My father was dead. The president was retired. Harry was married now to a woman that neither one of us particularly liked, but he said he was sticking it through for the sake of his young son and daughter. The world, I thought, is an ever-changing place, but too rarely for the better. It also seems to be a diminishing place; the people you love most tend to leave you too soon.
So much for my rising mood.
A young man came sauntering toward me in a pair of golf cleats and a shirt with an insignia that said “Dunes East.”
“Sir, are you playing with us today?” he asked, politely more than accusatorily. I apologetically explained that I was out from Boston on business, was returning a few phone calls from the road, and was just hitting a few shots before I got back to work.
“Ah, Boston,” he said. Usually this line preceded what used to be a crack about the Red Sox, but was now more along the lines of congratulations. Instead, though, he continued, “That’s crazy with that new serial killer you’ve got, huh? Have you read about it?”
Try written about it, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Before I could reply, one of the guys hitting balls a dozen or so yards away looked up and said, “I saw that on CNN this morning. That’s really scary, no? This new killer is like the old killer from back in the seventies.”
It was actually the sixties, but again, I wasn’t of any mind to correct him. Instead, I asked the young assistant pro, “What’s the latest?”
“You know, cops saying they’re not sure whether the whole thing is a prank. Two women dead. The newspaper there getting anonymous letters when someone is killed. Pretty damned spooky, if you ask me.”
I hadn’t, but still found his take interesting. There are some stories, very rare stories, that transcend gender and geography, class and race, and serve to bring people together in conversation and speculation, sometimes in hope, other times, like now, in fear. This was one of those stories, and I was in the absolute middle of it.
As we talked, my phone vibrated in my back pocket, and I could see on the caller ID that it was coming from the Record. I quickly excused myself and walked back to the car. It was Martin. He said he had Edgar Sullivan and Monica Gonsalves, the paper’s technology guru, on a conference call. They both said hello. I barely knew how to use call waiting, and made a mental note to get a session in telephone operations when I got back east.
Edgar said, “Jack, we’ve been monitoring your incoming mail for obvious reasons. I hope you don’t mind. First off, I want to be on record as saying I think it’s fine that you’re the New England chapter vice president of the Martha Stewart Fan Club.”
That Edgar, such a card. This, for whatever reason, made Monica laugh uproariously. It’s probably reasonable to note here that since Monica works in IT, almost anything could make her laugh uproariously.
Edgar continued, “You received a disc in this morning’s mail, an unlabeled DVD in an unmarked envelope with a Boston postmark. I opened it. There was no note included. I didn’t feel right invading your privacy by viewing the DVD, but I did take the liberty of having Monica upload the contents into the computer system. She, in turn, is going to e-mail it to you, and you can view it and determine whether it’s got anything to do with this Phantom Fiend business. It probably doesn’t, but I don’t want to leave anything to chance right now.”
Edgar is how old? Sixty-five? Seventy? Older? And here I am, somewhere in the middle of my life, and I lost him at DVD. I said, “That’s great, but I’m not near my hotel at the moment to view it.”
Monica chimed in. “Jack, Monica here.” She said this even though she was the only woman on the call, as if I was an absolute idiot. I guess maybe when you work in IT, you grow accustomed to the idea that everyone around you is an idiot. “Do you have your laptop with you?”
“I do.”
“You can receive your e-mail right from your laptop.”
I went into a long explanation of how I couldn’t, because I wasn’t wired into anything. She went into a longer explanation on how I didn’t have to be because of something called an air card that she had installed in my machine a year ago when she had it in for maintenance. I explained that she was wrong. She asked me to press a couple of buttons and proved that she was right. All in all, this is why I don’t make my living writing manuals for IBM, though that would probably pay more and prove less hazardous, at least compared to my professional life at the moment.
We hung up so I could deal with the DVD. I called up the e-mail with the video clip, expecting it to be another piece of schlock from an independent film producer desperately looking for a few moments of free publicity that would allow his arty movie to take off in the direction of The Blair Witch Project.
As the video was downloading, my phone rang again.
“Hey, Fair Hair, I hope you’re about to tell me you won a million dollars at the craps table, spent the night having wild sex with a pair of thousand-dollar-an-hour escorts, and are about to quit journalism to pursue your dream of being a hydroponics farmer.”
It was my mother.
Just kidding. It was Mongillo.
I said, “You’re using spy satellite photography to monitor my every move, aren’t you?”
With the halfhearted attempts at humor out of the way, he asked me how I was doing. I, in turn, told him about my meeting with Bob Walters and his information about Paul Vasco.
I said, “I don’t even know if he’s still alive, but my gut says he’s the key.”
Mongillo replied, “Best that I know, Vasco is alive and well.”
As he was talking, the video began playing on my laptop screen, a very methodical tour of the inside of a reasonably nice apartment. The camera proceeded slowly around the living room, pausing at an ornate marble fireplace, scanning the coffee table, which held some magazines and an unlit candle, glancing past a chunky contemporary couch in what a designer might describe as an aloof shade of gray. The tape looked to be nothing more than a particularly aggressive Realtor trying to sell an upscale condominium.
I said to Mongillo, “Oh yeah? Walters was adamant about it. We need to track Vasco down and double-team him. I’m going to be back east sometime later tonight, not in time to do us any good for tomorrow’s paper. It would be great if we could see him by tomorrow.”
As I said this, the camera proceeded from the living room to the small kitchen, the angle drifting over the appliances to a stainless-steel kitchen door that had a photograph of a tanned thirtysomething man in a blue blazer and open collared white shirt with his arm around a smiling woman in a yellow sundress.
Mongillo said, “Your wish is my command. Can you invite a murderer to lunch, or is that unseemly?”
Whoever was carrying the camera was now walking it down a narrow hallway that seemed to connect the front of the apartment to the back, the picture growing darker without any ambient light. I could make out a collection of old maps on the hallway walls, and at the end of the hall was a giant vintage poster, an advertisement for a trans-Atlantic voyage on board the Queen Elizabeth II. Very stylish. Maybe I’d buy the place. I wonder if I could get it furnished.