He acquired a big apartment on Beacon Street and a beautiful blond girlfriend to go with it. He and Holly went out to parties or dinner almost nightly. He could get a table at the tiniest, most exclusive restaurant, the kind that’s booked months in advance (not years; this was Boston, after all), at half an hour’s notice. When he wore suits, they were made by Ostrow’s tailor (working buttonholes on the cuffs, Super 130s, fully canvassed), at the friends-and-family rate. He had a weekly breakfast with Mort Ostrow at Mort’s regular table at the Bristol Lounge at the Four Seasons.
While it lasted, it was a pretty nice life.
* * *
The space heater buzzed and snarled. He heard something . . . scurrying somewhere within the walls nearby. A soft commotion, a rodent scrabbling. Mice? Rats? Squirrels? Anything could have gotten in through the chimneys or vents in the long years the house had stood unoccupied. Rodents or birds could be living in the walls. He got up from the couch, listened in silence for a moment, heard the muted scrabbling sound from inside the study’s back wall—then slammed the wall with his fist.
There was a great crash as one of the bookcases toppled, hurtling its contents to the floor, its glass front shattering.
“Shit,” he said. At least the scrabbling sound had stopped.
Broken glass was scattered everywhere, jagged shards twinkling in the morning light. Red bound volumes of The Massachusetts Law Reporter were arrayed on the floor. Rick’s father, Leonard, had been an attorney, a solo practitioner whose clientele included some sketchy characters: strippers, porn purveyors, club owners. He’d rented an office on Washington Street in downtown Boston. But he’d always kept a duplicate set of his law books in his home study.
Rick went to fetch a broom and a dustpan to sweep up the broken glass. The broom closet was off the kitchen, down one floor.
A thick blanket of dust and debris had collected on the wooden stairs, including some crumpled Narragansett beer cans and a discarded foil condom wrapper. Teenagers had gotten into the house—hence the broken window—but probably not squatters. No long-term residents. The house had been rented for most of the eighteen years since Len’s stroke. But as the place slowly deteriorated and repairs were left undone, the quality of the renters deteriorated along with it. The last ones were so rowdy and degenerate that the neighbors started complaining. Three years ago Rick had given up renting the house altogether.
The hallway was dark—the lightbulbs in the ceiling fixture were burned out—but he knew the way by heart. He could navigate the house blindfolded. He found the broom closet and located a tangle of plastic shopping bags but no brooms. And an old carpet sweeper that, even if it still worked, wouldn’t pick up most of the shards of glass anyway. He looked around the kitchen. More beer cans here, and beer bottles, and discarded Big Mac cartons.
“Don’t move, asshole!” someone shouted.
Rick jumped, startled. He spun around, saw a tall, skinny, balding man in a barn coat, jeans, and boots.
“Oh, it’s you,” the man said. “Hey, man, good to see you, Rick!”
“Oh, hey, Jeff.” He smiled with relief. “Been a while.”
“Sorry, dude, didn’t mean to scare you. I thought it was those damned Rindge and Latin kids again.” He held up a key ring and jingled it. “Wendy gave me a set of keys a couple, three years back and asked me to keep an eye on the place.”
“No problem.” Rick shook his head. “And listen, I really appreciate it.”
Jeff Hollenbeck lived next door, had grown up there and inherited the house after his parents’ death. He was a year or so younger than Rick. He and Rick weren’t friends, exactly, but used to play a lot of one-on-one basketball in Jeff’s parents’ driveway using the hoop mounted to their garage. Jeff, always tall and skinny and athletic, usually won. When Jeff went to Rindge and Latin, the local public high school, Rick had gone off to the Linwood Academy, a private school, so their already minimal friendship had been attenuated further. Also, Jeff began to make fun of Rick’s “faggoty uniform”—the blue blazer, white shirt, and striped crimson-and-gray repp tie. All legitimate grounds for ruthless teenage mockery, but not great for their friendship either.
Apparently, Jeff had gone through a druggy phase in high school, came close to being expelled once, but straightened up in time to go to Bunker Hill Community College. Rick didn’t remember what Jeff did for a living—something in the construction trade, maybe? His balding head was close-cropped on the sides. As a teenager he’d worn it down to his shoulders. Now, as if to compensate for the hairlessness up top, he had a goatee, wiry, gray-flecked. His eyes were a watery blue-gray.