26

“Why didn’t he take off the cowboy hat?” I said as we drove back to Angie’s.

I’d left my apartment behind gratefully. Currently it was filled with technicians and cops stampeding around, ripping up the floorboards, covering it in a cloud of fingerprint dust. One bug was found in the living room baseboard, another attached to the underside of my bedroom dresser, a third sewed into the kitchen curtain.

I was trying to distract myself from the deep incision made by my total lack of privacy, and that’s when I fixated on the cowboy hat.

“What?” Devin said.

“Why was he still wearing the cowboy hat when he blew the light in Wollaston?”

“He forgot to take it off,” Oscar said.

“If he was from Texas or Wyoming,” I said, “I’d say okay. But he’s Brockton boy. He’s going to be aware of a cowboy hat on his head while he drives. He knows there’re Feds after him. He’s got to know that once we found the eyes we’d figure he was impersonating Lyle.”

“Yet he’s still wearing the hat,” Angie said.

“He’s laughing at us,” Devin said after a moment. “He’s letting us know we’re not good enough to get him.”

“What a guy,” Oscar said. “What a swell fucking guy.”

Bolton had his agents stashed in the apartments on either side of Phil and in the Livoskis’ house across from Angie’s house and the McKays’ behind it. Both families had been paid well for the imposition and put up downtown at the Marriott, but even so, Angie called them both and apologized for the inconvenience.

She hung up and took a shower while I sat in the dining room at her dusty table with the light off and the shades drawn. Oscar and Devin were in a car down the street and they’d left two walkie-talkies behind. They sat on the table in front of me, hard and square, and their twin silhouettes looked like transmitters to another galaxy in the soft dark.

When Angie came out of the shower, she wore a gray Monsignor Ryan Memorial High School T-shirt and red flannel shorts that swam around her thighs. Her hair was wet and she looked tiny as she placed ashtray and cigarettes on the table and handed me a Coke.

She lit a cigarette. Through the flame I had a momentary glimpse of how drawn and afraid her face was.

“It’ll be okay,” I said.

She shrugged. “Yeah.”

“They’ll get him before he ever comes near this place.”

Another shrug. “Yeah.”

“Ange, he won’t get to you.”

“His batting average has been pretty good so far.”

“We’re very good at protecting people, Ange. We can protect each other, I think.”

She exhaled a missile of smoke over my head. “Tell that to Jason Warren.”

I put my hand on hers. “We didn’t know what we were dealing with when we pulled out of the Warren case. We do now.”

“Patrick, he got into your place pretty easily.”