So I pointed to Hank. Before I could even drop my arm, his foot slammed against the door at its most vulnerable point. The door, in turn, flew open, bounced off a door stop, and started closing again. But by the time it had come back, Hank’s foot was already inside. He had a gun drawn. And he stepped into the room, firmly reciting the words “Law enforcement. Hands up. We’ve got a whole crew here.”
He stood in the shadowy entryway, illuminated only by the dim hall sconces behind us, as I forged past him. The lights were off, and I ran my hand up and down a nearby wall, looking for a switch. When I found one, I said to Hank, “I’m turning them on.”
And I did.
I was expecting the absolute worst, and why shouldn’t I have been? Every time I received a driver’s license from the Phantom Fiend, or a video, a pretty young woman was dead, the body left in some gruesome manner by a publicity-seeking killer who immediately reported his misdeeds to me.
My eyes first settled on the bed, assuming that’s where he’d probably leave her. And so I was shocked to see that the bed, apparently turned down by the maids that evening, was completely empty — just a comforter wrapped in a white duvet cover stretched tight across the wide expanse.
Hank repeated himself: “Law enforcement. Get your hands up before we shoot.” As he said it, he was holding his gun out like he was Don Johnson on Miami Vice.
The room, by the way, was a big, elegant affair, what some lesser hotels might describe as a junior suite. The carpet was royal blue, the walls were a pale yellow, and the furniture, every piece substantial in size, was tasteful in an Old World kind of way. The entire room flowed toward a sitting area tucked inside a bow window that overlooked the grassy park at the center of Copley Square.
And right now, it appeared entirely empty.
Well, not entirely. As I slowly walked through it, I could see the signs that we were, in fact, in the right place — Elizabeth’s computer case, an overnight bag that I remember loading in the trunk of the car so many times, a barn jacket that I had bought her tossed across an upholstered chair. Another telltale sign: an empty bottle of Tab on her dresser. Who else in this life still drinks Tab?
As I walked toward the windows, which were near the bathroom entrance, Hank held his big, bearlike hand up to me, the one without the gun. I stopped. He looked under the bed. Then he began slowly walking toward the bathroom door, the gun poised at his side.
“You’ve got two seconds to come out,” he said.
No reaction. He arrived at the door, which was slightly ajar, and pushed it slowly with his foot, the door swinging into the dark bathroom. I squinted, remembering full well that at least one of the Boston Strangler’s victims back in the sixties was found in a bathtub. Hank reached his hand inside the door, flicked on the overhead light, and scanned the small space with his gun.
Again, nothing.
He looked at me and said in that easy voice of his, “Well, son, at this point, anything that’s not bad is good.” And don’t ask me how, but that made all the sense in the world.
Now, suddenly, I felt like an intruder, a feeling that was reinforced when two beefy gentlemen in ill-fitting button-down shirts, apparently security guards, showed up at the broken doorway, saying, “If you move another inch you’ll regret it.”
Hank doesn’t seem to know regret, which is one of the many things I love about the guy, so he walked calmly and casually toward them, gun at his side. One of the guards barked at him, “Hey, Gramps, stop where you are and put the gun on the bed.”
Hank said, “My only son was killed before he ever had any children, so nice as it sounds, my name isn’t Gramps.”
The security guard didn’t particularly seem to care, poignant as Hank’s declaration was. He said, “One more step and I will break your fucking face.”
So then I started walking toward them. No one talks to Hank like that, not when he’s protecting me. Did I mention, by the way, that they were unarmed?
The two security guards were inside the room now, one of them chest to chest with me. I had no idea what was about to happen, but I know what did. A uniformed police officer appeared in the doorway and exclaimed, “Lookie here, Hank Sweeney, the man behind the myth.”
Hank beamed. The security detail looked confused. I still considered all this a colossal waste of time, given that Elizabeth Riggs was still either dead or in imminent danger of becoming that way.
Hank and the cop, a guy introduced to me as Tommy Reilly, made small talk. Another cop showed up, and the first cop introduced the two of them. Then Reilly said to Hank, “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing breaking into a hotel room, but I assume you have good reason. Anything you need us to do?”
Hank started answering, started explaining about a woman being in extreme danger, when Tommy Reilly pulled his radio from his belt, contacted headquarters, and ordered whoever it was on the other end of the line to put out an immediate all-points bulletin for an Elizabeth Riggs. He stifled the radio for a moment, asked me for her date of birth and a physical description, which I gave him, and he relayed that information as well.
Reilly said to me, as well as Hank, “Technically, I should take you down to headquarters for some more information, especially since you have information in what might be a — well, might be something that’s pretty dire.”
Hank replied, “Technically, yeah, but the thing is, we slipped out before you had a chance to ask us.”
The cop nodded. Hank grabbed my elbow and said in his easy, matter-of-fact voice, “We’re out of here.” And we were, leaving the broken door and the empty room behind, but carrying my deepest fears along the way.
Down in the lobby, another pair of uniformed cops were rushing into the elevator and up to the fifth floor. A couple — the man in a tuxedo, the woman in an evening gown — were bickering over something that was undoubtedly profoundly unimportant, but ruinous nonetheless to what was supposed to have been a grand night.
Hank and I faced each other, standing amid the gold-gilded environs of the Copley Plaza, unsure what to do and where to go. I should have been exhausted, but I wasn’t. Rather, I was so frustrated by the events, by the complexities, by my helplessness, by the police higher-ups, by my own newspaper, by Paul Vasco’s bravado, by Vinny Mongillo’s secrets, that I thought I was going to explode.
It was either this or be sitting on a volcanic beach at one of the best resorts in Hawaii.
Wearily, I said to Hank, “In the absence of any better idea, we should get over to police headquarters to see what the hell is going on with Vinny.”
Hank replied, “The better idea might be to have a quick word with Elizabeth before we go.”
I shot him an incredulous look, as in what the hell was he talking about. He nodded calmly and casually down the long, carpeted hallway toward the front door of the hotel. I looked in that direction, and in the distance, Elizabeth Riggs was walking toward us, accompanied by Boston Police Detective Mac Foley.
“Wait for them here,” Hank said softly, not even turning to face me. So I did.
She was wearing a sweater and a pair of jeans, carrying a notebook in her right hand, her hips swiveling in that way they do, her hair framing both sides of her face. My body nearly went limp at the sight of her — limp with joy, with relief. It was as if the only emotion that had been propping me up was that of utter fear.
At the same time, the sight of Mac Foley with Elizabeth gnawed at some nugget of suspicion buried deep within my brain — or maybe it was buried inside my gut. It was nothing overt, but I felt a latent sense of unease for which I wasn’t yet able to provide words or thoughts.