She looked from her glass to him. "I'm not clear on something. Is this work, or is this a date?"
He shrugged. "It's not work."
"So it's a date."
"It's a pre-date. It's appetizers, drinks."
"Because," she said, "and maybe this sounds crazy, but someone warned me that I shouldn't speak to you again without a lawyer."
"Wait-- someone from Charlestown, right?"
"How'd you know?"
He dropped his voice a little. "Well, that's the other thing here, this 'Code of Silence.' Born out on the docks, I guess, with bootlegging and longshoremen. Something like fifty murders committed in this town over the past twenty years, many of them with witnesses, and yet only twelve have been solved. The code was, 'Talk to the cops, you're dead, your entire family is dead.' But it's all unraveling now. People testifying against each other, rushing to cut deals. Ugly."
She nodded, only half-listening. "Do you consider me a suspect?"
Who was feeding her this? "What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. The questions you asked me at my parents' house. It never occurred to me that you might think..."
"Well, early on, I had a kidnapping that resulted in the bank manager being released unharmed. Add to that the fact that she lived in Charlestown, and-- where are you getting all this?"
"Nowhere."
Nowhere? "Would I have asked you out here if I suspected you?"
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Not if I'd wanted a conviction, evidence that would hold up in court."
That seemed to satisfy her. She sat back, distracted. "Honestly, at this point? I almost hope you never catch them. In terms of testifying and all that. I just want to put this thing behind me and move on."
"Well," Frawley told her, "I am going to catch them. Don't sweat the testimony. Even if I bagged them tomorrow, court's easily a year or two down the line. And with twenty-year federal mandies for repeat offenders using firearms in the commission of a violent felony, on top of whatever they draw for the crimes-- those are tantamount to life sentences. And believe me, once you see these bozos in court, see their faces-- oh, yeah, shit." He searched his jacket pockets. "Almost forgot. Just a moment of investigatory stuff here."
He handed her the color copy he had made from a beat-up library book about the history of the Boston Bruins. It showed a pair of melancholy eyes inside a goalie mask covered with hand-drawn scars.
Frawley said, "That's Gerry Cheevers. Bruins goalie from the Bobby Orr era."
She stared as though he had handed her a photograph of the bandits themselves. "Why those scars?"
Dino's explanation became his own. "Every puck shot Cheevers took off his face mask, he drew the stitch scar over the resulting dent. His trademark."
She looked a moment longer before handing it back, not relaxing until he had returned it to his pocket. "Hate hockey," she said.
"Not so loud," he joked. "Ice hockey and bank robbing are the two year-round sports here in Charlestown."
Their server returned. Claire said, "I'll take a coffee. Decaf."
Frawley held up two fingers, masking his disappointment. "So what do you say we try a real date? Go see
Twister
or something?"
She nodded agreeably. "That might be great."
"Okay." He ran that around his head again. "Might be?"
"Could be. Would be."
"Uh-huh. But?"
"But I'm seeing someone else too."
"Okay."
"I just thought it would be fair to let you know." She smiled then, looking a little giddy and perplexed. "Why am I so popular all of a sudden? It's like getting boobs again. Two interesting guys I meet, after this robbery-- what happened? What changed?"
"Is this the piano mover?"
Her surprised look said that she had forgotten telling him about that.
"The guy you met in a Laundromat." Frawley smiled. "I thought you stood him up."
"What's so funny?"
"Nothing."
"You don't want to hear this, but he's helping me."
"Good. That's good."
"He's not a piano mover."
"What's wrong with piano movers?" Their coffees came, and the check. Frawley wasn't worried. "Competition's good. Raises the bar."
She smiled at him, uncertain. "So there aren't any FBI rules about this?"
"Against dating the vic? No. Just a personal rule I abide by."
"Which is?"
"Never, ever do it," he said, laying down his credit card and a smile.
* * *
DINO DROVE A COP'D-OUT 1993 Ford Taurus, the police blues under the grille only noticeable if you were looking for them or if the sun hit them just right. It wasn't an undercover car like Frawley's staid Bureau Cavalier, but other than the whip antenna curling off the trunk, it was good enough for cruising the Town incognito.
The police radio squawked an "odor of gas" call-- the attending patrolman acknowledging the 911 dispatcher not with
Affirmative
or
Roger
or the military
Over,
but rather with the distinctly Boston
I have it
-- as Dino and Frawley rolled out from under the Tobin Bridge, passing two Housing Authority sedans idling driver-to-driver at the end of Bunker Hill Street.
"I've told them," said Frawley. "I've said, you know, just get me an apartment here, set it up. Nothing fancy-- just let me work this square mile exclusively, give me the
time,
give me the
space
. Let me play the
part
. I'd be a yuppie Serpico, you know? A yuppie Donnie Brasco. This town, the way it is-- the streets are so narrow, so tight. Any change is noticed, any deviation from the norm. You can't surv a house here, even if you have the manpower-- even if there's a vacant apartment right across the street and your target's religion forbids window shades-- because the people here, they're too
involved
. Crack open a beer and a guy three doors down gets thirsty. You gotta be part of the landscape."
"But they won't do it."
"Boston would okay it. The SAC could be persuaded, but not D.C. People not from around here have a hard time understanding what a fountain of banditry this zip code is."
"Fountain of banditry," chuckled Dino. "You got a way."
The markets on lower Bunker Hill Street advertised their welfare-friendliness with window signs stating EBT Accepted, WIC Accepted. Above and to the left, the tapered spike of the monument rotated as they passed, the Town slow-roasting on an enormous granite spit.
"So what do you got on this phone company guy?" said Dino.
"Elden. Desmond Elden. What have I got? I've got nothing, that's what I've got. Guy lives with his mother, holds down a steady job, pays his taxes in full and on time, and has never spent a minute of his life in a jail cell. Goes to mass three, four times a week."
"And yet you're convinced-- "
"Oh, I'm absolutely fucking positive."
"No record," said Dino. "No time in double-A ball. Jumps right into the majors."
"I don't know the backstory, but it is what it is. As for getting into it later in life, I'd offer this guy's father as Exhibit A."
"Okay, go."
"He was clean too, no record, nothing, when they found him on one of those streets we just passed, early 1980, two bullet holes in the chest. Don't have the full read, but it looks like he was a bagman, not an enforcer, more like a buffer between the street and the guys he was collecting for. Arrest bait, this guy with a clean record. Fourteen years with Edison before that."
"Gotcha."
"This guy, Elden, he'd be their tech. Spotless work record, including attendance, except for a few important dates. Such as the sick day he took the Tuesday after the marathon. Your next right."
Dino flipped on the blinker. "Okay, so it's starting to come into focus."
"Thus far, I've only made him with one other guy, ID'd from the Lakeville mugs. One Douglas MacRay."
"MacRay?" said Dino.
"Yeah, ringing a bell?"
"My age, more like plinking a triangle. Bear with me. Mac MacRay's son?"
"Bingo."
Dino licked his lips, smelling something cooking. "Okay. Big Mac's gotta be a good ten or fifteen in. Walpole, I think."
"MacRay junior last saw twenty months for ag assault. Jumped a guy in a bar, no provocation, nearly killed him.
Would
have killed him if they hadn't pulled him off. Shod foot was the deadly weapon, public intox, resisting arrest. Got out about three years ago. Note that this string we're looking at now started up about six months later."
"Hockey star, wasn't he?"
"Something like that."
"Yeah, yeah, high school hockey star, Charlestown. MacRay. Drafted, I think. Christ-- was it the Bruins?"
"This is Pearl Street, where he lives now."
It was a one-way street, the one way being straight down. Frawley pointed out the worst-looking house halfway down the suicide slope. With the cars parked along the right, there was barely enough room for the midsized Taurus to squeeze through.
"See what I mean about surveillance?"
Dino watched his spacing and tried to take in the house at the same time. "Least he keeps it nice."
"Oh, it's not even his. He rents, or shares, I can't tell. The house is in two names, a sister and a brother, Kristina Coughlin and James Coughlin."
"Coughlin."
"Heard the bells that time?"
"Like Christmas morning at the Vatican. Fathers and sons, huh? What a piece of work Jackie Coughlin Sr. was. I think-- I
think
-- he bought it falling out of a fourth-floor window or something, a B and E. Wouldn't surprise me if he was pushed by his own partners."
Frawley remembered the bumping he had received in the cellar bar of the Tap, having matched Coughlin's foggy, more-white-than-blue eyes to his card in the Lakeville mugs. "Young Coughlin started with DUIs and race crimes in his teens and got more adventurous from there. By some miracle he's stayed clean for the past thirty months. No arrests, even served out his parole. He and MacRay went down on a bank job together in 1983, still juvees. Amateur hour, Coughlin vaulting the counter, MacRay brandishing a nail gun."
"Oh, that's nice."
"A .22-caliber construction gun loaded with staples. Guy's got a temper. Couple of months before that, he'd gotten himself drummed out of the AHL for putting another player in the hospital."
"In hockey you usually earn a bonus for that."
"Guy he fought was on his own team."
Dino snickered. "The happy-go-lucky type. What about Coughlin's sister?"
"Sister? I don't know. Haven't even looked at her."
They bottomed out on Medford and turned left. Dino said, "That makes three."
"The fourth I'm doing a little conjecture on. We know-- or almost know-- at least we think that they don't farm out their car jobs, because if they did, it's a good bet we'd have had a snitch by now, or at least some whispering on the wind. Coughlin was picked up on a joyriding bid in '90 or '91 with an Alfred Magloan. On his own, Magloan is a convicted car thief and a member of Local 25, does some film-crew work as a driver."
"That's pretty comprehensive work for file-checking and part-time eyeballing there, Frawl."
"I'm on them. My sense here is, they smell something. That's why they're staying clear of Elden. But I'm having enough trouble watching one, never mind all four. That's why we're in your car today."
"You think you got made?"
Frawley was reluctant to admit it. "Just being real careful. I put in for a new Bureau vehicle, but that's going to take some time."
"You want me for some weekend duty."
"Elden is the only one we've got the subpoena for, so I'm all for sticking with him. Build up some paperwork, make a case, grow it out from there."
"What about this bank Elden's been cruising? In Chestnut Hill."
"I don't know."
"Come on. Speak."
The Schrafft's building came around the corner, the firehouse, Local 25's headquarters. "Small neighborhood branch. Two exits-- a busy parking lot and narrow Route 9. A small-time bank, ATM. I don't see it."
Dino signaled and turned back onto Bunker Hill Street, the opposite end, starting up toward the Heights. "So what's he doing there then?"
"I hope not distracting us."
