|
ONE
CHAPTER ONE
 The dead man
lay on his face in his bed, the sheets and blankets pooled around his feet. The back of his head was a bloody mush.
He had on a pair of baggy white shorts and his skinny legs were quite hairy. The apartment smelled of old clothes
and dusty air and something else. Carl Landry recognized that third smell. It was the odor of a body, brutally
violated, giving up its life. It was a smell that had intrigued him once. Then it had saddened him. Now, it was
just something he was used to. Just part of the job.
Carl was a reporter
with the Boston Globe and he stood at the dead man’s bedroom door, notebook in hand, carefully recording everything
he could see, writing in a cramped style that had seen him through high school and the Army and four years of newspaper
work.
Detective Paul
Malone caught his eye and separated himself from the chattering group of cops. He and Carl were friends, sort of.
As much as a cop and reporter can be. Malone was in his late forties, overweight, and wore a tan coat that flapped
about his shins. There was a faint patch of gray stubble on his chin where he had missed shaving that morning,
and his thick gray-black hair was combed to one side with some wet-looking goop.
"C’mon,
Carl, get out, will ya?" he said, shooing him backward. "I let you see the stiff and that’s fine. Any
more and when the Herald shows up, they’ll expect the same treatment, and we can’t have none of that. Turn this
freakin’ place into a freakin’ circus, you will."
Carl smiled
his best buddy smile and said, "Come along, Paul. Chat with me for a second or two, will you? Deadline’s coming
up and I want to phone this in. Make the morning edition."
"And beat
the pants off the Herald, right?"
"You got
it."
Two steps and
they were in the kitchen. A younger detective was dusting the countertops for fingerprints. There was a flash of
light from the police photographer in the bedroom.
The apartment
was small and cluttered and to Carl’s practiced eyes it had been tossed. Drawers were open, closet doors were ajar,
and clothes and dishes were scattered across the floors and on top of the furniture. The kitchen floor was linoleum
and an empty metal bowl was on the floor, jammed up in the corner. The breakfast dishes were still in the sink.
One cereal bowl, one coffee cup.
A tiny prewar
TV set and a bunch of newspapers and magazines were in the living room. A jet screamed overhead, going toward the
landing strips at Logan Airport. The carpet was light brown and threadbare along the edges, with a faint pattern
of flowers that had been trampled away by years of foot traffic.
The door had
three locks, a sensible precaution, especially during the winter, when supermarket shelves emptied by 10 a.m. every
morning and the prostitutes in the Combat Zone bartered their wares for cans of beef stew. But none of the locks
appeared broken.
During the past
couple of years at the Globe, Carl had run into Paul Malone on a fairly routine basis. Carl’s job was general assignment
reporter. Because of his military experience, his editors thought he’d be used to seeing dead bodies, so more often
than not, he was sent out on crime stories. He and the older detective had a cautious but respectful relationship.
Malone was relatively straight when it came to news, and Carl was equally polite when it came to asking the questions.
"What we
have here is one Merl Sawson. Age sixty. Apparent gunshot wounds to the back of the head." Malone’s accent
was pure Boston.
Carl scribbled
away. "Looks pretty apparent to me."
"Sure it
does, young fella, but I ain’t putting my name to it until he’s at the morgue. Would look pretty funny if we turned
him over and found a knife to his heart, now, wouldn’t it?"
"Yeah.
A laugh and a half. You wondering who might have done the shooting?"
Malone grunted
with what might have been amusement. "Now, there’s somethin’ they must’ve forgot to teach us in detective
school. Wondering who done the shooting and all."
"You know
what I mean. This poor guy was shot. Who’s got guns and ammunition nowadays? Only the Army and the mob. Not civilians.
So what do you think?"
"I think
you’re crossing the line from being a reporter to being a pain in the ass, and that’s a mighty short line."
"Thanks
for the geography lesson," Carl said. "How did the call come in?"
"He’s got
a pal downstairs. He heard some shouts last night. Thought it might have been the television. Then Merl didn’t
show up for their usual lunch. When nobody answered the door, he called us."
"Suspects?"
The detective
looked pained. "C’mon, we’ve been here all of a half hour."
"Burglary,
though, that’s what it looks like."
"Look,
Carl, get the hell out, will ya? I got work to do."
"Just a
sec." He looked around the room. No pictures. That was funny. You’d think a guy this old would have pictures
of family and people on the walls. But no. Nothing. He looked at the magazines on the floor. Time, with a picture
of Nelson Rockefeller on the cover; American Legion, with a picture of Nelson Rockefeller on the cover, and Sports
Illustrated, with a picture of Joe Namath and Nelson Rockefeller on the cover. A veteran and a sports fan.
"Carl..."
"I’m outta
here."
By the door,
he finally figured out what was bothering him.
It was the boots.
Old work boots, their soles held together by gray duct tape. They stood neatly by the door on sheets of newspaper.
Just like...Carl glanced back into the open bedroom door, seeing the legs of the dead man. Sweet Jesus. Sure was
the right size. And the guy had claimed to have been a veteran. And he remembered.
It had happened
a month before, the first really cold day of September. A truly awful day. For six hours he’d been standing on
a pier by Boston Harbor, waiting for the police to dredge up a stolen car. A couple of Roxbury kids had driven
straight off the pier during a police chase the night before. Their stunned parents were huddled by the end of
the pier, ready to claim the drowned remains. When his relief came before the car was recovered, he almost cheered.
Thank God he wouldn’t have to talk to the families and get the usual "how do you feel" crap for the next
day’s story. Now, he could go home and have a beer or three and try to forget the drawn faces of these people waiting
for their dead children.
Then he felt
a touch at his elbow, and heard the old man’s voice. "Excuse me, are you a reporter?"
Carl turned
around. The man stood on the cracked sidewalk, dead leaves and discarded newspapers swirling about his feet from
the harbor wind. A few people walked by and looked at Carl sympathetically, silently saying Sorry he grabbed you,
fella, but better you than me. The man was tall, wearing a long Army overcoat devoid of insignia or even buttons.
His work boots were scuffed and cracked, held together by gray, grimy duct tape. His hands were quivering, and
when he saw Carl notice them, he quickly shoved them into the coat’s pockets. His face was red and pockmarked,
his nose dripping, and there were dark bags under his eyes, like he had gotten one night’s sleep a week for the
past decade. His thin gray hair was tangled and unwashed.
"Yes, I
am, and I’m sorry, but I’ve got an appointment and..."
"You’re
a vet, right? See you’re wearing the old field jacket."
Carl nodded
wearily. "Yep, U.S. Army. Just like you, right?" He reached into his pocket for a quarter.
The old man
shook his head violently. "No, no, put your money away. That’s not what this is about. I’m a veteran, too,
but I’ve never begged. Not once."
"Oh. All
right then, what can I do for you?"
He looked around
and stepped forward, his breath smelling of beer. "Got something for you. A hell of a story. But only if you
have the balls to print it."
"That’s
for my editor to decide. What’s it about?"
The old man
lowered his voice. "Something awful. But something you’ll want to know about. It’s just about the biggest
story ever, just you see. You know, even ten years later, some people still enjoy killin’, and that’s gotta be
stopped."
Carl nodded
seriously. That word ever sounded like it was said by a nine-year-old boy. But there was a faded look in the old
man’s eyes, and his thin shoulders shivered pathetically under the coat. Damn it, the man was a veteran. Just like
him. He deserved better. Hell, they all deserved better.
"I tell
you what, Mr...."
He shook his
head again. "Oh no, no names, not yet. But tell me, will you do the story?"
"No promises,
but I’ll look at what you’ve got." Carl said it seriously, respectfully. The old man was owed that.
He smiled in
relief, showing brown and misshapen teeth. "Good, that’ll be good. Look, I’ve got some important documents,
something important to show you. Here’s just a taste." He handed Carl a much-folded piece of lined notebook
paper.
"Right
there, that’s where the story should start. In that piece of paper. I’ll be here tomorrow afternoon, right at this
spot. We’ll go over the other papers together. Okay? But I won’t come if I don’t think I can trust you. I’ll go
somewhere else. These are bad times, you know."
Carl knew what
he was in store for. He had seen it before, with other reporters and other "sources" that had latched
on to them. But despite that, tomorrow he’d take the old guy to a nice diner, buy him probably the best meal he’d
had in ages, and listen to his tales of dark conspiracies involving no doubt the Rockefellers, space aliens, the
Romanovs, and whatever. Carl would nod politely in all the right places, slip him five bucks, and then go home
and get drunk at all the old memories the man had disturbed. So be it.
"Fine,"
Carl said. "Tomorrow, right here."
"Good."
He looked like he was about to say something, but then he swung around and walked away, his step more confident.
That was the last Carl had seen of him. The fellow veteran had not come back the next day, or the next. After a
week, Carl had given up on him.
The piece of
paper had a list of five names on it, and Carl had spent a few minutes looking them in up a phone book and city
directory. When not a name was found, he put the paper aside.
Now, Carl stood
outside Merl Sawson’s apartment, breathing deeply, glad to get out of the stuffy rooms. Focus, he thought. Focus
on the story. He looked at his watch. An hour to deadline. He shook off his promise to Detective Malone and took
the creaking stairs up to the next landing and knocked on the door. No answer. Well, let’s try his downstairs lunch
pal. He went back down and stopped at the first-floor apartment. An older man answered the door, his face flushed
and his eyes wide with concern and questions, a plaid bathrobe about his skinny body.
"Yes?"
"Carl Landry
from the Globe," he said. "And you are...?"
"Andrew
Townes."
"You rent
here?"
"I own
this place," he said, one gnarled hand holding his bathrobe closed. "My parents left it to me."
"So you
knew Mr. Sawson?"
Eyes still wide,
he nodded. "He’s rented from me near on four years."
"And what
did he do for work?"
"Retired,
I suppose."
"He was
a veteran, wasn’t he? I saw he had a couple of issues of American Legion."
Townes paused
for about a second too long. "I really don’t know. We didn’t talk much about that. You see, he—"
"Landry!"
came the detective’s voice from upstairs. Malone leaning over the railing, snarling at him. "Damn it, man,
when I said leave, I meant leave the building! Stop getting in our way, will ya?"
Carl waved a
hand up, resisting an urge to use one finger, and rummaged in an inside pocket of his coat, the same U.S. Army
field jacket the old man had noted the previous month. Jesus, he thought. It must have been him. Had to be. He
pulled out a creased and slightly soiled business card, which he passed over.
"Call me,
will you? I’m doing a story about Mr. Sawson and I’d like to give a good accounting of his life for the paper.
Hate to just run a brief story. I’m sure he’s worth more than that."
Townes took
the card and retreated into the apartment, "This is all so awful," he muttered as he closed the door,
and Carl went out to the porch. The crisp October air felt good after being inside the apartment house.
Poor Merl Sawson.
Probably just a crazy dead vet. Their meeting last month? Just coincidence, that’s all. Still...it wouldn’t hurt
to look at that list of names again. The old wooden apartment building was three stories, painted white, each floor
an apartment with an outside porch facing the street. In this Hibernian town they were affectionately known as
Irish battleships. He looked at the three mailboxes on the porch. Townes, Sawson, and Clemmons. He wrote down the
names and stepped off the front porch, past two uniformed Boston cops. The older cop said, "They get anybody
yet?"
"Not that
I know of."
The younger
cop tried to make a joke. "Chances are, the perp’s out of state. He’ll be as hard to find as a Kennedy ’fore
the night’s out."
The younger
cop laughed, but the older one frowned and stuck his hands in his uniform coat pocket and turned away. The cop’s
name tag said "Mooney." Maybe he was one of the true Irish believers, still pining for that lost promise.
Could be. This was Boston, after all, and even Carl sometimes still felt the faint stirrings of that old promise,
an old promise he often tried to forget.
A man in a tweed
jacket and jeans stood on the sidewalk, a camera bag over his shoulder and a 35mm camera in his hands. It was Mark
Beasley, a photographer for the Globe who wore a beard that reached the middle of his chest and was nicknamed the
Beast.
"What have
you got, Carl?"
"I don’t
have much, but the cops have a dead man up in the second-floor apartment."
"You want
me to wait around?"
Most reporters
simply tolerated the Beast, but Carl found he liked the guy. He might have the charm of a bull sniffing around
the entrance to a china closet, but he did get the job done and didn’t treat his work as an impediment to a "serious"
career as an artist.
Carl checked
his watch. "Yeah, if you can. If there’s a hole in the metro section, they might be able to use a picture
of the cops dragging this guy’s body down the stairs."
Another jet
flew by overhead. Beasley looked up, camera in his hands. "Jesus, what a place to live in. Freakin’ noise
would drive me crazy."
"What noise?"
Carl asked, oblivious.
"Typical
reporter," the Beast said, grinning. "Wouldn’t notice a naked woman in front of him unless it had something
to do with his story."
Carl smiled
back. "Typical photographer. Wouldn’t notice a naked woman in front of him unless he had film in his camera."
He walked away
quickly, past a faded McGOVERN FOR PRESIDENT sign flapping from a telephone pole. No neighbors were standing around,
and he didn’t have time for a door-to-door to get local color. If he was lucky he could make it to the Globe in
fifteen minutes—if there were no checkpoints set up along the way—and have almost thirty to do the piece. Already,
as he unlocked the car door and got inside, he was writing the story in his mind. It shouldn’t be too hard.
The inside of
his ’69 Coronet was cluttered with old Globes, notebooks, and maps. The outside was light blue and freckled with
rust. It was sloppy but comfortable and, most days, reliable. Today it started up after three tries. At the first
stop sign, he saw some faded graffiti on the side of a liquor store. He lives, it said.
Jesus, he thought.
Maybe there were true believers everywhere.
Walking into
the newsroom of the Globe was always a jolt to the system, even after four years. The noise was a constant hum
of conversations, ringing phones, chattering teletype machines, and the slapping of typewriter keys. The closer
it came to deadline, the louder the noise, and right now it was almost deafening. But even after deadline, it never
got quiet. Before one newspaper rolled out and hit the streets, it was time to work on another. As his editor once
said, the news never stops and never do the goddamn newspapers.
There were a
couple of dozen desks, arranged haphazardly over the dirty tile. Floor-to-ceiling pillars broke up the space, and
also served as a convenient hanging place for calendars, notices, and framed front pages of Globes past. At the
far end of the room was a large horseshoe of desks belonging to the foreign, national, metro, editorial, features
and sports editors. Carl aimed for a heavyset man behind one of the metro desks, his boss, George Dooley.
At the very
end of the room were the glass-enclosed offices of the managing editors and the executive editor. Off to one side
by itself, as if he didn’t really belong, was the office for the oversight editor. The curtains to the glass windows
of this office were closed. They were always closed. Like most reporters, Carl had never been in that office and
that suited him just fine.
He passed one
pillar. The framed front page was from August 14, 1945: JAPS SURRENDER. Another one was from June 28, 1950: AMERICAN
PLANES BOMB FLEEING REDS IN KOREA. Carl dodged a copy boy, racing out to Composing with a fistful of papers in
his hand. Another pillar, another front page. This one was January 21, 1961: KENNEDY OFFERS WORLD NEW START FOR
PEACE. It was hanging crookedly, and the broken glass had been poorly repaired with masking tape.
George had a
phone to his ear but glanced up as Carl approached. As always, he gave Carl a look of skepticism, a look Carl had
gotten used to these past four years. Dooley’s desk was covered with paper, pencils, half-empty Styrofoam coffee
cups, and damp photographs, fresh from the darkroom. His thin brown hair was plastered to a freckled scalp, and
he wore black-rimmed glasses that were always sliding down his large nose. He had on a wrinkled white shirt with
the sleeves rolled up massive forearms, a black necktie tugged open, and black slacks. He called it his uniform
and claimed it saved him from wasting time in the morning, choosing clothes while fighting his daily hangover.
"Yeah,
yeah," George growled into the phone. "Hold on for a moment, will ya?" He turned to Carl. "Whaddya
got?"
He stood before
his editor, flipped through his notebook. "A homicide from East Boston."
"Yeah,
I know. Male or female?"
"Male,
old guy. Looks like a vet. Shot in the back of head." He thought about telling George about his earlier meeting
with the man, and decided not to. There was a pecking order in the newsroom, depending on how many stories saw
print, and he didn’t want George delaying this story because of some odd meeting last month.
George picked
up a pencil, scratched a few notes. "Too bad it wasn’t a college girl. Could use something to spright up the
front page. All right, get me something in ten, page and a half."
"George,
come on, you know I’ve got twenty minutes. And besides, the guy was a vet. That should be worth something."
"Don’t
be offended, Carl, but I’d rather have a dead co-ed than a dead vet," George said. "And you still get
just ten minutes. Oversight took a long lunch and he’s running late."
He knew better
than to raise a fuss. "All right, ten it is. Did the Beast call? He was trying for some pictures of them taking
the body out."
"Yep, he
called and nope, there’s no pics. They took the body out the rear, to avoid all the attention."
Something seemed
to tickle the back of his hands. "That sounds strange, George."
"Strange?
Yeah, the whole world is strange. And now you’ve got nine minutes, Landry."
"On my
way," he said, looking up again, as he always did, to the framed Globe front page from October 31, 1962, that
hung on the pillar just behind George’s chair. REDS BOMB NYC, DC; MILLIONS FEARED DEAD. A smaller subhead read:
"Kennedy, First Family Perishes." And the first paragraph of the story: "The horrors of this past
weekend’s invasion of Cuba to attack Soviet missile sites struck home with an apocalyptic vengeance yesterday, with
news that atomic bombs had struck Washington, D.C., and the outskirts of New York City, killing millions of Americans
and destroying the upper reaches of the federal government. Military sources confirm that President John F. Kennedy
and Vice President Lyndon Johnson perished in the attack. The whereabouts of Speaker of the House John McCormack—the
next in line to the presidency—are not known at this time."
After his first
six months here, shuddering ever time he’d passed it, he eventually asked George why that particular front page
was in such a prominent place. George had replied in that gravelly voice of his, "Why the hell not? It’s news,
ain’t it?"
Carl turned
and headed to his desk.
|
