Invasion of Privacy

couple with what looked like a granddaughter—came through the doorway and into the lounge before two men appeared and nodded to Primo. Both wore suits. One was tall, stooped, and balding. The other was husky, with dark, styled hair. Neither of them looked anything like the two guys who had worked me over behind my office building, but the husky one, talking animatedly to Zuppone, was familiar in a different way.
    There was an obvious scar line through his left eyebrow, a lot like the one Primo described as belonging to the son of the “gentleman” Alfonso DiRienzi had helped send to prison.

14

    T o allow Primo Zuppone enough head start to clear the baggage carousel area downstairs, I stayed at the arrival lounge telephones. Trying Olga Evorova’s home number, I got an outgoing tape, her voice anonymously announcing, “Please, leave your message.” After the beep, I said to call me at my home number as soon as possible, any hour. Then I dialed the bank number and left the same on her voice-mail.
    Trying Nancy at home next, I got her machine too. After a similar beep, I said into the receiver, “Nance, if you’re there, please pick up,” but only static crackled back at me.
    I replaced the receiver and thought about it. I could go to Nancy’s in South Boston by taxi, but I’d have to make the driver wait, because if she didn’t answer her door, I’d be stuck over there without a car, and hailing or calling a second cab would mean hiking to Broadway. On the other hand, I could go to Evorova’s apartment on Beacon Hill by taxi. If she didn’t answer her door, I’d be within walking distance of my parking space, assuming Primo and the Milwaukee contingent weren’t already planted outside the condo building, watching for me to do just that. Then I could drive to Nancy’s, and my car wouldn’t be where I’d told Primo to tell the hitters it wasn’t.
    I checked my watch, sat for another five minutes trying to think of a better plan, and finally went downstairs to the revolving door marked GROUND TRANSPORTATION.

    I had the cabbie drop me at Joy Street , a few blocks from Evorova’s address. Then I zigzagged another two blocks around it. Given the narrow, one-way streets on the Hill, there was no way anybody in a car could follow me without tipping themselves, and nobody on foot who looked like one of Primo’s “associates” stayed close.
    Finally reaching Evorova’s building, I saw the telephone-style keypad at the main entrance and realized that if I punched in her code, I’d only be ringing her phone, and therefore would still get just her answering machine. I tried anyway, heard the “Please, leave your message,” and said it was me, waiting downstairs, and if she was there, would she please pick up or buzz the outer door. Neither happened, so I pressed the HANG UP button, then walked around the block to the back of her building.
    There was a parking area tucked into what should have been the rear garden of the first floor unit, but I didn’t see the orange Porsche Carrera my client had told me she owned. One slot stood empty, though, between a green Mercedes and a gray Lexus, and I figured I’d done as much as I could about warning Olga Evorova about “her Andrew,” at least for the night.
    Using a similar zigzag pattern, I walked down to Charles Street and over to Beacon. I went west up Marlborough to approach my building, then loitered at the corner of Fairfield for a while, watching the Prelude in its space under the streetlamp. Expanding my field of vision a few parked cars at a time, I didn’t see any people obviously sitting in them.
    Moving as casually as possible to my driver’s side door, I opened it, slid behind the wheel, and started the engine. Nobody tried to block me in as I backed out, and no vehicle seemed to stay in my rearview mirror very long on the drive to Southie.

    I left the car around the corner from the Lynches’ three-decker. At their stoop, I pushed Nancy’s button. No fancy phone pads or intercoms in this neighborhood, just old-fashioned bells that rang above doorways upstairs. I pictured her coming down the interior staircase, a towel over her right hand, a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard with shrouded hammer under the towel, in case a customer she’d nailed in court had somehow gotten the prosecutor’s address and decided to cross the line.
    I waited a minute, then forced myself to use my watch to wait a full minute more. I tried her button again. Same