Dennis Lehane - Gone, Baby, Gone

“With your name?” Angie said. “You can’t be serious.”

He smiled and gave her a small shrug. “Father was a merchant marine from New Orleans. Or ‘Nawlins,’ as he called it. He got in some trouble down there, ended up working the docks, in Charlestown and then Southie.” He cocked his head toward the brick buildings. “We settled here. Every third kid was named Frankie O’Brien and the rest were Sullivans and Sheas and Carrolls and Connellys. And if their first name wasn’t Frank, it was Mike or Sean or Pat.” He raised his eyebrows at me.

I held up my hands. “Oops.”

“So having a name like Remy Broussard…yeah, I’d say it toughened me up.” He smiled broadly and looked out at the projects, whistled softly. “Man, talk about going home again.”

“You don’t live in Southie anymore?” Angie asked.

He shook his head. “Haven’t since my dad died.”

“You miss it?”

He pursed his lips and glanced at some kids running past on the sidewalk, shouting, throwing what appeared to be bottle caps at each other for no apparent reason.

“Not really, no. Always felt like a misplaced country boy in the city. Even in New Orleans.” He shrugged. “I like trees.”

He turned the frequency dial on his walkie-talkie, raised it to his lips. “Detective Pasquale, this is Broussard. Over.”

Pasquale was one of the CAC detectives assigned to watch Concord Prison for any visitors who’d come to see Cheese. “This is Pasquale.”

“Anything?”

“Nothing. No visitors since you guys yesterday.”

“Phone calls?”

“Negative. Olamon lost phone privileges when he got in a beef on the yard last month.”

“Okay. Broussard out.” He dropped the walkie-talkie on the seat. He raised his head suddenly and watched a car come up the street toward us. “What have we here?”

A smoke-gray Lexus RX 300 with a vanity plate that read PHARO pulled past us and drove another twenty or thirty yards before banging a U-turn and pulling into a space along the curb and blocking an alley. It was a fifty-thousand-dollar sport utility vehicle built for off-road travel and those occasional jungle safaris that come through these parts, and every inch of it gleamed as if it had been polished with silk pillows. It fit right in with all the Escorts, Golfs, and Geos parked along the street, the early eighties Buick with green trash bags taped over the shattered rear window.

“The RX 300,” Broussard said, in the deep bass of a commercial announcer. “Pristine comfort for the drug dealer who can’t be hindered by snowstorms and bad roads.” He leaned forward and rested his arms on the seat back between us, his eyes on the rearview mirror. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet Pharaoh Gutierrez, Lord High of the city of Lowell.”

A slim Hispanic man stepped out of the Lexus. He wore black linen trousers and a lime-green shirt, clasped at the neck with a black stud, underneath a black silk dinner jacket with tails that fell to the bend in his knees.

“Quite the fashion plate,” Angie said.

“Ain’t he just?” Broussard said. “And he’s dressing conservative today. You should see the man when he goes out clubbing.”

Pharaoh Gutierrez straightened his tails and smoothed the thighs of his trousers.

“What the fuck is he doing here?” Broussard said softly.

“Who is he?”

“He handles Cheese’s action in Lowell and Lawrence, all the real sexy old mill towns. Rumor has it he’s the only one can deal with all the psycho fishermen up in New Bedford to boot.”

“So then it makes sense,” Angie said.

Broussard’s eyes remained fixed on the mirror. “What’s that?”

“Him meeting with Chris Mullen.”

Broussard shook his head. “No, no, no. Mullen and the Pharaoh despise each other. Something to do with a woman, I heard; goes back a decade. That’s why Gutierrez was banished to the 495 Beltway dumps, and Mullen gets to stay cosmopolitan. This makes no sense.”

Gutierrez looked up and down the street, using both hands to grasp the lapels of his dinner jacket like a judge, his chin tilted up slightly. His long thin nose sniffed the air. There was something recalcitrant and illogical in his stiff bearing; it didn’t go with his slim build. He cut the figure of a man who brooked no offense, yet always seemed to be expecting one. So insecure he’d kill to prove he wasn’t.

He reminded me of a few guys I’ve known-shorter guys, usually, or slight of build, but so ferociously determined to prove they could be just as dangerous as the big guys that they never stopped fighting, never paused for breath, ate too quickly. The men I’d known like this either became cops or criminals. There didn’t seem to be much room in between. And they often died quickly and young, an angry question frozen in their faces.

“He looks like a pain in the ass,” I said.

Broussard placed his hands on the seat back, rested his chin on them. “Yeah, that about sums the Pharaoh up. Too much to prove, not enough time to prove it. I always figured him for snapping, maybe walking up to Chris Mullen and busting a cap in his forehead some day, Cheese Olamon be damned.”

“Maybe this is that day,” Angie said.

“Maybe,” Broussard said.

Gutierrez walked around the Lexus and leaned back against the front quarter panel. He looked down the alley he blocked, then at his watch.

“Mullen’s coming your way.” Poole ’s voice was a whisper over the walkie-talkie.

“Unfriendly third party out front,” Broussard said. “Hang back, man.”

“Copy.”

Angie reached up and tilted the rearview mirror a bit to the right so we had a clear view of Gutierrez, the Lexus, and the edge of the alley.

Mullen appeared at the end of the alley. He ran a palm down his tie, looked at Gutierrez and the Lexus blocking his path for a still moment.

Broussard leaned back from the front seat, removed his Glock from his waistband, and racked the slide.

“This goes bad, don’t move from this car, just call 911.”

Mullen held up a slim black valise and smiled.

Gutierrez nodded.

Broussard ducked down on the seat and hooked his fingers over the passenger door handle.

Mullen reached out his free hand, and after a moment Gutierrez took it. Then the two men hugged, clapped each other’s backs with their fists.

Broussard let go of the door handle. “Oh, this is interesting.”

When they broke their clinch, Gutierrez held the valise. He turned to the Lexus and opened the door with a flourish and small bow, and Mullen climbed into the passenger seat. Then Gutierrez walked around to the driver’s door, climbed in, and started the engine.

“ Poole,” Broussard said into his walkie-talkie, “we got Pharaoh Gutierrez and Chris Mullen out here acting like long-lost brothers.”

“Hush your mouth.”

“Swear to God, man.”

Pharaoh Gutierrez’s Lexus pulled away from the curb and rolled past us.

As it continued up the street, Broussard raised the walkie-talkie to his lips. “Clear, Poole. We’re tailing a dark-gray Lexus SUV driven by Gutierrez with Mullen riding shotgun. They’re heading out of the project.”

As we passed the second alley, Poole came jogging out. He wore a vagrant’s disguise similar to my own except he’d added the dash of a dark-blue bandanna. He removed it as he crossed behind our car and trotted to the Taurus, and we followed the Lexus back onto Boston Street. Gutierrez took a right, and we followed into Andrew Square and then over to the annex road that ran parallel to the expressway.

“If Mullen and Gutierrez are friends now,” Angie said, “what does that mean?”

“Shitload of bad news for Cheese Olamon.”

“Cheese is in prison, his two lieutenants-supposedly mortal enemies-join up against him?”