Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro 4)

The sections of Charlestown change character with bewildering speed as well. Depending on which direction one is heading, the Mishawum Housing Project can give way to the gentrified brownstones surrounding Edwards Park in a horseshoe; the roads passing through the grandeur of the red-brick and white-trim colonial town houses fronting Monument Square drop without warning or respect for gravity into the dark gray of Bunker Hill Project, one of the most poverty-stricken white housing developments this side of West Virginia.

But speckled throughout it all, one finds a sense of history—of brick and mortar, colonial clapboard and cobblestone, pre-Revolutionary taverns and post-Treaty of Versailles sailors quarters—that’s hard to duplicate in most of America.

Still sucks to drive through, though.

Which is what we’d been doing for the last hour, following Poole and Broussard, accompanied by Helene in the backseat of their Taurus, up and over and around and across Charlestown. We’d crisscrossed the hill, loped around the back of both housing projects, jerked bumper-to-bumper through the yuppie enclaves up by the Bunker Hill Monument and down at the base of Warren Street. We’d driven along the docks, rolled past Old Ironsides and the naval quarters and once-dingy warehouses and tanker-repair hangars converted into pricey condos, rumbled along the cracked roads that skirted the burned-out shells of long-forgotten fisheries at the edge of the land mass, where more than one wise guy had gazed at his final vista of moonlight bathing the Mystic River as a bullet cracked through a breech and into his head.

We’d tailed the Taurus along Main Street and Rutherford Avenue, followed the hill up to High Street and down to Bunker Hill Avenue and beyond to Medford Street, and we’d cased every tiny street in between, idling at the alleys that appeared suddenly out of the corners of our eyes. Looking for a car on blocks. Looking for two hundred grand. Looking for Garfield.

“Sooner or later,” Angie said, “we’re going to run out of gas.”

“Or patience,” I said, as Helene pointed at something through the Taurus window.

I applied the brakes, and once again the Taurus stopped ahead of us, and Broussard got out with Helene and they walked over to an alley and stared in. Broussard asked her something and Helene shook her head and they walked back to the car and I took my foot off the brake.

“Why are we looking for the money again?” Angie asked a few minutes later as we dropped over the other side of the hill and the hood of our Crown Victoria pointed straight down and the brakes clacked and the pedal jumped against my foot.

I shrugged. “Maybe because, A, this is the closest lead there’s been in a while to anything and, B, maybe Broussard and Poole figure it’s a drug-related kidnapping now.”

“So where’s the ransom demand? How come Chris Mullen or Cheese Olamon or one of their boys hasn’t contacted Helene yet?”

“Maybe they’re waiting for her to figure it out.”

“That’s expecting a lot from someone like Helene.”

“Chris and Cheese ain’t rocket scientists.”

“True, but—”

We’d stopped again, and this time Helene was out of the car before Broussard, gesturing maniacally at a construction Dumpster on the sidewalk. The construction crew working on the house across the street was nowhere to be seen; I knew they were somewhere nearby, though, if only for the scaffolding erected against the building facade.

I pressed down the emergency brake and stepped out of the car, and pretty soon I saw why Helene was so excited. The Dumpster, five feet tall and four feet wide, had obscured the alley behind it. There in the alley sat a late-seventies Grand Torino, up on blocks, one fat orange cat attached by suction cups to the rear window, paws spread wide, smiling like an idiot through the dirty glass.

It was impossible to double-park on the street without blocking it entirely, so we spent another five minutes finding parking spaces back up the hill on Bartlett Street. Then the five of us walked back toward the alley. The construction crew had returned in the interim and milled around the scaffolding with their coolers and liters of Mountain Dew. They whistled at Helene and Angie as we walked down the hill.

Poole saluted one of them as we neared the alley, and the man quickly looked away.

“Mr. Fred Griffin,” Poole said. “Still have a taste for the amphetamines?”

Fred Griffin shook his head.

“Apologize,” Poole said in that threatening singsong of his, as he turned into the alley.

Fred cleared his throat. “Sorry, ladies.”

Helene flipped him the bird and the rest of the construction crew hooted.

Angie nudged me as we lagged behind the other three. “You get the feeling Poole’s a bit tightly wound behind that big smile?”

“Personally,” I said, “I wouldn’t fuck with him. But I’m a wuss.”

“That’s our secret, babe.” She patted my ass as we turned into the alley, which drew another round of hoots from across the street.

The Gran Torino hadn’t been used in a while. Helene was right about that. Chips of rust and sallow beige spots stained the cinder blocks under the wheels. The windows had accumulated so much dust it was a wonder we’d been able to discern Garfield in the first place. A newspaper that bore a headline detailing Princess Diana’s peace mission to Bosnia lay on the dashboard.

The alley was cobblestone, cracked in places, shattered in others, to reveal a pink-gray earth beneath. Two plastic trash cans spilled garbage beneath a cobwebbed gas meter. The alley cut so narrowly between two three-deckers, I was surprised they’d been able to fit the car in.

At the end of the alley, about ten yards off the street, sat a single-story box of a house, dating back to the forties or fifties, from the unimaginative look of the construction. It could have been the foreman’s shack on a construction site or a small radio station, and probably wouldn’t have stood out quite so much if it were in a less architecturally rich neighborhood, but even so it was an eyesore. There were no steps, just a crooked door raised about an inch off the foundation, and the wood shingles were covered in black tarpaper, as if someone had once considered aluminum siding but then quit before the delivery was made.

“You remember the names of the occupants?” Poole asked Helene, as he unsnapped his holster strap with a flick of his thumb.

“No.”

“’Course not,” Broussard said, his eyes scanning the four windows fronting the alley, the grimy plastic shades pulled down to their sills. “You said there were two?”