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“Me, too, pal. One year it was as high as seven fifty. He varies it. But never less than five hundred a year. Awfully good pay for a guy running a bar and restaurant. Just sayin’. That’s probably how he was able to build his house with cash.” She looks at Blair. “Did you know that? That he has no mortgage on his new house, paid for it in cash?”
“Yeah, I know that,” says Blair.
Her eyes narrow. “You know that. So you’ve been looking at this guy already.”
He lifts a shoulder. “Need-to-know, Beck.”
She wags a finger at him, getting more comfortable with her thought. “I googled this guy David Bowers. Took me two seconds to find about a thousand videos of him making that dramatic river rescue. Pretty freakin’ heroic stuff.”
“It was, sure.” No sense in being disagreeable on that point.
“Made his face go viral,” says Becky. “I’m thinking maybe some facial recognition technology with the Bureau might have picked something up.”
Blair blinks and tries to keep a straight face.
“Meaning you think you know who this guy is,” she adds. “Not that you’ll tell me.”
“Not that Icould,” he counters. “I mean, even if, hypothetically, you were right.”
She smiles, shakes her head. “And you’re still gonna pretend this isn’t about Michael Cagnina?”
“Beck, I never — I never said one way or the other.”
“For fuck’s sake, Frankie. I’m, like, seven months from retirement. I’m not looking to get in on anything that’s gonna get me whacked. I don’t even carry a service weapon anymore. I got one foot out the door. I’m gonna take a consulting job with a bank and live the good life any day now.” She leans forward. “I won’t tell anyone. Just let me live vicariously through a former partner.”
“Okay, fine, Beck. But tell me first — what makes you ask?”
She chuckles. “You mean besides the fact that you have Cagnina on the brain? That he’s your white whale? Besides that?”
“Yeah, besides that.”
“Okay. Besides that. Because I remember, and so do you, Frankie, that we always thought Cagnina managed to stash away some dough before we closed in on him. Right? Didn’t we always think that? Like, sixteen, seventeen million dollars?”
“Course I remember.”
“So I’ve got nothing exciting to do here in this gig,” says Becky. “And maybe my imagination is getting the better of me. Or maybe it’s just my advanced age. But I’m thinking if Michael Cagnina stowed that money away, about the onlyway he’d ever be able to spend it is if somebody cleaned it for him first.”
Blair smiles. Becky was always a smart one.
“I fucking knew it.” She slaps her hand down on her desk. “You’ve found Cagnina’s money launderer, haven’t you?”
FORTY-THREE
TOMMY MALONE DRIVES BY the Bowers home for the second time. It’s past ten in the morning. Nobody should be home. David and Marcie at work, Lincoln and Grace at school.
The snow is a problem. The temperatures have eased slightly around here, starting the thawing process, but there are still plenty of patches of crispy snow on the ground. He’ll have to be careful about footprints.
He parks two blocks away and walks. Checks his phone first, the app for his “eye.” First time he broke into the Bowers home, before they started setting their intruder alarm, he installed the small device in their mudroom high above the washer and dryer. To the homeowner, a tiny thing hardly noticeable alongside the carbon monoxide detector, barely worth a second glance. But for the intruder, miles away with a remote laptop, there’s a nice view of the alarm pad every time someone punches in the code. It’s workedfor Tommy every time, just as it worked for him when he got inside Hemingway’s Pub through the rear door.
He walks slowly, casually, his breath still showing in the air before him — it hasn’t warmed upthatmuch — and he thinks about how far he’s come. From snatching their dog, Lulu, to tossing their coffeepot in the clothes dryer to dropping a dead rat in the boy’s Halloween bag to seeing David washing money through that restaurant.
And now this. This will decide it once and for all.
He walks up the driveway, adjusting the neon-orange vest that village workers wear — sanitation, electrical, whatever. The vest and denim jeans and tool belt make everybody think “municipal employee.” Without missing a beat, he lifts the latch on the gate and enters the backyard. There are patches of snow on the ground but a clear, if wet, path to the back door.
He gets through the lock easily enough and hears the intruder alarm. He has the code memorized by now; no need to check the app. He punches in the numbers, and the alarm goes silent. He tosses a few dog biscuits to the floor to satiate the yapping dog, Lulu, who remembers him and isn’t a fan. More where that came from. This shouldn’t take too long.
He pulls the can of spray paint off his tool belt. Red spray paint is a nice touch.
