Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(50)

She chuckled. “Exactly. So then he goes in his bedroom and he’s thrashing around in there, ripping his suit off, slamming hangers together in the closet, ya ya ya. Anyway, it takes him a few minutes, and then he selects a new suit and he puts it on, and I’m thinking, Good, he’s outa here, because I’m getting real cramped behind that TV, piles of cables back there like snakes….”

“And?”

Angie can get lost in moments like these, so sometimes a gentle prodding helps.

She scowled at me. “Mister Cut-to-the-Chase, over here. So…then suddenly I hear him talking again. He’s going, ‘Fuckhead. Hey, fuckhead! Yeah, you!”

“What?” I leaned forward.

“Interested again, are we?” She winked. “Yeah, so I think he’s spotted me. I think I’m bagged. Cooked. Right?” Her large brown eyes had grown huge.

“Right.”

She took a drag off her cigarette. “Nah. Talking to himself again.”

“He calls himself ‘fuckhead’?”

“When the mood strikes him, apparently. ‘Hey, fuckhead, you’re going to wear a yellow tie with this suit? That’s good. Real good, fuck face.”

“Fuck face.”

“I swear to God. A bit limited on the vocabulary, I’d say. So then there’s more thrashing around as he gets another tie, puts it on, mumbles under his breath the whole way. And I’m thinking, He’ll get the tie right, be halfway out the door, and decide the shirt’s wrong. I’ll be so cramped, I’ll need traction to get out from behind his TV.”

“And?”

“He left. I called you guys.” She flicked her cigarette out the window. “End of story.”

“Were you in the apartment when Broussard walkie-talkied he was on his way back?”

She shook her head. “At Mullen’s door with picks in hand.”

“You kidding me?”

“What?”

“You broke in after you knew he was coming back?”

She shrugged. “Something came over me.”

“You’re nuts.”

She gave me a throaty chuckle. “Nuts enough to keep you interested, Slick. That’s all I need.”

I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to kiss her or kill her.

The walkie-talkie squawked on the seat between us, and Broussard’s voice popped through the speaker. “Poole, you got him?”

“Affirm. Taxi moving south on Purchase, heading for the expressway.”

“Kenzie.”

“Yeah?”

“Miss Gennaro with you?”

“Affirm,” I said in my deepest voice. Angie punched my arm.

“Stand by. Let’s see where he’s going. I’m going to start walking back.”

We listened to a minute or so of dead air before Poole came back on. “He’s on the expressway and heading south. Ms. Gennaro?”

“Yeah, Poole.”

“Are all our friends in place?”

“Every last one.”

“Turn on your receivers and leave your position. Pick up Broussard and head south.”

“You got it. Detective Broussard?”

“I’m heading west on Broad Street.”

I put the car in reverse.

“We’ll meet you at the corner of Broad and Batterymarch.”

“Copy that.”

As I left the garage, Angie turned on the boxy portable receiver in the backseat and adjusted the volume until we heard the soft hiss of Mullen’s empty apartment. I cut through the parking ramp under Devonshire Place, took a left on Water, rolled through Post Office and Liberty squares, and found Broussard leaning against a street lamp in front of a deli.

He hopped in the car as Poole’s voice came over the walkie-talkie. “Getting off the expressway in Dorchester by the South Bay Shopping Center.”

“Back to the old neighborhood,” Broussard said. “You Dorchester boys just can’t stay away.”

“It’s like a magnet,” I assured him.

“Scratch that,” Poole said. “He’s taking a left on Boston Street, heading toward Southie.”

I said, “Not a very strong magnet, however.”



Ten minutes later we passed Poole’s empty Taurus on Gavin Street in the heart of Old Colony Project in South Boston and parked half a block up. Poole’s last transmission had told us he was following Mullen into Old Colony on foot. Until he contacted us again, there wasn’t much to do but sit and wait and look at the project.

Not a bad-looking sight, actually. The streets are clean and tree-lined and curve gracefully through red-brick buildings with freshly painted white trim. Small hedges and squares of grass lie under most first-floor windows. The fence encircling the garden is upright, rooted, and free of rust. As far as projects go, Old Colony is one of the most aesthetically pleasing you’re apt to find in this country.

It has a bit of a heroin problem, though. And a teen suicide problem, which probably stems from the heroin. And the heroin probably stems from the fact that even if you do grow up in the prettiest project in the world, it’s still a project, and you’re still growing up there, and heroin ain’t much but it beats staring at the same walls and the same bricks and the same fences your whole life.