Strangled - Brian McGrory [155]
I quickly shuffled through them with one hand, shining the light on them with the other, dropping each envelope back into the cart after I had scanned it. I got to the end without finding anything with my name.
So I went to the cart that bore the Record’s zip code, only I found hundreds more letters. I called out in a loud whisper, “Guys, over here, I could use some help,” and I flicked my light around the room. In a moment they were both by my side, and the three of us divvied up the contents of the basket. I was fairly sure we’d find it there.
We didn’t.
I checked the face of my phone — 11:21. Sweeney said, “Follow me, I found a bunch of white boxes with postmarked mail. I’ll bet it’s in there.”
Mongillo and I followed Sweeney across the cluttered floor, stumbling more than a couple of times but ultimately arriving safely. I should have taken Hank’s bet, though, because after we divvied up about six hundred envelopes and shuffled through them, we didn’t even find so much as a phone bill bearing my name.
Now it was 11:23, time to give up. Mac Foley would be toast in the morning Record, in a story under my byline. I briefly tried to convince myself that he deserved it, but both my conscience and my gut told me otherwise.
My hands, by the way, were starting to cramp, probably from lack of food, lack of water, lack of sleep, lack of sex, lack of joy, lack of humanity, lack of virtually anything that normal people have plenty of in their refined and enjoyable lives.
That’s what I was feeling — self-pity — when the first gunshot rang out, the report slamming off the concrete floors and walls and ringing in my ears. I’ll repeat that: a gunshot. A real live honest-to-goodness gunshot, right there in the Back Bay U.S. Postal Service Annex in the dark of a crucial night. When I thought about it for any more than a fraction of a second, it started to make perfect sense, because that’s just plain and simple what happens in the increasingly absurd life of intrepid reporter Jack Flynn.
It’s what I heard after the gunshot that really frightened me. A crash, very near me, as if someone crumpled to the floor not from the sound of the shot but from the impact. I dove for cover, then crawled furiously toward the sounds of despair, which now also included a voice muttering, “Fuck. He got me.” It was, for the record, Vinny Mongillo’s voice.
I extinguished my light so I wouldn’t be a sitting duck, or in this case, reporter. I crawled headfirst into a metal desk, then a tall trash can, grabbing the former before it tipped to the floor. In about twenty seconds, I felt the form of Mongillo lying on his back between a desk chair and a canvas bin.
“Vinny, it’s Jack,” I whispered.
“The fuckers got me,” he said. His voice was more angry than panicked, especially when he added, “Right in my stomach.”
I flicked on the light and circled both my palms around it as I shone the bulb onto Mongillo’s vast abdominal area, which was not unlike trying to hit the continent of Asia with a dart. I didn’t see any bullet hole in his plaid shirt. I didn’t even see any blood. I whispered, “Show me where it hurts,” and he took his big, beefy hand and drew little circles in the air above the right side of his lower stomach.
I shone the light and saw the truth: he was grazed with a bullet that might have cost him an old shirt and a little bit of skin, but it hadn’t penetrated any flesh, or for that matter caused any lasting damage, at least not of the physical kind.
I whispered, “Vin, I think the bullet skimmed your gut. You’ve got nothing worse than a scrape.”
He replied, “Oh, God, man, anywhere but my stomach. Don’t take away the one true pleasure I still have.”
I don’t think he was talking about sex.
I shut my light off and told Vin to stay down and keep his light off as well. I set off across the room in search of that which I didn’t yet know. I stole another glance at my cell phone: 11:25 p.m. We were about to be late.
Hank Sweeney,