Prayers for Rain by Dennis Lehane

Author:Dennis Lehane [Lehane, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Contemporary, Politics
ISBN: 9781417710034
Goodreads: 21683
Publisher: San Val
Published: 1999-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

20

Rain fell softly on sun-drenched streets the afternoon I met Vanessa Moore at a sidewalk cafe in Back Bay. She’d called and asked to meet so we could discuss Tony Traverna’s case. Vanessa was Tony T’s attorney; we’d first met the last time Tony jumped bail, and I had appeared as a witness for the prosecution. Vanessa had cross-examined me the same way she made love—with a cool hunger and sharpened nails.

I could have declined Vanessa’s invite, I suppose, but it had been a week since the night we’d cooked for Diane Bourne, and in that week, we seemed to have taken four steps back. Wesley Dawe did not exist. He wasn’t listed in census records or with the Registry of Motor Vehicles. He did not own a credit card. He had no bank account in the city of Boston or the state of Massachusetts, and after getting slightly desperate, Angie discovered no one by that name existed in New Hampshire, Maine, or Vermont.

We’d gone back to Diane Bourne’s office, but apparently she’d taken our advice to heart. The office was closed. Her town house, we soon discovered, was abandoned. In a week, she hadn’t shown up there, and a cursory search of the place revealed only that she may have taken enough clothing to get by for a week before she had to either do laundry or shop for more.

The Dawes went fishing. Literally, I found out, after I’d impersonated a patient of the doctor’s and learned they were at their summer home in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

We lost Angie’s help when she was assigned by Sallis & Salk to join a team of bodyguards watching an oily South African diamond merchant around the clock as he did whatever it was oily diamond merchants do when they come to our little hamlet.

And Bubba went back to doing whatever it is Bubba does when he isn’t out of the country buying things that could blow up the Eastern Seaboard.

So I was a bit adrift, and caseless, it seemed, when I found Vanessa sitting outdoors under a large Cinzano umbrella, the gentle drizzle bouncing off the cobblestone and spraying her ankles, but leaving the wrought-iron table and rest of Vanessa untouched.

“Hey.” I leaned in to kiss her cheek and she slid a hand along my rib cage as she accepted it.

“Hi.” She watched me take my seat with the amusement that lived in her eyes like twin birthmarks, a lusty vivacity that said just about anything was hers for the taking. It was just a matter of her choosing.

“How you doing?”

“I’m good, Patrick. You’re damp.” She patted a napkin to dry her palm.

I rolled my eyes and raised a hand to the heavens. The shower had come suddenly as I’d walked from my car, broke from a tear in a lone cloud that floated through an otherwise glossy sky.

“I’m not complaining,” she said. “Nothing looks better on a handsome man in a white shirt than a little rain.”

I chuckled. The thing with Vanessa was that even if you saw her coming, she kept coming.

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