Strangled - Brian McGrory [16]
“Where to?” the cabdriver asked as I flipped the telephone shut.
Good question. I checked my watch — ten o’clock — and thought about how the plane I was supposed to be aboard with Maggie Kane was just touching down in Los Angeles. The plan had been to spend our wedding night at Raffles L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills before grabbing an early-morning connection to Hawaii and enjoying a blissful week of sun and sex at a world-class resort.
And here I was, the brokenhearted pen pal to a possible murderer, sitting in the back of an idling cab with what smelled like a quasi-eaten Big Mac in a discarded bag on the floor.
But back to the question at hand: Where to? My head hurt. My muscles ached. I felt like the entire world was a crowded elevator ride, only the elevator was broken and we were all standing still, looking at the numbers above the doors, frozen in time and place.
“The Hatch Shell, please. Over on the Esplanade.”
The cabdriver, an older gentleman with a graying ponytail, turned and looked at me for the first time. “Excuse me?” he asked, not so much curious as incredulous.
“You know, the Hatch Shell. The Fourth of July concert and all that. ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ ”
“You’re aware that this is March twenty-first, right, not the fricking Fourth of July?”
I replied, “Can you roll the window down? Now that I’m with you, I might as well fling my Palm Pilot away.”
Truth is, I didn’t actually use a Palm Pilot, but still thought the line was pretty good. He didn’t. Rather, he turned back around with something of an eye roll and a huff, and lurched away from the front doors of the Ritz, bound for Storrow Drive.
You see, I had an idea, one that involved exercise for the body and therapy for the mind. My gym was closed at this hour, so that option was taken off the table. Last time I shot baskets at the court near my waterfront condominium, someone nearly shot me, so I preferred not to do that. I was indulging in the next best thing.
My phone rang. It was Howard from the Record library.
“I’m getting no hits off the phrase Phantom Fiend,” he said. He said this in a voice so soft and a tone so flat that I had to wonder if he was taking this morgue nickname to an unhealthy extreme.
I thanked him. He returned to his coffin or wherever it is that he goes between pesky calls from reporters. I looked up as the cabdriver was pulling off Storrow Drive into a little parking area next to the famed Hatch Shell, an open-air stage that sits hard by the Charles River in downtown Boston.
“Where?” he asked, not very polite now.
“Here’s fine.” I paid him as if this was the most normal destination in the city, and casually got out of the car. He pulled back into traffic. I took a minute to let my eyes adjust to the dark.
The wind was blowing downriver from the west, colder than I had anticipated, but invigorating just the same. To my left was the lawn where thousands upon thousands of people would cram in with coolers, baskets, and blankets for the annual Fourth of July concert and fireworks celebration. At the moment, it was dark and empty, the grass still brown and spare from a long, snowy winter. To my right was the stage that would be filled with the Boston Pops Orchestra on that same holiday night. Now it was vacant and forlorn, looking like the open mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy abandoned in the corner of a dark bedroom. I bundled my overcoat around myself and set off toward the water.
With each step, the traffic noise of the roadway faded, and the sounds of my wingtips on the gravelly pavement grew more pronounced. I felt my muscles start to twitch with adrenaline. I felt my head begin to lighten with the anticipation of exercise.
I approached the old brick edifice of the Union Boat Club, a rare building on the miles-long expanse of the Esplanade, which is the local name for the grassy bank of this storied river. I pulled my key chain from my pocket and fidgeted beneath