“The Thoreau of Thuggery?”
“Susan is right.”
“About what?”
“You’ve been hanging around with me too long.”
“So where do we start with Henry?”
“I’ll make some calls,” I said. “And we observe.”
“Wait for those guys to show up?”
“Yep.”
“And Henry will push the point?”
“Henry is not a subtle man.”
We turned north onto the Harvard Bridge, making our way toward MIT, where we’d follow the bike path below Mass Ave, past the Longfellow Bridge and over to the dam, where we’d cross back over into the city. Z had yet to let up on the faster pace, seemingly still annoyed I’d taken an extra donut last week.
“Would be good to know who hired them,” Z said.
“We can ask nicely,” I said.
“Does that ever work?”
“Almost never.”
3
THE HARBOR HEALTH CLUB had been upscale longer than it had been low-rent. I knew it when it had been low-rent, before the waterfront was rebuilt with luxury hotels, slick office buildings, and million-dollar condos. Henry had changed with the times, adding the latest Cybex machines, treadmills, and stationary bikes. There were a lot of mirrors, a juice bar, and cubicles to meet with personal trainers. Henry had even recently added a glass-walled workout room, where women participated in something called Zumba. Z and I had little interest in Zumba but appreciated the taut young women in sweat-stained spandex who filed out of the room. Some of them even smiled at us as we took turns on the bench press. We decided to add more weight in appreciation.
“Maybe we should take a Zumba class,” I said.
“Might hurt our reputation.”
“Or maybe we could recruit some of the young ladies to the boxing room?”
“Susan might not like that.”
“Who would know?” I said. “She’s lecturing at the University of North Carolina this month on the psychology of adolescents.”
“Years of research?” Z said, sliding onto the bench and slowly repping out 275 as if the bar were empty. He took his time, pausing the bar on his chest as I’d taught him, not pushing the weight but working on breathing and controlling the weight.
Henry walked up to study us, watching as Z clanged the weights down on the rack and stood up. He wore a white satin tracksuit, right hand in his pocket and a grin on his face. “You turkeys gonna pump some iron or just ogle my clientele?”
“I’m teaching Z the proper way to accomplish both.”
“You ever think about investing in some workout clothes?” Henry said. “They’ve improved in the last century.”
“Not everyone benefited as much from Jack LaLanne’s death,” I said.
Henry snorted. Z smiled as I slid onto the bench and started into a slow rep.
“I’ll have you know this workout suit is custom-fitted,” Henry said. “Probably cost more than your whole freakin’ wardrobe.”
I paused the weight on my chest, pushing out a couple more reps. I wanted to say something about shopping in the kids’ section but kept it to myself, concentrating on the weight, the pause of the bar on my chest, exhaling as I pushed the weight upward. I finished the twelfth rep and re-racked the weight.
“Any more trouble?” I said.
“Nope.”
“Thought we might follow you home tonight.”
“I don’t need babysitters,” Henry said. “I need you to do that detective thing. Find out who these crapheads are.”
“Crapheads have muddied the water,” I said. “The prospective buyer is a corporation with an address listed as a P.O. box. The corporate contact registered with the state seems to be a phony.”
“What about their lawyer?”
“I called him,” I said. “He was less than forthcoming.”
“Hung up on you?”
“Twice.”
“I told you he was a prick.”
“He’s a lawyer,” I said, shrugging.
Z had moved on to triceps presses with a fifty-pound dumbbell. He made it look easy. And for me, it wasn’t as easy as it used to be. Of course, I wasn’t in my twenties and just a few years away from college football. I had lasted only two years at Holy Cross before joining the Army, never being a fan of the rah-rah coaches or taking orders.
I switched places with Z. He’d pulled his long black hair into a ponytail, his wide face covered in sweat. The front of his gray T-shirt read Rocky Boy Rez, Box Elder, Montana.
“Is there a lot to do in Box Elder?” I asked.
“Why do you think I stayed in Boston?”
“Numerous liberal coeds wanting to right their ancestors’ wrongs?”
“Nope.”
“Or because you worked for a bloated, self-absorbed, immoral creep and sought spiritual guidance from a Zen master?”
“There was that,” Z said.
We met Henry in the parking garage thirty minutes later. I was driving a dark blue Ford Explorer that year, decent legroom for men of a certain size. Henry pulled out in a white Camry, and we followed him up Atlantic and down into the Callahan Tunnel and intermittent flashes of fluorescent light, taking 1A up past Logan, through Chelsea, and on into Revere Beach. I had the radio tuned low to a jazz program on WICE, Art Pepper on horn. The tired triple-deckers and sagging brick storefronts whizzed past.
“A good friend of mine used to vacation in Chelsea,” I said.
“You’re kidding,” Z said.
“Have to know the guy,” I said. “Grew up in Lowell.”
Henry lived in a 1960s condo with the architectural inspiration of a Ritz cracker tin. The condo building was ten stories, with small jutting balconies hanging from each unit and a wide portico facing the water. A sign over the entrance read Ocean View in a fine, detailed script. I parked just across the street in an empty slot by the beach. I had cracked the windows and the wind had kicked up a bit, slicing in the sound of the ocean and smell of salt.
“And what’s the plan if they approach Henry?” Z said.
“Persuade them to stop.”
“How far do we go with the persuasion?”
“Fists,” I said. “No guns. Unless they want to up the ante. But we carry to make sure. This is not one of those situations where you make that play first. Other times call for it.”
Z pulled a .44 revolver from a shoulder rig. He popped out the cylinder, checked the load, and clicked it back into place. It was a big gun. But Z was a big man.
I watched for Henry locking his car and carrying his gym bag up a concrete walkway to the condo’s front entrance. I offered Z a piece of bubble gum, but he declined. I chewed and admired my reflection in the rearview mirror, looking rakish in my Brooklyn Dodgers cap and leather bomber jacket. I fiddled with the radio a bit. I smelled the salted breeze coming from the sound.
I glanced up to spot three men surrounding Henry’s slight figure under the portico. One of them knocked the gym bag from his hand. Henry responded with a left hook to the guy’s nose. The guy went down. His buddies rushed Henry and started pushing him. Henry set into a fighter’s stance.
“Saddle up,” Z said. “Here we go.”
4
ONE OF THE MEN pressed his hand to his nose, lots of blood oozing through his fingers. Henry had done well. “You come at me again and you’ll get it in the bazoo, too,” Henry said.
The men weren’t listening. They had switched their attention to Z and me after we drove up and slammed the Explorer’s doors. We all stood in a happy grouping under the portico. No one moved or spoke. Henry stepped back and lowered his dukes a bit. “Nice night,” I said.
One of the men was olive-skinned, with the build of a fire hydrant, and a tattooed neck bigger than his head. He was walleyed, with a skinny mustache and goatee and black hair cut short and combed forward to disguise a receding hairline. His pal was black, with a long face, patchy beard, and that thousand-yard jailhouse stare. He’d gotten pretty good at it, flicking his eyes from me to Z, watching our hands and waiting for one of us to make the play. The bleeder was taller than the other two, and older, maybe my age, with a thick head of brown hair and a lean, weaselly face. He also had a goatee with some gray in it.