Rescue

Guinness.“
    “Diplomatic.“
    “John, is that all of it?“
    “What do you mean?“
    “All this upset over a boy you barely know?“
    “He reminds me of someone.“
    “Who?“
    “An MP of mine, back in Saigon .“
    Instead of pushing on that, Nancy said, “You want me to do anything about the woman from the channel?“
    “Officially, you mean?“
    “Yes.“
    “No. Somebody’s running the plates the old Dodge had on it the two times I saw it. I don’t see what else I can do till Monday.“
    Nancy squeezed my arm against her. “I have a few ideas, but out here they’d require a blanket.“
    We stopped again, and I kissed her. Breaking off the kiss, Nancy looked up and down the beach, then back at me. “Maybe we could make do without the blanket.“

    Sunday morning I jogged along the Charles River and did a round of the Nautilus machines while Nancy worked on the armed robbery case for a few hours. Sunday afternoon we went to the last picnic of the season at the house of one of her former law professors who lives in Milton . He’s black, and when he moved up here from Philadelphia he inherited “Bertha,“ his aunt and uncle’s old-fashioned barbecue machine. It’s a monstrous double-barreled jobbie that slow-cooks about a thousand baby-back pork ribs for three hours until armed guards can no longer insure their safety. We mingled with other professors, alums, and some current students. Leaving early, both of us were in bed by ten so Nancy would be fresh for court the next morning.
    I was sitting in my office that Monday, having gone through the Saturday mail that included three charge card solicitations, two vacation “steals,“ and one advertisement sent by the Fall River Historical Society, still pushing Lizzie Borden memorabilia from the hundredth anniversary of the axe-murders. I was about to start writing the report on an arson case when the phone rang.
    “John Cuddy.“
    “Cuddy, you better have a good explanation for this.“
    “O’Boy. How was the weekend?“
    “The weekend was fine. They got this nice inn—more like a motel, but they call it an inn, the wife calls it an inn, I call it an inn—with this restaurant looks like a tugboat next door. Good food, good everything.“
    “Then what puts you in so foul a mood?“
    “Might have been professional courtesy to let me know what was involved in that check you asked me to rim, you know?“
    “If I knew, I would have told you. What’s up?“
    “What’s up is a request that’s got my name on it, and now I see from the NCIC that one of the plates was reported lifted from a car parked at a mall in East Jibib someplace.“
    “Which of the plates?“
    “S-L-H-2-3-7. Came off a 1990 Buick LeSabre owned by a Manchester woman named Squires, Emily D.“
    “And where is the mall?“
    “Just off 93, south of Manchester .“
    About an hour north of where I’d helped Melinda and Eddie. “How old is this Squires?“
    “Hold on, hold on. She’s married... sixty—no, that was when the registration was... Wait a minute—seventy-two years young.“
    “How about the B-A-T-6-1-1?“
    “That one’s just on the Motor Vehicle, not the hot list. Be longs to a Dodge Swinger registered to Finn, Oswald M. D.O.B.—for chrissake, he’s eighty-six. What’ve you got, some car-jackers out of a nursing home?“
    “Where’s this Finn from?“
    “Elton.“
    “Where’s that?“
    “What am I supposed to be now, your geography teacher?“
    “Just a second.“
    I went through the Rand McNally I kept in a desk drawer. The atlas was five years old, but the towns hadn’t changed names much. Elton was maybe thirty miles northwest of Manchester . Melinda and Eddie might have come from there in Finn’s Dodge, the redhead boosting a plate for his truck from the mall where the Squires woman parked her car. Then Redhead kills Melinda down here, switches the plates, and leaves the Dodge with the wrong tags to be traced, if at all, weeks—
    “Hey, Cuddy, you still there?“
    “I’m here, O’Boy.“
    “What am I supposed to say if Mrs. Squires wants her Plates back?“
    “Tell her they’re on Mr. Firm’s Dodge.“
    “And where is that?“
    “Parked next to the Fort Point Channel.“
    “Fort—over by you in Boston , there?“
    “Right.“
    The guttural noise. “I don’t know the woman, but somehow I got the feeling she isn’t gonna like that.“
    “O’Boy?“
    “Yeah?“
    “How about an address on Oswald Finn?“

6

    I drove