I spotted a few roof gardens, but they were too high up to tell if anyone was in them, and besides, none of the fire escapes looked close enough for easy access.
“Think you’d like that game, Pat?”
I turned a slow 360, willed my eyes to relax, to glide over the surface and see if anything incongruous showed itself.
“I asked if you’d like that game, Pat.”
“No, Wes.”
“Too bad. Oh, Pat?”
“What, Wes?”
“Take another look due east.”
I turned 180 degrees to my right and saw him down the far end of the alley, a tall figure made opaque by the fog, silhouette of a phone held to his ear.
“Whattaya say?” he said. “Let’s play.”
I broke into a run and he bolted as soon as I did. I heard the slap and clatter of his feet on wet cement and then he broke the connection.
By the time I reached the Clarendon Street end of the alley, he was gone. Shoppers and tourists and high school students filled the sidewalks. I saw men in trench coats and yellow macs and construction workers drenched to the bone. I saw steam rising from the sewer grates and enveloping taxis as they rolled past. I saw a kid on Rollerblades wipe out in front of a parking lot on Newbury. But not Wesley.
Just the mist and rain he’d left behind.
22
The morning after I had my encounter with Wesley in the rain, I got a call from Bubba telling me to be outside my house in half an hour because he was coming to pick me up.
“Where we going?”
“To see Stevie Zambuca.”
I stepped back from the small telephone table, took a long breath. Stevie Zambuca? Why the hell would he want to see me? I’d never met the man. I would have assumed the man had never heard of me. I’d been kind of hoping to keep it that way.
“Why?”
“Dunno. He called me, said to come to his house and bring you.”
“I was requested.”
“You wanna call it that, sure. You were requested.” Bubba hung up.
I went back out into the kitchen and sat at the table, drank my morning coffee, and tried to breathe steadily enough to avoid a panic attack. Yes, Stevie Zambuca scared me, but that wasn’t rare. Stevie Zambuca scared most people.
Stevie “The Pick” Zambuca ran a crew out of East Boston and Revere that, among other things, controlled most North Shore gambling, prostitution, narcotics, and chop-shop operations. Stevie was called “The Pick” not because he carried an ice pick or because he was skinny or knew his way around a lock, but because he was famous for giving his victims a choice on how they’d die. Stevie would enter a room where three or four of his goons held a guy to a chair, and he’d place an ax and a hacksaw in front of the guy and tell the guy to pick. Ax or saw. Knife or sword. Garrote or hammer. If the victim couldn’t pick, or didn’t do so in time, Stevie was rumored to use a drill, his weapon of choice. This was one of the reasons why newspapers sometimes erroneously called Stevie “The Drill,” which, according to rumor, pissed off a Somerville made guy named Frankie DiFalco who had a really big dick.
For half a second I wondered if Cody Falk’s bodyguard, Leonard, could be connected to this. I’d made him for a North Shore guy, after all. But that was just the panic. If Leonard had enough pull to get Stevie Zambuca to call me to his house, then Leonard wouldn’t have needed to hire himself out to Cody Falk.
This didn’t make sense. Bubba traveled in mob circles. I didn’t.
So why did Stevie Zambuca want to see me? What had I done? And how could I undo it? Quickly. Really quickly. By yesterday, perhaps.
Stevie Zambuca’s house was a small, unprepossessing split-level ranch that sat on the end of a dead-end street on top of a hill that looked down over Route 1 and Logan Airport in East Boston. He could even see the harbor from there, though I doubt he looked much. All Stevie needed to see was the airport; half his crew’s income came from there-baggage handlers’ unions, transport unions, shit that fell off the back of trucks and planes and landed in Stevie’s lap.
The house had an above-ground pool and a chain-link fence surrounding a small front yard. The backyard was bigger, but not by much, and kerosene torches were staked into the ground every ten feet, throwing light on a summer morning made blue by fog and a temperature dip that felt more like October than August.
“It’s his Saturday brunch,” Bubba said as we exited his Humvee and headed for the house. “He does it every week.”
“A wise guy brunch,” I said. “How quaint.”
“The mimosas are good,” Bubba said. “But stay away from the canoli, or the rest of the day your best friend will be your fucking toilet seat.”
A fifteen-year-old girl with a waterfall of orange-highlighted black hair pushed up off her forehead opened the door, her face a mask of fifteen-year-old fuck-you apathy and repressed anger she had no idea what to do with yet.
Then she recognized Bubba and a shy smile fought its way across her dim lips. “Mr. Rogowski. Hi.”
“Hey, Josephina. Nice streaks.”
She touched her hair nervously. “The orange? You like it?”
“It kicks,” Bubba said.
Josephina looked down at her knees and twisted her ankles together, swayed slightly in the doorway. “My dad hates it.”
“Hey,” Bubba said, “that’s what dads do.”
Josephina absently pulled a strand of hair into her mouth, continued to sway a bit under Bubba’s open gaze and wide smile.
Bubba as sex symbol. Now I’d seen it all.
“Your dad around?” Bubba asked.
“He’s in back?” Josephina said as if asking Bubba if that were okay.
“We’ll find him.” Bubba kissed her cheek. “How’s your mom?”
“On my ass,” Josephina said. “Like, constantly.”
“And that’s what moms do,” Bubba said. “Fun being fifteen, huh?”
Josephina looked up at him and for a moment I feared she’d grab his face right there and plant one on his oversized lips.
Instead, she pivoted on her toes like a dancer and said, “I gotta go,” and ran out of the room.
“Weird kid,” Bubba said.
“She’s got a crush on you.”
“Fuck off.”
“She does, you idiot. Are you blind?”
“Fuck off or I’ll kill you.”
“Oh,” I said. “In that case never mind.”
“Better,” Bubba said as we worked our way through a crowd in the kitchen.