Dennis Lehane - Gone, Baby, Gone

“Uh-ah,” I mumbled, and swayed some more.

The elevator bank dinged as another car reached the lobby.

The security guard reached for my elbow, but I pivoted and his fingers snapped at air.

I reached into my pocket. “Got something to show you.”

The security guard pulled his nightstick from its holster. “Hey! Keep your hands where I can see-”

“Oh, my God,” someone said as the crowd exited the elevator and I pulled a banana from my trench coat, pointed it at the rent-a-cop.

“Jesus Christ, he’s got a banana!” The voice came from behind me. Angie.

Always the improviser. Couldn’t stick to the script.

The crowd from the elevator was trying to cross the lobby, avoid eye contact with me, and still see enough of the incident to have the day’s best story at the watercooler.

“Sir,” the security guard said, trying to sound authoritative and yet polite, now that several tenants bore witness, “put the banana down.”

I pointed the banana at him. “Got this from my cousin. He’s an orangutan.”

“Shouldn’t someone call the police?” a woman asked.

“Ma’am,” the security guard said, a bit desperately, “I have this under control.”

I tossed the banana at him. He dropped his nightstick and jumped back as if he’d been shot.

Someone in the crowd yelped, and several people jogged for the doors.

At the elevator bank, Angie caught my eye and pointed at my hair. “Very hot,” she mouthed, and then she slipped into the elevator and the doors closed.

The security guard picked up his nightstick and dropped the banana. He looked ready to rush me. I didn’t know how many people remained behind me-maybe three-but at least one of them could be thinking about heroically rushing the vagrant as well.

I turned so that my back was to the horseshoe desk and elevators. Only two men, one woman, and the security guard remained. And both men were inching toward the doors. The woman seemed fascinated, however. Her mouth was open, and one hand was pressed against the base of her throat.

“Whatever happened to Men at Work?” I asked her.

“What?” The security guard took another step toward me.

“The Australian band.” I turned my head, locked the security guard in a kind, curious stare. “Very big in the early eighties. Huge. Do you know what happened to them?”

“What? No.”

I cocked my head as I stared at him, scratched my temple. For a long moment, no one in the lobby moved or even breathed it seemed.

“Oh,” I said eventually. I shrugged. “My mistake. Keep the banana.”

I stepped over it on my way out, and the two men flattened against the wall.

I winked at one of them. “First-rate security guard you got. Without him, I’da busted up the place.” I pushed open the doors onto Washington Street.

I was about to give a covert thumbs-up to Poole, who sat in the Taurus on the corner of School and Washington, when the heels of two palms hit my shoulder and chucked me into the side of the building.

“Out of my way, you fucking derelict.”

I turned my head in time to see Chris Mullen walk back through the revolving doors, gesture toward the frozen security guard in my direction, and keep walking toward the elevator bank.

I broke into the stream of pedestrians filling the street, cleared the walkie-talkie from my pocket, and turned it on.

“ Poole, Mullen’s back.”

“Affirmative, Mr. Kenzie. Broussard’s contacting Ms. Gennaro as we speak. Turn around, go to your car. Do not blow our covers.” I could see his lips move behind his windshield, and then he dropped his walkie-talkie back onto his seat and glared at me.

I turned in the crowd.

A woman with coke-bottle glasses and hair tied back so tightly off her forehead her face looked like a bug’s stared up at me.

“Are you some kind of cop?”

I raised a finger to my lips. “Sssh.” I put the walkie-talkie back in my trench coat, left her standing there, mouth open, and walked back to my car.

As I opened the trunk, I saw Broussard leaning against the window of Eddie Bauer. He held his hand up by his ear and spoke into his wrist.

I tuned to his channel as I leaned under the open trunk.

“…say again, Miss Gennaro, subject en route. Abort immediately.”

I brushed all the eggshell from my beard and put a baseball cap over my head.

“Say again,” Broussard whispered. “Abort. Out.”

I tossed the trench coat in the trunk, removed my black leather jacket, placed the walkie-talkie in the pocket, and closed the jacket over my soiled T-shirt. I closed the trunk and cut back through the crowds to Eddie Bauer, stared through the window at the mannequins.

“She respond?”

“No,” Broussard said.

“Was her walkie-talkie working?”

“Couldn’t tell. We have to assume she heard me and clicked off before Mullen could hear it.”

“We go up,” I said.

“You take a move toward that building, I’ll blow your leg off at the knee.”

“She’s exposed up there. If her walkie-talkie was on the fritz and she didn’t hear your-”

“I won’t allow you to queer this surveillance just because you’re sleeping with her.” He came off the window and passed me in a loose, loping, post-jog stride. “She’s a professional. Why don’t you start acting like one?”

He walked up the street and I looked at my watch: 9:15 A.M.

Mullen had been inside four minutes. Why’d he turn around in the first place? Had Broussard blown the tail?

No. Broussard was too good. I’d only seen him because I knew to look for him, and even then he blended into crowds so well my eyes had skipped over him once before I’d identified him.

I looked at my watch again: 9:16.

If Angie had gotten Broussard’s message as soon as he’d realized Mullen was headed back to Devonshire Place, she would have been in the elevators, or possibly have gotten as far as the outside of Mullen’s door. She would have turned and headed right for the stairwell. And she’d be down by now.

9:17.

I watched the entrance to Devonshire Place. A pair of young stockbrokers stepped out in shiny Hugo Boss suits, Gucci shoes, and Geoffrey Beene ties, hair so thick with gel it would take a wood-chipper to muss it. They stepped aside for a slim woman in a dark-blue power suit and a matching pair of wafer-thin Revos over her eyes, checked out her ass as she stepped into a taxi.

9:18.

The only way Angie would still be up there was if she’d been forced to hide in Mullen’s apartment or if he’d caught her, either inside or at his door.

9:19.

She’d never have been dumb enough to hop back in the elevators if she had, in fact, gotten Broussard’s message. Stand there and see the car door open to Chris Mullen on the other side…

Hey, Ange, long time no see.

You too, Chris.

What brings you by my building?

Visiting a friend.

Yeah? Aren’t you working that missing girl case?

Why do you have a gun pointed at me, Chris?

9:20.

I glanced across Washington to the corner of School Street.

Poole met my eyes, shook his head very deliberately.

Maybe she had reached the lobby but was being harassed by the security guard.

Miss, hold on. I don’t remember seeing you in here before.

I’m new.

I don’t think so. His hand goes to the phone, dials 911…

But she’d be out the door by then.

9:22.

I took a step toward the building. Took another one. Then stopped.

If nothing had gone wrong, if Angie had simply turned off her walkie-talkie so the squawk wouldn’t alert anyone to her presence and was, as I stood there, standing on the other side of a fifteenth-floor exit door, watching Mullen’s apartment door through a small square of glass, and I stepped in front of the entrance just as Mullen walked out, recognized me…