
Before I could ask if he was kidding—he’d never said a word about having a man cave before—there was a tap on Steve’s window. It was Esposito. She wasn’t smiling.