“Yeah?”

“You identify him yet?”

“No.”

“But you will, won’t you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, then…”

“Yeah?”

“Go get him, Patrick,” she said. “Shut his ass down.”

36

Four eleven South Street was the only vacant building on a street of artist’s lofts and carpet makers, costumers, rag merchants, and by-appointment-only galleries. Boston’s two-block equivalent of SoHo.

Four eleven was four stories tall and had been a parking garage before the city actually needed one. It changed hands in the late forties and the new owner turned it into an entertainment complex for sailors. The first floor had been a bar and billiards parlor, the second a casino, and the third a whorehouse.

The place had been vacant most of my life, so I never knew what the fourth floor was used for until my Porsche rose up past the dark floors in an ancient car elevator and the doors opened onto a dank, musty bowling alley.

Light fixtures hung haphazardly from a section of caved-in ceiling and several alleys were nothing but corridors of rubble. Shattered bowling pins lay in heaps of white dust in the gutters and the hand dryers had long ago been ripped from the floors and presumably sold for parts. Several of the runway shelves still held bowling balls, though, and I could see target arrows through the dust and grime on a couple of alleys.

Bubba sat in a captain’s chair by the center alley as we left the car and exited the elevator. The chair still bore screws at the base from wherever he’d torn it up, and the leather was ripped in several places and spilling foam stuffing onto the floor by his feet.

“Who owns this place?” I said.

“Freddy.” He sipped from a bottle of Finlandia. His face was ruddy and his eyes slightly watery, and I knew that he was easily into his second bottle, never a good sign.

“Freddy keeps an abandoned building on his books for fun?”

He shook his head. “The second and third floor only look like shit from the elevator. They’re actually pretty nice. Freddy and his boys use them for functions sometimes, shit like that.” He looked at Phil and there was nothing friendly in his glance. “Fuck you doing here, pussy?”

Phil took a step back, but still did better than most people facing Bubba in full psychotic tilt.

“I’m in this now, Bubba. All the way.”

Bubba smiled and the darkness that covered the entire rear of the alleys seemed to rise up behind him. “Well, now,” he said. “How nice for you. Pissed off someone put Angie in the hospital and it wasn’t you this time? Someone stepping into your area of expertise, faggot?”

Phil shifted toward me a step. “This has nothing to do with the bad blood between us, Bubba.”

Bubba raised his eyebrows at me. “He grow some balls or’s he just stupid?”

I’d seen Bubba like this only a few times before, and it was always a case of being far too close to the demon for my liking. By my amended estimate, he had to be three bottles of vodka in, and there was no telling if he’d allow his blacker instincts to be reined in.