Gone, Baby, Gone - Dennis Lehane [132]
He glanced at me. “Fear of cooties?”
He withdrew the hand and dug it into his inside coat pocket.
I reached behind my back.
“No fear, Mr. Kenzie. No fear.” He withdrew a slim wallet and flipped it open, showed us a silver badge and ID. “Special Agent Neal Ryerson,” he said, in a deep baritone. “Justice Department. Ta-da!” He closed the wallet, slipped it back in his jacket. “Organized Crime Division, if you need to know. Christ, you’re a chatty couple.”
“Why are you bothering us?” I said.
“Because, Mr. Kenzie, judging by what I saw at that football game this afternoon, you’re kinda short of friends. And I’m in the friend business.”
“I’m not looking for one.”
“You might not have a choice. I may have to be your friend whether you like it or not. I’m pretty good at it, too. I’ll listen to your war stories, watch baseball with you, generally pal around with you at all the hip watering holes.”
I looked at Angie, and we turned and started walking toward our car. I went to her side first, unlocked the door, and started to open it.
“Broussard will kill you,” Ryerson said.
We looked back at him. He took a puff of his Cohiba and came off the back of the Suburban, sauntered toward us with loose, long strides, as if he were walking off court at the end of a period.
“He’s real good at that, killing people. Usually doesn’t do it himself, but he plans it well. He’s a first-rate planner.”
I took Angie’s crutches from her and brushed Ryerson back with the rear door as I opened it to slide them in the backseat. “We’ll be fine, Special Agent Ryerson.”
“I’m sure that’s what Chris Mullen and Pharaoh Gutierrez thought.”
Angie leaned against her open door. “Was Pharaoh Gutierrez DEA?” She reached into her pocket, removed her cigarettes.
Ryerson shook his head. “Nope. Informant for the OCD.” He stepped past me and lit Angie’s cigarette with a black Zippo. “My informant. I turned him. I’d worked him for six and a half years. He was going to help me bring down Cheese, and Cheese’s organization was going to be next. After that, I was going after Cheese’s supplier, guy named Ngyun Tang.” He pointed at the east wall of the garage. “Chinatown bigwig.”
“But?”
“But”—he shrugged—“Pharaoh got hisself iced.”
“And you think Broussard did it?”
“I think Broussard planned it. He didn’t kill them himself because he was too busy pretending to get shot at up in the quarry.”
“So who killed Mullen and Gutierrez?”
Ryerson looked up at the garage ceiling. “Who took the money out of the hills? Who was the first person found in the vicinity of the victims?”
“Wait a sec,” Angie said. “Poole? You think Poole was the shooter?”
Ryerson leaned against the Audi parked beside our car, took a long puff off his cigar, and blew smoke rings up into the fluorescent lights.
“Nicholas Raftopoulos. Born in Swampscott, Massachusetts, 1948. Joined Boston Police Department in 1968, shortly after returning from Vietnam, where he was awarded the Silver Star and was, surprise, an expert-class marksman. His lieutenant in the field said Corporal Raftopoulos could, and I quote, ‘shoot the asshole ring out of a tse-tse fly from fifty yards.’” He shook his head. “Those military guys—they’re so vivid.”
“And you think—”
“I think, Mr. Kenzie, that the three of us need to talk.”
I took a step back from him. He was easily six-three, and his perfectly coiffed sandy hair, his easy bearing, and the cut of his clothes spoke of a man who’d come from money. I recognized him now: He’d been the spectator sitting alone at the far end of the stands in Harvard Stadium this afternoon, long legs hooked over the guardrail as he slouched low in his seat, baseball hat down over his eyes. I could see him at Yale trying to decide between law school and a job with the government. Either career held the promise of political office once the gray had blended in just right around his temples, but if he went with the government, he’d get to carry a gun.