Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

Angie and I both tensed for the blare of an alarm, but were met with silence as Bubba reached into the car, pulled something out, and slid it in the pocket of his trench coat.

Angie said, “What in the fuck is he doing?”

Bubba reached behind him and unzipped the gym bag by his knees. His hand searched around inside until he found what he was looking for. He removed a small black rectangular object and placed it in the car.

“It’s a bomb,” I said.

“He promised,” Angie said.

“Yeah,” I said, “but he’s, oh, nuts. Remember?”

Bubba used the sleeve of his trench coat to wipe the places he’d touched in and outside the car, then he gently closed the door and scrambled back across the lawn and over to us.

“I,” he said, “am so fucking cool.”

“Agreed,” I said. “What did you do?”

“I mean, I’m the balls, dude. I’m it. I surprise myself sometimes.” He opened the back door of the van, tossed the gym bag on the floor.

“Bubba,” Angie said, “what’s in the bag?”

Bubba was damn near bursting. He threw the folds of the bag wide, waved us to look inside. “Cell phones!” he said with a ten-year-old’s glee.

I looked in the bag. He was right. Ten or twelve of them-Nokias, Ericcsons, Motorolas, most black, a few gray.

“Great,” I said. I looked up into his beaming face. “Actually, why is this great, Bubba?”

“’Cause your idea sucked, and I came up with this one.”

“My idea wasn’t bad.”

“It sucked!” he said happily. “I mean, it blew, dude. Put a bug in a box, have the guy-or wasn’t it some chick at first-take it in the house.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So, what if he leaves the box on the dining room table, goes up to the bedrooms to do whatever it is you want to hear?”

“We were kinda hoping he wouldn’t.”

He gave me a thumbs-up. “Fucking great thinking there.”

“So,” Angie said, “what was your idea?”

“Replace his cell phone,” Bubba said. He pointed into the bag. “These all have bugs already inside. All I had to do was match one of mine”-he pulled a charcoal Nokia flip phone from his pocket-“to his.”

“That’s his?”

He nodded.

I nodded with him, let my smile match his own, until I dropped it. “Bubba, no offense, but so what? The guy’s inside his house.”

Bubba rocked back on his heels, raised his eyebrows up and down several times. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I said. “So-how do I put this?-why the fuck does he need to use his cell phone when he probably has three or four house phones inside?”

“House phones,” Bubba said slowly, a frown beginning to replace the smile. “Never thought of those. He can just pick one up and call anywhere he wants, huh?”

“Yeah, Bubba. That’s sort of their point. He’s probably doing it right now.”

“Shit,” Bubba said. “Too bad I cut the phone lines out back, huh?”

Angie laughed. She clapped his cherub’s face between her hands and kissed his nose.

Bubba blushed and then looked at me, that smile beginning to grow again.

“Ahm…”

“Yeah?”

“Sorry,” I said.

“For?”

“Doubting you. Okay? Happy?”

“And talking down to me.”

“And talking down to you, yes.”

“And speaking in a derisive tone of voice,” Angie said.

I glared at her.

“What she said.” Bubba jerked a thumb at Angie.

Angie looked over her shoulder. “He’s coming back out.”

We all climbed into the van, and Bubba shut the door behind us, and we looked out through mirrored glass at the redhead as he kicked his front tire, opened his car door, and reached across the seat, pulled his cellular from the console.

“Why didn’t he call people during the ride back?” Angie asked. “If the calls were important…”

“Roaming,” Bubba said. “Someone’s moving, it’s way easier to tap into their conversation-listen in or clone the phone, whatever.”

“But stationary?” I said.

He screwed his face up. “What, you mean like writing something down? What’s that got to-”

“Not the paper. Stationary,” I said, “as in standing still.”

“Oh.” He rolled his eyes at Angie. “Showing off the college again.” He glanced back at me. “Okay, Joe Word of the Day, yeah, if he’s ‘stationary’ it’s way harder to cut into his transmission. Gotta go through land lines and tin roofs and antennas and satellite dishes, microwaves, the whole fucking nine if you know what I mean.”

Carrottop walked back into his house.

Bubba used one finger to type on a laptop computer on the floor between us. He pulled a grimy piece of paper from his pocket. In his second-grader’s scrawl, he’d listed the cell phone types and serial numbers, and then the frequency numbers for his recording devices beside them. He typed a frequency number into the computer, then sat back on the floor.

“Never tried this before,” he said. “Hope it works.”

I rolled my eyes and sat back against the side panel.

“I don’t hear anything,” I said after about thirty seconds.

“Ooops.” Bubba raised a finger above his head. “Volume.”

He leaned forward and pressed the volume button at the base of the laptop, and after a moment, we heard Diane Bourne’s voice through the tiny speakers.

“…Are you drunk, Miles? Of course it’s an issue. They asked all sorts of questions.”

I smiled at Angie. “And you didn’t want to follow the redhead.”

She rolled her eyes and said to Bubba, “One good hunch in three years, he thinks he’s a god.”

“What questions?” Miles said.

“Who you were, where you worked.”

“How did they get onto me?”

Diane Bourne ignored the question. “They wanted to know about Karen, about Wesley, about how the fucking session notes got in Karen’s possession, Miles.”

“All right, all right, just relax.”

“Fuck relax! You relax! Oh, Jesus,” she said through a long stream of air. “The two of them are smart. Do you understand?”

Bubba nudged me. “Talking about you two?”

I nodded.

“Shit,” Bubba said. “Smart. Oh, sure.”

“Yes,” Miles Lovell said. “They’re smart. We knew that.”

“We never knew they’d trace anything to me. Fucking fix it, Miles. Call him.”

“Just-”

“Fix it!” she snapped. And then she hung up.

No sooner had Miles hung up than he dialed another number.

A man answered on the other end. “Yeah?”

“Two detectives sniffed around today,” Miles said.

“Detectives? You mean cops?”

“No. Private. They know about the session notes.”

“Someone forgot to retrieve them?”

“Someone was drunk. What can Someone say?”

“Sure.”

“She’s rattled.”

“The good doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Too rattled?” the calm voice asked.

“Definitely.”

“She’ll need a speaking to?”

“She may need more. She’s the weak link here.”

“The weak link. Uh-huh.”

There was a long pause. I could hear Miles breathing on his end, static and hiss on the other.

“You there?” Miles asked.

“I find it boring.”

“Which?”

“Working that way.”

“We may not have time for your way. Look, we-”

“Not over the phone.”

“Fine. The usual, then.”

“The usual. Don’t worry so much.”

“I’m not worried. I just want this dealt with faster than your usual inclinations allow.”

“Absolutely.”

“I’m serious.”

“I recognize that,” the calm voice said, and then he broke the connection.

Miles hung up, immediately dialed a third number.