Dennis Lehane - Prayers For Rain

“Cool.”

“Okay. McGarrett out.” She hung up.

I stepped out from under the tree and had taken all of four steps when Angie remembered what she’d forgotten and called back.

“You remember?” I said.

“Hi, Pat,” the sandy-haired guy said. “Enjoying the rain?”

An extra heart appeared in the center of my chest and began to thump. “Loving it. You?”

“I’ve always liked rain, myself. Let me ask you-was that your partner you were talking to?”

I’d been under a large tree on the southern side of the mall. No way he could have seen me from the north. That left east, west, and south.

“Don’t have a partner, Wesley.” I looked south. The sidewalk across from me was empty except for a young woman being pulled across the slick concrete by three large dogs.

“Ha!” he shouted. “Very quick, Pat. You’re good, buddy. Or was that a lucky guess?”

I looked east to Clarendon Street. Just street traffic crossing at the light, no one on a cellular that I could see.

“Little of both, Wesley. Little of both.”

“Well, I’m real proud of you, Pat.”

I turned very slowly to my right and through the thick mist and drizzle, I saw him.

He stood on the southeast corner of Dartmouth and Commonwealth. He’d covered his upper half with a hooded, transparent slicker. When our eyes met, he gave me a wide grin and waved.

“Now you see me…” he said.

I took a step off the curb and cars that had just jumped off the light at Dartmouth screamed past. A Karmann Ghia almost clipped my kneecap as its horn blared and it jerked a hair to its right.

“Oooh,” Wesley said. “Close one. Careful, Pat. Careful.”

I walked along the edge of the mall toward Dartmouth, my eyes on Wesley as he took several casual steps backward.

“I knew a guy who got hit by a car once,” Wesley said as I lost him around the corner.

I broke into a trot and reached Dartmouth. The traffic continued to smoke the road in front of me, rain hissing off the tires. Wesley stood at the mouth of the public alley that ran parallel to Commonwealth Avenue from the Public Garden to the Fens a mile west.

“This guy tripped and a car fender hit his head while he was down. Turned his frontal lobe to egg salad.”

The light turned yellow, but this was merely an excuse for eight cars in two lanes to speed up as they broke through the intersection.

Wesley gave me another wave and disappeared into the alley.

“Always be careful, Pat. Always.”

I bolted across the avenue as a Volvo turned right onto Commonwealth and cut me off. The driver, a woman, shook her head at me, and then roared down the avenue.

I reached the sidewalk, spoke into the phone as I ran toward the mouth of the alley. “Wesley, you still there, buddy?”

“I’m not your buddy,” he whispered.

“But you said you were.”

“I lied, Pat.”

I reached the alley and slid on the sole strip of cobblestone at its mouth, banged into an overflowing Dumpster. A soaked paper bag exploded upward from the Dumpster and a rat surged up and over the edge, dropped to the alley. A cat that had been lying in wait under the Dumpster took off after it, and the two of them bolted the length of a city block in about six seconds. The cat looked big and mean, but so did the rat, and I wondered who exactly was controlling the chase. If I’d been betting, I’d have to have given a slight edge to the rat.

“You ever play Bronco Buster?” Wesley whispered.

“Which?” I looked up at the fire escapes dripping water from chipped iron. Nothing.

“Bronco Buster,” Wesley whispered. “It’s a game. Try it with Vanessa Moore some night. What you do is you mount the woman from behind, doggie style. You with me?”

“Sure.” I walked down the center of the alley, peering through the fog and drizzle at the rear doorways of opulent town houses, the small garages, and the shadowed places where buildings met buildings and some jutted out and others didn’t.

“So you have her from behind and you slip your dick in there so it’s good and firm, as deep as it can go. How deep would that be in your case, Pat?”

“I’m Irish, Wesley. You figure it out.”

“None too deep, then,” he said, and a low “ha-ha” rode his whisper.

I craned my head up at the odd collection of small wooden decks that protruded from the brick, like lean-tos for those underneath. I peered up at the cracks between the wood slats, looking for any shape resembling feet.

“Well, anyway,” he said, “once the two of you are attached good and snug, you whisper another woman’s name in her ear and then hold on tight like a bronco buster as the bitch goes wild.”

I spotted a few roof gardens, but they were too high up to tell if anyone was in them, and besides, none of the fire escapes looked close enough for easy access.

“Think you’d like that game, Pat?”

I turned a slow 360, willed my eyes to relax, to glide over the surface and see if anything incongruous showed itself.

“I asked if you’d like that game, Pat.”

“No, Wes.”

“Too bad. Oh, Pat?”

“What, Wes?”

“Take another look due east.”

I turned 180 degrees to my right and saw him down the far end of the alley, a tall figure made opaque by the fog, silhouette of a phone held to his ear.

“Whattaya say?” he said. “Let’s play.”

I broke into a run and he bolted as soon as I did. I heard the slap and clatter of his feet on wet cement and then he broke the connection.

By the time I reached the Clarendon Street end of the alley, he was gone. Shoppers and tourists and high school students filled the sidewalks. I saw men in trench coats and yellow macs and construction workers drenched to the bone. I saw steam rising from the sewer grates and enveloping taxis as they rolled past. I saw a kid on Rollerblades wipe out in front of a parking lot on Newbury. But not Wesley.

Just the mist and rain he’d left behind.

The morning after I had my encounter with Wesley in the rain, I got a call from Bubba telling me to be outside my house in half an hour because he was coming to pick me up.

“Where we going?”

“To see Stevie Zambuca.”

I stepped back from the small telephone table, took a long breath. Stevie Zambuca? Why the hell would he want to see me? I’d never met the man. I would have assumed the man had never heard of me. I’d been kind of hoping to keep it that way.

“Why?”

“Dunno. He called me, said to come to his house and bring you.”

“I was requested.”

“You wanna call it that, sure. You were requested.” Bubba hung up.

I went back out into the kitchen and sat at the table, drank my morning coffee, and tried to breathe steadily enough to avoid a panic attack. Yes, Stevie Zambuca scared me, but that wasn’t rare. Stevie Zambuca scared most people.

Stevie “The Pick” Zambuca ran a crew out of East Boston and Revere that, among other things, controlled most North Shore gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and chop-shop operations. Stevie was called “The Pick” not because he carried an ice pick or because he was skinny or knew his way around a lock, but because he was famous for giving his victims a choice on how they’d die. Stevie would enter a room where three or four of his goons held a guy to a chair, and he’d place an ax and a hacksaw in front of the guy and tell the guy to pick. Ax or saw. Knife or sword. Garrote or hammer. If the victim couldn’t pick, or didn’t do so in time, Stevie was rumored to use a drill, his weapon of choice. This was one of the reasons why newspapers sometimes erroneously called Stevie “The Drill,” which, according to rumor, pissed off a Somerville made guy named Frankie DiFalco who had a really big dick.