Brothers and Bones (31 page)

“So,” I said, “how about you? Did you find anything?”

“I don’t think so. The Lord’s Prayer, also called the Our Father, was taught by Jesus to his disciples. He never actually used it himself, apparently, because it asks for forgiveness of sins, and using it would have implied that he was guilty of some sin or other, and Jesus was supposed to be above that kind of shit.”

Referring frequently to the copies in his hand, Bonz gave me a brief but surprisingly lucid lecture on the prayer, from its current form—which apparently derived from a version imposed upon England during Henry VIII’s rule—through its treatment by the King James translators, to scholarly interpretations of various phrases appearing in the prayer, and finally to its use in penance and while saying the rosary.

After taking me on a tour through the history of the Lord’s Prayer, Bonz gave me a similar, even lengthier exegesis on the Hail Mary. In all, it was a tidy little presentation and I was impressed and more than a little surprised. Bonz was proving to be more intelligent than I’d given him credit for. But in addition to being impressed, I was also depressed, because I heard nothing helpful in anything Bonz had told me.

“So what’s next?” he asked. His body was fairly relaxed as he stood—a holstered weapon at the moment—but his eyes were restless, flitting around the room, his gaze moving from one library patron to another, over to a librarian, to the guy by the copier, to the shadowy area between some bookcases, to the various entrances and exits visible from our location. Despite having acquitted himself well at his research task, he was a man of action, not words, either written or spoken. I could see it was hard for him to wait for a research breakthrough, maybe an inspiration about the history or text of the prayers. Frankly, I think he just wanted to do some old-fashioned head-busting. But, as I said, he’d proven he wasn’t stupid. If we could find the tape without having to go looking for the people who were looking for us, all the better.

“What’s next?” I said. “I’ve got to digest all this.” I waved the printed prayers at him. “And I’m still thinking about the church, Saint John’s. I must have missed something there.”

“You wanna go back?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. At least not yet. Risky to retrace our steps, probably. Also, I remember pretty well what I saw. If I did miss something, I’ll figure out what it was eventually.”

Bonz nodded but said nothing. But I thought I saw something on his often-inscrutable face.

“What?” I asked.

He shrugged.

“What is it?” I asked again.

“Nothing.”

“Like hell. What are you thinking?”

“Well,” he began, “I was just thinking that Jake thought you were a mental marvel, a real whiz kid. Albert Einstein back from the dead and all that.”

“Yeah?” I thought I saw where he was heading.

“Well, if that’s true, if you’re as smart as all that, why haven’t you figured this out yet? Jake left you a clue he must have thought you’d be able to use. But you’re stumped. That’s all.”

I sighed. I’d half expected this question. “I’ll tell you a secret. One nobody knows. One Jake never knew.” I had Bonz’s attention. “That IQ test I took when I was ten? The one that convinced everyone I was going to cure cancer one day while designing antigravity hover suits in my spare time?”

“Yeah?”

“I cheated on it.”

“No.”

“Yes. I went up to the teacher’s desk to ask for a new pencil because I’d worn my eraser to an unusable nub, and right there on her desk was the answer key. I only glanced at it for a moment, and it was upside down, mind you, but remember I told you that I have almost an eidetic memory? Well, I looked at that sheet for only a couple of seconds while the teacher got me a new pencil, and I memorized it. Well, I saw patterns, anyway, the little circles you fill in with dots—A, B, C, or D—and I saw how the dots were arranged in relation to each other. And somehow I remembered it. I hadn’t meant to cheat. I just remembered it. When I got back to my desk I turned my paper upside down and copied down the arrangement of dots I’d seen. Turns out, I remembered it very well. My score was off the charts. My parents were dead by then, but the school told Jake, and that’s why he called me Wiley. They tried to retest me over the years but I always refused, saying I didn’t want to be labeled a freak. They wanted to skip me ahead a few grades, but I begged Jake not to let them and he stuck by me. After that, every time I didn’t do well in school, everyone assumed I wasn’t sufficiently challenged. I was still an above-average student, just not a budding rocket scientist. I grew up, did fairly well at school, well enough to get into Tufts University, where I did well enough to get into Northeastern University Law School, where I did fine but not exceptionally well. So you see, Charlie Beckham, super genius, is really Charlie Beckham, probably-slightly-above-average-intelligence guy.”

There it was. My dark secret. One I’d never had the courage to reveal to Jake, which always bothered me.

“Oh,” Bonz said.

My big revelation didn’t seem to have as much of an impact on him as I expected.

“You’re not surprised?” I asked.

“Not really. You’re no dummy, but you’re no Einstein either. No offense.”

How could I take offense? He was right.

“Let’s go,” Bonz said. “We shouldn’t spend too long in one place, and we’ve been here for a couple of hours now.”

He was right again, so we made our way back to the main staircase and started down the steps.

That’s when the two cops walked into the library.

THIRTY-THREE

Standing on the landing halfway up the steps, peering around one of the marble lions, I watched the two policemen speak to the woman at the information counter near the library’s front doors.

“Maybe they’re not here for us,” I said.

“Yeah,” Bonz replied, “maybe they just got a sudden hard-on to read poetry to each other. And that picture they’re showing to the lady at the desk? Wonder whose face is on it?”

“All right, they’re here for us.”

“Yeah, but look how relaxed they are. They’re probably just doing a routine sweep of the area. They don’t imagine we’re actually here, in a library. They think we’re on the run somewhere far from here, on a train or bus. That’s gotta work in our favor.”

I looked around. A boy, maybe ten years old, was sitting at the top of the stairs leafing through a magazine. I hurried back up to him and tried to look a little panicked. It probably wasn’t a real stretch, at that moment.

“Hey, kid!” I said, sounding out of breath. “You gotta go get help. There’s a pregnant woman up there on the second floor, in the religion section, and she’s on the ground holding her stomach.”

The poor kid suddenly looked terrified. I said, “I’m going back to her. You go to the woman at the front desk, tell her to call the cops and get them up here fast.”

He just stood there looking at me.

“Hurry!

His paralysis wore off and he tore past us, down the stairs, and across the marble foyer. I slipped over to where Bonz was waiting behind one of the lions, then cautiously looked down the stairs. The kid went first toward the woman behind the counter, then, as I hoped, he spotted the policemen and made straight for them. We watched him gesticulate madly, shrug emphatically, point back up the stairs the way he’d come—toward us, though he couldn’t see us where we were standing—then follow in the cops’ wake as they trotted directly toward us. One of the policemen was already on his radio as they started up the steps.

“They’re looking for two men,” Bonz said quickly. “Separate. You go up, wait a few seconds, then come back down and meet me outside.”

He turned quickly and walked down the steps, copied pages in hand, right past the cops. I walked up, casually, and the cops rushed past me and turned left at the top of the stairs. I kept my face averted and, thankfully, they didn’t notice my extensive facial bruising. I figured I had more than enough time to get away. Even with directions from a reference librarian on the second floor, it had taken us a while to make our way to the remote religion section. By the time the policemen reached that area, searched between all the shelves, and, after finding no pregnant damsel in distress, questioned the library patrons nearby, Bonz and I would be gone and the cops would assume they’d been the victims of a daring practical joker who put one over on the kid. The poor kid might himself get a lecture, too.

After half a minute or so I turned around, descended past the lions, and walked across the marble foyer and out onto the sidewalk.

Bonz met me on the corner of Boylston and Dartmouth Streets. He was already wearing the twelve-dollar sunglasses we’d picked up at a corner drugstore. I followed his lead and slipped on my pair.

We were on foot, as we’d ditched our stolen pickup for good before heading to the library. Couldn’t keep riding around in the same stolen car for long. We’d paid cash for three nights when we checked into the motel, but we weren’t sure whether we’d feel it was safe to go back later, so I had our backpack slung over my shoulder with all our stuff in it—Jake’s notes, our library research, the walkie-talkies and rope we’d bought at Walgreens, and the duct tape. Bonz still carried the Belmont cop’s gun, which probably earned the cop some serious disciplinary action. Plus, of course, we still had our trusty Swiss Army knives.

We stood briefly in line at a Wendy’s on Boylston, keeping our faces turned away from the other patrons as much as possible, and got a couple of meals to go. Then we hailed a cab and ate cheeseburgers and greenish-brown salads as we talked so much about prayer that the driver must have thought we were ministers preparing for our next sermons. When we exhausted our prayer talk, Bonz fell silent and I replayed the mind pictures I’d taken at the church, letting the slide show run in a continuous loop in my subconscious. Now and then I focused directly on it, straining, praying even, for an epiphany, concentrating on what I’d seen at the church—the altar, Christ hanging on the cross, the organ, confessionals, lockers, closets. Sadly, the clouds didn’t part for a sunlight-golden burst of inspiration.

The cab dropped us back at the Stay-Long Motel in East Boston. As it pulled away, I said to Bonz, “Let’s slip into the lobby. I can see a newspaper rack in there. I wouldn’t mind reading what the city’s saying about us.”

Bonz followed me to the check-in counter, where a twentyish clerk with sleepy eyes sat behind the counter watching TV. He glanced up when we came in, looked at me, than at Bonz, then back at me, then returned his eyes to the little television set. I couldn’t see the screen but I heard the banging, clanging, boinging sound effects of cartoon mayhem.

I took a
Boston Beacon
from the rack, walked over to the counter, and put two quarters down in front of the kid. He barely glanced up as he swept the coins off the counter.

“Thanks,” he said.

I turned and left the office with Bonz right behind me. Outside, I started for our room. Halfway there, Bonz stopped, turned, and went back down to the lobby. I followed right behind. The kid was standing with his hand on the phone when I entered a moment after Bonz.

“Hey, is that your car out there?” Bonz asked.

“Which one?” the kid said.

“The Jetta. They’re towing it.”

“Not mine.”

“Oh,” Bonz said casually, “what do you drive?”

“Eighty-two Firebird.”

Bonz whipped the gun out of the waistband at the small of his back and pointed it at the kid’s face. The kid’s eyes opened wide and locked on the gun.

“Keys,” Bonz said. “Right fucking now.”

The kid fumbled in his pants pocket and produced a jangling set of keys, which Bonz snatched from his hand.

“Was that the cops you just called,” Bonz asked, “or someone else?”

“Cops.”

Wow. The kid had been cool. Barely looked at us when we came in, but somehow he made us and kept his head, despite the fact that I was wanted for murder and Bonz was just plain scary. As cool as he’d been, though, he looked plenty frightened now.

“You gonna kill me?” he asked.

“It’s your lucky day,” Bonz said as he turned and left the lobby with me close behind. We hurried across the parking lot to where a dark-blue Firebird sat in the relative shade of a scraggly tree. Bonz unlocked it, slid behind the wheel, and unlocked my door for me. I tossed the backpack and the newspaper into the backseat and fastened my seat belt. Bonz turned the key in the ignition and I was gratified to hear a healthy, throaty roar from the car’s engine. We left probably a quarter of our tire rubber on the pavement of the parking lot as Bonz floored the accelerator and sped away from the motel. He took us off the main drag and through some side streets to avoid the police units, which no doubt would soon be arriving at the motel. Soon, we were heading back toward Boston.

“If we’re gonna stick around the city, Charlie, which we agree we need to do if we’re gonna find that tape or figure out your brother’s clue, then we’re starting to run out of time.”

“I know,” I said, realizing how close that call had been. The cops were snapping at our heels. And I had no doubt that Carmen Siracuse’s men weren’t far behind, either.

“So how’s it coming?” Bonz asked as we sped toward the city.

“What’s that?”

“Your work on your brother’s clue. Any closer to a solution?”

I shook my head. “No closer.”

“Ready to try my plan then?”

“The one where we go around town and beat up Mafia guys?”

“Well, I’d probably be the one beating them up while you cheered me on, but yeah, that’s the plan.”

“Well, Bonz, I think I’d rather stick with—”

A vibration against my chest made me pause.

“Stick with what?” Bonz said.

“Hang on.” I reached into the inside breast pocket of my leather jacket and closed my hand on Randy Deacon’s cell phone, which was vibrating silently. I’d meant to turn it off after calling Jessica to preserve the battery, but clearly I’d forgotten. Anyway, I had a call. Or Randy did. Only one way to find out.