Mission Flats by William Landay

Author:William Landay [Landay, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9780440237396
Google: wne3e5fUR1cC
Amazon: 0440237394
Goodreads: 9705856
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-08-25T14:00:00+00:00

24

After four days of searching for Harold Braxton—since Caroline had given the go-ahead to pick him up after Ray Rat’s murder—the Boston police had nothing to show. Braxton had vanished.

Gittens and I trolled the Flats daily, questioning anyone who had ever passed him a tip. It was fascinating to watch Gittens, a supple man who was able to connect with all sorts of people. This he accomplished with an arsenal of small talents. He spoke passable Spanish. He had a politician’s knack for remembering names, not just the names of informants but their relatives and associates too. And most important, Gittens used good judgment. He had no desire to pile up the arrests, and he was perfectly willing to turn a blind eye to petty offenses where other cops might not. It is too much to say that all this skill was appreciated by a grateful populace. Gittens was still a cop and people were leery of him. But he handled his role gracefully, he was respectful, he spotted nuances and complexities that others missed. He was a great cop—and he knew it.

In this case it wasn’t enough. Braxton had vanished, and by this point the police were no longer searching for him so much as they were waiting for Braxton to reveal himself. Officers were posted in likely locations and left to wait there like hunters behind duck blinds. Convinced he knew Braxton better than anyone, Gittens positioned a few officers from Area A-3 at various locations in the Flats. Kelly and I drew assignments from Gittens too. I was stationed, alone, outside the apartment building where June Veris’s girlfriend lived—an unpromising site, I thought, although Gittens assured otherwise.

I arrived at my post early Monday morning, around seven. Under a dreary gray sky, I leaned in a doorway and sipped from a paper cup of coffee. My assignment was to eyeball the building opposite, on the off chance that Braxton might have stayed there the night before. In movies they call this a “stakeout,” though I’ve never heard a cop use that term. Call it what you will, it is a phenomenally boring task. And to a worrier like me, it is an invitation to trouble. An idle mind and all that.

My thoughts turned to Caroline and our encounter the night before. What had it meant to her? And to me? It is all very well and good to take someone to bed with blithe intentions, but there is always the danger that things will seem more complicated in the morning—particularly when it is unclear who took whom to bed. It was not that I had fallen in love with Caroline. Nothing so dramatic or unambiguous had happened. I am too cautious a person to be struck by those thunderbolts anyway. But something had happened. I could not stop thinking about her—or, more accurately, about my idea of her, for it must be said that Caroline Kelly was a difficult person to know. She could be warm and mettlesome one moment, chilly and remote the next.

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