Page 25 of The Lie Maker

Dick pointed. “Over there! That way!”

The captain cut the throttle, looked where Dick was pointing, squinted, caught sight of whatever it was that was bobbing in the water.

The water taxi’s captain had been doing this job long enough to have seen most everything, and he had a pretty good idea what his rider had spotted. He altered the taxi’s course, kept the engine going at a low speed, barely above an idle.

“Yeah!” Dick said. “Almost there. Jesus!”

The captain came out onto the deck, standing by the railing next to Dick. Didn’t need a long look to know what it was. Old guy, the captain thought, judging by the few wisps of gray hair. Facedown, like they almost always were. Probably been dead for a few days, he figured. Most likely went to the bottom at first, then the gases would have started to build up in the body, finally bringing it back up to the surface.

As someone who read the Boston papers every day—the real thing, not some online version—the captain wondered if this might be that old judge who’d gone missing. Maybe wandered down to the harbor, fell in.

The captain said to Dick, “I’ll call it in.”

Fourteen

Jack

That night, Lana wanted to know everything.

“Spill it,” she said. “It’s been driving me crazy all day.”

Lana and I had met for a drink at the Granary Tavern. She was working on a Seaglass Riesling. I’d ordered a Jack’s Abby House Lager.

“There’s not a lot I can tell you,” I said.

“Come on,” she said. “So where’d you meet this woman?”

“I don’t know that I can say.”

“Oh, come on.”

“An office on Boylston. I can’t be any more specific.”

Lana hated not knowing things. Whenever I was with her and got a text, if she could get to my phone first she’d read it out to me.

“So who was this woman? Can you tell me that?”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t, or won’t?”

“I was kind of sworn to secrecy.”

“Okay, well, what was she like?”

“Like?”

“Young? Old? Frumpy? Hot?”

My mouth felt dry. I took a drink of water. “She was... businesslike.”

Lana rolled her eyes. “Businesslike? Definitely not hot then. Okay, let’s talk about the gig. Are you really not going to tell me what this is about? Is it some secret government project or something?”

When I didn’t say something right away, she said, “Ah, so I’m already warm.”

“Okay, all I can say is, yes, it might, just might, have something to do with some level of government. It’s totally legit, and that’s about it.”

“What level of government? What department?”