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She came out onto Beacon through a small yard in front
of a nondescript brownstone, found herself in a stream of
Emerson College students heading to a night class. She
walked with them as far as Berkeley Street and then retrieved
our company car from its illegal parking spot on Marlbor-
ough Street.
“Oh, yeah,” she told me, “we got a parking ticket.”
“Of course, we did,” I said. “Of course, we did.”
72 / DENNIS LEHANE
Richie Colgan was so happy to see us he almost broke my
foot trying to slam his front door on it.
“Go away,” he said.
“Nice bathrobe,” I said. “Can we come in?”
“No.”
“Please?” Angie said.
Behind him, I could see candles in his living room, a flute
glass half-filled with champagne.
“Are you playing some Barry White?” I said.
“Patrick.” His teeth were gritted and something akin to a
growl rumbled in his throat.
“It is,” I said. “That’s ‘Can’t Get Enough of Your Love’
coming from your speakers, Rich.”
“Leave my doorstep,” Richie said.
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Rich,” Angie said. “If you’d rather we
came back…”
“Open the door, Richard,” his wife, Sherilynn, said.
“Hi, Sheri.” Angie waved through the crack in the door.
“Richard,” Sherilynn said.
Richie stepped back and we came into his house.
“Richard,” I said.
“Blow me,” he said.
“I don’t think it’d fit, Rich.”
He looked down, realized his robe had opened. He closed
it and punched me in the kidneys as I passed.
“You prick,” I whispered and winced.
Angie and Sherilynn hugged by the kitchen counter.
“Sorry,” Angie said.
“Oh, well,” Sherilynn said. “Hey, Patrick. How are you?”
“Don’t encourage them, Sheri,” Richie said.
“I’m good. You look great.”
She gave me a little curtsy in her red kimono, and I
SACRED / 73
was, as always, a little taken aback, flustered like a schoolboy.
Richie Colgan, arguably the top newspaper columnist in the
city, was chunky, his face perpetually hidden behind five
o’clock shadow, his ebony skin splotched with too many late
nights and caffeine and antiseptic air. But Sherilynn—with
her toffee skin and milky gray eyes, the sculpted muscle tone
of her slim limbs and the sweet musical lilt of her voice, a
remnant of the sandy Jamaican sunsets she’d seen every day
until she was ten years old—was one of the most beautiful
women I’d ever encountered.
She kissed my cheek and I could smell a lilac fragrance on
her skin.
“So,” she said, “make it quick.”
“Gosh,” I said, “am I hungry. You guys have anything in
the fridge?”
As I reached for the refrigerator, Richie hit me like a
snowplow and carried me down the hall into the dining
room.
“What?” I said.
“Just tell me it’s important.” His hand was an inch from
my face. “Just tell me, Patrick.”
“Well…”
I told him about my night, about Grief Release and Manny
and his Pods, about the encounter with Officer Largeant and
Angie’s B and E of the corporate offices.
“And you say you saw Messengers out front?” he said.
“Yeah. At least six of them.”
“Hmm.”
“Rich?” I said.
“Give me the diskettes.”
“What?”
“That’s why you came here, isn’t it?”
74 / DENNIS LEHANE
“I—”
“You’re a computer illiterate. Angie, too.”
“I’m sorry. Is that bad?”
He held out his hand. “The discs.”
“If you could just—”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He snapped the diskettes from my
hand, tapped them against his knee for a moment. “So, I’m
doing you another favor?”
“Well, sorta, yeah,” I said. I shifted my feet, looked up at
the ceiling.
“Oh, please, Patrick, try the aw-shucks-bawse routine on
someone who gives a shit.” He tapped my chest with the
diskettes. “I help you, I want what’s on these.”
“How do you mean?”
He shook his head, smiled. “Now, see, you think I’m
playing, don’t you?”
“No, Rich, I—”
“Just ’cause we went to college together, all that shit, you
think I’m just going to say, ‘Patrick’s in trouble. Lawsy, I’ll
do whatever I can.’”
“Rich, I…”
He stepped up close to me, hissed. “You know the last
time I had a good old romantic, I’m-gonna-have-sex-with-
my-wife-and-take-my-time sorta night?”
I stepped back. “No.”
“Well, I don’t either,” he said loudly. He closed his eyes,
tightened the belt on his robe. “I don’t either,” he repeated
in his hissed whisper.
“So, I’m leaving,” I said.
He stepped in front of me. “Not until we get this straight.”
“Okay.”
“I find something on these diskettes I can use, I’m using
it.”
SACRED / 75
“Right,” I said. “As always. As soon as—”
“No,” he said. “No ‘as soon as.’ I’m up to here with that
‘as soon as’ shit. As soon as you’re okay with it? No. As
soon as I can, Patrick. That’s the new rule. I find something
on here, I use it as soon as I can. Okay?”
I looked at him and he stared back at me.
“Okay,” I said.
“I’m sorry.” He held a hand to his ear. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Okay, Richie.”
He nodded. “Good. How soon you need it?”
“Tomorrow morning, the latest.”
He nodded. “Fine.”
I shook his hand. “You’re the best, Rich.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get out of my house so I can have sex with
my wife.”
“Sure.”
“Now,” he said.
8
“So they know who you are,” Angie said as we entered my
apartment.
“Yup.”
“Which means it’s just a matter of hours before they know
who I am.”
“One would imagine.”
“Yet they didn’t want you to get arrested.”
“Something to gnaw on there, eh?”
She dropped her purse in the living room by the mattress
on the floor. “What’d Richie seem to think?”
“He was pretty pissy, but he seemed to perk up when I
mentioned the Messengers.”
She tossed her jacket on the living room couch, which
these days doubled as a chest for her clothing. The jacket
landed on a pile of freshly laundered, folded T-shirts and
sweaters.
“You think Grief Release is connected to the Church of
Truth and Revelation?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me.”
She nodded. “It wouldn’t be the first time a cult or what-
have-you had front organizations.”
“And this is one powerful cult,” I said.
“And we may have angered them.”
“We seem to be good at that—angering people
76
SACRED / 77
who shouldn’t be angered by people as wee and powerless
as us.” [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]