Charlesgate Confidential E-Book

Scott Von Doviak

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: Hard Case Crime
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 518

Beschreibung

"CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL is terrific." – Stephen KingA breathtakingly clever, twist-filled narrative that moves from 1946 to 1988 to 2014 and back again, CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL establishes Scott Von Doviak as a storyteller of the first order.A group of criminals in 1946 pull off the heist of the century, stealing a dozen priceless works of art from a Boston museum. But while the thieves get caught, the art is never found. Forty years later, the last surviving thief gets out of jail and goes hunting for the loot, involving some innocent college students in his dangerous plan – and thirty years after that, in the present day, the former college kids, now all grown up, are drawn back into danger as the still-missing art tempts a deadly new generation of treasure hunters. A breathtakingly clever, twist-filled narrative that moves from 1946 to 1988 to 2014 and back again, CHARLESGATE CONFIDENTIAL establishes Scott Von Doviak as a storyteller of the first order, and will leave you guessing until the very last page.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Some Other Hard Case Crime Books You Will Enjoy

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

June 8, 1946

September 27, 1986

April 22, 2014

June 10, 1946

September 29, 1986

April 23, 2014

June 11, 1946

October 3, 1986

April 24, 2014

Charlesgate Confidential, Part I: Myth vs. Reality

June 11, 1946

October 4, 1986

April 25, 2014

June 12, 1946

October 6, 1986

April 25, 2014

June 12, 1946

October 8, 1986

April 26–29, 2014

June 13, 1946

October 9, 1986

Charlesgate Confidential, Part II: The Lost Years

April 30, 2014

June 14, 1946

October 10, 1986

May 1, 2014

June 15, 1946

October 11, 1986

May 1, 2014

June 16, 1946

October 12, 1986

May 2, 2014

June 16, 1946

October 16, 1986

May 5, 2014

June 16, 1946

October 18, 1986

May 5, 2014

June 16, 1946

October 20, 1986

May 5, 2014

June 16, 1946

October 21, 1986

May 6, 2014

June 16, 1946

October 21, 1986

May 7, 2014

June 23, 1946

October 23, 1986

May 7, 2014

June 23, 1946

October 24, 1986

May 7, 2014

June 24, 1946

October 24, 1986

May 9, 2014

August 9, 1947

October 24, 1986

May 9, 2014

August 10, 1947

October 25, 1986

Charlesgate Confidential, Part III: A Confession

May 24, 2014

Afterword

They entered a spacious gallery, its walls dominated by several intimidating portraits of royalty and a striking image of a ship in peril on stormy seas.

“Okay,” said Dave T. “I’m gonna stand guard here at the door. Here.” He tossed a small object to Shane, who caught it in the air. It was an ivory handle, about five inches long. “Open it.” Shane did so, revealing the blade of a straight razor. “Okay, see that painting there with the poor fuckers on the sailboat? Go over and slice it out of the frame. Carefully. There’s a lot of money at stake for all of us.”

Shane took the razor and carefully drew it around the perimeter of the canvas on his side of the painting, then passed the blade to Jake, who did the same.

“All right. Peel it out and roll it up. Slowly and carefully.”

As delicately as possible, Jake used the razor blade to pry the canvas away from the edge of the frame at the top corner, then passed the razor back to Shane so he could do the same. Working in unison, each holding one top corner of the canvas, they slowly pulled it away from the frame, rolling it as they went. Flecks of paint and canvas wafted to the floor, each speck no doubt reducing the painting’s value. When it was completely rolled up, Shane handed his end off to Jake, who awkwardly tucked the Rembrandt in the crook of his arm.

“All right,” said Dave T. “Next up is The Concert by Vermeer…”

SOME OTHER HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS YOU WILL ENJOY:

JOYLAND by Stephen King

THE COCKTAIL WAITRESS by James M. Cain

THE TWENTY-YEAR DEATH by Ariel S. Winter

ODDS ON by Michael Crichton writing as John Lange

BRAINQUAKE by Samuel Fuller

EASY DEATH by Daniel Boyd

THIEVES FALL OUT by Gore Vidal

SO NUDE, SO DEAD by Ed McBain

THE GIRL WITH THE DEEP BLUE EYES by Lawrence Block

QUARRY by Max Allan Collins

PIMP by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr

SOHO SINS by Richard Vine

THE KNIFE SLIPPED by Erle Stanley Gardner

SNATCH by Gregory Mcdonald

HELP I AM BEING HELD PRISONER by Donald E. Westlake

THE LAST STAND by Mickey Spillane

UNDERSTUDY FOR DEATH by Charles Willeford

CHARLESGATEConfidential

byScott Von Doviak

A HARD CASE CRIME BOOK

(HCC-135)

First Hard Case Crime edition: September 2018

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street

London SE1 0UP

in collaboration with Winterfall LLC

Copyright © 2018 by Scott Von Doviak

Cover painting copyright © 2018 by Paul Mann

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Print edition ISBN 978-1-78565-717-7

E-book ISBN 978-1-78565-718-4

Design direction by Max Phillips

www.maxphillips.net

Typeset by Swordsmith Productions

The name “Hard Case Crime” and the Hard Case Crime logo are trademarks of Winterfall LLC. Hard Case Crime books are selected and edited by Charles Ardai.

Visit us on the web at www.HardCaseCrime.com

That time’s long past, but what would I not give To see that whorehouse where we used to live?

—KURT WEILL, THE THREEPENNY OPERA, “THE BALLAD OF IMMORAL EARNINGS”

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart.

—A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI, THE GREEN FIELDS OF THE MIND

JUNE 8, 1946

The eighth floor of the Charlesgate Hotel was invisible. The hotel’s architect, J. Pickering Putnam, had designed it that way for reasons known only to him. It was hardly the only quirk of the Gothic Revival-style building, which opened for business in 1891, flourished in the early 20th century, and was now in steep decline. There were rumors, of course. Putnam belonged to a Satanic cult. The hotel was financed with Mafia money. The foundation was ingrained with rare metals specifically chosen to attract paranormal activity.

Dave T neither knew nor cared whether any of that was true. But he did know the eighth floor couldn’t be seen from outside the building. And he knew that rooms were cheap now that the Charlesgate had fallen on hard times. Once it had been the jewel of the Back Bay, attracting Rockefellers and heads of state. Now Jimmy Dryden from Somerville ran whores out of the sixth floor, splitting the hourly rates with the house. The grapevine had it that the hotel was about to be sold to one of the local universities as residential space, but Dave T would worry about that when the time came. The only thing that mattered now was that the Charlesgate was the perfect place for his weekly poker game: secluded, private, overlooking Kenmore Square and Fenway Park beyond. The out-of-towners got a kick out of seeing the lights of Fenway during the summer months, and the Red Sox were having a good year. A pennant kind of year.

The poker game typically attracted a mix of regulars and out-of-towners, and that was the case tonight. Dave T would deal all night and take the house cut when they shut the lights, but he never gambled anymore. He sat at the head of an ornate oak banquet table dating back to the Charlesgate’s glory days. Two guys from Marko’s crew had muscled it up the back stairway, eight stories from the basement, a couple years back. It wouldn’t fit in the elevator, so Dave T slipped them twenty bucks each and a standing invitation to sit in on the game if they’d hump it all the way to the top. The table could seat eight easily, ten in a pinch. Tonight it was ten. A radio perched on the kitchen counter crackled with the Sox broadcast, Jim Britt and Tom Hussey on the call.

“Stud,” Dave T said, for no good reason. Five-card stud was the only game ever dealt on the eighth floor of the Charlesgate. It was the only game ten people could play at once. He sent the cards around and the bullshitting soon followed.

“Anyone heard from our friend down Middleboro?”

“I were you, I wouldn’t be expecting no Christmas card.”

“What I heard, he was messing around with one of the Casey girls. Way I hear it, Old Man Casey finds out, sends a couple of the cousins from Pawtucket up to Middleboro there. They find our friend in his garage, working on his Packard. One of the cousins kicks out the jack and down comes the Packard, two tons of steel. End of the line for our friend. Way I hear it, anyway.”

“First of all, how is he our friend? He’s our friend, he’s not your friend.”

“Ladies,” said Dave T. “Cards are up. Jack high bets.”

Men tossed chips into the center of the table. Quinlan’s chair creaked as he shifted, his breathing labored as always. Quinlan owned a liquor store in South Boston—or rather, the store’s liquor license was in his name. Everyone knew who really owned it. It was Quinlan who had first asked about the man from Middleboro, and it was clear he already regretted it. “I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “Just asking.”

“Knock it off, ladies,” Dave T said. “You know the rules. Friendly game, no shop talk.” That was the longstanding policy. In truth, Dave T didn’t mind a little gossip. As long as he kept up the pretense that house rules forbade shop talk, the players felt more relaxed and, paradoxically, more willing to shoot the shit and let slip the occasional valuable nugget of information. Dave T dealt in information. Know everything, say nothing. Nobody at the table knew his last name. No one could say for sure whether he was Irish, Italian, or the King of Sweden. But they all trusted him. He was the dealer.

“Cards around and pair of nines bets.”

“Check.”

“Check? Check my pants, I got somethin’ for ya there.” Dryden tossed two white chips into the pot.

“Not what I heard,” said Hugh Mullen, doubling Dryden’s bet.

“Come on, are we playing cards or are we playing—”

A shotgun blast put an end to the talk. Men dropped their cards and reached for their guns.

“Hands on the fucking table!”

The first man through the door held a still-smoking shotgun. He’d blown out the lock and the whole knob assembly with it. Two men followed him into the room, one holding a .38 pistol in each hand, the other carrying a briefcase. All three faces were hidden by potato sacks with eyeholes cut into them.

“I want to count twenty hands on the table,” said the man holding the two guns. “I count less than twenty hands, my friend here shoots someone in the head. We don’t care who.”

Dave T made a show of placing both palms flat on the table. “You jokers know whose game you’re robbing?”

“That’s why we’re here. Now this can go real smooth. My friend with the briefcase will just empty the bank, and then we’ll hit the road.”

“No bank here, fellas. This is just a friendly game. Sorry you wasted your time, but if you’ll see yourselves out…”

The man with the briefcase headed straight for the liquor cabinet under the window facing Kenmore Square. “Except we already know where the fuckin’ bank is. Just like we knew where to find this game. Food for thought, huh?”

He slid open the cabinet door, tossed aside a few bottles of scotch, and pulled out a cash register drawer. “Ain’t this convenient. Divvied up by tens and twenties and everything.”

He set down the briefcase, popped it open, and filled it with the contents of the cash drawer. The men with guns kept them trained on the poker players. The only sound now came from the radio: top of the ninth, two out.

“Good, you guys been listening to the game. So you know it was twelve nothin’ in the third inning. Pesky got three hits, Teddy scored four runs, and this thing is just about over. When it ends, there’s gonna be at least twenty thousand happy Red Sox fans pouring into Kenmore Square. Even figurin’ some people left early, such a pounding they put on Detroit.”

From the radio: “…and Bloodworth pops up to short, and this should do it. Pesky gloves it and the Red Sox win this one 15−4. Never in doubt.”

“There ya go,” the man with the briefcase said, making his way to the exit. “In about ninety seconds, my friends and I are gonna melt into that crowd and you ain’t never gonna see us again. But just to make sure nobody gets any smart ideas…”

He gestured to his colleague who was holding the shotgun. The man took two steps toward Dave T and lowered his weapon six inches from the dealer’s nose. “Get up.”

“Fellas, you got your money.”

“Get up!” He popped Dave T in the nose with the business end of his weapon, drawing blood. Dave T never flinched, but he stood as instructed.

“You fellas are writing a real bad ending for yourselves here. Should have just stayed home and enjoyed the ballgame.”

“Tomorrow maybe. Come on, let’s go.” The man with the shotgun nudged Dave T toward the door. The one with the briefcase was already out in the hall. Once Dave T cleared the doorway, the third robber stayed a moment longer, watching men tense up, itching to take their hands off the table. “Do yourselves a favor,” he said, keeping his pistols aimed squarely at the group. “Just stay here and listen to the postgame show. There’s always another card game.”

He backed out the door, kicking it shut behind him. It swung back open immediately, its broken knob assembly bouncing off the doorjamb. By then two of the Mullen boys were on their feet, guns drawn, making for the hallway. About ten paces away, the robber with the shotgun stood with his weapon at Dave T’s head as his friends stepped into the elevator.

“Take a powder, fellas,” Dave T said. “You can see this man is serious. What say we just let ’em be on their way.”

“Well said.” The robber pushed him to the floor and hopped aboard the elevator. Dave T could see the shotgun still trained on him until the door closed. A bell sounded and the elevator started down.

“Call Pete down at the front desk and tell him to shoot those sonsabitches before they make the exit!” Dave T scrambled to his feet and started down the stairs, taking them two at a time. Fast as he could go, it was still eight stories and he was no match for the elevator. By the time he got to the lobby, the front desk was deserted. Dave T pushed through the front door and into the mild June night.

Out on Charlesgate East, as predicted, happy Red Sox fans could be seen in every direction. Short of breath, Dave T took a seat on the front steps. A minute or two passed before Pete emerged from the darkness of the park across the street. He was short of breath, too.

“Lost ’em,” he said. “By the time I got the call, they were already out the door. If they jumped on the train at Kenmore, they could be on their way to anywhere.”

“That was their plan,” said Dave T. “Don’t sweat it.”

“I never seen them come in. They couldn’t have come in the front door. I never took my eyes off it, I swear!”

“I believe you. Check around the ground floor. I bet you find an open window. Those boys had help.”

“You know who they were?”

“Not yet. This time tomorrow, next day at the latest, I’ll know.”

“How’s that?”

“Because anyone dumb enough to take down my card game is dumb enough to yap about it. And they’ll be yapping, tonight, tomorrow night. And then I’ll know.”

By now Dryden and the Mullens had joined them on the front steps of the Charlesgate. Dave T stood up and wiped his bloody nose on his sleeve.

“How ’bout them Sox?”

SEPTEMBER 27, 1986

Jackie St. John, wearing nothing but a number 56 Lawrence Taylor jersey over her cherry-red panties, opened the Parker Brothers box with a conspiratorial wink. I didn’t care about the Ouija board, possession of which was (according to legend, at least) strictly forbidden in Charlesgate. I didn’t care about the fat joint the Rev had rolled and was now passing around the room, or the suitcase of Old Milwaukee someone had paid Paul Seitz five bucks to fetch from Marlboro Market and smuggle back into the dorm. All I cared about was Jackie St. John and her smoky laugh and her pencil-eraser nipples pressing up against number 56.

Jackie wasn’t just out of my league—we weren’t even playing the same sport. She probably never would have acknowledged my existence, except somehow she’d found out I was really into the Who, and she was really into the Who, so she stopped by my room one night to tape some bootlegs and debate whether “Boris the Spider” or “My Wife” was the greatest John Entwistle song. That’s one of the things the movies always get wrong. You see a movie set in the ’80s and the kids are always listening to the B-52s or the fucking Cure or something. Well, I went to college in the ’80s, and my dorm was full of Deadheads and Led Zeppelin freaks and even a few guys who listened to Yes all the time, although I never figured that one out. The day I got to Boston in the fall of ’85, my first stop after dropping all my stuff off in my dorm room and meeting my freaky acidhead roommate was Nuggets, the used record store in Kenmore Square. A cramped, dusty cellar crammed stem to stern with vinyl, Nuggets was heaven on earth for a kid who’d grown up in the woods of Maine thirty miles from the nearest mall. I ended up buying a stack of Who bootlegs from an enormous, surly Samoan dude with a pink mohawk, using up all the “walking around” cash my Dad had pressed into my palm as I was leaving my childhood home that morning.

Anyway, Jackie St. John and her pale blue eyes and her cascade of candy-apple-red hair had the idea for Ouija night. Everyone knew Ouija boards were against the rules in Charlesgate, even though no one had ever seen this in writing. It’s not like our acceptance letters read “Welcome to Emerson College. You’ll be living in Charlesgate Hall, which is, as you know, haunted. Ouija boards are strictly forbidden.” Besides, who in their right mind was going to check for Ouija boards when four hundred students were moving into the building on the same weekend? Refrigerators were illegal too, thanks to the ancient shitty wiring in the place, but I still managed to smuggle in a dorm fridge which, along with my VCR and movie collection (Spinal Tap, Repo Man, The Road Warrior, all the classics), had helped me make friends freshman year.

Jackie, though, had brought a Ouija board with her to college, so she must have known about Charlesgate’s checkered past before she ever got here. Otherwise, who would bother? Six of us had gathered to drink some beer, smoke some weed, and summon the spirits of Charlesgate. Seeing as how we were all under twenty-one, we were breaking three Emerson rules all at once. If the RA stopped by, we’d be standing tall before the Man in the morning.

The Rev had volunteered our room for the occasion. We shared a triple in the southeast corner of the sixth floor with Murtaugh. It was a choice room assignment. Most of the triples in Charlesgate were really doubles with a set of bunk beds crammed into one corner. Once you added bureaus, desks, milk crates full of albums, and all the other crap students haul from home, there wasn’t enough room left for a fly to fart. But room 629 was one of a kind on the sixth floor, because it was actually a suite. In the far right corner, by the foot of my bed, two steps led up to our secret lair, the Love Room, where we kept the stereo, a couple of comfy chairs, a life-sized cardboard Leatherface standee from Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, and a futon that would fold out on those rare occasions when one of us (usually Murtaugh, truth be told) got lucky.

The Love Room had been built out on the roof decades after the original construction of Charlesgate. Its walls were concrete, so we could crank the stereo and the RA would never hear it. On this particular night, the Love Room was festooned with candles and burning incense, which was decidedly not our usual style. In addition to the three of us who shared the room, our Ouija group included Jackie, her roommate Dana Perry, and a watery-eyed waif from the all-female seventh floor (“the Nunnery”), whose name I didn’t know.

“Someone stuff a towel under that door. There’s one in the laundry basket.”

I waved off the Rev’s joint and went rooting through our filthy undergarments in search of a towel to block the pot smoke from seeping into the outer room, just in case an RA stopped by for a visit. In Charlesgate, we held the Resident Assistants in about the same esteem as the meter maids writing parking tickets down on Beacon Street.

“Use your boxers, Tommy. No pot smoke could penetrate that wall of stink.”

“Blow me, Murtaugh.” I found the towel and stuffed it in the crack between the door and the floor.

“We need some spooky tunes,” said the Rev, stroking his yellow tangle of beard thoughtfully. “Maybe some Crimson?”

“I’ve got the Halloween soundtrack here somewhere,” said Murtagh with a devilish smirk. He was big on the devilish smirk. It worked for him.

“No way,” said the waif I didn’t know. “This is scary enough as it is.”

“ ‘If desired, set the mood by dimming the lights or turning them off,’ ” Jackie read from the inside cover of the box. “Okay, we’ve got that covered. ‘Set the planchette in the center of the Ouija board.’ ” She did so. “So who’s going first? Besides me?”

I volunteered, of course, because if I was holding the planchette at the same time as Jackie, our fingers might brush against each other, and in my mind, that was the first step in an inevitable chain of events that would end with me waking up beside her in the Love Room wearing only a smile. Pathetic, I agree, but that’s just how 19-year-old guys think. For all I know, it’s how 89-year-old guys think too, but I’m not quite there yet.

“What are we gonna ask it?”

“First we have to ask if anyone’s here.” Jackie scrunched her eyes shut and cleared her throat. “Spirits of Charlesgate…are you with us?”

The planchette began to move under my fingertips. I was applying very little pressure, but I can’t swear that I wasn’t nudging it, ever so slightly, toward the upper left corner. Whether Jackie was helping it along, I could only guess. In any case, the answer was “YES.”

“How many of you are with us?”

The planchette slid downward a few inches, settling on “1.”

“Did you die in Charlesgate?”

“YES.”

“When did you die?”

“1”…“9”…“4”…“6.”

“1946. Um, let’s see…ask a question, Tommy.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know! Aren’t you a journalism student?”

“Okay, um, spirit: How did you die?”

The planchette vibrated under my fingers but it didn’t move.

“Maybe that’s a sore subject,” Jackie said.

“Yeah. Um…all right. Spirit: What was your name in life?”

The planchette moved. Jackie read the letters. “D…O…R…”

But before Jackie could finish, she was cut off by an ear-splitting squeal. Jackie screamed and jumped back from the board, knocking over one of the candles set up on an end table behind her. By the time it registered with me that the ongoing shrieking noise was the Charlesgate fire alarm, the candle— one of those fat scented deals encased in a glass holder—had shattered against the wall, and the window curtain was going up in flames.

In the moment, there wasn’t much time to appreciate the irony of a fire that had essentially been caused by a fire alarm. We could laugh about that later, assuming we all got out alive. I grabbed the towel I’d just stuffed under the door and crossed the room in three long strides. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Nobody else had moved except Jackie, who was still screaming, staring at the flaming curtain in horror. I smothered the curtain with the towel, ripped it down off the window, balled up the towel, and pounded it against the wall a half-dozen times for good measure. The alarm was still blaring.

“Okay, séance over,” I said. “What do you say we get the fuck out of here?”

***

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, we were standing on the sidewalk across Charlesgate East, watching the red lights of the fire engine flash while the inspectors checked the building. When Jackie grabbed my hand and raised it above our heads, I thought I might levitate off the sidewalk and float across the River Charles.

“Hey!” she shouted to no one in particular, her voice hoarse and sexy after all that screaming. “Hey, this is the guy! This is the guy who saved Charlesgate!”

A smattering of applause broke out—along with a few sarcastic whoops and whistles, but I didn’t care at all.

APRIL 22, 2014

“Where did you see our listing?”

Rachel O’Brien, assistant manager of Back Bay Modern Living, owners of seven condominium complexes throughout the Boston metro area, including the Charlesgate, led the client down the sixth floor hallway to Unit 67. The client had identified himself as Charles Finley, a lawyer with Goodwin Palmer downtown. Mr. Finley had explained that he was getting divorced and looking to move back to the city after years out in Medford.

“Actually, I didn’t see a listing. It’s just this building caught my eye. Kind of a…classic, right?”

Rachel smiled and began fumbling through her substantial keyring. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? This is the only one-bedroom we have available with a view of Kenmore Square. I should tell you, since you didn’t see it, that we have it listed at $349,000.”

“You aren’t scaring me off. I just happen to have 350K put away for a rainy day.”

Rachel chuckled with no trace of humor. Finding the key she was looking for, she popped open the door to Unit 67 and led Finley inside.

“There’s that view,” she said, gesturing toward the bay windows in hopes that the sight of the Citgo sign would distract Finley from noticing he wouldn’t be getting the roomiest living space $349,000 could buy. The unit was unfurnished; just an empty living room with hardwood floors, a tiny kitchen behind a bar to the left, and a short hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom beyond.

“This was some kind of fancy hotel back in the day, right?”

“Oh yes. The Charlesgate was the destination on the eastern seaboard during the Gilded Age. Only the best people. We like to think that’s still the case.”

Finley walked to the bay windows and stared out at Kenmore Square below. It was just past 5:30 in the afternoon, and foot traffic was heavy trailing out of the T station and up Brookline Ave towards Lansdowne Street. The Yankees/Red Sox game would be getting underway in about an hour and a half.

“But it wasn’t always the best people, am I right?” Finley turned around and flashed a tight grin at Rachel. “I mean, I’ve heard some stories. Didn’t the guy who designed this place kill himself right in this building?”

Rachel cleared her throat. “My understanding is that Mr. Putnam did pass in the Charlesgate, but I can assure you, it was not suicide. Natural causes.”

“My bad. Can we see the rest of the place?”

Rachel took a moment to consider it. Finley certainly wouldn’t have been the first nutjob who wanted to tour “haunted Charlesgate” under the pretense of condo shopping. She’d been impressed with his Hugo Boss suit, but up close he looked rough, like a hardhat playing dress-up. Maybe he’d worked his way through law school on the docks or in a warehouse. But she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. After all, her commission from the sale would pay for another vacation in Belize.

“Of course. Right this way.” Rachel stepped to the kitchen entryway. “As you see, we have the granite countertops. Real ones, not that faux-granite you often find nowadays. These are all-new fixtures and cabinets, also a brand-new dishwasher and the stainless Bosch refrigerator with French door bottom freezer and ice dispenser.”

Finley followed Rachel down the short hallway. “Bathroom on the left, with marble tub and glass shower door. Good water pressure, too. All this plumbing is new. And the bedroom is here on the right.” She pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Again the bay windows, and you have a walk-in closet at the other end.”

“I guess I must have got the story screwed up,” Finley said. “The way I heard it, the architect…Putnam? Way I heard it, he was some kind of high priest of the Black Mass or something. Weird occult shit, human sacrifice, all of that.”

Rachel sighed. So he was one of them after all. “Mr. Finley, I’m sure you can appreciate that any building with a history as long and colorful as the Charlesgate attracts its share of tall tales and ghost stories. It comes with the territory, but honestly, I am not an expert on the subject. Whatever happened here in the past, the Charlesgate is now one of the most appealing highend residential communities in metropolitan Boston. If you’re really interested in the building’s past, I can recommend the Emerson College library, which I understand has an extensive file on the subject available for in-house study.”

“Oh, that’s all right. To tell you the truth, I’m really not all that interested in the building itself. Just what’s inside it.”

Finley closed the bedroom door behind him, blocking Rachel’s only means of exit from the room. For the first time, she noticed that he’d put on a pair of gloves, and spotted a neck tattoo peeking above his collar. She stiffened and clutched the small canister of pepper spray in her pocket. She’d been through this before.

“Mr. Finley, our tour is over. Please step away from the door.”

“No problem.”

Rachel O’Brien had no time to scream as Finley lunged toward her, wrapping his left arm in a tight chokehold around her neck. With his free hand he took hold of her jaw and wrenched her head to the side until he heard her neck snap. He held his hand over her nose and mouth until he was sure her breathing had stopped.

After her body hit the floor, Finley went through her pockets, tossing the pepper spray aside and taking her oversized keyring. Then he left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

JUNE 10, 1946

Fat Dave was making Manhattans down at the Red Room Lounge. Fat Dave made the best Manhattans in town, but that’s not why his customers did their drinking at the Red Room. It wasn’t for the atmosphere, either; unless you liked chipped tile floors, hard wooden stools and ripped vinyl booth seats with the stuffing sticking out, the place had little to offer in that regard. Tucked away on quiet Lincoln Street, just a few blocks from South Station, the Red Room had the reputation of a safe, neutral watering hole for what was known in law enforcement circles as the criminal element. The reason for that reputation was Fat Dave, a six-foot-five, 350-pound slab of a man known for keeping the peace. There were no vendettas at the Red Room, no wars. No one ever started anything there. If anyone did, it didn’t last long. For men who wanted a place to have a drink without worrying about taking a couple bullets to the back of the skull, it was the city’s most reliable option.

As a result of his lounge’s unique appeal to underworld clientele, Fat Dave heard everything. And because he knew Fat Dave heard everything, Dave T dropped by for a Manhattan two nights after his card game got hit.

“Other Dave!”

“Ho, Other Dave! What’s the good word?”

“Drink, drank, drunk. These are good words.”

“Getcha Manhattan?”

“I would love a fucking Manhattan. And gimme a Gansett while I’m waiting.”

Fat Dave cracked open a Narragansett tall boy and set it in front of Dave T, who eagerly swigged from the can. He glanced around the Red Room, saw a handful of regulars and no one he didn’t recognize. If you drank at the Red Room, chances were you’d sat in on Dave T’s card game a time or two.

“Heard you had some trouble the other night,” Fat Dave said, scooping ice into a mixing glass.

“I’ve had two straight days of trouble. You hear about that business over at Billy’s Tap?”

“Think I heard something about that.” Fat Dave poured a half-ounce of sweet vermouth into the glass. “This was last night?”

“Yeah. See, this is why it’s a good thing you got no dartboards in here, no pool table, none of that crap. Anything that gets the competitive juices flowing is bad for business.”

“Says the guy with the card game.”

“Well, that’s different. It’s not physical. Besides, the guys who play my game, they know better. Cuz if they don’t know better, they know they ain’t never coming back. That’s what makes it a friendly game. That’s why I can get North End greaseballs and Southie micks and mutts from Somerville at the same table and there’s never any beef. Same deal you got here. Only Billy, he don’t really operate that way.”

Fat Dave shrugged, stirring Mount Vernon rye whiskey into the vermouth. “Not my place to say.”

“Well, you don’t have to say it. Actions speak louder. It’s like this: Do you know my last name?”

“It’s…T-something.”

“Yeah. T for what? Tarantula? Tipperary? See, you don’t know. And I don’t know yours either, because we’re not in this thing. This Italian, Irish, whatever the fuck. Tribal shit. My grandparents had their name changed at Ellis Island anyway, so what does it matter? See, we stay out of all that, and it works for us, but guys like Billy…” Dave T shook his head.

“Anyway, it was darts?” Fat Dave drained the contents of the mixing glass minus the ice into a lowball glass, dropped in a maraschino cherry, and slid it across the bar.

“Yeah, darts.” Dave T stirred his drink. “So there’s two teams of two, right? And all four of these knuckleheads are Irish, but that don’t even matter, because two of them are with the Killeens and two of them are with the Mullens. And they got beef going all the way back to County Cork or whatever the fuck. But fine, a game of darts, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“You tell me.”

Dave T sipped his drink. “That’s a fucking good Manhattan.”

“I’ve been told.”

“Anyway. The game isn’t even close. The Killeens are knocking ’em down left and right. Closing ’em out and hitting triples before the Mullens are even on the board. So they start rubbing it in a little bit. More than a little, as I understand it. Maybe getting a little personal. And these Mullen boys, they’re not known for their good sportsmanship in the first place. So the Killeens are ribbin’ them about their aim, you know, and Chris, the crazier one of the Mullen boys, he says: ‘So you don’t think much of my aim, huh?’ ‘No, I don’t think much of your aim.’ So Chris, he pulls his dart out of the board, he grabs the closest Killeen around the neck, and he jams the dart right in his eye.”

“Oh boy.”

“Yeah. So now the other Mullen has to jump the other Killeen, and all hell is breaking loose. Now let me ask you this: You don’t know my last name, I don’t know your last name, but what’s Billy’s last name?”

“Killeen.”

“You bet your fuckin’ ass it is. So Billy comes flying over the bar with that Bobby Doerr autographed Louisville Slugger of his, and he’s all over those Mullens like they’re batting-practice fastballs. Puts Chris in intensive care, but the other one don’t have to worry about no hospital bills, because he’s dead.”

Fat Dave whistled. “Sounds like a mess.”

“It’s a mess all right. I mean, ordinary circumstances, Billy knows the right palms to grease. But this one’s not gonna slide so easy.”

“Tough break for him, but what I can’t figure is why you give a shit. See, when you came in here tonight, I thought it was about something else entirely.”

Dave T tossed back the rest of his Manhattan and glanced around, as if to be sure no one was sneaking up on him. Nothing was moving in the Red Room except a small electric fan on a shelf behind the bar. “Yeah. Well, ordinarily, you’re right, I wouldn’t give a shit. Except without getting into specifics here, those Mullen boys were supposed to help me out with something I got in the works. And now that ain’t gonna happen. Which is maybe my good luck, because obviously these guys are a couple of fuckups. Well, one’s a fuckup. One’s a dead fuckup.”

“Believe me, you’re better off. What I heard, that whole bunch of Mullens is ready to go to war with Marko.”

“That’s the rumor. They’re crazy enough to do it, too.”

“Well, like you said. Probably the only thing stopping them is you and your game.”

“How do you figure that?”

“No one wants to screw up a good thing. Tensions simmer always, but as long as everyone can sit down together once a week and blow off a little steam at the poker table, everything stays in balance.”

“Yeah, it’s a regular United Nations. But anyway, speaking of my game…”

“The other night? Think maybe I can help you out with that.”

“I was hoping you’d say that. How about another Gansett?”

Fat Dave cracked another tall boy and slid it across the bar. “Well, you know me. I like to keep my mouth shut. But like I said, your game has always been a safe place. That’s gotta be respected. This ain’t the Wild West up here.”

“I appreciate it.”

“So last night, while all that was goin’ on at Billy’s, it was pretty quiet in here. Just like it’s always pretty quiet in here. Except for these three guys. And these are three guys you’d know. They were drinking a lot, which is not unusual, but they were buying rounds for the house, which is pretty fucking unusual. And they’re laughing it up, two of them especially. The third one, you can tell he’s kind of trying to keep a lid on it. So the loudest one comes over to buy another round for everybody. I says to him, ‘Another one? You sure about that?’ So he laughs again, reaches in his pocket and pulls out a fat roll of bills. He peels a couple of twenties off the top and sets them on the bar, then peels off another one for good measure. And you know what he says? Thinking he’s being all clever? ‘I had a good run at the poker table last night.’ ”

Dave T took a long pull off his tall boy. “And what did you say to that?”

“I said ‘Good for you.’ And he and the other guy laugh it up again, but the third one, he ain’t laughing at all. He’s giving his friend Henny Youngman there the stink-eye, like he fucked up big time. Which he did. I mean, I understand this kid’s thinking: What’s the point of knocking over Dave T’s game if nobody knows you did it? He’s thinking he’s just made his reputation, but what he doesn’t understand is nobody’s ever gonna work with someone who knocked over Dave T’s game. Some things are sacred. So…lotta balls, this kid, but no brains.”

“Got that right.” Dave T ran his fingers over the cracks and crevices of the wooden bar top. Everyone who was anyone had carved their initials into the Red Room bar. He’d done it too, but he couldn’t remember where. “So these three guys you say I would know. Where would I know them from?”

SEPTEMBER 29, 1986

By the morning after the fire alarm, Jackie St. John and I had gone on our first date, had our first kiss, our first fuck, and our first fight. She’d met my parents, I’d met hers, we’d gotten engaged, married, raised our kids, and been buried side-by-side after a long and happy life together. Either that or our first date had been a disaster, I’d fucked the whole thing up as usual and would spend the rest of my life alone and miserable. Or something in between. I’d run every possible scenario as I tossed and turned, unable to shut my brain down. Lust had solidified into deep infatuation overnight. I relived the moment when she raised my hand above her head over and over again. It meant nothing, but it meant everything. It was all like a movie—hell, it was a whole damn film festival. The problem is, you’re always the leading man in your mind. In real life, you may wake up to find out you’re just an extra.

“Wake up, chief! It’s Monday morning. Professor Pussyhound awaits.”

I peered through crusty eyelids. Murtaugh was hunched in front of his mirror on intensive nosehair patrol. Sunlight streamed in through the window overlooking the Pit.

Freshman year I’d lived on the second floor, which circum-navigated the building. You could keep walking in circles forever on the second floor. But above that, Charlesgate was horseshoe-shaped. We were at one end of the horseshoe: Looking straight across the Pit, we could see all the windows of the rooms on the other side. But if you looked straight down, you’d see the Pit, which may well have been a lovely courtyard back in Charlesgate’s glory days, but was now the building’s largest garbage receptacle. On a hot day, the smells wafting up from the Pit were unspeakable. Right outside our window was a sizable ledge that must have once been a posh hotel balcony. We managed to hang out there for all of five minutes one afternoon before an RA yelled at us to get the hell inside. There were no secrets on the Pit.

“Let’s go, Donnelly!” Murtaugh kicked my bed, spraying his entire body with Right Guard all the while. I groaned and rolled to my feet.

“Jesus, you can’t possibly be tired. You slept through Sunday altogether, for Chrissakes.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s why I’m tired. Too much sleep makes you tired. Look it up.”

“Well, you missed out. Sox clinched the division yesterday. It was crazy! Kenmore was rockin’. This is the year, man, I’m telling you.”

I put on a reasonably clean shirt and ran my fingers through my hair. “All right. Let’s face the music.”

That would be Music Appreciation with Nathan Pierce, known to us as Professor Pussyhound. Pierce had a reputation for fucking his female students in bunches, and whether that was true or not, he looked the part. He was a dead ringer for Robert Urich, a TV actor who was shooting Spenser for Hire in Boston at the time, and although he couldn’t have been more than a dozen years older than us, his attempts at seeming hip were invariably lame. He smoked clove cigarettes by the open classroom window in flagrant violation of school policy, and was given to strained comparisons like, “Stravinsky was the Clash of his day.”

Murtaugh and I took the Emerson shuttle, which dropped us off at the Wall, a stoop in front of the library on Beacon Street where students smoked and shot the shit between classes. As we were walking to class, I spotted Jackie sitting with some friends, and felt the back of my neck heat up. I let loose with a way too enthusiastic, “Hey Jackie, how’s it’s going?” She didn’t even glance up, and her barely audible “Hey” put the funk in perfunctory. As soon as we passed, she and her girlfriends burst into laughter, and while there was every chance that had something to do with whatever they were talking about and nothing to do with me, I could not have been more mortified. Somehow Jackie had seen inside my head. She knew I’d spent the whole weekend in bed fantasizing about our life together. Maybe the Ouija board had told her.

Professor Pussyhound introduced us to the wonders of early 20th-century Italian opera that morning, but it’s safe to say Madama Butterfly flew in one ear and out the other. After class I was still in a daze as Murtaugh and I hiked back to our end of Beacon Street for lunch. After two or three attempts at engaging me in conversation, he punched me on the shoulder.

“Ow!”

“Oh, there he is! Sorry, I thought I was walking alone here. What’s up your ass?”

“Nothing, just…thinking about opera.”

“Yeah, right. You look like someone raped your dog. Is this about a chick? Yeah, this is definitely about a chick.”

I shrugged. “It’s nothing. Forget it.”

“Just tell me who it is. I bet it’s not as bad as you think.”

“I told you it’s nothing. I’ve got…I’ve got a little crush on Jackie St. John.”

Murtaugh snorted. “Yeah. You and every other heterosexual male in Charlesgate. Which is only half the males in Charlesgate at best, but still…well, I think you’re a little bit over your skis, chief.”

“Yeah, I get that now.”

“Look, I’m not trying to bust your balls. You could totally get laid tonight if you wanted, but you’ve got to stay in your lane, you know?”

“Okay, well, thanks for the pep talk. Let’s fucking eat, all right?”

The Canteen, our school cafeteria, was on the first floor of the dorm across the street from Charlesgate. Known as Fensgate, it had none of the history, charm, or quirkiness of our dorm. I never heard any stories of Fensgate being haunted, although I did hear about a kid who did a shitload of acid and took a tumble out a fifth-floor window, his head exploding like a cantaloupe all over Beacon Street. Like sightings of Eugene O’Neill’s ghost, however, that was probably bullshit.

We had a free-floating lunch group of about a dozen regulars, any six or eight of whom would put in an appearance on any given day. Once Murtaugh and I had filled our trays with the usual assortment of fried meat-like items and piles of starch, we made our way over to our table, where Rodney, Brooks, Jules, Purple Debbie, and the Rev were already chowing down. These were my people. This was my tribe. I’d never found them in high school, but I’d found them now. For that alone, my Emerson tuition was worth every penny I’d spend the next ten years paying off.

“Donnelly’s in love with Jackie St. John,” Murtaugh announced as we sat down.

“I hate you,” I said. “Have I mentioned that I hate you?”

“Really?” said Jules, a wide-eyed freshman from Texas who had somehow instantly clicked with our group. “Isn’t she kind of…?” She wrinkled her nose.

“Unattainable?” said Murtaugh. “Yes, which is why I advised our colleague here to get laid post-haste. Do I have any volunteers? Jules, you’re looking for your first college fling, aren’t you?”

“She’s twelve years old!” I protested.

“I am not! And I’m sitting right here! Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”

“No offense.”

“Anyway, I’m not looking for a fling, thank you.”

“Right,” said Murtaugh. “You’re looking for Prince Charming. And Purple Debbie, I suppose you still claim to be dating your imaginary high school sweetheart…”

“Chad is not imaginary! You met him!”

Purple Debbie was called Purple Debbie to distinguish her from some other Debbie she’d gone to high school with and none of us had ever met. In all ways mentally and emotionally, Purple Debbie was still in high school.

“Can we drop the subject please?” I said.

“Yes, we can,” said Rodney, a preacher’s kid from New Hampshire who took to his college experience like a sailor on shore leave. Compared to the rest of us, Rodney was Barry Goldwater, but his parents still thought he’d sold his soul to the devil. “Chest Guy is making fake IDs. Twenty bucks. I’m in. Who’s with me?”

“Me,” Murtaugh, the Rev and I chimed in simultaneously.

“You guys,” said Jules, wrinkling her nose again. “That’s illegal.”

“Yes,” said Rodney. “That’s the whole point. If they were legal, we wouldn’t need them. Look, we’re all over eighteen here. Five, ten years ago, we’d all be able to drink legally anyway. So it’s completely arbitrary. Typical big government.”

“Think of the boost to the local economy,” said the Rev. “All those shows at the Rat, Bunratty’s, TT the Bear’s…we can keep a half-dozen local bands afloat easily. We’re supporting the arts.”

Judging from her still-wrinkling nose, Jules wasn’t buying it, but that ship had sailed. “So that’s four of us?” said Rodney. “Brooks, you’re not in?”

“I turn twenty-one in three weeks. I only look stupid.” Brooks was a theater major and it didn’t take anyone more than one guess to figure that out. Looking back now, he was the most stereotypically ’80s member of our group, with sculptured Flock of Seagulls hair, an all-black wardrobe and a penchant for eyeliner. He’d taken a year off after high school to volunteer for MASSPIRG, saving the planet door-to-door.

“Okay, so four of us. I’ll let him know. Stay tuned for further instructions.”

These were the further instructions: We were to report to Chest Guy’s room on the sixth floor of Charlesgate at fifteen-minute intervals. We were to bring twenty dollars in cash each, non-negotiable. My appointment was for 7:45 that night.

I showed up a couple minutes early. Chest Guy opened the door and waved me in. He was on the phone, and true to his reputation, he had his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, all the better to show off his glistening pecs. He raised a finger and continued his conversation.

“Yes, I’m six foot even, 185 pounds. Very muscular. My chest is 40 inches, waist 32, inseam 34. Six-pack abs. My hair is a little spiky in front, collar-length in back. A bit like Simon Le Bon in ‘Wild Boys,’ if you’ve seen that video. I can fax you a head shot in the morning if you’ve got a fax machine. Sure, that’s no problem…10:30 tomorrow morning? I’ll be there. No, thank you. See you then.”

He hung up. “Modeling agency. You know the drill.”

“Sure.” I didn’t know the drill, and he knew I didn’t know the drill, but whatever. I wanted to get through this as quickly as possible. Chest Guy skeeved me out.

“So I’m sure Rodney told you it’s twenty bucks.”

I fished my last twenty out of my wallet. For the rest of the week, I’d have to hit the Shawmut Bank ATM. It was the only one in town that dispensed five dollar bills.

“Good deal,” said Chest Guy. “So here’s how it works. We use the Maine license, because it’s the only one in New England that still has the photo in the lower right-hand corner. You’ll see why that’s important in a minute.”

“Fine,” I said. I already had a Maine driver’s license, only because I happened to be from Maine. Chest Guy fetched a piece of cardboard, about 18 by 36 inches, and a black magic marker, and handed them to me.

“As you can see, I’ve already filled in all your pertinent information. I just need your signature.” I examined the piece of cardboard. It was an exact replica of a Maine driver’s license, with my name, a fake address and birth date, and blank spaces where the photo and signature should be. I took the magic marker and scrawled an oversized signature in the designated space.

“Beautiful,” said Chest Guy. He slapped some double-sided tape on the back of the cardboard and pressed it against the wall in the spot where a Def Leppard poster had been hanging the week before. He turned on a 10K light borrowed from the film depot and picked up his Nikon Tele-Touch. “Okay, now I need you to stand about six inches in front of the license so your head is framed by the square where your photo should be.”

I did what he asked. “Okay, let me just adjust the light so there’s no telltale shadow…great. Now smile like you’ve spent three hours in line at the Registry.”

I offered a shit-eating smirk as Chest Guy snapped a half-dozen photos.

“All righty,” he said. “It’ll be ready on Friday, just in time for you to try it out.”

”Looking forward to it. You sure this thing is gonna work?”

“How could I be? All sales are final and you use it at your own risk. And if you do get caught, remember, you bought it in the Combat Zone from some guy you never met before and never seen since. You bring my name into it, I’ll drop you in the Pit headfirst.”

He winked. I showed myself out.

APRIL 23, 2014

Detective Martin Coleman lifted the yellow crime scene tape and stepped under it, trying not to spill his large Dunkin’ Donuts coffee as he entered Unit 67. The two uniforms were inside as expected, milling around the body and shooting the shit about Dustin Pedroia’s three doubles the night before.

“Fackin’ Laser Show went off last night. Vintage Pedey.”

“Well, he had to. Friggin’ bullpen can’t hold a lead. Five ribbies he gets, and it still goes extras. Oh—hey, boss.”

“Gentlemen. Sorry to interrupt the postgame show, but who’s the vic?”

“Rachel O’Brien, twenty-nine years old, realtor from Back Bay Modern Living. Unmarried, but engaged. Fiancé was on a business trip to the West Coast. He’s in biotech sales or some shit. Had late meetings last night, wasn’t expecting to hear from her. Time difference. Anyway, we got ahold of him a few minutes ago, he’s a fackin’ mess as you might presume.”

Coleman squatted beside the body and sipped his coffee. “Crime Scene has been here, looks like.” Actually, he knew for a fact they’d been there. He and his partner had just finished chasing down a lead on another case in Dorchester when they caught the call on O’Brien. Baseball and murder were both back in season, and everyone in Homicide had a full scorecard. Carnahan had a scheduled court appearance, so Coleman made the trip to the Back Bay alone.

“Just left. They weren’t buying my theory that she tripped on her shoelaces and broke her neck.”

“First thing you want to look for in that case, shoelaces. Of which she has none. Hold this for me, will you?” Coleman raised his coffee cup and the nearest officer took it from him. “What did they find?”

“One canister of pepper spray, unused, next to the body. Prints everywhere, but this unit has been shown almost two dozen times since it went on the market ten days ago, so…good luck there. Usual hairs and fibers. No open wounds. Guy obviously didn’t want to make any noise. No gunshots, no screaming, just a body hitting the ground, which might annoy the downstairs neighbors if they were home, which they were not. Aside from the neck, no other visible bruising. Far as they can tell, not a pube out of place.”

“That’s good,” said Coleman, rummaging through Rachel’s pockets. “Hopefully we don’t have to call in those sick fucks from Sex Crimes. So it’s looking like this happened yesterday, am I right?”

“Best they can say before the ME gets ahold of her, sometime between two and ten yesterday. But we can do a little better than that. Her people at the realty office started to miss her when she didn’t show for work this morning. Made several calls to her cell. The receptionist over at Back Bay Modern Living was able to pull up her calendar. Her last appointment yesterday was right here, this unit, 5:30 P.M. yesterday. Client was a Charles Finley, a lawyer with Goodwin Palmer downtown. Your next question is whether I called Goodwin Palmer to verify they have a Charles Finley on the active roster.”

“Why am I even here? So you did that and they said…?”

“They have no such Charles Finley. Never heard of him.”

“One shocker after another.”

“Right, but Sully and I have a theory. Maybe Charles Finley is Chuck Finley. Know who that is?”

“Former pitcher for the Angels,” said Coleman. “Married the chick from the Whitesnake video. You figure him for this?”

“No, but you ever watch Burn Notice?”

“What the fuck is Burn Notice?”

“TV show. Spies and shit. Anyway, this one character, Sam Axe—”

“Bruce Campbell,” said Sully. “The guy with the chin, he plays Sam Axe.”

“Yeah, and whenever he’s undercover, Sam Axe uses the same alias. Chuck Finley.”

“So we figure this guy is a Burn Notice fan.”

“Good work, guys,” said Coleman. “I’d say this case is just about wrapped up thanks to your keen attention to detail.”

“Yeah. Anyway, couple hours ago the realty office finally sent someone down here to make sure she didn’t drop dead while showing this guy Finley around. Which, as we can see here, she did.”

“Indeed. So presumably, since she was showing this nonexistent lawyer this lovely overpriced condo, she must have had a key. Such key as I’ve failed to find on the vic’s person.”

“Such key as we didn’t find either, nor did Crime Scene. According to the receptionist, she had the key to every unit in the building on her ring, along with keys to the administrative, storage, maintenance, and function rooms. This Back Bay Modern Living was handling every aspect of the Charlesgate on behalf of some mystery owner, of whom we know not thing one at this point. Now, it’s always possible that some of the residents have changed their locks since they took occupancy, but you gotta assume the perp had access to the majority of the building and had many hours to find whatever it was he may have been looking for.”

Coleman held Rachel’s lifeless gaze as he fished two small pieces of folded cardboard from her inside jacket pocket and slipped them into his own. This was something different, for sure. It beat chasing down leads on dead drug dealers in the Dot projects anyway. “Officer…”

“Billings.”

“Officer Billings. I assume you asked for a comprehensive list of this distinguished old building’s occupants?”

“You’ll have it in your email when you get back to the station tonight.”