Strangled - Brian McGrory [42]
Speaking of which, I didn’t see him. Of course, I didn’t expect him to be padding around the Skywalk with one of those stickers on the front of his jacket that says, “Hello, my name is Phantom Fiend.” But I didn’t see anyone who looked the part. Actually, I didn’t see anyone at all, which didn’t entirely thrill me.
So I went to the assigned telescope, which, as described, was tucked into the corner overlooking both the Charles River and downtown Boston. The morning sun sparkled on the calm skin of the water and flashed on the distant office towers. In the distance, the newly clean water of Boston Harbor looked nearly turquoise.
I had no change for the telescope and wasn’t of the mind to walk back into the lobby to get any, so I stood and drank in the view with my bare eyes. Vehicles in miniature dawdled down Boylston Street fifty stories below, reminding me of the Matchbox cars my father used to bring home for me when I was a kid. Down on the street, people were but insignificant little specks flitting about, and I couldn’t help but think that’s how the Phantom regarded them in life as well as in death — as insignificant, a means toward a very temporary gratification, or maybe just a step in his pursuit of fame.
I wondered if on a clear day you could see Hawaii. Probably not. And then I realized I was facing the wrong way, which I deemed to be something of a metaphor, though for what, I wasn’t exactly sure. I did know one thing for certain: it would be nice if Maggie picked up the phone and gave me a call. That said, I hadn’t actually broken a finger dialing her cell phone number, either.
Just then my phone rang. I looked at the incoming number and saw it was “Unavailable.” I answered with my trademark, clipped “Jack Flynn here.”
“I told you to go alone and you’re not,” the Phantom said.
I looked down the long, sun-soaked expanse of the Skywalk in both directions and saw an older man in a Red Sox cap and sunglasses peering through a telescope. From the way he was standing, favoring one leg, I assumed it was Edgar. I replied, “I wasn’t followed, and I haven’t used my phone.”
The Phantom didn’t respond directly to that assertion. Instead, he said without a hint of impatience, “Leave the Prudential Center complex. Drive by taxi to the September 11th memorial in the Public Garden. Go there right away. Again, do not use your cell phone or contact anyone about anything. I will meet you there.”
This Phantom was lucky I had a lot of time on my hands. Truth is, I was starting to doubt his last assertion, that he’d meet me there, and was wondering if this might be some sort of wild serial killer chase, meaning I was going to come away empty-handed and still without a story for the next day’s Record. That being the case, I suspected good old Barry Bor would be getting another call on his show, and I’d have yet another miserable morning to follow.
I did as told again. Should I ever reunite with Maggie Kane, this was probably pretty good practice at being married. Again, a cab happened to be out front, but I was less suspicious because it was an actual cabstand. I rode the six blocks down to the Public Garden in anxious silence, got out at the corner of the park, and walked along the sidewalk of Arlington Street toward the main entrance at the base of Commonwealth Avenue.
This park was also familiar ground. It’s where I got engaged to be married, where I first told a former live-in girlfriend named Elizabeth Riggs that I loved her as we tromped through the sunlit snow one Sunday morning in the calm aftermath of a bad blizzard, where I last