Deep Pockets by Linda Barnes Page A

car’s engine. The heater felt glorious.
    “Do you want us to follow him?”
    “Us” meant Roz and Lemon. She’s never learned to drive. I’ve been after her, have even volunteered as her instructor, but since Lemon jumps to chauffeur her around, she sees no reason to expand her skills.
    “Follow a fucking boat?”
    That was Lemon, in the background. He sounded sleepy and crabby, and knowing Lemon, he was probably high on whatever was stashed in the glove compartment. The chances of my Toyota or Lemon’s van drawing a cop seemed higher than the chances of either of us getting a better photo op.
    “Forget it,” I said. “Go home.”
    I warmed my hands on the heater vents and thought about how neatly the blackmailer had handled the pickup. Then I drove to 157 Claremont Street, a triple-decker on a narrow street near the Somerville line. The parking was tight. I didn’t want to stick the car in front of a driveway or a fire hydrant, didn’t want anything to look odd or out of place. I had to circle the block three times before a man in green scrubs hurried out of an apartment across the street from my target and moved his well-placed Volvo.
    Then I waited. I have a love-hate relationship with surveillance. It’s filled with potential. Anything can happen at any time. You soak up the atmosphere of an area of the city you might not have appreciated before. After awhile, it gets goddamned boring. And then you have to pee.
    At least it was dry inside the car. I took off my jacket and inspected it. Hole right in the damned collar.
    Two hours and thirteen minutes later, a black TransAm with a kayak strapped to the roof turned into the narrow driveway next to 157. The garage door didn’t operate from an automatic opener, so the figure in black had to get out and expose himself to the elements.
    Bingo. The Claremont Street address was Benjy Dowling’s. I didn’t even need to snap another photo, but I did.
     
Chapter 11
     
    I couldn’t have been asleep more than twenty minutes when the phone rang. I rolled over and stared at it in dismay, hoping my glance would fry it, but I never considered letting the machine pick up. Ex-cops are tough; we answer the phone.
    “Did he come? Did you follow him?”
    Light streamed through the flimsy curtains and tried to blind me. I blinked. It felt like someone had removed my right eyeball, rolled it in sand, and reinserted it. “Professor Chaney?”
    “Were you asleep? I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have called so early, but I won’t be reachable later today. I’ll be at the lab, a conference with investors, not the sort of thing I can interrupt. So I just — I felt I needed to know.”
    “I got him,” I said.
    “Got who?”
    “Not the sort of person you’ll be able to convince with words.”
    “Is it someone I work with? Someone I know?”
    “Look, go to your meeting and try to relax. There’s a good chance this will all work out, and soon.”
    “You really think so?”
    “Yes. Good night.”
    I hung up. It wasn’t night, of course, but my body was confused. I tried to get back to sleep, but it wasn’t any good. I’d sleepily reassured my anxious client that everything would work out even though I had no reason to suspect it would, and I couldn’t rest with that on my plate. I wasn’t making any progress on the case lying in bed.
    I got up and hit the shower. Sometimes a long shower — hot water, hair scrub, cold-water finish — is almost as good as a night’s sleep. I wrapped my dripping hair in a towel, my body in a red chenille robe, and went down to the kitchen to make coffee.
    When I started at the Academy, I thought cops had it in for ex-offenders. The whole cop attitude, I thought, reeked of that final scene in the old film
Casablanca
, the one where the French cop says, “Round up the usual suspects.” The French cop knows who did it, knows who killed the nasty Nazi major, but the usual guys are gonna get rousted, and probably one of them will wind up