dividing line, but with its spirit broken, forced to run alongside the ugly turnpike more or less as a back alley for Commonwealth Avenue, its humiliation ending at the suicide bridge.
Frawley rounded the corner to the front of the bank, at the tail end of a block of brick-front apartment buildings topping street-level retail stores and bars. Kenmore Square was a bottleneck fed by three major inbound roads, Brookline, Beacon, and Commonwealth, converging at a bus station where Comm boulevarded into two lanes split by a proper grass mall. Curbside clots of police cruisers, fire engines, and news vans were squeezing traffic down to one lane.
An industrial-sized fan blocked the bank's open front door, broadcasting pungent bleach out onto the sidewalk. A handwritten sign on the window said the branch was closed for the day and directed customers to area ATMs or the next nearest branch at the corner of Boylston and Mass.
Frawley opened his credentials holder, pressing his FBI ID card and his small gold badge against the window near the FDIC sticker that was his ticket inside. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guaranteed all deposit accounts up to $100,000, making any bank crime committed on U.S. soil a federal offense. A Boston cop holding a handkerchief to his mouth stepped into the ATM vestibule and switched off the big fan in order to let Frawley inside.
"Here he is," said Dino, greeting him beside the check-writing counter, clipboard in hand. The smell of violation was not so strong there as at the door.
Frawley said, "I was fine until I hit the expressway coming back."
The Boston Bank Robbery Task Force operated not out of the field office downtown but out of a resident agency in Lakeville, a small bedroom community thirty miles south of the city. Frawley had been pulling into the industrial park there when he got this call.
Dino had a pair of paper bootees for him. Dean Drysler was Boston Police, twenty-seven years, a lieutenant detective on permanent assignment to the task force. He was local product, tall, long-boned, sure. Boston saw more per capita bank jobs and armored-car heists than anywhere else in the country, and Dino was indispensable to Frawley as someone who knew the terrain.
Frawley was thirty-three, compact, laser-sighted, a runner. He had less than two years with the Boston office, eight overall with the FBI following rapid-fire assignments in Miami, Seattle, and New York. He was the youngest bank robbery agent in the country, one of a platoon of five Boston agents assigned to the BRTF, investigating bank crimes throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. The working partnership he and Dino had formed was of the teacher-student variety, though the roles of teacher and student flip-flopped day to day, sometimes hour to hour.
Frawley pulled the bootees on over his size-eight-and-a-halfs and organized his rape kit: paperwork folder, notebook, tape recorder. He scanned the various uniforms and acronym-proud windbreakers. "Where is she now?"
"Break room in back. They let her go at Orient Heights, north of the airport. She walked to a corner market, they called it in. We already had a cruiser here on the silent bell."
"From?"
"Teller cage number two." They walked through the security door behind the counter, where the vapors were stronger, the industrial carpeting already blanching in spots. Dino pointed his clipboard at a floor button. "Panic bell. The assistant manager is down the street at Beth Israel, he caught a pretty good beating."
"Beat him, then took her for a ride, let her go?"
Dino's eyebrows arched satanically. "Unharmed."
Frawley set his suspicion aside, trying to go in order. "Anything on the vehicle?"
"Van, seems like. I put a BOLO out for car fires."
"You talk to her?"
"I set her up with a female officer first."
Frawley
Frawley rounded the corner to the front of the bank, at the tail end of a block of brick-front apartment buildings topping street-level retail stores and bars. Kenmore Square was a bottleneck fed by three major inbound roads, Brookline, Beacon, and Commonwealth, converging at a bus station where Comm boulevarded into two lanes split by a proper grass mall. Curbside clots of police cruisers, fire engines, and news vans were squeezing traffic down to one lane.
An industrial-sized fan blocked the bank's open front door, broadcasting pungent bleach out onto the sidewalk. A handwritten sign on the window said the branch was closed for the day and directed customers to area ATMs or the next nearest branch at the corner of Boylston and Mass.
Frawley opened his credentials holder, pressing his FBI ID card and his small gold badge against the window near the FDIC sticker that was his ticket inside. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guaranteed all deposit accounts up to $100,000, making any bank crime committed on U.S. soil a federal offense. A Boston cop holding a handkerchief to his mouth stepped into the ATM vestibule and switched off the big fan in order to let Frawley inside.
"Here he is," said Dino, greeting him beside the check-writing counter, clipboard in hand. The smell of violation was not so strong there as at the door.
Frawley said, "I was fine until I hit the expressway coming back."
The Boston Bank Robbery Task Force operated not out of the field office downtown but out of a resident agency in Lakeville, a small bedroom community thirty miles south of the city. Frawley had been pulling into the industrial park there when he got this call.
Dino had a pair of paper bootees for him. Dean Drysler was Boston Police, twenty-seven years, a lieutenant detective on permanent assignment to the task force. He was local product, tall, long-boned, sure. Boston saw more per capita bank jobs and armored-car heists than anywhere else in the country, and Dino was indispensable to Frawley as someone who knew the terrain.
Frawley was thirty-three, compact, laser-sighted, a runner. He had less than two years with the Boston office, eight overall with the FBI following rapid-fire assignments in Miami, Seattle, and New York. He was the youngest bank robbery agent in the country, one of a platoon of five Boston agents assigned to the BRTF, investigating bank crimes throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. The working partnership he and Dino had formed was of the teacher-student variety, though the roles of teacher and student flip-flopped day to day, sometimes hour to hour.
Frawley pulled the bootees on over his size-eight-and-a-halfs and organized his rape kit: paperwork folder, notebook, tape recorder. He scanned the various uniforms and acronym-proud windbreakers. "Where is she now?"
"Break room in back. They let her go at Orient Heights, north of the airport. She walked to a corner market, they called it in. We already had a cruiser here on the silent bell."
"From?"
"Teller cage number two." They walked through the security door behind the counter, where the vapors were stronger, the industrial carpeting already blanching in spots. Dino pointed his clipboard at a floor button. "Panic bell. The assistant manager is down the street at Beth Israel, he caught a pretty good beating."
"Beat him, then took her for a ride, let her go?"
Dino's eyebrows arched satanically. "Unharmed."
Frawley set his suspicion aside, trying to go in order. "Anything on the vehicle?"
"Van, seems like. I put a BOLO out for car fires."
"You talk to her?"
"I set her up with a female officer first."
Frawley
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