Prayers For Rain Part 44

I did my best pure-porridge Northern Irish accent. "Yer man take yew for a sessiun, did he, yah?"

"What?"

"Fer f.o.o.k's sake, Rogowski, got a fierce amount of cotton in yer ars?"

"Cut it out," Bubba said. "G.o.ddammit."

Angie put her hand on my arm. "Stop torturing the poor fella."

"Angie's with me," I said.

"No s.h.i.t. Where?"

"Back Bay. We need a delivery man."

"Bomb?" He sounded excited, like he had a few lying around he needed to get rid of.

"Ah, no. Just a tape recorder."

"Oh." He sounded bored.

"Come on," I said. "Remember, Ange is with me. We'll go drinking afterward."

He grunted. "Shakes Dooley says you forgot how."

"Well, school me, brother. School me."

"So we follow Dr. Bourne home," Angie said, "and then we somehow slide a tape recorder into her place?"

"Yeah."

"Dumb plan."

"You got a better one?"

"Not at the moment."

"You think she's dirty?" I said.

"I agree there's something fishy about her."

"So we stick to my plan until we have a better one."

"Oh, there's a better one. I'll come up with it. Trust me. There's a better one."

At four a black BMW pulled up outside of Dr. Bourne's office. The driver sat inside for a bit, smoking, and then he got out and stood on the street, leaned back against the hood of the Beemer. He was a short guy who wore a green silk shirt tucked into tight black jeans.

"He has red hair," I said.

"What?"

I pointed at the guy.

"So? Lotta people with red hair. Particularly in this town."

Diane Bourne appeared on the front landing of her building. The redheaded guy raised his head in recognition of her. Very slightly, she shook her head. The guy's shoulders rose in confusion as she walked down the stairs and pa.s.sed him, her head down, her footsteps fast and deliberate.

The guy watched her go, then he turned slowly and looked around the street as if he suddenly sensed he was being watched. He tossed his cigarette to the sidewalk and climbed in his BMW.

I called Bubba, who was parked over on Newbury in his van. "Change of plans," I said. "We're tailing a black Beemer."

"Whatever." He hung up. Mr. Hard-to-Impress.

"Why are we following this guy?" Angie said. I let two cars get in between us and the BMW before I pulled away from the curb.

"Because he's a redhead," I said. "Because Bourne knew him and acted like she didn't. Because he looks hinky."

"Hinky?"

I nodded. "Hinky."

"What's that mean?"

"I don't know. I heard it on Mannix Mannix once." once."

We followed the BMW south out of the city with Bubba's black van riding our rear b.u.mper straight into the rush-hour crunch. From Albany Street on, we averaged about six miles a decade as we crawled through Southie, Dorchester, Quincy, and Braintree. Twenty miles, and it took us only an hour and fifteen minutes. Welcome to Boston; we just f.u.c.king live for traffic.

He got off the expressway in Hingham and led us through another half an hour of b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper down one humid, crabby lane of Route 228. We pa.s.sed through Hingham-all white colonials and white picket fences and white people-and then wound past a strip of power plants and mammoth gas tanks under high-tension wire before the black Beemer led us into Nantasket.

Once a grungy beach community with a soiled-neon carny atmosphere that attracted lots of bikers and women with flabby, exposed midriffs and stringy hair, Nantasket Beach slipped into a sterile, picture-postcard loveliness when they tore down the amus.e.m.e.nt park that once fronted its sh.o.r.es. Gone were the cheesy teacup rides and ratty wooden clowns you'd knock down with a softball to win an anemic guppy in a plastic bag. A roller coaster that, in its time, had been acknowledged as the country's most dangerous had had its twisted dinosaur of a skeleton shattered by wrecking b.a.l.l.s and pulled by its roots from the earth so they could build condos overlooking the boardwalk. All that remained of the old days were the ocean itself and a few arcades bathed in sticky orange light along the boardwalk.

Pretty soon they'd replace the arcades with coffee bars, outlaw stringy hair, and as soon as anyone stopped having any fun whatsoever, they could safely call it progress.

It occurred to me, as we wound our way down the beach road past the site of the old amus.e.m.e.nt park, that if I ever had kids, and I took them to places that had once mattered to me, all there'd be to show for my youth would be the buildings that had replaced it.

The BMW took a quick left just past the end of the boardwalk, then a right, and another left before he pulled into the sandy driveway of a small white Cape with green awnings and trim. We rolled past, and Angie watched in her sideview mirror.

"What the h.e.l.l is he doing?"

"Who?"

She shook her head, eyes on the mirror. "Bubba."

I looked in the rearview, saw that Bubba had pulled his black van to a rest on the shoulder about fifty yards before the redhead's house. As I watched, he hopped out of the van and ran up between two Capes that were near identical to the redhead's and disappeared somewhere in the backyards.

"This," I said, "was not part of the plan."