“But, ten minutes in the truck — Viddich, it’s not like we’re engaged or anything.”
Garrison kept his voice down, even when the busses roared by on Mass Ave, a block away.
“You ask me,” he said, “it might be the most important ten minutes of your life.”
“The most important ten minutes of my life? I think that was yesterday when I talked to my lawyer.”
“Whoa. Tough guy.”
In fact Kit’s role-playing felt stale. Out here, coatless and pumped up, with the soft spots in his testimony behind him — stale. And he was the one who’d left Leo the note, after all. Kit touched his neck.
“Garrison,” he tried, “think about it. You shouldn’t even be talking with me.”
The guard shrugged. Kit recalled what he’d seen in the paper: the Grand Jury had called prison security.
“Hoo boy,” he said. “Now who’s playing the tough guy?”
“Viddich, I mean, you’re not the only one’s got a lawyer.”
Got a lawyer, check. In spite of himself Kit began to think of the logistics: he looked at his watch. Eight-thirty. Leo was all the way down at the new waterfront station — the work site where they’d turned up the Colonial artifacts and the Shawmut pieces. Mirinex must have landed the contract. Only a cab could make Kit’s rounds, he figured, before the appointment with Popkin. A cab plus serious cash.
“Eight-thirty,” Garrison said, his own sleeve shoved back. “You know I been standing out here a half-hour?”
Kit remained head-down, over the big knob of his wrist. He found himself making a connection to something Uncle Pete had said last night, the man’s idea of eviclass="underline" secrets in too small a place. Secrets ingrown and festering. If anything other than sheer astonishment had kept Kit out in the cold talking to this guy, perhaps it had been that, the need to break open his own small place. To talk, to tell. If anything would take him across town to confront Leo, perhaps it would be that.
Garrison stood so low, down off the stoop, that Kit hardly had to raise his eyes. “You realize that anything you tell me, it’s going to go straight to my lawyer?”
The guard grinned, catching on at once. “Lawyers, that’s their job. Got to hear what everybody’s telling everybody.”
An ambulance went shrieking by, the windchill made audible. Kit had a final consideration: “Garrison, listen. Last time I talked with Leo, he told me he wasn’t the Mafia.”
Again the Irish pout. “Come on. You asking what I think you’re asking?”
Kit, straightening, recrossed his arms.
“Viddich. I’m not even supposed to be talking to you. You think I’d do anything to hurt you?”
Kit left him waiting. Left the big dogged errand boy down on the sidewalk wondering what Kit would do, while back in the warmth of his kitchen he pulled on his coat. The single noteworthy event of his few moments up there was the thump of the gun in his pocket. The whump of it swinging into place against his thigh. Kit would have to wait till lunch to stop at the police station. He couldn’t leave it here, not when there was a chance Bette might come back again. If he wanted her to find anything — if he had anything remotely resembling a strategy — it was his testimony. Kit tossed the Globe into the trash and squared the blue-specked legal paper in the center of the table. Ghosts and all, his draft went right where she’d left him the printout. Darling, here’s mine.
Still the gun nagged him, as Kit returned to Garrison and started towards his truck. The density got to him, the full pack jabbing and rejabbing his thigh. Out of nowhere, Kit recalled something from childhood, a square set of miniature books. Maurice Sendak: The Nutshell Library.
The Nutshell Library. When in fact this weight in his pocket was an unregistered weapon, and he was about to take a ride with a crooked cop. To meet a crooked money man. Kit never broke stride, there beside Garrison, but his face lengthened, sobered. He didn’t at first see the truck. He was eyeing the street. The walls of the Cambridgeport duplexes and triple-deckers were all straight lines, clapboard and shingle and aluminum siding, but at this time of year those lines were smudged with caked-on filth. A ruined geometry. And the brick sidewalks humped and wallowed, nowhere reliable.
He didn’t see the truck. He’d grown up with trucks, blockhead pickups only a hair more comfortable than a tractor. One or two might have been fancy enough to carry a Philco in the dash. But Kit didn’t see any truck like that today. Garrison’s rig was something from Star Wars.
The slate morning sky left the reflectors dark, out of luck, but they made quite a collection nonetheless. Reflector mud flaps: Yosemite Sam barking “Back off!” with teeth bared and guns drawn. Reflector pinstriping, black and silver. Reflector stick-ons that bore the CB handle and call numbers. Even the interior, once Kit had climbed into the high cab, seemed designed to glitter. Garrison had gone with creamy black Naugahyde. He had no rear window, the rig was a sleeper, and behind the seats hung black velvet curtains. The gauges had disco-purple needles and digits, and the twin gearshifts were webbed with stainless-steel diagrams.
The CB hung in mid-ceiling. Bristling with dials and hookups, to Kit the squawk box called to mind something from out of left field, a couple thousand years’ worth. He put the CB together with Leo Mirini’s dirty white block from the Coliseum. Another weight over his head. Then he and Garrison were out of the parking space, heat blasting.
“Unbelievable,” Kit said.
“Check out the sound system.”
The guard gestured, more or less indicating the sunroof, then touched a button on the 8-track. Music erupted as if from between Kit’s vertebra. A witless AOR boogie, Grand Funk Railroad. Railroad-loud, and crisp to the least tap of a tambourine.
“Quadrophonics,” Garrison shouted. “The Japs.”
“Unbelievable. You can take the high tech to the woods.”
Garrison eyed him sideways, hands high on the wheel.
“The woods are incidental,” Kit shouted. “The woods are just the backdrop.”
“Whoa. You don’t know, Viddich.” Garrison fingered down the volume. “You don’t know. I go up the Kankamangus Highway there all the time. I’m in the woods all the time.”
“I’m sure you are, Garrison. I’m sure you have lots of fun out there.”
“What are you, still a tough guy? Grand Jury don’t care if I take my baby here to the woods.”
“Take my baby to the woods. Hoo, boy.”
“What are you talking about? Like, ecology?”
“Garrison, I’m talking about perception. Talking about how you perceive.” Already Kit could see they were going by way of the city’s central artery, Memorial Drive, Storrow Drive. They were going to creep along nose to fender with a million others pushing nine o’clock. The errand boy wasn’t taking any shortcuts.
*
The woods, Kit explained, used to mean actual wilderness. “The wild, Garrison. The opposite of technology.”
But in a rig like this, he went on, the wilderness was only a pretty backdrop. Only one backdrop among many, really. “You can take your baby to the woods one weekend, then take her to the seashore the next. It’s the same easy access, same comforts. You’re not in the woods, Garrison, you’re in the technology. You’re at a party.”
The guard slowed for a yellow light, while two cars on Kit’s side accelerated through the intersection.
“I don’t get you,” Garrison said. “There something wrong with a party in the woods?”
“I’m talking about perception, about messing with perception. In my line of work, Garrison — think about it. Perception’s key. The whole job’s predicated on knowing what’s happening and where.”