Page 25 - double revenge 3.

BOSTON MASSACHUSETTS

TH
SUNDAY MARCH 8 1998

Mick Hagley stepped off the tram at Washington Square and gazed around him. The early spring
Sun shone through the trees throwing mottled shadows on the wide pavements and a slow smile
gradually broke into a big laugh. He didn’t care if passersby stared at him he was just thinking how
good life was for a jailbird turned secret intelligence agent. He knew that would be pushing it a bit
far, intelligence services lackey would be more appropriate. London paid him a retainer and a

bonus for every job. Sometimes a bit of surveillance, occasionally picking someone’s pocket or
stealing a briefcase off a back seat but three years ago he was burgling houses in Hampstead and
now here he was in Boston Massachusetts about to break into office premises and being paid to
do so by the British taxpayer. He crossed from the tramway to the sidewalk and looked up and
down the broad highway that is Beacon Street.

London had traced a series of calls to a payphone somewhere between Washington Square and
Cleveland Circle, a distance of about a mile but they were only able to trace the area code and the

first three digits. The caller had apparently not stayed on line long enough for a full trace. Mick
suspected this made the guy a pro. If he was making “threatening calls” as London described them,
then he would have made them from a booth rather than a call phone in the middle of a crowded
bar. Finding the pay phone would be the easy part, locating his office would be the challenge. The
notion was he would be involved in finance, accountant or investment advisor seemed most
probable and his office would probably be close to the payphone.

Mick’s plan was to walk down to Cleveland Circle checking all the premises that might have a phone

booth, window gazing those that just might have a secluded pay phone and then walk back up the
other side and then, if he hadn’t struck lucky, check the first block of each side road.

An hour and a half later he had checked a couple of bars and a travel lodge and had made a note of
those he might have to visit to confirm their payphone and had just reached Cleveland Circle,
where the trams turn to go past the Chestnut Hill reservoir and then back up to Boston Central. On
the corner of Chestnut Hill Avenue, outside the Shapur’s Persian Deli, he spotted a street phone
booth and he felt lucky.

The number was good. This was the pay phone; Mick was not in any doubt. Shapur’s Deli was set in
a row of ten premises each of which had office space above. Only two offices had lettering on the
windows, a law firm and a construction company. Breaking into ten premises at midnight with each
setting off a call to the local cops was out of the question. The search had to be narrowed down.

Mick settled himself into a seat at the counter. There were no other customers but it was easier to
strike up a conversation at close proximity rather than from a table. He perused the menu board
above the counter, ordered a mushroom bourekas combo with a sprite and waited to see if Shapur
would start a conversation.