Howard Shrier - Boston Cream

Once we were all inside the compound, we’d wait for Frank to advise the surgical team of what was happening. Stayner would send Jim Reimer out on a phantom errand, say to pick up some crucial piece of equipment that had been left behind. No surgeon would ever do that because they’d no longer be sterile but we doubted anyone inside would know that. I’d be waiting in the trunk, in a surgical outfit identical to Reimer’s. Reimer and I would switch places. I’d let Ryan and Victor into the loading area. Inside, in the improvised operating room, Frank would be reaching for his gun.

We would take down anyone in our path, find Jenn and bust out in Reimer’s SUV.

That was the plan; that was my promise to Jenn, sure and silent in my heart.

Jews say that when man plans, God laughs. Even though I’m an atheist, I kept an ear cocked for the sound of faraway laughter.

Kieran was driving Sean crazy. He had slept all day, drugged to the tits, but now he was awake and restless and up Sean’s ass. He couldn’t pace because of his leg, so he sat on a stool at the kitchen island, swivelling it this way and that to keep Sean in his field of vision as Sean moved back and forth trying to get dinner together for the kids. Bev was upstairs getting ready for a night of cosmetic sales with a dozen fortysomething women, something she did to make her own spending money, or at the very least get all this high-end facial shit for free. Unbelievably expensive little tubes and jars full of Dead Sea mud.

Sean was putting salmon fillets in the oven, rinsing lettuce for their salad, setting out juice and cut-up celery and carrots. He didn’t want his kids eating junk and getting fat like some of their friends, barely into their teens and already out of shape, out of breath, with the same prison pallor as guys at Cedar Junction. He wanted them strong and straight. No one, especially Michael, would ever go near his business. They’d go to school and find their own lives and careers.

“Can’t these kids feed themselves?” Kieran said. “Christ, when we were their age, we were getting drunk and stealing cars.”

“I told you when we’re leaving, okay? Be patient. You’ll have plenty of time-four, five hours till they’re ready for her. Jesus, how much do you think she can take?”

“We’ll find out.”

“We who? This is your thing, pal, not mine.”

“Like you’ve never taken anyone out to the garage, tuned them up until they would talk or deal.”

“Not for fun, I didn’t. And never a woman.”

“She destroyed my fucking leg. If it was a guy who done it, believe me, he’d have the same shit coming. Worse. Except I wouldn’t plan to fuck him. She looked real nice, what I saw.”

“She’s even better up close. A real honey.”

“Now that’s unfair, man. You’re teasing me.”

Daggett sighed. “Okay, we can go in fifteen minutes.”

“How long to get there?”

“Half an hour.”

“And how long till she’s clear-headed?”

“Also half an hour.”

“Then call Freddie now, tell him to take her off the drip. I want her up before we get there. Wanna call her on the phone and tell her what she’s in for.”

Damn it. Sean had called Freddie from the road and told him they were on their way. Take her off the drip, Sean had said, even though the girl wasn’t scheduled to go under the knife for another few hours. Freddie knew why. Kieran was pissed about his leg and wanted to take it out on her. Freddie could understand that, sympathize with it, but it still pissed him off. The girl’s body was fucking magnificent. Playboy material. And now he had to put the catheter back in so Sean wouldn’t know he’d been into the goods. Wipe her up. Work the gown back over her limbs.

What a waste, he thought. A first-class piece of ass she was, even asleep and unresponsive. But when Kieran got through with her, pieces was all she would be. He took one more long look at her, wishing he had a better camera than the one in his phone. He took a few more snaps.

Look at her .

If he stopped the drip right now, she’d still stay out for at least fifteen minutes or more. And Sean and Kieran would take at least that long to get there from Framingham. He decided he had enough time to play one more game, nothing long and drawn out, just a quick little sketch that was forming in his mind.

Freddie and the Maiden, part three.

A light rain began to fall as we drove along Huntington Avenue past Northeastern University. Keep it coming, I thought. Rain would obscure vision, make guards hurry in and out of doorways that much faster. Make them hunch, maybe jam on a ball cap, make it harder for them to see.

“Feel it?” Ryan asked.

“What?”

“The adrenalin.”

“I guess.”

“You guess? Your left foot is pumping like a heavy-metal drummer.”

“Okay, I feel it.”

“Don’t fight it, use it.”

“I know.”

“You need to go over the guns again before we meet Frank and Victor?”

“I’m good. Your in-room seminar was excellent.”

We met Frank and Victor at a Chinese restaurant on Brookline Avenue. Easy for us out-of-towners to find; plenty of on-street parking. Ryan made sure my gun was in my back waistband before we went in. But no one pulled on us when we walked in. We were shown to a table where the boys were waiting. They didn’t pull either. No one poisoned the spring rolls or the hot-and-sour soup; all it did was make my nose run.

Everything had gone smoothly with Riklitis, Frank said. “I mean, he was disappointed and everything that he wasn’t going to be collecting the rest of his payment, but when I told him it was that or get a bullet up his ass, he calmed down.”

“How much were they paying him?”

“Fifty large. When Victor heard that, he was ready to sign up himself.”

“Why the fuck not,” Victor said. “One kidney is all you need. It was right there in the pamphlet.”

“I can’t even tell if he’s kidding,” Frank said.

We drank tea and Cokes as we went over the details again, then Frank left in Riklitis’s car. Victor guided us south out of Brookline and along the Jamaicaway.

“See that dark spot on the right?” Victor said. “That’s Jamaica Pond. Me and Frank go fishing there sometimes.”

“For what?” Ryan asked.

“Pickerel, bass, hornpout, perch. Those are all natural to the place. Plus they stock it with salmon and trout.”

“Can you eat any of it?” I asked.

“Hell, yeah, that’s clean water. Cleanest around here, anyway. Spring-fed, Frank told me. You guys come down in the summer, we’ll grab a rod and some six-packs.”

“Can’t wait,” Ryan said.

Stayner had told us to meet him in the administration parking lot at Forest Hills Cemetery; from there, we’d all go in his car, from a cemetery above Mattapan to the mortuary down below. There were no other cars when we got there so I pulled in and shut off the engine. Darkness shrouded us; a steady rain was visible in the glare of tungsten lights. While we waited, Victor and Ryan applied shoe polish to whatever skin wasn’t covered by their balaclavas. I sat with my eyes closed, breathing in the smell of the polish; I realized we were just on the other side of Franklin Park, where Carol-Ann Meacham’s battered body had been found. A cemetery, a mortuary, a dumping ground for the murdered. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Jonah Geller’s Boston. Maps and guidebooks sold here. Don’t mind the bloodstains, folks. A little soda water will lift those right up.

Headlights swept across my field of vision as Chuck Stayner drove a champagne-coloured Cadillac CTS sedan into the lot and pulled up beside us. We transferred a gym bag containing our guns and other supplies to his trunk, then locked up the Charger. The worst that could happen to it here was it would be towed away. Better that than having it stripped and stolen in Mattapan and having to file a police report-or have Ryan make another rental-car clerk wet his pants.