Dennis Lehane: Prayers For Rain

“More like fourteen.”

Cheswick chuckled. “Cars really go that cheap?” Cheswick owned a Bentley, a Mercedes V10, and two Range Rovers that I knew of. When he wanted to be one with the common folk, he drove a Lexus.

“They’ll pay the claim,” he said.

“They said they wouldn’t,” I said, just to get a rise out of him.

“And go up against me? I hang up the phone without satisfaction, they’ll know they’re already fifty thousand in the hole. They’ll pay,” he repeated.

When I hung up, Bubba said, “What’d he say?”

“He said they’ll pay.”

He nodded. “So will Cody, dude. So will Cody.”

Bubba went back to his warehouse for a while to clear up some business, and I called Devin Amronklin, a homicide cop who’s one of the few cops left in this city who will talk to me anymore.

“Homicide.”

“Say it like you mean it, baby.”

“Hey-hey. If it ain’t numero uno persona non grata with the Boston Police Department. Been pulled over recently?”

“Nope.”

“Don’t. You’d be amazed what some guys here want to find in your trunk.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. Being at the top of the police department’s shit list was not where I’d planned to be at this point in my life.

“You can’t be too popular,” I said. “You’re the one who put the cuffs on a fellow cop.”

“Nobody’s ever liked me,” Devin said, “but most of them are scared of me, so that’s just as good. You, on the other hand, are a renowned cream puff.”

“Renowned, huh?”

“What’s up?”

“I need a check on a Cody Falk. Priors, anything to do with stalking.”

“And I get what for this?”

“Permanent friendship?”

“One of my nieces,” he said, “wants the entire Beanie Babies collection for her birthday.”

“And you don’t want to go into a toy store.”

“And I’m still paying serious child support for a kid who won’t talk to me.”

“So you want me to purchase said Beanie Babies, as well.”

“Ten should do.”

“Ten?” I said. “You’ve gotta be-”

“Falk with an ‘F’?”

“As in flimflam,” I said and hung up.

Devin called back in an hour and told me to bring the Beanie Babies by his apartment the next night.

“Cody Falk, age thirty-three. No convictions.”

“However…”

“However,” Devin said, “arrested once for violating a restraining order against one Bronwyn Blythe. Charges dropped. Arrested for assault of Sara Little. Charges dropped when Miss Little refused to testify and moved out of state. Named as a suspect in the rape of one Anne Bernstein, brought in for questioning. Charges never filed because Miss Bernstein refused to swear out a complaint, submit to a rape examination, or identify her attacker.”

“Nice guy,” I said.

“Sounds like a peach, yeah.”

“That’s it?”

“Except that he has a juvenile record, but it’s been sealed.”

“Of course.”

“He bothering somebody again?”

“Maybe,” I said carefully.

“Wear gloves,” Devin said and hung up.

Cody Falk drove a pearl-gray Audi Quattro, and at nine-thirty that night, we watched him exit the Mount Auburn Club, his hair freshly combed and still wet, the butt of a tennis racket sticking out of his gym bag. He wore a soft black leather jacket over a cream linen vest, a white shirt buttoned at the throat, and faded jeans. He was very tan. He moved like he expected things to get out of his way.

“I really hate this guy,” I said to Bubba. “And I don’t even know him.”

“Hate’s cool,” Bubba said. “Don’t cost nothing.”

Cody’s Audi beeped twice as he used the remote attached to his key chain to disengage the alarm and pop the trunk.

“If you’d just let me,” Bubba said, “he would have blown up about now.”

Bubba had wanted to strap some C-4 to the engine block and wire the charge to the Audi’s alarm transmitter. C-4. Take out half of Watertown, blow the Mount Auburn Club to somewhere over Rhode Island. Bubba couldn’t see why this wasn’t a good idea.

“You don’t kill a guy for trashing a woman’s car.”

“Yeah?” Bubba said. “Where’s that written?”

I have to admit he had me there.

“Plus,” Bubba said, “you know, he gets the chance he’ll rape her.”

I nodded.

“I hate rape-os,” Bubba said.

“Me, too.”

“It’d be cool if he never did it again.”

I turned in my seat. “We’re not killing him.”

Bubba shrugged.

Cody Falk closed his trunk and stood by it a moment, his strong chin tilted up as he looked at the tennis courts fronting the parking lot. He looked like he was posing for something, a portrait maybe, and with his rich, dark hair and chiseled features, his carefully sculpted torso and soft, expensive clothes, he could have easily passed for a model. He seemed aware that he was being watched, but not by us; he seemed the kind of guy who always thought he was being watched, with either admiration or envy. It was Cody Falk’s world, we were just living in it.

Cody pulled out of the parking lot and took a right, and we followed him through Watertown and around the edge of Cambridge. He took a left on Concord Street and headed into Belmont, one of the tonier of our tony suburbs.

“How come you park in a driveway and drive on a parkway?” Bubba yawned into his fist, looked out the window.

“I have no idea.”

“You said that the last time I asked you.”

“And?”

“And I just wish someone would give me a good answer. It pisses me off.”

We left the main road and followed Cody Falk into a smoke-brown neighborhood of tall oaks and chocolate Tudors, the fallen sun having left a haze of deep bronze in its wake that gave the late winter streets an autumn glow, an air of rarefied ease, inherited wealth, stained-glass private libraries full of dark teak and delicate tapestries.

“Glad we took the Porsche,” Bubba said.

“You don’t think the Crown Vic would have fit in?”

My Porsche is a ’63 Roadster. I bought the shell and little else ten years ago and spent the next five purchasing parts and restoring it. I don’t love it, per se, but I have to admit that when I’m behind the wheel, I do feel like the coolest guy in Boston. Maybe the world. Angie used to say that’s because I still have a lot of growing up to do. Angie was probably right, but then, until very recently, she drove a station wagon.

Cody Falk pulled into a small driveway beside a large stucco colonial and I cut my headlights and pulled in behind him as the garage door rolled up with a whir. Even with his windows closed, I could hear the bass thumping from his car speakers, and we rolled right up the driveway behind him without his hearing a thing. I cut the engine just before we would have followed him into the garage. He got out of the Audi and we left the Porsche as the garage door began to close. He popped his trunk, and Bubba and I stepped under the door and in there with him.

He jumped back when he saw me, and shoved his hands out in front of him as if warding off a horde. Then his eyes began to narrow. I’m not a particularly big guy and Cody looked fit and tall and well muscled. His fear of a stranger in his garage was already giving way to calculation as he sized me up, saw I had no weapon.

Then Bubba shut the trunk that had blocked him from Cody’s view, and Cody gasped. Bubba has that effect on people. He has the face of a deranged two-year-old-as if the features softened and stopped maturing around the same time his brain and conscience did-and it sits atop a body that reminds me of a steel boxcar with limbs.

“Who the hell-”