The Inn(54)

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said now, watching Malone as he tried not to laugh his ass off. “Maybe I thought I might have been able to hear it ticking or something.”

“You were a hero.” Malone laughed. “A true hero of the people.”

I’d gotten very close to the bag on that fateful day, and I was so young and brazen that I’d reached out to see if I could open the bag and see inside. When my fingers were mere inches away, the bag moved.

“When that bag moved—” Malone was slapping the deck railing, laughing so hard he couldn’t finish his sentence.

When the bag moved, I’d fallen back with a terror so sudden and all-consuming I’d almost fainted. The bag contained not a bomb meant to assassinate the president but two huge live Dungeness crabs that someone had obviously bought at the local market and planned to take home for dinner. When I’d recovered enough to stand, Malone and I had taken the crabs, their pincers bound, down to the waterfront to show the former president. The papers got a shot of me kneeling on the dock, clipping the creatures free of their bindings before I released them into the harbor.

While the Globe had been quite mature about it, other newspapers had a good time with the story. One headline read “Cops Catch Crabs; President Scuttles Away.” I still had the newspaper clipping somewhere.

“I wonder if those crabs are alive now,” I said as Malone tried to recover from the hilarity. “How long do crabs live?”

“I don’t know. But if they’re alive, they’re probably still telling that story.”

“Over drinks at their underwater crab bar,” I said. “The Claw, it’s called. I went there once. Nice place. A bit wet.”

“Jesus.” Malone sighed, watching the lights in the distance. “That was so much fun. We had a good time, didn’t we? We were a great team.”

“We’re still a great team.” I nudged him in the ribs, feeling how hard and prominent they were beneath his shirt. As though he could sense my concern, Malone turned to me.

“Look, there’s something I’ve got to tell you,” he said. He took a deep breath. “I didn’t just come up here to hang out, to see the place. I wanted to know you’d forgiven me, because if you hadn’t, I wanted to fix it before it was too late. I’ve got cancer, Bill. It’s terminal.”





CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO





I LISTENED TO Malone tell me about his illness for as long as I could, then I crossed the bar to the restrooms to wash my face. I looked over at Susan, perhaps an involuntary reflex, my mind seeking comfort. She seemed to notice my distress, but I waved her off. I knew that if she asked me what was going on, I wouldn’t be able to put it into words. Malone was leaving me and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Just like Siobhan had. And Marni. And Doc. I needed a minute to close my eyes and think.

I turned the corner to the hall where the restrooms were and saw a man with sweat-slick hair and grimy clothes carrying a stack of boxes toward the back door of the pub. He turned and caught my eye and nodded his head toward the door.

“Dude,” he said. “Could you …”

I already had my hand on the doorknob of the men’s room. In my sadness, my stupor, I didn’t see the danger lurking.

“Sure thing,” I mumbled. I pushed past him and opened the door. As I stepped out into the dark, he set the boxes down, came out, and slammed the door closed behind us. Another figure emerged out of the night and shoved me into the wall.

“Don’t move, shitbird!” a voice snarled.





CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE





I SHOVED BACK at the second figure, who was just a silhouette in the dark. In a moment I realized it was a woman, and I felt a pang of regret as she stumbled away from me.

“Hey! Hands off, asshole!” the guy who’d been carrying the boxes said.

“Hands off?” I pushed him. “What the hell is this?”

The moon emerged from behind a cloud and I caught a slice of his face. I recognized him now—it was the gardener I had seen at the side of Cline’s house the day Nick and I confronted him.

“This is a thank-you.” He stuck his finger in my face. “My partner and I have been on Mitchell Cline for three months. You and your idiot friends cost us the biggest drug bust in Massachusetts history last night.”

The realization of what was happening was like a punch to the gut. “You’re undercover cops?”

“Boston PD,” the woman said. She was stocky and square-jawed and had small, mean eyes. “We’ve been brought in because the locals are on Cline’s payroll.”

I struggled to comprehend what they were saying, my mind still reeling from Malone’s revelation and the sneaky maneuver the two of them had used to get me outside the bar. I supposed they knew one of Cline’s men could be inside watching me and they didn’t want to blow their cover. Someone tried the door behind me, but the male cop butted it shut with his shoulder.

“What’s your goddamn problem with Boston PD, Robinson?” The male edged closer to me, his face now just inches from mine. I could smell nicotine gum on his breath. “You trying to fuck up our operation as revenge for getting canned by the commissioner?”