"Ready?" he asked.

"For what?"

He pushed a button. Three warning blasts sounded, the gears began to grind, and the ancient conveyor mechanism sputtered to life, complaining against the cold. This would explain the second circuit breaker he'd thrown.

"Watch the security door." He pointed with one of his stubby fingers to the opening in the wall where the bags fed through to the passenger side. The heavy security door had lifted automatically when the belt had started to move, leaving nothing but a curtain of rubber strips that swayed with the motion of the belt.

"Are you watching?"

"I'm watching."

He hit the emergency shutdown switch. The alarm blasted again, the belt lurched to a halt, and the security door dropped in a free fall from its housing, crashing onto the belt with a force, both thunderous and abrupt, that made me jump about a foot off the ground. "Jesus Christ."

"It's defective."

"I hope so."

He was right next to me, once again standing too close for my comfort. I took a step away as he propped his foot up on the belt and took out a pack of Camels-unfiltered. The belt was off, the bag room was quiet, and the sound of his lighter snapping shut was loud in the strange stillness that followed the resounding crash.

"One of my guys got his foot almost took off by that thing about six months back. He was trying to kick a jammed bag through when some idiot over there hit the emergency stop." He nodded toward the wall, indicating that "the idiot" had been a passenger in the claim area.

"Is he all right?"

"He's on long-term disability and his foot don't look much like a foot no more. But thank God he didn't lose it."

I stood, hands down in the gritty pockets of Kevin's coat, shifting from foot to foot, trying to keep feeling in my toes. The cold from the concrete was seeping up through the thin leather soles of my pumps and I shivered, but not from the cold. I was imagining what a bone-crushing force like that could do to a man's foot. It was exactly the reaction he was hoping for and we both knew it.

He was leaning forward on his knee and looking at me pleasantly, as if we'd met in a bar to talk over old times.

"Why are you showing me this?"

He stared at the burning end of his cigarette. "I hear the McTavish kid is coming back."

"So what?" Not a snappy comeback, to be sure, but no one had told me, officially anyway, that Terry was coming back and it ticked me off that Big Pete was continually better informed than I was. "Besides, Little Pete's coming back, and the only thing Terry did was save him from an even bigger screw-up than the one he actually caused."

"I don't know what screw-up you'd be referring to."

"The one where he reversed the load on one of his trips because he was drunk."

The fact that I knew one of his secrets didn't seem to bother him. He offered a nod in my direction that was almost deferential. "That was a ballsy move, going around Lenny the way you did. I gotta give you credit for that. Lenny's a piece of shit, but he ain't easy to push around, neither." He took another deep drag, his cheeks hollowing out as he inhaled, then exhaled slowly, directing the stream up toward the ceiling.

"I also gotta ask myself, how is it you seem to know so much about what's going on down here with us."

"I'm well connected."

"Either that or you got a snitch…"

Something in the back of my neck began to tighten.

"…Which means we got a rat."

The smoke from his cigarette drifted up toward the ceiling, a ceiling still black with soot from the bombing this man had most certainly engineered. I was starting to get the idea. That tightening in my neck twisted a little more. "Say what you mean to say."

"All right. I know about Johnny McTavish. I know he's been feeding you information. I know that's part of why his kid brother got his job back."

I held perfectly still, which was just as well since all sensation had long since abandoned my feet.

"Is that what this demonstration is all about? Is this a threat to make me stop looking for whatever it is you and I aren't looking for?"

"This ain't nothing more than a friendly reminder that the ramp is a dangerous place. Accidents happen all the time, and even though you ain't out here that much, other people are." He looked at me with those chameleon eyes. "We don't like rats down here. That guy who got his foot flattened, he was a rat, and he was lucky it wasn't his head got caught in that bag door. Johnny Mac's a pretty tough guy, but his bones break just like everybody else's. Just like yours." He stepped a little closer. "Just like hers."

My heart thumped against my rib cage. "What are you talking about?"

"I hear that's how she died-broken neck." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. That's how quick it can happen." He pressed his lips into a thin smile that to me was the equivalent of fingernails on a blackboard. "Can you imagine that?"

"You sick, sleazy bastard."

"What happened to that woman should never have happened," he said, "but it did. It's done and nothing you can do will change that. Nothing. This ain't your fight, and what you're looking for, nobody wants you to find it. Nobody."

For the first time I felt real panic, as if I was in over my head, as if something I'd started was about to spin dangerously out of my control. I wanted to run to a phone to call John, to call Dan, to call everyone I knew and make sure they were safe tonight. And I wanted to get out of there. "I'm leaving."

He dropped the cigarette on the cement floor and crushed it out under his boot. Then he stood in front of me, this time at a polite distance, with his hands in the pockets of his coat. "Listen to me. There's nothing happening around here that ain't been happening for a long time, and by the time you figure that out, that it ain't worth it, it's going to be too late. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you got no friends here, including that asshole Fallacaro."

The numb feeling in my toes began to creep ever so slowly into my calves, my knees… "What about him?"

"He's been lying to you right from the beginning."

…my thighs, my hips, and my stomach…

"Who do you think told me about Johnny Mac being a rat?"

"What you're saying about John McTavish is not true. But even if it was…" My words couldn't keep up with my brain. "What would be in it for Dan to tell you something like that?"

"He didn't tell me. He told your boss."

"Why would he tell Lenny something…" The cold, dry air was sticking in my throat, and it was getting painful to breathe, almost impossible to talk, and now I was completely numb. I didn't feel cold. I didn't feel anything. "Dan hates Lenny. He wasn't even in Boston most of the time that Lenny was here."

"You know about Crescent Security, I know you do. But do you know where it was located?"

I opened my mouth to answer and closed it.

Pete was watching me closely, nodding. "Crescent Security was run by Lenny's brother-in-law in Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is just down the road from Newark." He used it for payoffs. He needed to pay someone off, he made them a Crescent contractor. He needed to collect, he'd send a bill from Crescent. But sometimes he needed to move large amounts of cash in secret, and that's where your buddy came in. It was the Danny Fallacaro delivery service-Jersey to Boston, hand-delivered. Better than FedEx. That's how he got into management. He was just another bag slinger before that… one of us."

I tried to find some equilibrium, because the concrete floor was falling out from under me. I wanted to say I didn't believe him, but I couldn't find my voice.

"If you don't believe me, ask him." Pete lifted his hood over his head, and when he turned to go, I could no longer see his face, could only hear his voice. "Ask him about locker thirty-nine. He'll know."