Part 76 (2/2)

”Inside the coffee shop, yeah. Two people remembered seeing a tall, slim guy wearing a baseball cap and Ray-Bans-they couldn't agree on his age, but they both knew what kind of sungla.s.ses he wore-who stood by the door, looking down at a leaflet in his hand.”

”Anything else they remember about him?”

”Yeah. He wore driving gloves. Black. Middle of the summer, guy's wearing gloves, n.o.body finds him suspicious. Jesus.”

She stopped to light her third cigarette of the walk. Clarence took that as his signal to go off the path again and sniff a pile of s.h.i.+t left by another dog. Probably the primary reason I've never owned a dog is because of this colorful aspect of their personalities. Give Clarence another thirty seconds, he'd try to eat it.

I snapped my fingers. He looked up at me with that slightly confused, slightly guilty look that to me is the most defining characteristic of his species.

”Leave it,” I said, again relying on recollections of Bubba for my tone of voice.

Clarence turned his head sadly and then wiggled his b.u.t.t away from it, and we all resumed walking.

It was another dull August day, humid and clammy without being particularly hot. The sun was somewhere behind slate clouds and the mercury hovered in the high seventies. The bicyclists and joggers and speed-walkers and Rollerbladers all seemed to be moving past us through a jungle of thin, transparent cobwebs.

Along this stretch of the river path, small tunnels cropped up every now and then. No more than sixty feet long and fifteen wide, they formed the bases of the footbridges that led pedestrians over from the other side of the Soldiers Field Road/Storrow Drive split. Walking through the tunnels, stooping slightly, felt like walking through a child's fun house. I felt huge and a bit silly.

”My car was stolen,” Vanessa said.

”When?”

”Sunday night. I still can't believe this has been only a week. You want to hear about Monday through Thursday?”

”Very much.”

”Monday night,” she said, ”someone managed to slip past building security and throw the main circuit breaker in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Power was off for about ten minutes. No big deal unless your alarm clock is electric and fails to go off in the morning and you end up being seventy-five minutes late for opening arguments in a f.u.c.king murder trial.” A small gasp escaped her lips, and she bit down on it and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes.

”Tuesday night, I come home to a series of p.o.r.nographic recordings on my answering machine.”

”Guy's voice, I a.s.sume.”

She shook her head. ”No. The caller had placed the phone up to a TV playing p.o.r.nographic movies. Lots of moaning and 'Take that, b.i.t.c.h,' and 'Come in my face,' s.h.i.+t like that.” She flicked her cigarette into the damp sand to the left of the path. ”Normally, I guess I'd have shrugged it off, but I was starting to get a feeling of dread in my stomach, and the message total was twenty.”

”Twenty,” I said.

”Yup. Twenty different recordings of p.o.r.no movies. Wednesday,” she said with a long sigh, ”someone pickpockets my wallet from my bag as I eat lunch in the courtyard of the federal courthouse.” She patted the bag slung over her shoulder. ”All I have in here is cash and whatever credit cards I was smart enough to leave in the drawer back home because they'd made my wallet bulge.”

Just to my left, Clarence suddenly stopped and c.o.c.ked his head high and to his left.

Vanessa stopped, too weary to pull him forward, and I stopped with her.

”Any activity on the stolen credit cards before you noticed they were gone?”

She nodded. ”At a hunting and fis.h.i.+ng store in Peabody. A man-the f.u.c.king clerks remember he was a man, but they never noticed he was using a f.u.c.king woman's credit card-purchased several lengths of rope and a buck knife.”

About 150 yards ahead of us, three teenage boys broke from a tunnel on Rollerblades, their feet slas.h.i.+ng expertly back and forth in front of one another, bodies low, arms swinging in tandem with their feet. It looked like they were talking s.h.i.+t to one another, laughing, goading one another on.

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