Dennis Lehane (Editor) - Boston Noir

Beacon Hill was unbearable. He couldn’t find its rhythm, couldn’t recognize the cues. He was out of place, and nothing he did made him feel any better. Daily life was a relentless series of insults and indignities. People were smug and complacent. Common courtesy didn’t exist. No one said hello or thank you or held open a door. His wife, a temperate soul, couldn’t disagree completely when he said there was something odd and off-putting about the place. A cleaner on Charles Street misplaced two of her suits for nine days and never apologized. She’d ordered a case of wine for a party at their apartment and it never arrived. “Service isn’t a priority,” she concluded. He couldn’t find plantains at the grocer’s, and the bagels sucked. No one knew what he’d done.

She loved her job, and called the neighborhood a walker’s delight-the town houses, antique shops, Acorn Street, the esplanade on the Charles, the way the sun shone when spring finally arrived. She took his arm as they crossed the Salt-and-Pepper Bridge, sailboats gliding below.

After Maya went to bed, he’d walk across to the Public Garden, his guitar and case in hand, hoping something would come to him. In Washington Square Park, he’d have drawn a crowd. Here, nobody cared. During the day, he’d slip into a T-shirt, tug on jeans, and bring a sandwich to a bench where he’d watch swans drift on the lake; nearby were flowers and nannies with cheery babies running on chubby legs. He’d smile, nod, but no one responded. In New York, he’d meet friends for lunch. He’d see people on the street. Everybody was open and welcoming. Hey, Jeff! they’d shout. Here, there was no refuge, no place to hide. He was a balloon drifting toward the high, boundless sky.

Staring at his platinum album, he saw his gaunt, ghostly reflection and was surprised to find he was still there.

“Did you hear about the baby?” Maya said, as she hung up her skirt.

He shook his head. “I didn’t go out.”

She was going to ask if he heard it on the radio, but he’d become completely disengaged. He’d even stopped streaming WNYC. “A baby is missing. Stolen.”

She came to him with a flier she’d been given at the Charles Street T station. It said the baby was taken in the Public Garden yesterday. She had been sitting in a stroller over by the Make Way for Ducklings statue. So many children were laughing and playing. One fell and cut a knee on the cobblestone. When a nanny rushed over to help, leaving the infant’s stroller for a moment…

“You could jump into a car and be on 90 to New York in five minutes,” he said.

“They’re looking for people who were in the park to help.”

“Good luck.” He had it in his mind Beacon Hill wouldn’t piss on somebody if he was on fire. He didn’t believe her when she said it wasn’t Beacon Hill’s fault, reminding him that he’d struggled for the past few years in New York.

He went to his studio while she made dinner-salmon and a cold rice dish she’d picked up on Charles Street. When he came down, she was pouring Pinot Grigio as she read a working paper on the Fair Trade movement.

After they ate, he brought the dishes to the sink. Soon soap bubbles rose and popped.

“Jeff. Are you coming?”

He grabbed a towel. “Where?”

“To the vigil, remember? Everybody’s helping with the baby.”

“These people?”

“Stop it,” she said. “I’m going. I wish you would.”

“I’ve got work,” he told her. “I’ll be upstairs.”

After he brought the trash to the basement, he walked outside and stood on the steps. Over in the Public Garden, hundreds of people were fanned out, studying the grass and grounds, looking into the tulip beds, hoping for a clue, any tidbit of information, a revelation. Klieg lights police had stationed on the pathways shed an eerie glow throughout the park, and there were long, quivering shadows. Kids in shorts and hoodies served cold drinks. An uncomfortable silence and an unsettling sense of dread filled the early summer air.

Maya was over by the Angel of the Waters , the statue that reminded him of one with the same name in Central Park, and she was chatting with a thick, busty blonde. As the other woman lectured, Maya folded her arms, solemnity on her face. When she spotted him, she beckoned him with a wave, but he pointed upstairs and made a little gesture like he was strumming a guitar. Then he went back inside.

“I’m onto something,” he said when she returned. “Don’t be surprised if I don’t come to bed.” He held up a cloth sack she’d gotten at the Museum of Fine Arts that he’d filled with snacks and something to drink.

“Jeff,” she said, as she kicked off her flats, “look at this.”

Another flier. A sketch by a police artist.

“It looks like you, Jeff.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he said, as he nudged it back toward her.

“Gail McDermott thought so.”

“Gail McDermott…?”

“The blonde on the first floor…Runs a PR agency…”

He didn’t know anyone in the building. “No,” he said, tapping the flier, “that guy is old. He’s half bald. Scruffy. It’s not me.”

“I didn’t say it was you…”

“I’m going upstairs.”

“They’re going to drag the lake tomorrow,” she told him.

Walking away, he said, “She’s not dead.”

He couldn’t keep the baby in his music room. It was as dark as a cave, and the soundproofing left the air stagnant and stale. He’d changed her and fed her and burped her and held her, tickled her chin, combed her downy hair with his fingers, bathed her with warm water with a face cloth, cooed at her, sang to her, played little figures on the piano. But the carton he converted to a bassinet was stupid, and she needed sunlight, so he brought her downstairs into the kitchen and sat with her on his lap by Maya’s basil plants and thyme leaves.

“Hey baby,” he said as he cuddled her in his arms.

Out on Beacon Hill, people had pulled their chins out of the air and were treating each other with decency and humility. They had a cause bigger than themselves now, something beyond parading their imaginary status. Or so he assumed. He hadn’t left the apartment grounds since he took Baby Alice. Remembering that a few residents in the building didn’t retrieve their Globe until the day’s end, he brought her to the center of the king-sized bed, nestled her on goose down, and took the creaking spiral staircase to the lobby. As he started back up, the Globe under his hand, he heard the baby cry and hurried back to scoop her in his arms. He said, “It’s all right, baby. Everything’s all right.” He bounced her and rubbed her back until she sighed and stopped fussing. He kissed her moist cheek.

Down in her office in apartment 3, statue-still and silent, sat Gail McDermott, who, though she tried, couldn’t convince herself she hadn’t heard a baby’s cry. Fresh cup of coffee in hand, she lifted the flier with the police sketch from her in-box, and yeah, it did look like Maya’s husband, that New Yorker who was some sort of musician, the odd, scowling guy who dressed like a teenager and looked like he needed something no one could provide.

“Jim,” she called as she knocked again. “Jim.”

He opened the door a crack. “It’s Jeff,” he said.

“Jeff.” Gail McDermott introduced herself by handing him a business card. “I heard a baby.”

“Not here.” He scanned the card. McDermott Communications , it read. Specialists in Crisis Management . The building’s address was printed below.

“Do you have the baby?”

“Do I have-”

McDermott pushed in, and he watched as she surveyed the living room. Plain, plump, and round-faced, she wore business slacks and a snug white silk blouse. No makeup, her hair tucked behind her ears. Flip-flops and a PDA on her belt.