But he knew Boston. He’d spent time here as a kid and for a few years between bids. He felt comfortable in Boston and knew all sorts of people in town, people who might give him a room until things cooled down or who could hook him up if and when he decided to fence the dragonfly ring. He’d been inside when that marathon-bombing thing happened, but he knew the town was different now, that there were eyes all over the place that hadn’t been there before. Still, if he had to keep looking over his shoulder, he felt more relaxed doing it in a place he was familiar with, a place full of people who didn’t look anybody in the eye or care about anybody else’s business.
So far, he felt good about his choice. He hadn’t gotten a second look since getting into town. He’d already found a place to hunker down for a night or two or until he could make contact with someone who could find a better spot for him. Now he had to make a call. He hadn’t wanted to make the call until he was in a safer place. That’s what he told himself. The truth was he didn’t want to make the call because he didn’t want to face the fact that King had fucked him. He guessed he should have figured it out because of the extra two grand King left behind with the note. Knowing that, he should have been happy King got what was coming to him. The thing about it was that it just made him feel more sad and stupid than betrayed.
He felt pretty stupid to begin with, that he could have let King play him the way he had. The worst part of it was that King had so little respect for Hump that he hadn’t even bothered covering his tracks. King had left intact the notepad where he’d scribbled down the phone number. Hump kept shaking his head whenever he thought about King’s lack of respect for him. Sure, King’d ripped off the sheet with the phone number on it, but didn’t bother with the sheets beneath it. Did he really think I was so dumb I wouldn’t know how to shade in the next sheet on the notepad with the side of the pencil lead? The answer was painfully obvious. He was shaking his head as he walked into Dennis’s, a dreary local bar in Southie.
Hump knew the place had an old-fashioned phone booth in the back by the bathrooms. What else he knew about Dennis’s was that Mickey Coyle hung out there. They weren’t friends or nothing. Coyle was the kind of person who didn’t need to make friends inside because he was protected by Gino Fish’s money. Coyle was heavily connected and that counted for a lot, especially in the position Hump was in. If he couldn’t squeeze more money out of the guy who’d hired him and King, he was going to have to sell the ring. Mickey Coyle was the type of guy to know people who might take the ring off his hands.
The back of the bar was beautifully mirrored, the way they used to do it. The bar itself was vintage but beat up, and the stools looked pretty wobbly. There were a few guys at the bar, minding their own business. Dennis’s was the kind of place where people minded their own business and drank shots with tall boys back. There wasn’t a blender, an olive, or an orange slice in sight. Nobody turned or looked directly at Hump. You didn’t look people in the face in Dennis’s. Instead they all rolled their eyes up from their drinks or papers to see what the bar mirror told them about the big guy walking into the place.
“Phone booth still in the back?” Hump asked the barman.
“Ain’t moved since I seen it last. Drink?”
“Harpoon tap. I’ll be back in a minute.”
Hump found the phone booth where he remembered it. It smelled of stale beer and ancient cigarette smoke preserved inside the sticky wall grime like insects trapped inside amber. He pulled quarters out of his pocket, sat down on the rounded ledge of a seat, and closed the booth door. He dropped the coins in the slot and punched in the number. It rang and rang and rang and rang. He put the phone back in its cradle.
Hump’s beer was on a coaster on the bar by a stool far away from the others. He sat down, took a sip, and waved the barman over.
“What I owe ya?”
“Three bucks.”
Hump put a twenty on the bar. When the bartender turned to walk away, Hump stopped him.
“Mickey Coyle still come in here?”
“Who?” The bartender was a bloated guy in his thirties with shaggy gray hair and a prison stare.
“Mickey Coyle. Works for Gino Fish.”
The bartender gave Hump a strange look and laughed at him.
“I say something funny?”
“Not funny, just ignorant.”
Hump’s skin burned with anger and it took everything he had not to crack the beer glass against the side of the barman’s fat face. Instead, he finished his beer in a sip and said. “You got a pencil?”
The barman reached over by the register and gave him a pen. “Best I can do.”
Hump ripped the sheet of notepaper in half. He wrote something down and handed it and the pen to the bartender.
“When Mickey comes in, give him that. Keep the change.” Hump was moving to the door.
“Who?” the barman asked again without any heart, because the door was already closing.
52
When he left the station for the night, someone was waiting for him by his Explorer. Jesse thought the guy looked vaguely familiar, a face he’d seen in a sea of other faces. But he’d be damned if he could remember which sea and the name that belonged to this guy’s face.
“Can I help you?”
“Maybe. Maybe we can help each other, Chief.”
Then it clicked. Reporter.
“Boston Globe, right?”
“Very good. Ed Selko.”
Selko was a short, desiccated man whose breath smelled of cigarettes. His breath also smelled of something else, something that Jesse’s breath often smelled of: scotch whiskey. The reporter was fifty going on sixty and had that ruffled, careless look that newspaper people could afford to have. Selko was never going have to stand in front of a camera doing a remote.
Jesse gave Selko his blank stare and silence to fill up with chatter. When all Selko gave in response was silence of his own, it was clear to Jesse that the newspaperman understood silence in the way a detective understands it. TV and radio reporters didn’t have the luxury of silence. Dead air was their enemy. Not so for newspaper people.
“Can I buy you a drink, Chief?”
Jesse snorted. “I’m not that easy, Selko.”
“Come on, Stone, gimme a break. A drink will grease the skids... for me, anyway.”
“You talk, but you don’t say anything. What do we have to discuss?”
“A frayed old index card.”
“I’m listening.”
“Drink first.”
They sat alone in the banquet room at the Lobster Claw, a second glass of Lagavulin in front of Selko and a beer in Jesse’s hand. Jesse was happy to let Selko get a few single malts in him while he nursed his beer. As much as Jesse loved scotch, single malts didn’t hold much appeal for him, especially the godawful smoky ones like Lagavulin. The nose of the scotch stank like a campfire after a rainstorm.
“You’ve got expensive taste in scotch,” Jesse said.
“The other half of my diet is cigarettes, so I can afford it. How’s your pal Johnnie Walker these days?”
“We’re not talking about me, Selko.”
The reporter first took a sip, then slugged the rest down. “You know, Chief, when I said we should have a drink, an empty banquet room wasn’t what I had in mind.”
“Privacy is what I had in mind. You mentioned an index card.”
“You know, the one you found on Curnutt’s body. The one you didn’t tell the press about,” Selko said, staring at Jesse’s face, looking for any reaction. “You’re good, Stone. You get about as worked up as an Easter Island totem. I’ve always admired that about you. How you don’t give anything away.”