Chapter 11: The Watchman

I took the call on the study phone with Donal's hand flat on my back and a quilt around my shoulders.

"This is the woman," I said.

A man's voice came down the line from Maine, thick and slow.

"I'm not coming to Hull," he said.

"I'm not talking to Dalton's people. I'll sit with you at the Pond Street Diner at ten Saturday, you alone, and I'll say it once."

"Why me?" I said.

"Because you're on the poster."

"I'm not on the poster."

"Your name's on the bottom," he said. "'Ask for D. Finnegan.' You're the one he left."

He hung up.

I stood there with the receiver against my chest.

"No," Donal said, before I'd said anything.

"The man will run if you come," I said.

"Then the driver sits in the lot, and I sit with the driver."

"Donal."

"I'll be sixty feet away with the window down," he said. "That's the whole bargain."

I kissed him, and it was a long way from the bargain.

The Pond Street Diner was a low cinder-block building across from a shut-down transfer station, with a neon coffee cup in the window.

At ten Saturday I sat in the back booth with my hands around a mug.

The man who came in was fifty, heavy and unshaven, in a green work jacket.

He slid onto the bench across from me and looked ill.

He looked at my face for a long time.

"You're her," he said.

"I'm her."

"I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so sorry."

"For what?"

"I didn't know whose it was," he said. "I swear to God I didn't know."

My hands went cold on the mug.

"Start at the beginning."

He rubbed his face with both palms.

"I'm the night man at the pit. Eleven years. It's nothing. A fence and a shed and a light on a pole."

"October twelfth," I said.

"That Saturday. About dusk."

He swallowed.

"A black Lincoln comes through the gate. My gate's chained, and he has a key.

"Teller & Sons holds the lease on the pit. Everyone knows the Tellers."

I didn't move.

"He drives right down the ramp to the bottom, by the old fill. No headlights. I watch from the shed, because that's my job."

"Who was driving?" I said.

"A man in a navy suit with a dimple. Nice-looking. His trouser legs were soaked, and he'd been crying, or I thought he had."

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