Boston Cream by Howard Shrier Page B

patted him down with my other. No gun. His wallet was in an inside pocket of his leather jacket: Kevin Walsh, a Boston address, somehow made it to twenty-six dumb years of age.
    “Your partner’s out, Kevin, so you’re going to have to do all the talking.”
    “About what? We were just taking a shortcut here and you attacked us, man, you’re crazy.”
    “You were following us. And you and your friend tried to grab a man named David Fine two weeks ago. On Summit Avenue with this van. You hit a cyclist and he got away.”
    “You’re crazy!”
    “Where is David Fine?”
    “How should I know!”
    I added my weight to Jenn’s on the car door and he cried, “
Ow
. Christ. Okay. you’re right, you’re right.”
    “About what?”
    “We tried to grab him. Please.”
    “Then what?”
    “Let go my leg!”
    “Then what?”
    “Aargh! He got away, like you said.”
    “Where?”
    “Fuck!”
    “Just tell me where.”
    “Down those steps. Down that path. I don’t know what the fuck it’s called. He ran down them and we couldn’t find him with the van.”
    I nodded at Jenn and we took just enough weight off the door to keep his leg pinned without pressure.
    “Who hired you?”
    “He did,” Walsh panted, pointing to his driver’s seat. “He said we had a job to do, didn’t say who hired him. Didn’t say why.”
    I looked at Jenn. “Do you believe him?” He saw the look in my eyes and tried to pull his leg inside the car but Jenn was too fast. She threw herself against it again and he screamed as it trapped his leg, lower this time, closer to the ankle.
    “Christ!”
    “Who wanted him? Who wanted David!”
    “No fucking way,” he said. “Break my leg, go ahead. I ain’t saying fuck all.”
    I could tell he was too scared to talk, whether I broke his leg or not, and one of these shitheads had to drive the other one out of that alley. I picked up the GPS and went back to our car, got the digital camera and took shots of both pretty boys. I also took close-ups of both drivers’ licences and the van. I banged the mud off the front plate and shot that as well. Then I helped Walsh swing his limp partner into the back seat so he could drive them both to a hospital, if they so chose. I figured they would head for Sinai. If they’d been following us for any amount of time, they knew where it was.
    We had a message from Colin MacAdam when we got up to my room. Karl Thompson had cracked David’s password and had sent us a link to a ghost drive where we could look at his email and Internet history. Jenn started on that while I booted up my laptop, uploaded the pictures I had taken of our assailants and called Mike Gianelli in Brookline.
    “How would you like to see a photo of the guys who tried to abduct David Fine?”
    “You serious?”
    “Give me an email address, you’ll have them in a second.”
    “All right, Geller,” he said, and gave it to me. “I’ll circulate them here and with some of my old guys in Boston. We come up with something, I’ll call you. Jesus Christ,” he said, “maybe turning you loose wasn’t such a bad idea.”
    When I called Adath Israel and asked to speak to the rabbi, the woman who answered said they didn’t have one. “We will, shortly,” she said. “Certainly for the High Holidays. Our search committee is almost done. Are you thinking of joining?”
    “No, I’m from out of town,” I said. “I was hoping to ask the rabbi about a member named David Fine. I was told they’re close.”
    “Oh, you want Rabbi Ed,” she said. “Ed Lerner. Yes, he and David were close, I’d say. But he’s not with our congregation anymore. He stepped down last month.”
    “Can I ask why?”
    There was a pause and then she said, “Personal reasons. That’s all I can say.”
    “Could you put me in touch with him?”
    “His number is unlisted,” she said. “So, no.”
    “It’s very important,” I said. “David is missing and his family has hired me to find