Brothers and Bones Page 2

  I was beginning to compose my résumé in my head and to consider where I would send it when Angel Medina spoke again from my doorway. “Charlie, you going to say anything? What gives?”

  “Like you said, Angel, I choked.”

  “That’s obvious. But why?”

  I’d always loved Angel’s tact. “I wasn’t on my game, I guess. I had trouble concentrating. Must have been nervous. What can I say? I got flustered.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you nervous, Charlie, and I’ve definitely never seen you flustered.”

  He also hadn’t seen me on the subway that morning, just after the homeless guy called me Wiley, a nickname known only to my brother, missing for thirteen years, finally declared legally deceased six years ago. At first, I’d stood still and dumb, like I’d been poleaxed. I don’t even know what that means, frankly, but I’ve seen cowboys in Westerns who the other cowboys say look like they’d been poleaxed, and that’s just how I felt I must have looked. But as the subway-car doors began to close, I snapped out of my stupor and struggled to get back to the platform, where I could see the homeless man watching me from the crowd. However, my pushing and shoving and banging people with my briefcase succeeded only in making me unpopular after the doors closed with me still inside the train. I ignored the people around me, though, and simply watched the homeless man through the window until he was lost to my sight as the train rounded a bend in the tracks and I was looking at the black tunnel wall.

  I could feel my heart fluttering in my chest, a nervous parakeet banging around in its cage. Who was that guy? How did he know my brother’s secret nickname for me? Had he known Jake? Did he know what happened to him?

  And as I stared blankly at the subway-tunnel wall rushing past the train’s windows, a thought struck me with hammer force. I hadn’t gotten a great look at the homeless man. I closed my eyes and tried to summon his appearance in my mind’s eye—his height, his build, his coloring. It was hard to imagine what he looked like under that hermit hair and city grime. Was it possible? The guy stooped so much it was difficult to estimate his true height, but it seemed close enough. So did his build, though it was hard to tell with the man’s many layers of clothing. His coloring was something of a mystery, as it was largely hidden by shadows. The age, at least, seemed about right, though. The big question remained. Was it possible?

  My eyes had snapped open along with the train doors at the next stop and I’d forgotten all about the Redekov trial as I pushed my way through the struggling mass of commuters and out onto the platform. I dodged and danced around people as I ran up the stairs and over to the outbound platform, where I waited four anxious minutes for a train to take me back to where I’d seen the homeless man in the Harvard sweatshirt. I was panting and sweating and wild-eyed. If the looks on the faces of the people near me were any indication, I looked like a lunatic. People had begun to clear out a few feet of space all around me. A small girl staring at me from nearby actually whimpered and jammed her face between her mother’s knees. I barely registered these things.

  When the train came, my psycho-killer vibe garnered me my own private corner of a subway car. When we reached Kendall Station, I exited onto the platform and waited for the train to pull away, then looked across the tracks to where I’d seen the homeless man. He was nowhere in sight. The platform was still busy, though a little less so, and I definitely would have seen him if he’d still been there. I bolted up the stairs again and out onto the sidewalk, where I stood scanning in all directions for him. No luck. I gave his description to a few people walking past and asked if they’d seen anyone who looked like him come out of the station within the past few minutes. The most helpful response I received was, “You’re blocking the stairs.”

  I dropped my head and exhaled loudly. There was nothing for me to do but to go to work and…oh, no. I looked at my watch and had to choke back a little bile.

  As I expected, it wasn’t pleasant when I finally appeared in court twenty-one minutes late. Fortunately for me, the court reporter and the judge’s own clerk had been a little tardy themselves because of the subway delays—though both arrived before me by a good ten minutes—and their experiences had paved the way for my excuse.

  Still, it had been a terrible start to a terrible day in court. Despite my best efforts to focus on the case, my mind spent the day wandering through the Boston subway system instead of being in the courtroom where it belonged. And it showed. I did my distracted best, though, ignoring the poisonous silence of Andrew Lippincott at my side as I plodded through the beginnings of the government’s case. In the afternoon, I lamely wrapped things up for the day, pasted on a self-deprecating smile, and promised the court that I’d be on time from now on. It was Thursday, and the judge had announced after the lunch recess that he wouldn’t be on the bench the following day for personal reasons, so the next time I had to make sure upon penalty of death that I was on time would be Monday morning.

  After court adjourned, Lippincott told me he needed some time to think, so I left him sitting at counsel’s table and slunk from the courtroom. I ignored Angel, whom I sensed trying to catch up with me. Outside, I “no commented” my way through a thick forest of media microphones and cameras and began the depressing walk back to my office.

  Inside the building, as I rode the elevator up to the ninth floor, which houses the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s office, I half wondered if Lippincott had called ahead and given the order to have my office cleaned out before I got there and security sent up to escort me from the building.

  It turned out that Lippincott had not, in fact, called building security yet. Now, an hour later, as Angel stood at my office door, I said to him, “I hope our association won’t taint you here at the office after I’m gone and have been reduced to hanging around emergency rooms, handing my business cards to people with newly found limps.”

  Angel was kind enough to smile at my gallows humor. But he wasn’t kind enough to contradict my vision of my future.

  My phone rang and I lifted the receiver and heard the voice of doom.

  “Lippincott?” Angel asked as I hung up.

  I nodded. “He wants to see me.”

  As I walked past Angel, he said, “Want me to start cleaning out your desk for you?”

  I nearly shot him the bird again, then realized I probably could, in fact, use his help packing up my office later.

  THREE

  The John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, in addition to housing several federal courtrooms, also houses, on the ninth and tenth floors, the offices of the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and his staff. From the street, the courthouse is a fairly typical, unimpressive federal building—all brick and right angles. From the back, however, you can see where the tax dollars really got busy back in the 1990s. To begin, the building is on Boston Harbor, close enough for you to lob a baseball into the water from its back door. This side of the building is semicircular, its concavity facing a panoramic view of the harbor and the Atlantic beyond. It’s covered by huge glass windows that follow the curve of the wall, and which sweep steeply, majestically up and back from the ground, nearly all the way to the top of the building ten stories above. On the ground below, snuggled against the curving base of the building, is a small, nearly circular grassy area dotted with trees and surrounded by a brick walk. It’s easily the most aesthetically pleasing federal building I’ve ever seen. That may not be saying much, but it really is a great building.

  Inside the enormous windows, there are landings spanning the building’s length. If you look over the railings, you see the floor several stories down. But why look down when you can look out, through the giant windows at the sparkling water of the Atlantic Ocean?

  The Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s office takes up the ninth floor of the Moakley building, with the Civil Division, Administration, and the law library up on the tenth. The Organized Crime Strike Force Unit is located at one end of the b
anana-shaped floor and Lippincott’s big corner office was at the other end. I could have made my way there from my unit, which is one of several in the Criminal Division, by cutting through other sections—like Economic Crimes, Anti-Terrorism and National Security, Major Crimes—but instead of wending my way through the rabbit warren of offices, within units, within sections, I chose simply to exit the office area entirely and take the more direct route along the landing, essentially walking along the inner curve of the banana. As well as being more efficient when traveling all the way from banana tip to banana tip, it gave me the added benefit of seeing the sun glinting off the water rather than the faces of my co-workers, who, unlike me, were not taking that long, depressing, anxiety-provoking walk to the principal’s office.

  * * *

  Andrew Lippincott was an intimidating man. Not physically, mind you. He couldn’t have been taller than five-eight and I doubted he could reach a hundred fifty pounds on a scale without a soaking-wet cocker spaniel in his arms—which would never happen because he didn’t care for animals. But intellectually, the guy was more than intimidating, really. He was just plain scary. Conversations with him were like chess matches, with Lippincott always thinking a dozen moves ahead. The half-joking rumor around town among both the AUSAs who worked for Lippincott and the lawyers who opposed him in court was that the man had more than a mere touch of clairvoyance. I wasn’t sure about that, but I knew he was fiercely brilliant. His insights were dazzling. I’m not certain that a single intuition of his during his sixty-two years of life had ever been proven wrong after the fact. And as a legal mind, his was second to none in Boston, which is not known as a city full of legal hacks.

  As I said, Lippincott’s on the small side, physically, but he looked even smaller sitting behind his monstrous mahogany desk, a desk so big that, when I stood in front of it, with Lippincott on the other side, I couldn’t be certain he and I were in the same zip code. I hoped they were able to build a nice little village in the space they cleared when they knocked down the trees it took to construct that thing.

  Lippincott had his elbows on his gargantuan desktop, his chin resting on his hands. Most of his almost delicate, immaculately manicured fingers were laced together, except for his index fingers, which were pressed together and pointing up like a church steeple. His thumbs were tucked under his chin, providing it support. I realized that his fingers were molded into the shape that a child would use if he were pretending to point a gun with both hands. I hoped this was not some subconscious sign of Lippincott’s plans for me. But for now, he kept his thumbs under his chin, the barrel of his finger gun against the tip of his nose. He looked at me with gray eyes the color of dark smoke and, with the smallest tilt of his head, motioned me toward one of two beautiful, pine-green leather chairs in front of his desk. I swear I thought I heard his voice in my mind, telling me to sit, even though his lips never moved. He could have that effect on people.

  I sat in one of the chairs, choosing the one that wasn’t already occupied. Sitting beside me was Michael Kidder, a clammy-looking guy about the same age as Lippincott. Kidder was almost completely bald on top with an unusually thick ring of graying hair running from temple to temple around the back of his head. In the center of the bald spot was a small and, to be honest, slightly ridiculous-looking tuft of hair. If it was me, I’d have shaved it completely. His head looked like a domed rock rising out of a meadow of thick grass with a tiny little plant somehow surviving on the rock’s smooth, otherwise inhospitable peak.

  Kidder was the First Assistant U.S. Attorney, making him Lippincott’s right-hand man, which put him several rungs up the ladder from me and just one below Lippincott. He’d outlasted nine U.S. Attorneys, rising up from among the rank-and-file AUSAs, became Chief of the Economic Crimes Unit, then spent the final three years of Lippincott’s predecessor’s tenure in his current position of second-in-command. After twenty-two years with the U.S. Attorney’s office, there was nowhere for him to go but to the top spot, and it was beginning to look doubtful he’d ever get there. It was no secret that he’d openly campaigned for the position that ultimately went to Lippincott. Kidder was disappointed, I heard, but he was a professional. Lippincott’s daughter, Jessica, whom I happened to have been dating for six years, intimated to me that her father didn’t seem to completely trust Kidder, but she thought that might have been him sensing a little resentment—possibly real, possibly imagined—on the part of his lieutenant.

  I hadn’t seen Kidder in a few weeks, so it seemed appropriate to shake his hand. I reached over and he met me halfway. His handshake was just as I remembered it from the few previous ones he’d given me. His grip was weak, his hand slightly moist with sweat. It was like he had pressed a damp sponge into my palm. I was dying to wipe my hand on my pants when we broke our handshake, but managed to keep from doing so.

  I looked back at Lippincott, who stared at me a moment longer. As he did, I’m somewhat proud to say, I didn’t fidget or sweat overly much or yammer something nonsensical to break the uncomfortable silence. Though I wanted to do all those things.

  Finally, he cleared his throat, a small, calculated sound, and began speaking in that voice of his—that deep, rich voice, unusual coming from a man of his modest physical stature, that soothing, confident voice that told judges that he knew exactly what he was talking about, that told jurors he was a man to be trusted, that told opposing counsel he was a man to be respected and, yes, feared a little. He used that voice to say to me, “If you weren’t engaged to my daughter….” He didn’t finish his thought. He didn’t have to.

  I have to admit, I guess, that the main reason for my relative cool around Lippincott was the fact that Jessica, the light of his life, had agreed to marry me one of these days. My relationship with her didn’t make me cocky with regard to her father; it merely meant that I spent more time with him than other AUSAs did—I even saw him in a bathing suit one time…and, I always fervently hoped, it would remain just the one time—so I was less queasy around him than many of the other lawyers in the office were. To be honest, he was actually quite decent to me. I’d graduated in the top twenty percent of my class at Northeastern University Law School, which wasn’t bad, but the school itself isn’t ranked all that highly among law schools. Nonetheless, Lippincott, who was the District Attorney for Middlesex County at the time, recruited me personally to join his staff of attorneys, which was pretty unusual. He later told me he’d been contacted by one of my professors, who preferred to remain anonymous. I couldn’t have imagined on which professor I’d made such a positive impression, but who was I to argue? Lippincott was offering me a great job. Fairly modest pay for a lawyer, but very, very interesting work. More importantly, I thought, as a prosecutor, I just might be able to work now and then on finding out what happened to my brother, which was far more important to me than making twice the salary working in a midsized law firm.

  In my six years as an Assistant District Attorney, with Lippincott as my mentor, I established an admittedly impressive record, putting away a string of high-profile nasty people. When the president of the United States appointed Lippincott U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, and Congress confirmed the appointment, Lippincott wanted me, his star protégé, to join him working for the feds, even going so far as to agree to my condition that I be assigned a position on the highly sought after Organized Crime Strike Force Unit. I liked to think that, in the five years since, I’d acquitted myself well as a federal prosecutor. Well, at least until that morning, of course.

  As I said, though, Lippincott had been pretty good to me over the years. On top of everything else, after he’d casually introduced me to Jessica at an informal DA’s office function, he hadn’t seemed to mind that we started dating. Considering all the brightly shining, tops-of-their-classes, exploding-with-potential young professionals in Boston who would, if requested, punch their own grandmothers for a date with someone as smart, successful, and attractive as Jessica, I’m surprised he let her date one of h
is subordinates, much less become engaged to him. But to his credit, he let her make her own decisions about me—though, for all I knew, he regretted terribly making that introduction.

  I suddenly realized that Lippincott had ceased speaking and seemed to be expecting a response of some kind from me. “Yes, sir, I know I didn’t do well today, and I just—”

  He cut me off with a curt, dismissive wave of his hand. He had, through use of a strategic pause, compelled me to speak, then cut me off, thereby demonstrating his control of the chessboard.

  “I don’t expect excuses, Charlie,” he said.

  “No,” Kidder said unnecessarily.

  I nodded and kept my mouth shut. Lippincott regarded me a moment, then said, “While I’m not looking for an excuse from you, though, I do expect an explanation.”

  How could I tell him that a voice from the past, possibly from the grave, had caused that train wreck in court? How would he react to my telling him that my long-lost, dearly departed brother might actually have been not so lost or departed? How long would it take for him to call for security if I told him my performance was pure crap because I was wondering whether my brother, who went missing thirteen years ago, might be somewhere nearby at that very moment arguing politics with a parking meter? And besides, it was none of his business. So I told him that I was distracted, hadn’t slept well the night before, got flustered when the trains ran late that morning, and aliens had abducted me during the night and used probes in very personal ways.