D
anny sat behind the wheel of the Honda. In the passenger’s seat next to him sat the man in the suit, tall and lanky yet powerfully built.
“Place the call,” Dr. Mendoza said.
“He’s on his boat. I don’t even know if a call can get through.”
“For your sake, for your daughter’s sake, let us hope it does.”
Galvin was on his boat, waiting for Danny to give him the all-clear signal.
But this call would change everything.
Once again, Danny felt a terrible clarity. His daughter’s life depended on this. He remembered the morning when Sarah and he had strapped their tiny baby into a car seat and drove her home from the hospital. A howling snowstorm outside, and they’d covered her face with a pink-and-blue-striped baby blanket to protect her from the snow during the dash from the hospital to their car. He drove as if the baby was made of glass, as if the baby’s life was in his hands, and it was.
As it was now.
The most precious thing in the world to him.
His stomach was roiling. He was frightened and alone and his baby’s life depended on him. Abby or Tom Galvin—was that even a choice?
He punched the numbers for Galvin’s BlackBerry. It rang once, twice, three times, and he thought:
What if he doesn’t answer? What will this monster in the seat next to me do?
On the third ring, Galvin answered. “Danny?”
“Tom—don’t leave yet. I have—something to give you.”
“Danny? What, did you say—give me—?”
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said, and he ended the call.
“Where is Galvin?”
“Boston Harbor,” Danny said softly.
“The faster you take us there,” Dr. Mendoza said, “the faster our business will be concluded.”
“What are you going to do to him?”
A long silence. “That will be determined by his behavior.”
Danny drove like an automaton. Not another word was exchanged between the two men on the way over. His chest was tight. He found it hard to breathe. He was acutely aware of Dr. Mendoza’s presence next to him. It burned his cheeks and ears like he was standing next to a raging fire.
Traffic had gotten light, and they made it there in twelve minutes.
He pulled the Honda into the Boston Yacht Haven parking lot. He got out, his legs leaden, a prickle at the back of his neck.
As they came around the side of the clubhouse to the dock, Dr. Mendoza drew up close to him. “Do I need to tell you that if anything happens to me, if I do not place a call to my associate within an hour, harm will befall her?” He glanced at his wristwatch, a large white face with gold numbers and a brown leather strap. “You will see I am not in the business of making idle threats.”
Danny nodded. He felt light-headed, thick and slow. He moved as if through sludge.
“And where is his yacht?” Mendoza demanded.
El Antojo
wasn’t tied up at the dock. Its berth was empty.
He pointed. Galvin’s yacht had left shore. It was a few hundred yards off, its running lights illuminating the ship with an orange glow as if lit from within.
“He’s left?” Mendoza said. “This is most unfortunate for you.”
“He’s out there. I told him not to go anywhere.”
Danny could taste the salt in the air. He heard the scuff of a shoe against pavement nearby, but when he turned he saw nothing.
“You had better persuade him to turn back now.”
Danny looked at Mendoza, then looked at the water. He said nothing.
“Let us be clear, you and I,” Mendoza said. “If he does not return to shore, your daughter is dead. It is as simple as that. If you cannot persuade him, your daughter is dead. It all rests on you.”
“Christ!” Danny said. His nerves felt stretched taut. He took out his cell phone and was about to hit
REDIAL
.
But then he stopped. Shook his head.
“Make the call,” Mendoza said.
“No.”
Mendoza’s eyes flashed. For the first time, Danny detected anger in the man’s face. Anger was good. Anger revealed vulnerability.
“You give the order to release Abby,” Danny said, “and I’ll get Galvin back here. But you’d better do it now, or you’ll lose Tom Galvin forever. Once Galvin’s out of cell range, it’s too late for you.”
“You do not make the rules of this game.”
“Let her go and I’ll make the call. You want a hostage, you have me. But let her go now. I want to hear her voice. Then I’ll give you whatever the hell you want.”
Mendoza gave Danny a basilisk stare. Taking a small mobile phone from his suit jacket, he spoke quickly in Spanish. Danny understood nothing of what he said.
Mendoza handed the phone to Danny.
“Daddy?” Abby croaked into the phone.
“Abby!” Danny said, tears in his eyes. “Baby. Where are you?”
“They tied me up! I think there’s a furnace? It’s like the boiler room—the basement of the school.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“He just left, Daddy, he’s gone. He cut off the things, the—those, like, plastic things for handcuffs?”
“You can move?”
“Yeah. I just want to get out of here. I—”
“Call Lucy. Right now. Ask her to pick you up at school. Can you do that?”
“Yeah. I—” She started crying. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry—”
“Boogie. Sweetie. Just call Lucy, would you do that for me?”
He hung up the phone.
Mendoza nodded, and Danny nodded back.
“As I have said, I am a man of my word,” Mendoza said. “And now it is your turn.”
Danny dialed the number for Galvin’s BlackBerry. It rang once, and then Galvin came on the line.
“Danny, what the hell is it?”
“Please, Tom, listen to me. You need to return to shore. Come back in. This is important.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just—it’s important. I’m here on shore. Come back.” He clicked off.
Mendoza, he noticed, had suddenly flinched. Danny turned to look and felt an iron grip on his left upper arm and something cold and hard pressing into the side of his head and he knew it was a gun. He froze.
He heard another scuffing sound and saw someone was holding a gun to Dr. Mendoza’s head as well. They were flanked by two men who smelled of cigarettes and body odor and whose bulging arms were tattooed down to their wrists.
In front of them stood Glenn Yeager. At his side he held a large stainless steel pistol. He wasn’t bothering to point it at Danny and Mendoza. He didn’t need to. His muscle was taking care of that for him.
“Well, Daniel,” Yeager said. “Looks like you’ve brought us a Sinaloa legend. Dr. Mendoza, it’s good to finally make your acquaintance.”
Mendoza stared straight ahead.
Danny looked back at Yeager, dazed.
“Oh, yeah,” Yeager said, smiling, “and thanks for the tip. As always, we’re three steps ahead of you. Forgot about Galvin’s BlackBerry, didn’t you? Forgot we were listening in to everything you and Galvin said. Well, you enjoy your new babysitters. Phil and I have some business to transact with your friend Tom Galvin. And, Daniel?”
Danny looked at Yeager. Yeager smiled. “I knew you’d do the right thing.”
Danny saw where Yeager was heading: down the ramp to the lower level of the pier where some of the smaller ships were tied up. Down there, Philip Slocum and several other guys with guns were boarding what looked like a large black inflatable raft with an outboard motor. Slocum had a large assault rifle slung around one shoulder.
Then the inflatable’s motor roared throatily to life. Danny turned instinctively to the loud noise, and he felt Mendoza’s left arm twitch.
Suddenly, Mendoza torqued his body to his right, whipping his free left hand around. Something caught the light, something glinting and lethal and slashing. In almost the same instant, the man on Mendoza’s right turned questioningly toward Mendoza. Around his throat was a thin red seam. As the man moved, the seam in his throat gaped open and a geyser of blood spewed forth, and the man’s knees buckled and he sank to the sidewalk.
Then Mendoza spun to his other side as Danny jumped out of the way. The man who a moment earlier had been holding a gun to Danny’s temple now lurched away from the blade concealed in Mendoza’s left sleeve.
The blade whooshed in the air, missing its target. Danny dove to the ground, taking cover behind a tall concrete planter.
What happened next took no more than ten seconds, but it seemed to take minutes, as if time had somehow slowed.
Dr. Mendoza juked behind a broad wooden column, a large gun in his hand. He moved with balletic grace. The other man fired, the muzzle flash a tongue of orange flame, and a shot splintered the wood a few inches from Mendoza’s head.
Another muzzle flash and a bullet zinged against the brick sidewalk near Danny. He could feel sharp fragments sting the side of his face. He crabbed on his knees toward where Mendoza was crouching behind the column, and with one forceful lunge, he shoved Mendoza, hard.
Mendoza lost his balance, sprawling out from behind the column, and a bullet exploded in his abdomen. Mendoza gasped. Then suddenly came another muzzle flash, and a bullet whizzed, striking him in the chest. Holding his gun level in a perfectly steady grip, he squeezed off one more shot. There was a scream, and the shooter’s weapon crashed to the ground.
For a moment, there was just the whine of the outboard motor.
Mendoza’s white dress shirt bloomed red. He’d been badly wounded. He reached down with one hand to feel his abdomen, and his pistol slipped from his hand and clattered to the sidewalk.
A moment later, he seemed to list to his left and then toppled slowly, tripping over the chain-link barrier, plummeting headlong with a great splash into the black water.
A frenzied splashing in the water as Mendoza struggled to stay afloat . . .
Then nothing. Just the growl of the motor.
A distant shout from the water.
Danny lay flat against the brick. He waited for another gunshot, but nothing more came. He waited some more. Then he turned toward the harbor and saw the inflatable racing toward the
El Antojo
.
Danny scrabbled to his knees, then onto his feet. His ears rang. Transfixed, he watched the speedboat pull up alongside Tom Galvin’s yacht. Its motor sputtered and died.
The former DEA agents and their cartel associates began boarding the yacht, intent on killing Tom Galvin.
Danny found himself praying. All was now beyond his control. He had done his best. He had done everything he could.
He took out his disposable cell phone and hit the only number he’d programmed into it. He listened to it ring precisely three times and then stop.
He waited. Three, four, six seconds . . .
And then the night lit up with an immense flash of fire, as if somehow the sun had suddenly climbed back up over the horizon, bleaching the sky, and a second or two later came the explosion, an enormous deafening boom, seemingly out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie, and the
El Antojo
had become a vast ball of fire. The sky was ablaze with orange and red and plumes of black smoke, a great roaring inferno.
And as he sank to the ground, he kept watching the burning yacht, and he felt an emotion he did not at first recognize because he hadn’t felt anything like it in such a long time.
It wasn’t despair and it wasn’t elation.
It was, quite simply, relief.
H
e became aware of a bright light and a throbbing in his eyeballs and an insistent beeping, a cacophony of beeps from everywhere. Voices murmuring; someone groaning in pain. Shapes floated across the scrim of his closed eyelids. His eyes felt glued shut. It hurt when he opened them. He saw a ceiling, a curtain rod, became aware of commotion, the hubbub of many voices.
He was in a hospital bed.
He swallowed and his throat hurt immensely. He groaned aloud.
“Baby?” A woman’s voice. “Danny?”
Lucy’s. He smiled. “Luce?”
“He’s awake,” she said. To him? He wasn’t sure. Why was she here? He didn’t want to ask.
“
He
,” Danny said, “has a headache.” It took effort to speak. He felt drugged, slow and gauzy and a thousand miles away. “And the worst sore throat in the world. He tried to smile. “You finally got me in a hospital. You know I hate hospitals.”
“I figured it was better to leave the trauma surgery to the experts. If I could have taken the bullet out myself, I would have.”
Danny squinted, thinking he’d misheard. “I didn’t get shot.”
“Yeah, you did. You’re gonna be fine, but you’re going to have a nasty scar on your shoulder.”
He struggled to sit up, felt a burst of pain. An alarm began to sound, a different sort of beeping, rapid and high.
“Where’s Abby?”
A nurse yanked open the curtain. “What’d he do now?”
“Where’s Abby?” he repeated.
“Abby’s at the Galvins’,” Lucy said.
The nurse pulled the sheet away, tugged something off his chest, ripping chest hair painfully. She adjusted whatever it was—an adhesive lead, he saw—and pressed it back down on his chest. “Please don’t try to sit up again, Mr. Goodman.”
“Can I get a glass of water? I’m really thirsty.”
“Not until your blood pressure stabilizes, and not until we see some urine. Lie back down and please stop moving.”
He shrugged and felt the pain shoot down his right side.
“Abby’s doing fine,” Lucy said. “Shaken up, obviously. She was pretty traumatized, but she seems to be doing okay.”
“I want to see her.”
“She was here for a bit while you were asleep. Now you’re going to have to talk to the FBI.”
“FBI? Wait . . .”
“There’s two of them, but the nurse will only allow one in here at a time. They say they just want information. They’re sitting in the waiting room. I could tell them to come back.”
“But why . . .”
“The explosion, sweetie, remember? Getting shot, everything at the dock?”
Danny closed his eyes, felt it coming back to him now. The gunfire, the blat of outboard motors, the immense, deafening blast.
A minute or two later, he heard the scuff of a chair on the floor nearby. “Mr. Goodman, I’m Agent Steve Nocito with the FBI, and I was wondering whether I could ask you just a few questions.”
Danny, lying down, turned his head to one side. He remembered the elaborate con perpetrated on him by the impostors Slocum and Yeager. “Can I see some ID?”
“Of course.” The agent handed him a black leather folding credential wallet. Danny glanced at the badge and ID—it felt heavy, substantial. He handed it back.
“Mr. Goodman, you were at the scene of the . . . explosion last night.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Why were you there?”
Why
was
he there? Ah, yes. How much could he say? As he thought—his brain was working far too slowly—he remained silent.
“Did you know the deceased, Thomas Galvin?” the FBI man prompted.
The words hit him in the gut.
The deceased
. “I did.”
“Were you a friend?”
Danny thought a long while. “Yes. I was.”
“Was he planning to flee the country?”
He thought some more. What was supposed to be known, and what wasn’t?
“Yes, I believe he was,” Danny said.
“Do you know where he intended to go?”
Danny shook his head.
“Might it have been Anguilla? He and his family used to vacation there regularly.”
“Could have been. Yes, I think so.”
“Did he have enemies?”
Danny could hear one set of beeps accelerate as his heart sped up. “Of course.”
Agent Nocito waited for more, but Danny had fallen silent. After a moment he went on: “Our preliminary investigation indicates three other deaths in the explosion. Two of them are former employees of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Were you familiar with them, by any chance?”
What was the right answer? He guessed: “No.”
“Do you know whether they were associates of Mr. Galvin?”
“Not that I know of.”
“I see. Now, your . . . your daughter was taken hostage for a short while last night.”
“That’s right.”
“Do you have any idea why?”
“The man wanted to know where Galvin was.”
“The man being . . .” The agent took out a sheaf of photographs and flipped through them. He pulled one out and showed it to Danny. “This individual?”
Danny nodded. The bald head, the rimless glasses, the mocha skin. Looking at Dr. Mendoza’s face made his stomach go cold.
“You told him where Galvin was.”
“I didn’t really have a choice. My daughter—”
“I understand. She’d been abducted. Did the man who abducted her—this Mr., uh, Mendoza—did he say what his connection was to Galvin?”
Danny paused. “I believe he was employed by the Sinaloa cartel.”
“You don’t have any proof of that, do you?”
“No.”
“Then that’s not really something you want to speculate about. This is a sensitive area for a lot of parties.”
Danny, head turned toward the side, couldn’t quite make out the FBI agent’s facial expression. “That’s what Tom Galvin thought.”
“Did he have any proof of that?”
He looked at the FBI man, and for a moment their eyes locked. Nocito’s head moved imperceptibly, a gesture of—warning? Then he leaned in and whispered in Danny’s ear. “Be very, very careful how you answer this, do you understand?”
Danny realized he was holding his breath. Nocito sat back in his chair, a neutral expression returning to his face. He repeated his original question.
“Do you have any proof of this? Anything beyond mere speculation, about . . .”
And Danny understood suddenly. It was like a puzzle piece falling into place. Something he’d known all along, in his gut, without ever quite realizing he’d known.
Galvin had been a confidential source for the DEA. Mistakes had been made, things were being covered up. Powerful people didn’t want to be embarrassed.
“Mr. Goodman, do you need me to repeat—”
“No, no—there’s no proof. Not sure why I said it. My head . . .”
“Yes, I understand. You’re disoriented, not thinking clearly. It’s best for a lot of reasons to keep your theories to yourself. Not least Mr. Galvin’s survivors. His family.”
“My memory, it’s not so good.”
Danny watched Nocito’s stern gaze melt away, like an actor on cue. The agent now smiled benignly, stood. “That should cover it, then,” he said. “Thanks for giving me a few minutes of your time, Mr. Goodman. Feel better, okay?”
• • •
Danny had drifted off to sleep. When he woke up, the FBI man was gone and Lucy was sitting in his chair. He saw her and smiled.
She said, “You weren’t telling him the truth.”
Danny was silent. He felt the blood pressure cuff tighten on his left arm, heard its gasp and wheeze.
“About . . . what—?”
“Quit it, Danny. The FBI guy. You weren’t telling him the truth. I want to know why. Will you tell me?”
• • •
He told her about Jay Gould and the telegrams. How Gould knew his telegrams were being read by Western Union, and how he’d used this to his advantage. Presenting falsehoods he wanted them to believe as true. And believe it they did.
In the same way, Slocum and Yeager, the two ex-DEA employees who’d planned to extort Tom Galvin for billions of dollars, had cloned Galvin’s phone. Assuming Galvin to be unaware of this, they naturally believed everything Galvin and Danny said over the monitored line had to be true. Which was why they believed that Galvin was on his own boat preparing to sail away.
And that once they learned that Dr. Mendoza hoped to get to Galvin first, they had no choice but to kill the man.
And in this way, Danny and Galvin had set up Galvin’s enemies to neutralize each other. Which was exactly what happened.
The Medford Regional Construction & Engineering Company later reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that eight one-pound blocks of C-4 plastic explosive had been stolen from its inventory, along with a quantity of fifty-grain-per-foot detonating cord and an electric blasting cap. Medford Regional kept stores of such equipment to raze buildings.
Had agents from the Sinaloa cartel targeted their own financier before he could escape? Had the events in Boston Harbor in fact been the result of an internecine battle between two warring Mexican drug cartels?
Investigators from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Boston Police bomb squad later determined that the C-4 had been placed in three locations on Thomas Galvin’s yacht: near the forward cabin, aft of the engine room, and on the fly bridge. Most experts agreed that Thomas Galvin had been standing on the fly bridge, piloting his yacht. Because the fly bridge had been completely destroyed, nothing of Galvin’s body remained. Just some clothing and shoes and his Patek Philippe watch.
Lucy watched Danny explain, and when he had finished, they were both silent for a long while.
Too many elements within the US government had a vested interest in keeping things quiet. Mistakes had been made. Danny had told Lucy everything, and now she understood the sort of pressure he’d been under.
“When I heard you’d been shot, I was worried out of my mind,” she said. “I’m sorry it took something like that to make me realize.”
“Realize?”
“How much I still care for you. How much you were dealing with. Some of the choices you made were, I don’t know . . .”
“Wrong?”
She shrugged. “Not for me to say. Sometimes life gets complicated, and the answers aren’t so easy.”
They were both quiet a moment longer. Finally, Lucy asked, “Does this mean you’re safe? That we’re safe?”
He nodded. “I think so.”
• • •
A week later, there was a memorial service for Tom Galvin at St. Brigid Parish in South Boston, where he’d been baptized and confirmed. He was eulogized as a brilliant investor and generous man who’d never forgotten his roots.
A lot of old friends of Galvin’s from Southie showed up. A much smaller group of friends from his later years sat uncomfortably on one side of the aisle. Celina Galvin wore a long black dress and a veil and looked dazed and small and lost. His daughter, Jenna, wept quietly throughout the service. Abby sat next to her and tried without much success to comfort her. His two sons looked awkward and forlorn in their dark suits.
Danny noticed a couple of men in business suits sitting near the back of the nave who looked particularly out of place. They actually didn’t appear to be mourning. They seemed to be studying the mourners. He recognized one of them as the FBI agent who’d paid him a visit in the hospital.
• • •
Danny and Lucy were married in August. The ceremony was performed by a justice of the peace in the Boston Public Garden. The only attendees were Abby Goodman and Lucy’s son, Kyle. Afterward they all repaired to Legal Sea Foods for a late lunch.
• • •
It took Danny a good six weeks before he was able to sit at a computer keyboard and type comfortably, but once he could, he experienced a great surge of productivity. He finished the book in three months, and his agent, Mindy Levitan, sold the book to another publisher. For more money than even his last publisher had paid.
Eighteen months after the explosion in Boston Harbor,
Genius: The Controversial Life of Jay Gould
was published to universally glowing reviews. The first one ran in
The
New York Times
on a Tuesday, the book’s on-sale day, and it was enthusiastic enough to spur a six-week run on the
New York Times
bestseller list.
The book party was held at an art gallery in the South End owned by a friend of Lucy’s. Shortly after Danny had said good-bye to the last guest, he gave Abby a hug.
“Hey, Boogie. Luce and I have decided to spend Christmas in Turks and Caicos. Sort of a celebration of the book being finished and all that. How about you come with us? Maybe with Jenna, too, if she’s free.”
Abby looked at Danny with incredulity. “Seriously? Doesn’t that seem like kind of . . . I don’t know, a waste of money?”
“I thought you always wanted to go to the Caribbean.”
She and Jenna had each decided to put off college for a while, spending a gap year volunteering at an orphanage in Guatemala.
“Come on, Dad,” she said, and in her eyes a teasing smile sparkled. “Keep up.”
As they left the gallery, Danny got a message alert on his phone.
It said,
SNAPCHAT FROM LYNYRD
.
“Who is it, Dad?”
“Not sure, Boogie.” He stepped away, touched in his passcode.
On the screen before him was a photo of an ancient stone house in an emerald field next to a flock of sheep. Beautiful, timeless, like a picture postcard—except he knew it wasn’t a postcard. On the top right of his phone’s screen, a number was counting down from 10.
Danny had never been to New Zealand, but this looked a lot like the way Tom Galvin had described it. The scene was lovely and still and remote and it filled him with a deep sense of calm.
He studied the picture, staring intently at it, wondering if it contained some hidden message. It looked like a good place to live a peaceful life off the grid.
“What is it, Dad? Let me see.” She leaned in close; an instant later, the picture was gone.
“What the heck? What—”
“Oh, Dad,” Abby said. “You’re so clueless! That’s Snapchat. You take a picture and send it to your friends and then it’s gone after a couple of seconds.”
He nodded. “And it just—disappears? Forever?”