“The Phantom.” Then I added, “I’ve got to leave this line open. Call you soon.”
He was whistling as I hung up the phone — chewing, panting, and whistling.
A moment later, an elderly man ambled past, still dressed for winter in a long wool herringbone coat, even though the day was screaming spring. People are like that in this town — suspicious of the weather, slow to acknowledge that the season is really changing, always believing that the next wind is going to send another cold front or storm system our way.
This old man, though, he was looking at me, almost studying me, and the truth is, he looked familiar.
He stopped short and said, “Excuse me, but did you used to have a dog?”
I wondered if that was some sort of code for “I’m the Phantom Fiend and I just committed another murder.” I replied, “I did, but he died about a year ago of cancer.”
He nodded slowly and said, “I used to watch the two of you play fetch out here in the mornings. You were quite a pair.”
Well, okay, I wasn’t sure I knew how this morning could get any worse. I said, “Thank you,” but he had already turned and was walking off.
My phone chimed again.
“Any luck?”
It was Peter Martin, once more not seeing the need for the kind of manners that separate human beings from lower forms of life.
“It depends what you call luck. If you’re asking if I’ve been approached yet by a serial murderer and asked to go take a car ride to a dark warehouse where my life will be immediately endangered, the answer is no. But in that same regard, I also feel kind of lucky, so the answer would be yes.”
He dismissed that line without even seeming to think about it.
“No sign of him yet?”
“No.”
“Keep me posted.”
We hung up. I scanned the park. There were a few young mothers pushing strollers together on the cement path closest to the shoreline. Businessmen and — women were coming and going in either direction. A maintenance worker was spearing loose litter with a sharp-edged pole and placing the trash in a plastic bag.
In other words, there were abundant witnesses to anything that might happen here, which was a relief, but which also made me wonder if the Phantom or the Strangler or whatever he might like to be called would be frightened off by the exposure of the venue. But he’s the one who picked the spot.
I should also mention that Edgar Sullivan, the Record’s aging but no less relentless director of security, was somewhere with a view of this park, if not actually in it, per Martin’s orders. We had discussed calling the police, but immediately dismissed it because of the myriad possibilities that they would screw things up.
My phone chimed anew.
“Flynn,” I said.
“Go into the trash can to your immediate right and pull out today’s Boston Traveler. Open up to page thirty-eight and see the destination written across the top of the page. Place the newspaper back in the receptacle, do not pick up your phone again, and take a taxi directly to the location that is written down. If you use your phone between now and the time you get to the location, either you will be killed or you will never see me again.”
It was that same slightly synthesized voice, the words fringed by just a bit of static, as if someone was speaking through a machine set on its lowest level of alteration. By the way, who uses the word receptacle except for maybe a junior high school vice principal or a bureaucrat with the city sanitation department? I thought better than to question him on his language usage and instead said, “I’ll do exactly as told.” For kicks, I added, “Is there a number where I can reach you if something goes awry?”
By the time I got that request out, he had already hung up. They say that jokes are all about timing, and I’m starting to think they’re right.
I stood up and walked to the green barrel to the right of the bench and saw a copy of that day’s Traveler lying near the top. I say near because on top of the paper were several plastic bags filled with what could politely be called dog waste. As I pulled the paper up, one bag spilled open and the, ahem, waste dripped onto the front page. Now, I’m not saying this is an inappropriate substance to appear on the front of the Traveler; God knows they’ve published worse. But I am saying I’d prefer it wasn’t on a paper I had to read.
I carefully flipped the paper open to page thirty-eight while trying to avoid getting dog shit on my hands. The smell wasn’t entirely pleasant. It always seems fine when it’s your own dog, but someone else’s, it’s completely gross. It wouldn’t happen this way in the movies, with the handsome hero trying to avoid the animal feces as he’s working toward saving the city — that I knew for sure.
Anyway, I got to the appropriate page, and written across the top in pen were the words “Prudential Skywalk. Telescope in the corner pointing toward Charles River and downtown Boston.” And that was that. This Phantom definitely had a flare for the dramatic.
I placed the paper back in the barrel, as ordered, making a mental note to call Peter Martin at the first available opportunity and see if we could get a handwriting analyst to look at the paper before the garbagemen came. I walked back out onto Atlantic Avenue and flagged a cab that happened to be passing by.
The Prudential Skywalk, for the uninitiated, is the pavilion on the fiftieth floor of the Prudential Center, for a while the tallest building in town, but now eight floors shorter than the nearby Hancock Tower a few blocks away. The Pru, as Bostonians tend to call it, is a remarkably ugly structure, boxy and boring and nearly a blight, except it’s our blight, and for that, the city loves it.
I got out of the cab on Boylston Street, reflexively looked straight up at the top of the building in the way that tourists from New Hampshire probably do, and took the escalator up into the mall that wraps around the skyscraper. The streets and mall passages were busy with late-arriving workers and early shoppers, and I looked around in quasi-wonderment at whether I was being followed. I assumed that the Phantom was probably already in the Skywalk, though if he was, what was with all the taxicab stuff? Why not simply sit on the bench with me in Columbus Park?
The elevator ride made my ears pop, as elevator rides generally do. At the top, I paid the nine-dollar admission fee and pictured Martin quibbling with me when I submitted the expense. He’d argue that I should have been able to talk my way in for free because I wasn’t actually going to see the view.
As I strode out onto the glass-enclosed Skywalk, the first sensation was that of light — light everywhere, streaming through the windows, reflecting off the floors, dancing along the walls, glistening off the telescopes that were pointing at the Financial District and the harbor beyond.
The second sensation was that of space — space everywhere. I don’t care how old I am, I don’t care how many times I’ve sat in offices or dined in restaurants atop high-rise buildings; whenever I do, the feeling is one of being above it all, figuratively as well as literally. The city below is minuscule, as are all the little problems of everyday life, things like traffic and litter and crowds and late appointments. High in the sky, you’re above the daily grind, free to contemplate the larger issues of life.
Which I don’t necessarily think was good at the moment, because what I had to contemplate were hardly the issues of soaring dreams. A broken marriage before the vows were ever recited, two dead women, a newspaper publisher with no balls, a serial killer who regarded me as his confidant, and some unknown would-be assailants who seemed to want me dead. I think I’d have to be soaring around the earth in a space shuttle for these problems to appear small at the moment, but maybe that’s where the Phantom would send me next.