He was leaning forward on his knee and looking at me pleasantly, as if we'd met in a bar to talk over old times.
"Why are you showing me this?"
He stared at the burning end of his cigarette. "I hear the McTavish kid is coming back."
"So what?" Not a snappy comeback, to be sure, but no one had told me, officially anyway, that Terry was coming back and it ticked me off that Big Pete was continually better informed than I was. "Besides, Little Pete's coming back, and the only thing Terry did was save him from an even bigger screw-up than the one he actually caused."
"I don't know what screw-up you'd be referring to."
"The one where he reversed the load on one of his trips because he was drunk."
The fact that I knew one of his secrets didn't seem to bother him. He offered a nod in my direction that was almost deferential. "That was a ballsy move, going around Lenny the way you did. I gotta give you credit for that. Lenny's a piece of shit, but he ain't easy to push around, neither." He took another deep drag, his cheeks hollowing out as he inhaled, then exhaled slowly, directing the stream up toward the ceiling.
"I also gotta ask myself, how is it you seem to know so much about what's going on down here with us."
"I'm well connected."
"Either that or you got a snitch…"
Something in the back of my neck began to tighten.
"…Which means we got a rat."
The smoke from his cigarette drifted up toward the ceiling, a ceiling still black with soot from the bombing this man had most certainly engineered. I was starting to get the idea. That tightening in my neck twisted a little more. "Say what you mean to say."
"All right. I know about Johnny McTavish. I know he's been feeding you information. I know that's part of why his kid brother got his job back."
I held perfectly still, which was just as well since all sensation had long since abandoned my feet.
"Is that what this demonstration is all about? Is this a threat to make me stop looking for whatever it is you and I aren't looking for?"
"This ain't nothing more than a friendly reminder that the ramp is a dangerous place. Accidents happen all the time, and even though you ain't out here that much, other people are." He looked at me with those chameleon eyes. "We don't like rats down here. That guy who got his foot flattened, he was a rat, and he was lucky it wasn't his head got caught in that bag door. Johnny Mac's a pretty tough guy, but his bones break just like everybody else's. Just like yours." He stepped a little closer. "Just like hers."
My heart thumped against my rib cage. "What are you talking about?"
"I hear that's how she died-broken neck." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. That's how quick it can happen." He pressed his lips into a thin smile that to me was the equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. "Can you imagine that?"
"You sick, sleazy bastard."
"What happened to that woman should never have happened," he said, "but it did. It's done and nothing you can do will change that. Nothing. This ain't your fight, and what you're looking for, nobody wants you to find it. Nobody."
For the first time I felt real panic, as if I was in over my head, as if something I'd started was about to spin dangerously out of my control. I wanted to run to a phone to call John, to call Dan, to call everyone I knew and make sure they were safe tonight. And I wanted to get out of there. "I'm leaving."
He dropped the cigarette on the cement floor and crushed it out under his boot. Then he stood in front of me, this time at a polite distance, with his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Listen to me. There's nothing happening around here that ain't been happening for a long time, and by the time you figure that out, that it ain't worth it, it's going to be too late. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you got no friends here, including that asshole Fallacaro."
The numb feeling in my toes began to creep ever so slowly into my calves, my knees… "What about him?"
"He's been lying to you right from the beginning."
…my thighs, my hips, and my stomach…
"Who do you think told me about Johnny Mac being a rat?"
"What you're saying about John McTavish is not true. But even if it was…" My words couldn't keep up with my brain. "What would be in it for Dan to tell you something like that?"
"He didn't tell me. He told your boss."
"Why would he tell Lenny something…" The cold, dry air was sticking in my throat, and it was getting painful to breathe, almost impossible to talk, and now I was completely numb. I didn't feel cold. I didn't feel anything. "Dan hates Lenny. He wasn't even in Boston most of the time that Lenny was here."
"You know about Crescent Security, I know you do. But do you know where it was located?"
I opened my mouth to answer and closed it.
Pete was watching me closely, nodding. "Crescent Security was run by Lenny's brother-in-law in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is just down the road from Newark." He used it for payoffs. He needed to pay someone off, he made them a Crescent contractor. He needed to collect, he'd send a bill from Crescent. But sometimes he needed to move large amounts of cash in secret, and that's where your buddy came in. It was the Danny Fallacaro delivery service-Jersey to Boston, hand-delivered. Better than FedEx. That's how he got into management. He was just another bag slinger before that… one of us."
I tried to find some equilibrium, because the concrete floor was falling out from under me. I wanted to say I didn't believe him, but I couldn't find my voice.
"If you don't believe me, ask him." Pete lifted his hood over his head, and when he turned to go, I could no longer see his face, could only hear his voice. "Ask him about locker thirty-nine. He'll know."
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The track at the East Boston Memorial Stadium is right in Logan's front yard, encircled by a noisy four-lane road that loops into and out of the terminals. But as I came down the back stretch, the only sounds I heard were my feet pounding the track and my own labored breathing as I sprinted the last quarter mile at a pace I could barely sustain, pushing toward the finish, arms pumping, chest heaving, tapping into my last reserves of energy. When I was finished running this morning, I didn't want to have anything left.
Coming out of the last curve, a sharp, familiar pain flashed like a hot poker from behind my left knee straight up the back of my thigh, and I knew I'd pushed too hard. Again. My hamstring had been aggravated for two years, but I'd never stopped running long enough to let it completely heal. I shifted down to a trot and then a walk, hands on my hips and favoring the left side.
"Shanahan…"
I shielded my eyes so I could peer down the track, but I didn't need to see. The tenor and cadence of Dan's voice had become as familiar to me as my own. He was standing in the middle of my lane, completely out of place in his gray worsted suit, pant legs flapping around his Florsheim shoes. He had his hands stuck down in the pockets of his camel-hair coat, which was about an inch too long for his frame. Behind him, the traffic flowed over the access road nonstop, moving like sludge out of the airport. The sky over his head was bright and clean and blue.
"You pick the strangest places to have meetings, boss."
The jaunty tone was jarring. I'd been in a black pit in the hours since I'd talked to Big Pete, unable to sleep, too upset to eat. I was doing the only thing I knew would make me feel better. But there are only so many miles you can run before your body breaks down and you have to face the hard things in life, and there wasn't much that was harder than what I was about to face with Dan.