Brothers and Bones (4 page)

Kidder stepped in again. “And despite my misgivings about this particular trial, Charlie, I think you’re a good attorney. If Andrew believes in you, then I will. Make us proud.”

Making Michael Kidder proud wasn’t high on my to-do list, but I certainly planned to do a good job putting Redekov away. I could sense that it was time for me to leave Lippincott’s office. I was surprised to still be lead counsel for the trial, but I managed to collect myself enough to say, “I, uh, well, I want you to know that, I think…I mean, I know…that I won’t let you down.”

My cheeks suddenly felt very hot, like I’d opened an oven door to check on some brownies. I’m sure I turned an alarming shade of red. Boy, if Vasily Redekov’s lawyers could only have heard me then, they’d have been shaking in their size-eleven Bruno Maglis.

Lippincott nodded. “I know you won’t,” he said, though he looked slightly uncertain. This, of course, did wonders for my confidence. I muttered something I hoped sounded reassuring and left his office. I think I even stumbled on the corner of an ornate Persian rug near the door on my way out. I was one smooth fella.

* * *

“It has to be because you’re sleeping with his daughter,” Angel said as he stood again at my office door.

I gave him my best steely-eyed stare—which, to my knowledge, has never intimidated anyone—and said, “First of all, I’m not just ‘sleeping’ with her, Angel. And second, that’s not the reason I’m still lead counsel.”

“Well, if that’s not it, as you say, there has to be another explanation.”

“I’m partial to the theory that he thinks I’m the best lawyer for the job.”

Angel rubbed his chin. “No, that can’t be it. Hey, you’re not sleeping with him, too, are you?”

Angel’s quick. He had to be, or the ruler I threw at him from my desk would have nailed him in the forehead before he ducked. As it was, it sailed over him and bounced off the desk of my assistant, Patty, who paused in her telephone conversation long enough to give me an icy glare. I smiled weakly at her before Angel straightened up again, which, thankfully, blocked me from Patty’s view.

“Today’s Thursday, Angel,” I said. “No court tomorrow. So have your fun now, because I have until Monday to get my head back in the game, which I’m going to do over the weekend, and then, starting first thing next week, I’m going to work you like a Roman galley slave.”

He narrowed his eyes at me and seemed to be trying to come up with an adequate response. Then he sighed in defeat. “I don’t suppose Lippincott’s got any other daughters, has he?” I shook my head. “And sleeping with his wife wouldn’t get me anywhere, I guess.”

“His wife is dead, Angel.”

“Well, then, I refuse to sleep with her. I’ve got my standards. What about Kidder?”

“What about him?”

“He married?”

“You interested in him or his wife?”

“Who’s prettier?”

“I met her once. It’s a toss-up.” I smiled.

He shook his head and walked away. The instant he was gone, so was my smile. “Thanks, Wiley,” the homeless guy had said.

FOUR

The more I thought about the homeless man in the Harvard sweatshirt, the more I realized he couldn’t have been Jake. Any similarities I’d seen were the result of my mind seeing what it wanted so badly to see. If it had been Jake, why wouldn’t he have just identified himself and spoken to me? Why drop a hint then disappear? It didn’t make sense. I was imagining things.

Wasn’t I?

I didn’t know. I wanted so desperately to find Jake, and to find him alive, that I was ready to believe anything. Maybe what Jessica told me for years before I finally started to listen to her was true: my obsession about Jake’s disappearance wasn’t healthy.

But I think it was understandable. There was a time in my life when Jake was all I had in the world. He was my only sibling and, for most of my life, my only family. I worshipped him.

My parents had Jake when they were in their midtwenties. I was an accident that happened eleven years later, though Jake assured me I was a happy one. Unhappier accidents crouched on the horizon, waiting to pounce. One day thirty years ago, when I was a six-year-old kid whose biggest concern was whether I’d get the bike I wanted for my birthday, my parents were killed by—believe it or not—an empty fried chicken bucket. Both sad and ridiculous, I know. They were driving home from a dinner party when the teenaged passenger in the car in front of them tossed an empty fried chicken bucket out his window. The cops said the cars were doing about sixty at the time, the bucket bounced off my parents’ windshield, and my father lost control of the car. They hit a guardrail, flipped, and rolled along the highway. My parents were dead before the car came to a stop. In the span of eight seconds, their lives were over and ours would never be the same again.

As soon as he turned eighteen, just ten months later, Jake rescued me from my foster home, where I was not mistreated but where I was far from happy. And he raised me. He made sure the bulk of the money we received from our parents’ insurance policies went toward my care. And his personal life suffered. He had no time to spend with his friends, so they drifted away. He had no spare time or money to date. When he should have been living it up, an eighteen-year-old with the world by the balls, he was playing father, mother, and big brother to me. He put the insurance money away, used it only when he had to for my needs, and supplemented it by pumping gas full-time at a Shell station, taking overtime when he could get it.

It wasn’t easy for him. I think it got to him at times, though he never wanted me to know it. Now and then I’d see him looking different somehow, in a way I didn’t fully understand at my age. It was probably anxiety, maybe about me, maybe about money. Perhaps he was chafing under the burden of responsibility that had fallen on him so unfairly, so much more heavily than on his peers. But when I’d catch him looking that way and ask him if he was all right, he’d say, “I’m just Jake.” I didn’t know what he meant at the time but his smile was enough to send me off happily. When I was in high school, I learned that in the jazz age of the 1920s, if something was “jake” it meant it was fine, just great. Maybe I read it in
The Great Gatsby
. Anyway, in later years, my standard greeting to my brother after any kind of extended absence was, “How are you?” and he’d always answer, “I’m just Jake.”

But, as I said, there were times when I was very young when he seemed to be a little overwhelmed by our circumstances, though he didn’t want me to know that. And, of course, I didn’t realize—and therefore didn’t appreciate—his sacrifices at the time. I mouthed off, acted bratty, complained about the things he didn’t do for me or give me, until I grew up a little—okay, a lot. But eventually, after a few years, I understood. And then I raised him up into the place he’d earned on the pedestal I created for him.

He went to night school, majored in journalism, and, even though he only went to a community college, he landed a job at the
Boston
Beacon
, the third-largest newspaper in the city, writing small stories. He worked hard, took whatever assignments he could get, and sharpened his skills. Over time, he made some contacts of his own, earned their trust, and turned them into confidential sources. Eventually he became a pretty good investigative journalist. He never broke the really big story, but he made a small name for himself. And that was enough for him, I think.

But I still wonder what he could have accomplished if it hadn’t been for that phone call fate had sent my brother’s way. More importantly, I think about all the times we would have shared but for that night thirteen long years ago. I was studying for a tort law exam at Northeastern University Law School at two in the morning when two policemen paid me a visit. The presence of cops at your door in the middle of the night does little to make you think you’re going to be getting much sleep after they’re gone. And indeed I didn’t. They told me that, according to a reporter friend of my brother’s, Jake and he were having lunch in a pub downtown two days earlier when Jake received a page. He went to a pay phone, made a call, and left quickly, telling the reporter he’d see him back at the
Beacon
’s offices in two hours. He didn’t make it. And he didn’t make it to work the next day. Or ever again.

He was gone for good, it seemed. And it started with a single phone call. For the second time, fate had turned my life inside out. It didn’t just throw me a curveball—it sizzled a fastball into my ear.

I rubbed my eyes and focused on the Redekov case file sitting on my desk in front of me. Thinking about the past wasn’t going to do me any good in my trial preparation. I realized I’d been staring at the file for an hour but hadn’t read a single word. My intention that night had been to try to put the mystery of the homeless man out of my mind, at least for the night and concentrate on Vasily Redekov. I called Jessica and told her I couldn’t meet for dinner. I planned to work late that night, plug away on the case some more on Friday, then spend the rest of the weekend at the office.

That was my plan at the time, anyway.

* * *

I started looking for the homeless man around ten o’clock that night. Armed with a cup of coffee to fight off the chill in the air, I began to walk the streets I thought might be home to the homeless. I soon found I had very little idea where to start. To my shame, I realized I’d never paid much attention to the homeless I passed every day. Then I remembered sometimes seeing people lounging in doorways asking for money on Cambridge Street, so I headed in that direction, toward the Charles River.

As I walked, leaving Boston’s financial district behind, I began to feel that damned prickling sensation on the back of my neck. Cambridge Street was quiet. Nearly deserted, in fact, which didn’t thrill me. But I was even less thrilled when I turned to look behind me and saw a figure melt into the shadows of a doorway two blocks back. Or I thought I did.

I began to sweat as I watched the doorway for five full minutes without seeing a hint of movement. I’d imagined it, of course.

I wished Dr. Fielding were with me then. He never believed me when I talked about being followed, which can be both comforting and frustrating as hell. But he usually made me feel better, at least for a while.

Continuing down Cambridge Street, I thought I heard footsteps behind me now and then, but when I turned around, I saw no one. There were a few other people on the street who clearly were
not
following me, and I ignored them. But those footsteps still bothered me, as they always did when I imagined hearing them. I hated being a little nuts.

I stopped at the end of Cambridge, right near the Charles River, in sight of the concrete staircase that curved up in a gentle spiral from the ground and spanned over Storrow Drive before curving to the ground again on the other side. I stood for a moment in the comforting, brightly lit doorway of a corner convenience store. Here there was light. Across the street, where the stairs met the ground, there were shadows. Within the shadows I thought I saw movement. For a long moment I had trouble coming up with a good reason to go from here to there. Then I thought of Jake and my feet began to move without me even telling them to.

I’d like to say I honestly wasn’t nervous about approaching the darkness under those concrete stairs. I can’t. I stopped just before passing into the shadows under the bridge, my heart thumping loudly enough for me to wonder if someone had a boom box under there. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness in front of me, I watched indistinct forms slowly take shape, turning into a stack of cardboard boxes, a pile of blankets, some plastic grocery bags filled with what appeared to be empty aluminum cans. I stared into the shadows a moment longer, half hoping I’d find a person there, half hoping I wouldn’t. Maybe it was more of a one-quarter, three-quarters split.

Then the pile of blankets moved and I saw it wasn’t a pile of blankets at all. It was a man and a woman with a canvas tarp pulled over them. They sat up and blinked at me, the whites of their eyes glittering and wet in the dark. A moment later another set of eyes, smaller than the other two, appeared. The woman pushed the child back down and covered it with a corner of the tarp. I made a mental note to call the Department of Social Services the next morning.

The man rose much more quickly than I expected and I was sure he’d smash his head on the underside of the stairs, but he stood without hesitation, his head stopping a fraction of an inch below the coarse concrete above him. He took a few steps forward and stopped three feet away from me. I knew immediately he wasn’t the man I’d seen in the subway station. He was older, thinner, and, if it was possible, a little scarier-looking. I’m not a small guy. I’m five-eleven, a hundred eighty pounds, in decent shape. But there was something intimidating about this man. Maybe it was simply the shadows that made me so nervous, and the way they seemed to cling to the man. But more likely it was the guy’s dead eyes.

I shifted my own eyes to the darkness behind him, looking for others like him, but saw that he and the woman and child were alone. Except for me.

I swallowed nervously and said, “I’m looking for a man.”

“Wrong part of town for that,” he said in a phlegmy voice.

I realized I should have thought about what I’d say if I actually found a homeless person. “No,” I said, “I’m looking for a particular man. He’s a…he lives on the street, I think.”

He blinked at me.

“Um,” I said, “maybe you’ve seen him. Or know him.”

Silence. Staring. Churning in my stomach.

I continued. “He’s a little taller than you, I’d say. Long hair, long beard. Stoops a little. I’ve seen him a few times down in the subways—the MGH Station, State Street, South Station.” I strained my memory for some other identifying feature. “I think he wears a Harvard sweatshirt of some kind.”

The man regarded me impassively for a moment, then said, “I’m a BC man myself.”

I looked down at his tattered Boston College sweatshirt.