Strangled - Brian McGrory [124]
The two of them were walking and talking. Elizabeth wasn’t wearing or carrying a coat, indicating that they had been in the Oak Bar, which was just closing for the night. They would have walked right by us without noticing, except I said, “Hello there, Elizabeth Riggs.”
She stopped, looked, and allowed a big smile to spread across her face. “Hello there, Jack Flynn.”
At the same time, Mac Foley exclaimed, “I don’t believe it, the legendary Hank Sweeney, in the flesh. Look at you, you look like you could step back into roll call tomorrow.”
Hank smiled. Elizabeth said to me, “What are you doing here?”
“I was about to ask you the same question.”
“The Times has me nipping at your heels on the Phantom Fiend story. Jack, this is really terrifying.”
She was about to find out just how terrifying.
I asked, “Did you lose your driver’s license?”
Hank and Foley began chatting amiably about the old days and the new ones. More stragglers from the Oak Bar wandered past us. Elizabeth gave me a surprised look and said, “Yeah, someone swiped my wallet when I got into Boston this morning. How’d you know?”
“Because I have it,” I said. “I hate to tell you this, though you have no idea how happy I am to be given the chance. It was sent to me by someone claiming to be the Phantom. There was no note, no nothing. The way I took it, the Phantom was telling me that you were his next victim. I’m so thrilled to find you alive that I almost can’t speak.”
She stood in uncharacteristic shock for a long moment, her eyes staring into mine, trying to process what I had just said. Foley glanced over and said, “Hey there, Jack.” Then, to Elizabeth, “Everything all right?”
She didn’t answer. Instead she looked at me, her laudable first instinct always to protect a reporter’s information, rather than share with authorities. I said to Foley, “Just some more dramatics in the case. Your colleagues up on the fifth floor can fill you in.”
Hank spoke up for the first time, saying to Elizabeth, “You’re one hell of a pretty sight for a lot of reasons.”
Elizabeth gave him an exaggerated wide-eyed look, then a kiss on the cheek.
I said to her, “Let me grab you for a second over here.” Not literally. But I pulled her aside as Mac Foley watched us walk a few paces away.
“Listen, the cops are going to offer you protection. I’d just as soon have Hank watch over you. There are too many moving parts, and I can be sure he’s not one of them.”
Truth is, I was so relieved as to be almost euphoric, but at the same time so exhausted as to be a zombie. And yet something, some distant feeling, a little emotional tic, kept tapping at my gut.
She stared me straight in the eyes, her look a cross of confusion and vulnerability, and she said, “I’ll do what you think is best.”
I let my guard down a bit and told her, “I’m just glad you’re okay. This isn’t what I expected to find: you alive, talking to me, the two of us figuring out a plan. This isn’t what I expected to find at all. Thank God I did.”
Elizabeth took a step toward me, maybe cutting in half the distance between us. If I took a step forward as well, there wouldn’t be any distance between us, and maybe that’s what I was supposed to do. But I didn’t. Didn’t matter. She said, “Why don’t you stay here tonight. You love hotels.”
I did, and the invitation was an extraordinary one, the type of offer that could boost your spirits for hours or weeks or maybe longer.
I had been up the entire night before, after Edgar Sullivan was killed. I had flown to Vegas early that morning, hunted through the boxes in the desert heat, jetted back here, met my friend Rover in the darkest sliver of Boston, learned that my ex-girlfriend might be dead, burst into her hotel room, found her alive in the lobby, and now I’d just received an invitation to stay with her.
I was about to answer in the affirmative when the vision of Vinny Mongillo popped into my mind. This isn’t a good thing to have