“It didn’t get reception in the hotel.”
“You need to be available to me twenty-four hours. Where’s Princess Grace?”
“He’s not here?”
My boss shakes his head. “If you two want a job where you don’t have to come in on Sundays, go work at the post office.”
“I am in,” I say.
A young trader is screaming at one of the televisions. His friends sit in front of the television in leather armchairs, Frisbeeing paper plates at the screen.
My boss says, “Any of these guys would kill for your job.”
The skin on my face feels very light. “So would I.”
I imagine throwing my boss through the tinted window and watching him plummet into the middle of the court. I can see the stain of him spreading on the bleached wood.
My boss says, “Let’s sec some of that.”
I pull my gun from inside my coat and touch the barrel to his eyebrow. “Open your mouth,” I say.
“What?”
I hit him in the forehead with the side of the gun. He steps back. Blood trickles down his face.
“Get on your knees,” I say.
He does.
“Open your mouth.”
The traders have stopped making noise. I know that people around the room are looking at us. No one moves. My boss opens his mouth.
“Wider,” I say.
I shove my gun deep into his mouth. It clatters against his teeth.
I say, “You’re going to have to learn how to treat people.”
He nods. He is shivering.
I say loudly. “You’re a ridiculous man. You don’t even understand your job. I don’t know who put you in charge. I’m younger than you. I’m better than you. I don’t even need this gun. I could kill you with my hands.”
A dark patch has appeared on my boss’s light gray trousers. There are tears running down his face.
I say, “You don’t have the balls for this kind of work.”
I take my gun out of his mouth.
Everyone stares at me uncertainly. A few of the traders applaud.
“Thank you,” I say.
My boss is slumped on the floor, moaning. I smile at the room. I put my gun away and give one last wave and then walk quickly to the door.
I say, “If I see this door open while I’m still in the hallway. I’m going to come back and choose two of you at random and shoot you in the balls.”
When the elevator opens, it is full of security guards. They have their guns drawn.
I say, “There’s some maniac in there with a gun. He has baggies of nitroglycerin taped all over his body. He said he would detonate if he heard anyone trying to come in. If you shoot him, the whole place might go up. Can you imagine what that would be like? You’d spend days sifting through body parts. You’d have to make piles of limbs. Can you imagine an enormous pile of severed arms?”
One of the security guards says, “Get behind us.”
They push past me and fan out around the entrance to the luxury box. One of them puts a finger to his lips and leans his ear against the door.
I step inside their elevator and press Lobby.
Standing on the sidewalk next to the Fleet Center, listening to the sirens approaching, I take out my cell phone and call Heather.
I say, “How soon can you be at South Station?”
“Is this a joke?” she says.
“It’s not a joke. I’m leaving. Will you go with me?”
“Yes.”
I cross Causeway Street. “How soon?”
“Do I have time to pack?”
“No.”
“Half hour,” she says.
I push the End button and put the phone back in my pocket and look over my shoulder at the Fleet Center and at the squad cars pulling up in front and that is when I see the Jamaicans.
They are on the other side of the street, half a block behind me, watching the cops pile out of their cars. One of the Jamaicans is tall and wide. The other is the one who frisked us at the barbershop. They are moving at the same speed I am. They turn away from the cops and toward me and I snap my head back around, but I am almost certain they saw me see them. I keep walking, sweat dripping down my back, feeling them behind me.
I cross Merrimac Street.
I glance over my shoulder. The Jamaicans are still matching their speed to mine. They are maintaining the same distance.
At Cambridge Street, I reach the corner just as the DOn’t WALK sign stops blinking and I slow down and almost stop and then suddenly I dash into the street and hear squealing brakes and slide over the hood of a moving taxi and hear horns screaming behind me and then I am on the other side, running.
Heather’s father stands up to meet me. His office is lined with black shelves that hold crystal eggs and lacquered cigar boxes.
“How did you know I’d be here?” he says.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s Sunday.”
“Oh.” I run my tongue along the backs of my teeth. “Heather must have told me.”
He looks at me. “Must have,” he says.
I take a deep breath. “I need your help.” I glance out the window. “By the flower cart.”
Heather’s father walks to the window and gazes down at the street. “Who are they?” he says.
“I don’t know exactly.”
“They’re pros.”
“Yes.”
“How’d you make them?”
“I don’t know. They just sort of appeared across the street from me.”
“I mean, how’d they let you see them?”
“I was looking for them. I knew they were coming.”
He shakes his head. “Shouldn’t matter.”
“But why would they want me to spot them?”
He shrugs. “Maybe they wanted to see whether you’d run. Maybe they figure only a guilty man runs.”
We are silent for a while.
Seven stories below us, the big Jamaican crosses the street and walks along the sidewalk and around the far side of the building.
“Why don’t they follow me in?” I say.
“They don’t know which floor you’re on. Also, they’d be worried about the building’s security force. And they don’t want to trap themselves in case things go south. If they take you in the open, they have escape routes and it’s easier for them to avoid the cops. They’ll cover the exits and wait to reacquire.”
“You learned all this in Vietnam?”
“It’s textbook,” he says. He lifts his telephone receiver.
“What are you doing?”
“Cops.”
I shake my head.
He puts down the receiver. “Sounds like you have something to tell me.”
I don’t say anything.
He steps away from the window and takes his key ring from his pants pocket and unlocks the top drawer of his desk. He brings out a heavy automatic. He pulls back on the slide and checks the cylinder.
“You keep it loaded?” I say.
“Doesn’t do much good when it’s not.” He puts the gun in the waistband of his pants. “You carrying?”
I show him the pistol inside my jacket.
“You any good with that?”
I shrug.
“Who put these guys on you?”
I shrug again.
“This have anything to do with that fairy you hang around with?”
“You mean Kelly?”
“How many fairies you know?”
“But Kelly’s just cool.”
He snorts. “For a catamite.”
“No,” I say. “It’s his job. Kelly sells cool. I sell cheekbones.”
He looks at me. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. I don’t much care. All I want to know is why there are two hard guys waiting for you outside my building.”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“Give me the broad strokes.”
“They think Kelly took out a friend of theirs.”
“Did he?”
I stare at him.
Heather’s father nods. “I guess that’s not too surprising.”
“Will you help me?”
He frowns. “You ever do any wet work?”
I take a breath. “Not really.”
“Stay close to me. When it happens, hold low and put your man down. Nothing fancy. Keep shooting until he drops.”