“Same place. Same time. He does it as long as he’s in Boston and not in New York. It’s been happening for at least eighteen months.”
“How do you know?” Eamon asked.
“I had brunch with my mother across the street once. He came out at nine-fifteen and didn’t see me. I had a hunch about it. Three months later, I had coffee with a source nearby and walked past the café at nine on a Thursday. Henry was inside at a window seat with a newspaper. I checked two more times. Same thing.”
“You could have told us this two nights ago,” I said.
“I could have.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Two nights ago I hadn’t decided I needed to speak with him.”
Wiley set his mug down. “No.”
Cabot looked at him.
“Stanley, you’re describing a man who sits in the same chair on the same morning for eighteen months. You think that’s loneliness. I think that’s a man who’s being watched and knows it.”
“That’s possible.”
“It’s likely. If Henry is who you think he is, then whoever’s running him has clocked that café by now. They’ve cleared it because it’s useful to them that he has one habit they can account for. The minute you sit down across from him, you’re a variable they didn’t account for, and they will handle stray variables.”
“I’m not sitting across from him.”
“You’re sitting in his sightline. That’s the same thing to anyone watching the room.”
Cabot didn’t answer.
“And the napkin you think he might pass you, or the look he might hold a beat too long—they create a paper trail. That’s something a third party in that café will remember when someone shows them a photograph of you next week.”
Eamon was listening. He hadn’t moved.
“What’s your alternative?” Cabot asked.
“I don’t have one. That doesn’t mean this is the answer. It means we don’t have an answer yet, and we’re about to commit to the first one we thought of because we’re tired.”
“We’re going to be tired in three days too,” Eamon said.
“I know.”
“And in three weeks.”
Eamon let the silence sit a moment.
“Wiley, your read is correct on the watchers. It’s correct on the paper trail. It’s correct that we’re committing fast. It’s also correct that Henry has opened a door that won’t stay open, and we don’t have a second door.”
Wiley nodded once. He didn’t agree, but he’d been heard.
“Let’s walk through this,” Eamon said. “Cabot sits fifteen minutes after Henry’s usual arrival. He doesn’t approach. He takes a seat in Henry’s sightline and lets Henry decide whether to acknowledge.”
“Yes,” Cabot said.
“He acknowledges, or he doesn’t. If he does, he’s told us he wants to talk. If he doesn’t, he’s too watched to risk it, or he isn’t the man you think, and we walk it back.”
“Agreed.”
Dane took a seat at the head of the table and laid his forearms flat. Six o’clock had come and gone. He was still with us.