What followed was the typically awkward start of a speakerphone call. Buck called out, “How are you, Jack? Nice to meet you.”
I wanted to point out that we hadn’t actually met yet, and that it wasn’t bound to be all that nice when we did. Instead I said, “Good, Buck. Where are we with the Phantom?”
Buck said, “He’s just come back and essentially said he wants to meet in Downtown Crossing at one this morning.”
I gritted my teeth. By the way, the Nevada desert was giving way to development, which was leading to the airport, which meant that I was getting close to being wheels up and flying home. I said, “Buck, I don’t want to know what he essentially said. Tell me exactly what he said.”
“Why don’t I just read it…”
“Good idea, Buck.”
“Sure. He wrote, ‘Dear Mr. Flynn, then please appear at the corner of Winter Street and Winter Place at one a.m. Come alone. Do not alert authorities. Do not send anyone in advance. If you violate these conditions, you will suffer even greater consequences, and so will many more women. I will contact you at the appropriate hour and location. PF.’ ”
Buck added in a confiding tone, “I think the PF stands for Phantom Fiend.”
“Thanks, Buck.” I added, “Peter, can I talk to you for a moment?”
The line clicked and became clearer, and then Martin said into the phone, “I don’t like the feel of it.”
He didn’t like the feel of it because he’s the one who put us — namely, me — into this situation by not standing up to Justine Steele’s bullshit.
I said, “But you’re not going to do anything about it. You’re not going to the police. You’re not going to Justine. You’re not going to flag the mayor. Every time we include authority figures in our thinking, we get screwed, Peter. Let’s just do what we do best and report this story out.”
I liked the simple sound of all that, apparently more than Peter did. He said, “You could get arrested for interfering with an investigation. And maybe so could I.”
I replied, “Hey, jail’s probably a hell of a lot safer than where I’m at now.”
He didn’t have a comeback to this one, least of all because he undoubtedly knew it was true. He said, “All right, against my better judgment, go. But I’m going to have Buck meet you at the airport when you arrive.”
I said, “I don’t think Buck can find the airport, but go ahead and let him try.”
And then I heard another little click. Peter Martin had just hung up the phone on my ear.
Before I could even put the phone down, it chimed anew. I thought it was going to be Martin calling me back to apologize for the abrupt cessation of our conversation. Instead, it was the serious voice of a self-important young woman telling me — not asking me, but telling me — in her words, to “please hold the line for Commissioner Harrison.”
“I don’t want to hold the line for Commissioner Harrison.” That was me, replying, but there was no one on the other end to hear, no one except some Muzak version of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Believe me, I know how you guys feel.
A good two minutes passed, and by then I was pulling into the Avis return lot, some guy in a brown shirt walking briskly toward me with one of those handheld checkout devices as jet airplanes roared overhead. Still no sign of Harrison on the phone.
It’s an unvarnished power trip, this whole “hold the line for” stuff, a blunt declaration that my time is more important than yours, and you should be thrilled to wait while I finish up whatever else I may have been doing to get on the line and grace you with a few moments of my busy day. Another two minutes passed. “Satisfaction” morphed into “Rhinestone Cowboy,” a song I’ve always liked, and that played to the end. By that point, I was curious as to just how long Boston Police Commissioner Hal Harrison was going to leave me waiting on the phone for a call I had neither made nor necessarily wanted to have. But I wasn’t quite curious enough, so I hung up.
Ten minutes later, as I was walking through the airport terminal, my cell phone rang. This time when I picked it up, it was Harrison acting as if that whole prior incident had never occurred. Or maybe he just didn’t know about it.
“Jack? Hal Harrison here.” He said this in an abnormally loud voice, as if he were giving a speech at the morning roll call.
“Hello, Commissioner,” I said.
“Jack, it’s been too long since you and I got together and chatted about things. And that conversation the other day didn’t exactly go the way I had hoped or planned. You know what I mean?”
I didn’t, but I didn’t say that.
Instead I said, “What do you have in mind, Commissioner?”
“Well, nice of you to ask. You’re under a lot of pressure at the Record with these murders. I think I’m in a position now to share a little perspective on this whole thing with you, seeing as I was one of the lead detectives back in the sixties on the successful Strangler investigation. Mind you, I’m not looking for any publicity on this thing. God knows, we’re getting too much of that as it is. I just think I might be in a position to give you a little help.”
“When do you have in mind, Commissioner?”
“Any chance you might find your way to my office tomorrow morning, say, ten a.m.? I’ll have coffee for us. I think I can make it worth your while.”
“Count me in,” I said. And with that, I secured another first class upgrade and boarded the plane bound for Boston. If there were air-traffic controllers who had any idea of the metaphorical storm I was about to fly into, they never would have let the flight leave the ground.
31
As predicted, Buck wasn’t awaiting my arrival at Logan International Airport when my flight landed at twelve-thirty. Or if he was, he was pretty effectively undercover.
Didn’t matter. My man Hank Sweeney, attired in a blue blazer and a freshly pressed pair of khaki pants, stood at the airport end of the jetway, casually sipping on a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, as I got off the plane.
“You strike it rich out there?” he asked, his voice the damnedest combination of silkiness and raspiness that I’d ever heard.
“So to speak,” I replied, and the two of us immediately began walking with the flow toward the baggage claim and the parking lot.
I hadn’t seen Hank since that Tuesday dinner we had at Locke-Ober, four days before, when he tipped me off as to the importance of the knife and the potential help of his former colleague Bob Walters. I was no closer to finding the knife, and Detective Walters was dead. All in all, things still weren’t going as hoped or as planned.
He expressed condolences about Edgar’s death. I thanked him, and we walked for a stretch in silence.
Finally, I said, “Your advice on Bob Walters was good. The big problem is, he died the day I spoke to him.”
Hank nodded as if he knew this already, but didn’t say whether he did or he didn’t.
So I said, “And obviously Edgar was killed last night in a supposed robbery that I don’t think was a robbery at all. I remind you of this because I’m going to head into this men’s room here. While I’m in there, you might be smart to just keep walking down this corridor, get in your car, head home, and watch Wedding Crashers on pay-per-view. People around me have a way of dying lately, and I really don’t want that to happen to you, Hank.”
Cutting through my minidrama, Hank asked, “Then why’d you call me?”
It’s true, I had. I’d called him just before I got on the plane in Vegas, explaining some of my predicament, laying out the dangers, and asking for his help. I needed an able-bodied, street-smart guardian angel — to use Edgar’s term — over the next day or so, and so what if he happened to be about seventy years old.