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  “Because if you are, I have some information for you.”

  Well, there you have it, my biggest weakness—information, well, along with beautiful women, great food, and handsome dogs, specifically retrievers.

  Crack.

  I whirled toward the action to see an arching fly ball to center field, more shallow than I or anyone else in the park would have liked. The outfielder caught it. Ramirez tagged up and headed for home. It’s a shame they don’t have public transportation right on the playing field because it probably would have gotten him there faster.

  As it was, the catcher caught the throw, completed half that day’s New York Times crossword puzzle, then tagged Ramirez out. Double play. To Ramirez’s credit, it took him so long to run home that it allowed Ortiz to tag up and get to third.

  Back to the man beside me. I asked, “What is it you have?”

  “You’re Mr. Flynn?”

  “No, my father’s Mr. Flynn. He’s dead, though. I just go by Jack. Jack Flynn.”

  I sounded like Bond, James Bond, when I said that, but not really.

  My fellow fan said, “From the Record, right?”

  I nodded.

  “I have a group of associates who want to meet you after the game, in the Boston Cab Company garage. If you’re not there within thirty minutes of the last out, they’re gone, and they’ll take the information somewhere else. We have a story of crucial importance that we’d like to give you.”

  His instructions were formal, rehearsed, as if he had gone over them many times in what I was starting to understand was his tiny mind. Deviation didn’t seem to suit him well, as when I replied, “Not likely. But who are your associates?”

  He fumbled for a moment, collected himself, and returned to the script, “You will see them soon enough. Mr. Flynn, people’s lives depend on your getting this story. Life and death. It’s in your hands.”

  Crack.

  Again, I turned back to the infield and saw batter Jason Varitek racing toward first base. The right fielder was sprinting toward the foul line, heading directly at the Pesky Pole. I saw a blur of white disappear in the short right field stands. I heard a deafening roar. I began clapping along with the rest of civilization, stamping my feet, hollering my approval, until I couldn’t clap, stamp, or holler anymore.

  Then, flush with bravado, I turned back to my mystery man and said, “Tell your friends to go fuck themselves.”

  Elizabeth, standing beside me holding a Cool Dog in each hand, an impassive look on her utterly flawless face, held one out to me and casually replied, “Why don’t you go tell them yourself.”

  I accepted the ice cream and said, “No, no, I wasn’t talking to you.”

  She looked at me curiously. I cast a glance up the aisle, in search of my messenger, but he was nowhere to be found. Elizabeth said, “I had to go all the way over to the first base side to track these things down. You better like it.”

  Oh, I do. I do. I spread some warm chocolate sauce across mine. The Red Sox put New York down one-two-three in the top of the ninth, advancing to within a game of first place. But it ends up, now that the game was over, the night’s excitement had just begun.

  Chapter Two

  I don’t want to sound melodramatic and make this seem like I was meeting an unknown informant in an underground parking garage in the dark of an unfriendly night. That would be a lie. The garage was at street level.

  The Boston Cab Company is located in one of those warehouse-style buildings on the outfield end of Fenway, tucked among the artists’ lofts and sprawling dance clubs that encircle much of the park. Elizabeth and I filed out of the stadium with the rest of a happy humanity, and outside, on Yawkey Way, she grabbed my arm with both her hands in that affectionate way she has and said, “You pick the place, I’ll buy the beer.”

  It was one of those increasingly common situations that required an ever so slightly delicate touch, for the following reasons: My name is Jack Flynn. If that’s not enough of a description, and much to my professional chagrin, in most cases, it’s not, I’m a reporter for The Boston Record, as the lucky messenger pointed out during the game. Actually, I’m the best reporter I know, though with a caveat. My editors often tell me I don’t know a lot—jokingly, I think, or at least I hope.

  Anyway, Elizabeth Riggs is also a reporter, though with The New York Times, her beat being New England and all the news that’s fit to print about it. That’s a little newspaper humor there. Admittedly, she didn’t laugh the first time I used it either.

  The point here being that because we work for two papers that might be considered rivals, I can’t always share with Elizabeth every facet and nuance of my day, nor she with me. At least we both understood that, so I said to her, “Something work-related suddenly came up. Very suddenly. I have to go meet a guy. I don’t have a clue about how long I’ll be, but I suspect not very.”

  We were standing on the street outside of Gate A, with what felt like the entire baseball-loving world jostling past us. My emotions were admittedly mixed. On the one hand, the Sox had won. I had tickets to the next night’s game. I wanted nothing more than to sashay into some bar with the most beautiful woman in town and celebrate what it means to be in the throes of an epic pennant race during the greatest month in the greatest city in the world.

  On the other hand, this was Monday night, September 22. On Wednesday, the aforementioned Elizabeth would be boarding a flight that would take her to a new life in California, where she would become the San Francisco bureau chief for the Times. The prospect of her departure left me feeling somewhere between uneasy and morose, and standing there staring into the biggest, bluest eyes I might ever see in my life, I didn’t like the fact that I was being dragged off on what would likely prove to be a goose chase, and one that probably wouldn’t be all that wild. Good-byes are always tough, tougher still when you’re not there to give them.

  Elizabeth didn’t ask any more questions. She had been as distracted as I had lately, wondering about her new job, wondering about her new life in a faraway city, wondering what the future held for us, as a couple, or not as a couple, whichever the case might be. All good questions, the last of which we had fastidiously avoided. She pushed her hair out of her face, kissed me softly on the lips, and said, “If I’m asleep when you get home, wake me up and fuck me.”

  Just one more reason why I love the woman.

  Elizabeth and I went our separate ways, she heading to our waterfront apartment, me toward, well, I’d soon find out. Blind tips and unknown sources, by the way, aren’t anything particularly novel in my business. In fact, this is how we get much of our best information—from people who care enough, or are angry enough, or hell, even vengeful enough—to reach out to reporters and push dark facts into the glare of publicity. The flip side is, most of these leakers and sources don’t have much of a clue as to what comprises a great or important story. Their idea of a bombshell is often my idea of a New England News Brief, relegated to the middle of the second section if it deserves to be in the paper at all. But you never arrive at the occasional gold mine without slogging your way through so many veins of pyrite.

  Which explains my thoughts as I arrived in front of the closed garage door of the Boston Cab Company, exactly thirty-five minutes after the game ended, meaning I was five minutes late. I didn’t think it would be a problem, mostly because I had it in my mind that this wouldn’t be a particularly useful excursion.

  I walked past the garage, to an unmarked steel door with a simple knob, and pushed against it. The door, to my surprise, opened up into a dark room, which I assumed to be some sort of office or dispatch area. I stared around, looking for desks or computers or anything that might tell me where I was and why I was there, until my eyes slowly adjusted and I realized I was staring into the black expanse of the garage, completely still and seemingly empty. There wasn’t a light on in the place, the only wan illumination coming from the open door just behind me.

  The sound was that of utte
r silence. The odor was a dull potpourri of transmission fluid, motor oil, windshield wash, and engine coolant.

  “Hello,” I hollered. My voice echoed back off the walls and cement floors, then dissolved into the dark like sugar into black coffee. There was no response.

  “This is Jack Flynn,” I yelled. Normally I’d expect, or at least appreciate, cheering and hooting at such a dramatic proclamation. But again, only an echo, followed by silence.

  Now mind you, the most dangerous thing most Record reporters encounter on any given day is lunch in the company cafeteria, especially on, say, Mexican theme day, what with Tony and Val at the grill making their version of a burrito or a plate of nachos. Even this didn’t seem dangerous as much as foolish. Frustrated, I turned around and headed for the door, looking forward to waking Elizabeth, at her request, from her slumber.

  Just as I did, a light flicked on in a distant corner of the sprawling garage, and I whirled toward it. Actually, it was two lights—headlights, of the soft, blue halogen variety, heading directly toward me, though not fast, and perhaps even slow. I leaned against the doorway and waited for what was to come, which in this case was the car and whomever and whatever was in it.

  The vehicle pulled to within a few feet of me and stopped, its engine revving, then calming. I still couldn’t tell the make, the color, who was driving, or how many people were inside. I didn’t know if it was a taxicab. All I could see were the headlights, the high beams striking me square in my eyes. I continued to lean in the doorway, trying to look casual, though admittedly curious as to what the hell was going on.

  The rear passenger’s side door opened up, but nobody got out. The door just hung out there, beckoning, I suppose, but not really. I’ve always wanted my own driver, but the expectation if I ever get one is that I’d at least insist on knowing where he was taking me.

  I heard the subtle sound of a purring motor, a power window descending, followed by the words, “Mr. Flynn, get in.” The voice seemed to be coming from the passenger side of the car. I recalled a scene like this from Lost in Space, but I think it involved an alien craft, not a four-door sedan.

  Still leaning, I asked, “Who are you?”

  “We’ll explain all of that. Please, Mr. Flynn. Please.”

  The voice was neither pleasant nor overbearing, neither tentative nor demanding, more earnest than I might have expected to hear in an otherwise barren garage under circumstances as undefined as these.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “We’re going to get you a story. A big story.”

  Good answer. Right answer. How does someone in my shoes, an admitted news junkie, say no to that?

  “Why don’t I meet you there?” I said this still staring into the teeth of the high beams, still seeing nothing at all.

  Admittedly, that didn’t make a lot of sense, considering I didn’t know where “there” even was, but I was buying time, hoping they’d offer something more in terms of clues or agendas as I tried to delay the inevitable, which involved me getting into the rear seat of this mysterious car.

  He replied with the magic words, “If you don’t want to get in, that’s your choice. We’ll give the Traveler a call.”

  Well, he certainly knew what buttons to press. I mean, I’ve been shot at by assassins, kicked in the head by white supremacists, threatened by governors, lied to by none other than the president of the United States. If you think I have a good sense of danger, then you’re right, and I was starting to sense it here. But all you have to do is tell me that The Boston Traveler, the city’s feisty little tabloid paper, might beat us to the proverbial punch and all appropriate caution is thrown to the side of a potholed road. It’s about how you want to live your life, and I like to live mine by getting to the story first.

  So I walked around the headlights to the open rear passenger door. Outside of the glare, I saw that the car was some sort of dark-colored luxury model, perhaps a Lexus. I saw two men sitting in the front—the driver and the passenger who had goaded me into this act of stupidity—I mean, pursuit of a story. As I slid into the backseat, I couldn’t help but notice another man sitting there beside me, mostly because he had many of the same physical characteristics as a gorilla.

  I settled into the leather seat, looked around at the three silent men, and said, “Anybody want a stick of Juicy Fruit?” Nobody laughed, I guess for good reason, though they might have seen their way to being polite. All three, by the way, were somewhere in their fifties, dressed in black windbreakers and dark pants. None of them looked like they knew the way to the executive washroom, if you know what I mean. The guy beside me was one of those barrel-chested types with Popeye forearms who’s either gone soft from age or forever retains his superhuman strength, though I wasn’t in any real rush to find out which was the case.

  The guy in the front passenger seat, wearing a dark baseball cap—a Red Sox hat, no less—slung low over his forehead jumped out and shut my door behind me. I heard the power locks go down in unison. The wide garage door ascended with a jolting roar. No one in the car spoke—no one but me, who asked, “You mind telling me where we’re headed?”

  Still, silence. I looked at the Cro-Magnon beside me. His face was wide and puffy, his nose broad and hooked, as if it had been broken in prior excursions. He had wisps of grayish-black hair, and his eyes, which stared back at me, were tiny and vacant. I could hear him breathe through his mouth.

  I said, with a faint smile, “Lots of legroom back here.” As I said it, I looked down at his legs, which were short and stubby, mere afterthoughts to his huge torso. He didn’t reply.

  Through the heavily tinted windows, I could see that the car was heading down Boylston Street, heading for downtown Boston. The car drove around the Public Garden, up and over Beacon Hill, and into the financial district, largely barren of people at this time on a Monday night, but for the occasional law firm associate trying to bill more hours than there are in a day.

  I said, “I would have thought Ortiz would have bunted. Lucky he didn’t.”

  More silence. Apparently no one felt like talking baseball, even after such a monumental win. Perhaps only their little messenger had been at the game. Or perhaps these guys were unschooled in the conversational arts.

  By now, the car had driven through Government Center and pulled into a hulking downtown parking garage. I’ll confess, I didn’t quite get it. We left one garage only to arrive at another. The car kept circling through the building, heading upward toward the roof, around and around, past all the empty spaces. Finally, we pulled into a short section marked by signs that said, Reserved, Government Vehicles Only. The driver, who wore a baseball cap, glasses and the previously noted dark windbreaker, threw the car into park and hit the unlock button. The man in the passenger seat jumped out and opened my door.

  Now I didn’t exactly feel like a hostage, but nor did I feel free to come and go, either. As I was walking, I noticed that these Blues Brothers knockoffs essentially had me surrounded, their shoes clicking on the concrete floor as they guided me toward a steel door.

  One of them, the driver, placed a security badge against the door, and there was an audible click. He pushed the door open into a well-lit hallway, and the four of us proceeded down a short, austere corridor amid our practiced silence.

  At a second steel door, same routine. Inside, though, the hallways were carpeted, the lighting softer. We kept walking, took a left, then a quick right, and suddenly I found myself in an outsize office with a mustachioed man in a light blue windbreaker over a shirt and loosely knotted tie sitting behind an enormous wooden desk.

  He stood up. The three men backed out behind me. The office door closed with a soft click.

  “Good evening, Mr. Flynn,” the man said, his whiskers twitching as he spoke in a gentlemanly farmer kind of way. “Nice of you to come out here at this hour. I appreciate that very much.”

  He came around the desk and shook my hand, all friendly and familiar, as if we knew each ot
her, though I had never met him before.

  I replied, just as breezily, “I’m not entirely sure I had a choice.”

  He gave me a low laugh while meeting my gaze. “Oh, you did. You certainly did. And you’re free to go at this very moment if you’d like. I’ll even have my”—and he paused here for a sliver of a second—” associates drive you right to your house.” His mustache twitched again as he flashed a wry smile.

  That’s obviously not what I wanted for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that I was within walking distance of my home, but no need to point that out. And I had come this far, arrived at this unusual sanctum. I wanted to find out who this was and what he had for me.

  When I didn’t respond, he said, “I’m Tom Jankle, special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I’m a fan of your work.”

  I said, needlessly, “Jack Flynn, reporter for The Boston Record.” I didn’t mean to make fun of his introduction, though maybe I did.

  Still in his windbreaker, as if he had just come in from raking leaves in the yard or, say, rounding up a collection of bank robbers, he beckoned me to a pair of upholstered chairs around a low-slung coffee table. Tom Jankle was, in a word, famous. I’ll throw out another one: celebrated. He was arguably the most effective agent in the entire beleaguered Bureau, a one-man crime-busting squad who took down the New England Mafia, the Irish Mafia, politicians, bank robbers, white-collar criminals who thought they were above the law—anyone and everyone. And he did it all with a strangely unassuming air about him, as if he were an engineer in a struggling high-tech company out on Route 128, not an agent with the most powerful law enforcement organization in the world.

  And there I was, in my first face-to-face with him, wearing faded jeans and a lazy navy blue sweater over an old tee shirt. My breath was a combination of the Italian sausage, Cracker Jack, peanuts and multiple beers I had consumed during the game, not to mention the Cool Dog. And yet, he made me feel perfectly comfortable.