The Fire This Time

by S. Frederic Liss

  Charlie’s political machine was reminiscent of Chicago of the Daley era or New York of Boss Tweed’s time. With his appointees controlling the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Boston Zoning Board of Appeals, Charlie personally issued the zoning and building permits for the office towers and hotels that revitalized Boston to developers who awarded the work to the right contractors, who hired people out of the right union halls. If a restaurant needed a liquor license, Charlie’s henchmen on the Boston Liquor Licensing Board approved it if the right wholesaler vouched for the restaurateur, the right distributors provided the produce, the beef, the fish. He distributed real estate tax abatements as if they were papal indulgences, proportionate to the applicant’s contributions to his campaigns. When video games resurrected the penny arcade, he rammed a regulatory scheme through the Boston City Council mandating a municipal permit for each machine; not each arcade, each machine. To protect the youth of the city, he explained at the press conference when he signed the ordinance. He, of course, controlled the permits. People beholden to him could mobilize more campaign workers, raise more money, than any candidate other than those named Kennedy.

  “Mr. Mayor.” James Goddard, a wire service reporter and senior City Hall correspondent, always asked the first question. “On behalf of the press corps, please accept our condolences. How is Mrs. Sullivan?”

  “Thanks, Jim. It’s been difficult. She’s doing as well as can be expected.”

  “Mr. Mayor.” Franklin Crocker of the Boston Globe stood.

  Charlie’s facial muscles tightened as the camera panned from him to Crocker who was referred to as “Crocker Shit” by Charlie’s inner circle. The Globe had supported Charlie in his first run for mayor, then abandoned him when he ran for reelection because it perceived his opinions on school busing and the distribution of low income housing throughout the city to be too similar to such ardent segregationists as Ross Barnet, George Wallace, or Lester Maddox. When Charlie announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, the Globe editorialized a plea he not run, arguing he would divide the Democratic Party and prevent the election of a senator in the tradition of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the current senior senator from Massachusetts, Edward Moore Kennedy. Some tradition, Charlie joked to his aides. One hunted pussy ‘round the clock; the other drove it off bridges.

  “Any new developments on the investigation?” Crocker asked.

  “No.”

  Charlie’s composure came through on television because he knew how to use the small screen to his advantage. He alternated eye contact with the camera as if it were a constituent sitting across from him in his office and with the reporter asking the question. He modulated his voice so it did not sound pre-recorded. He held his hands and head steady. When he paused to blow his nose, he made it look as if he were struggling to overcome a deviated septum his parents could not afford to have surgically repaired.

  “Chief Ugolino,” Charlie continued, “has assigned the investigation to Detective Angelo Procaccino, a thirty-year veteran of the police department well-respected for the thoroughness of his investigations. Detective Procaccino has linked the skull-cap to Avram Levy who, as you know, is in custody. Several more like it were found in his apartment.”

  Angelo the Sweeper, Maddie thought. She called him that because Ugolino, according to gossip among the defense bar, assigned him to cases where the chief wanted inconvenient facts swept under the rug. Maddie had encountered him in defending a busboy in the Flying Dragon arson case in which the building housing Chinatown’s Flying Dragon restaurant had been gutted by fire. The prosecution theory was that the busboy was acting on behalf of one of the Chinese triads, China’s version of the mafia. Maddie’s defense theory was that the owner of the building, a parochial school classmate of Ugolino’s, had torched it for the insurance. Maddie could not break Procaccino on cross-examination. Years later, the owner of the building confessed to the arson on his death bed. By that time, Maddie’s client had died in prison, silenced by a guard on the triad’s payroll.

  Procaccino added several new layers of mystery to Levy’s case. What facts did Ugolino want swept under the rug? Who was he protecting? Why? No wonder, Maddie thought, he wanted a change of venue. No wonder he wanted to lay off on the defense the work the police should be doing. Once again, her temptation to ask Levy if he murdered Bumper Sullivan, her wisp of a wish he would confess, agitated her.

  “Say, Mr. Mayor.” Tony Cochoni of the East Boston Patriot waved.

  Maddie read Charlie’s mind through his smile. Cochoni was Charlie’s pet reporter. For him, “off the record” meant off the record. Now and again Charlie had a few beers with him without worrying every word would appear on the next day’s front page. Trish appreciated he didn’t feel obliged to interview her every time they met. Charlie rewarded Cochoni’s discretion by leaking him enough scoops to make the Globe and the Herald-American jealous. “Rumor has it that Capablanca’s only black member played chess with Bumper that night.”

  “His name is Mabi and that rumor is true.”

  “Was he in conspiracy with Levy?”

  “No. He left Capablanca when it closed and has an alibi for the rest of the evening.”

  “Have you questioned him?” Crocker shouted.

  “I haven’t questioned anyone,” Charlie said.

  “The police, I mean.”

  “The police have undertaken a thorough investigation and are confident in the accuracy of the outcome of that investigation, as is the district attorney.” Charlie stared straight into the camera and Maddie felt he was in her living room challenging her to make something of the fact that the police investigation had started and stopped with Levy’s skull cap and that, arguably, he had just pronounced Levy guilty. Charlie’s harebrain was as cold and calculating as Ugolino. Angelo the Sweeper changed the game within the game. Her instincts told her more, much more, was going on than trying to force a change of venue.

  “Is it true Mabi attended the funeral?” Cochoni asked.

  “Everyone from Capablanca did.”

  Charlie pointed at Makim Obawa from the Roxbury News, a black weekly.

  Obawa rose as if standing would elevate his question to a level of importance it would lack if asked while seated. “We in the black community know Mabi as the leader of the Trojans. Some believe the Trojans control the trade in the drugs poisoning our streets. Why would someone like him join Capablanca?”

  Charlie paused to add import to his response, then repeated the question, a strategy Maddie had woodshedded her witnesses to use to buy time. “Why would someone like him join Capablanca, you ask. Perhaps, you should ask him. On a more serious note, Mr. Obawa, as you know Capablanca is a municipal facility. As such it is open to all city residents without regard to race, religion, or national origin. To refuse admission to a city resident for one of those reasons is a violation of federal law. Are you advocating the city deny membership to Mr. Mabi because of his race?”

  Maddie sensed the press conference was becoming an ordeal for Charlie. Rapid eye blinking was the first sign his harebrain was struggling to free itself.

  Crocker pointed his pencil at the mayor. “I understand Levy’s bail hearing is Friday. How would you rule on his application for bail?”

  “How would I rule? I would give the safety of the community due consideration. A person accused of murdering a young child in such a horrific way should not be released before trial.”

  “So you’re advocating preventive detention,” Crocker said.

  “Preventive detention is a buzz word fuzzy-thinking liberals like the Globe use to deceive the public. What I advocate is common sense. Every parent, black or white, Christian or Jew, rich or poor, will sleep better knowing someone accused of such a heinous murder is not free to prey upon other innocent children. The numbers don’t lie. Countless crimes are committed by people free on bail. Protecting the community is one of the reasons bail may be imposed. I wish your editors would climb down off their polo ponies and wake up
to real life.”

  Polo ponies, Maddie thought. He’s on the verge of losing it. Maddie sipped her tea. It had cooled to the point of being bitter. Not losing it, she realized. Hitting a home run. Charlie’s core voters would certainly agree the Globe was an elitist paper pandering to readers insulated and isolated from the real world by their bank balances. Polo ponies was the perfect symbol, concise, quotable, the image of the filthy rich. It would resonate with voters happy to afford a dog for the kids, not a pure bred, a mutt. It would play well outside the city among voters who didn’t read the Globe. It would align him with the majority who lived paycheck to paycheck. In her mind’s eye, Maddie saluted him.

  “Hey! Give someone else a break,” Cochoni shouted. “Are you saying judges are too soft on criminals?”

  In Charlie’s first campaign, criminals were portrayed as victims of societal conditions beyond their control. In his most recent, they were stereotyped as predatory deviants who victimized the innocent and law-abiding. Maddie’s years in legal aid had taught her Charlie was right about seventy-five per-cent of the time.

  “If every judge spent time riding in a patrol car or, even better, walking a beat, they’d show more common sense in their application of the bail statute.”

  The harebrain was peeking out, fighting to liberate itself from the calm, rational man temporarily controlling it. Maddie knew this demeanor, if Charlie maintained it on the witness stand, would overwhelm the jury. If the evidence were there, no feeling person would vote to acquit the man accused of murdering his son. Yet, to her and her alone, Ugolino’s machinations whispered Levy’s innocence, whispered that the police knew something that pinpricked a hole in what seemed like an airtight case. Emotion would patch that hole unless she figured out some way to neutralize it. Or, found the real killer, if it weren’t Levy. To ask or not to ask, that is the question.

  SCLS couldn’t afford to hire a private investigator, at least one capable of finding anything not beneath a flashing neon sign screaming “Look Here!” In all her years as a public defender, she had never persuaded the court to order the Commonwealth to pay for a private investigator for an indigent defendant even though the U.S. Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights arguably mandated it. Maddie Devlin, P.I., a wonderful title for a television series. She’d insist on a jazz score like the old Peter Gunn show her da watched religiously.

  “Do you think Levy can get a fair trial in Boston?” Maise Davis, a television anchor, asked. Maise anchored the 6:00 and 11:00 news on the least-watched of Boston’s three network television stations. Unlike most anchors, she wanted to be a field reporter, but the salary and perks of being an anchor in a market as big as Boston’s were too good to trade down for being a reporter for a local station in a smaller market. Her overtures to the networks and to local stations in New York and Los Angeles had been ignored.

  Charlie stepped back from the microphone so he would have to raise his voice, an old trial attorney trick Maddie recognized from her own repertoire. “As the Christian Science Monitor editorialized, Boston does not need another Sacco and Vanzetti. And, I would like to add, Boston does not need its own Dreyfus either.”

  Not the Monitor; the Globe. A slip of the tongue so minor it would not undermine Charlie’s credibility as a witness at Levy’s trial. Two teaspoons of sugar did not sweeten the bitterness of her tea. She spit the mouthful back into her cup.

  “Mr. Mayor.” The camera focused on Aaron Finegold, a reporter from The Daily Herald, a Jewish newspaper that circulated throughout New England. “I appreciate your sentiments, but I must remind you that on Friday leaders of the Jewish community requested police protection at synagogues during Sabbath services and you refused. Yesterday morning, a bar mitzvah in West Roxbury was disrupted when vandals threw smoke bombs through the synagogue windows. By refusing to act, is not the city condoning if not promoting anti-Semitism?”

  “No one is more opposed to anti-Semitism than me, Aaron, but I can’t assign police units to every synagogue. The rest of the city would go unprotected. The people of Boston are good people. Anti-Semitism is the illness of the lunatic fringe. A few smoke bombs do not a holocaust make.”

  The harebrain was wrestling its way to freedom. The hot television lights reflected off the sweat accumulating on Charlie’s brow. He blew his nose to clear his nasal passages.

  Crocker waved his hand like a first-grade boy desperate to go to the bathroom. “Do you think it proper for an elected official to permit his position on an issue of public debate to be influenced by a personal tragedy?”

  The mayor’s press secretary intervened. “It’s been a long day.”

  Charlie nudged her aside. “Public debate? What public debate? It’s not a matter of public debate that Boston should be safe for my son, for yours, for everyone’s.”

  “Is Boston safe for Jewish sons?” Finegold asked.

  “The arrest and prosecution of Avram Levy are not anti-Semitic acts, but rather proof justice is blind in America. Crime victims also have rights and the most important is having the person who committed the crime apprehended, brought to trial, convicted with due process, and sentenced to time to be served rather than suspended. As long as I am mayor of the city of Boston, due process will not be a shield behind which people who murder out of hatred can hide from justice. This defendant will be judged in accordance with the American system of justice, which guarantees him a fair trial before a jury of his peers and representation by competent counsel at the expense of the Commonwealth if he can’t afford to pay.”

  Charlie paused, his mouth open as if he were debating with himself to say something else, then pointed to a woman sitting at the end of the front row. “You’ve been very quiet this afternoon,” he said to Anne McGann, editor of the woman’s page of The Lighthouse, the weekly newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Boston. “Do you have a question?”

  “I was just thinking you and Charles must have been very close.”

  “Me and Bumper would go to Bruins games together, Fenway Park, watch road games on television. Movies, bowling, pizza, the kind of things you do with a kid his age.”

  “Did you and he ever play chess?” McGann asked.

  “He’d have none of me.” Charlie smiled. “I wasn’t good enough.”

  “Did he enjoy campaigning?”

  “He was a natural. Do you remember the time he stumped the Democratic Solidarity Dinner with a riddle? What did the deep sea diver have for lunch?” He paused. “Peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches.”

  Everyone laughed, Charlie the loudest, until his laughter disintegrated into sobs. Tears streaked his cheeks as he struggled to rein in his emotions. Failing, he stepped back from the microphone, then hurried from the podium, from the room. His press secretary announced the press conference was over.

  Maddie rewound the tape and watched it again. She couldn’t get out of her mind the thought that Charlie and Ugolino knew of a weakness in the prosecution’s case that might lead a thinking juror–and she only needed one–to have reasonable doubts. Perhaps Bumper’s opponent across the chess board that night, Mabi, was that weakness. Perhaps Mabi was the intended beneficiary of Angelo the Sweeper’s skullduggery. Had his alibi been corroborated? Charlie certainly tried to create the impression it had. But, Mabi’s name had not appeared in the Globe? Or, the Herald-American. It wouldn’t be beyond Charlie to plant that question with his pet reporter. Charlie hadn’t flinched when Mabi’s name came up. He had acknowledged the truth of the rumor the way a proud parent acknowledged a son or daughter who won a prize at the school spelling bee or science fair. Was Charlie’s confidence a bluff? Or, a tell?

  She admired the way Charlie was playing politics, Boston’s favorite blood sport. Levy’s trial would be the engine that drove Charlie’s Senate campaign and nothing would be allowed to make that engine sputter. Free press coverage of Levy’s trial, Charlie’s and Trish’s grief, would be more effective, more valuable, than millions of dollars of campaign ads ext
olling Charlie’s positions on the issues. Any Democrat who opposed him in the primary would be condemned as heartless, or worse. The name of the hapless Republican opposing him would rarely, if ever, be mentioned. Bumper’s absence from the campaign trail would speak more eloquently than any words his speechwriters could write. There was something callous and coldhearted, something odious and repellent, about Charlie riding his son’s murder to the United States Senate; but Bumper was dead and nothing Charlie did on or off the campaign trail would resurrect him.

  Maddie cursed the “what-ifs” parading through her mind like the marching bands on Southie’s West Broadway, then East Broadway, during Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. At the heart of each band like an oversized bass drum on wheels was the biggest “what-if” of all, Michelle Furey. She wished she were on Furey’s bed, the beady eyes of “The Screaming Pope” ogling her naked body. She wished Furey’s tongue was gently lapping her labia, then burrowing into her vulva, deeper, deeper, until it found her clitoris, attacking her clit, pounding against it, as if she, Furey, wanted to dislodge it. The orgasm washed over her like the chill of plunging into the ocean at Carson Beach in early spring before the new season had warmed the water. Too quickly, the last marching band exited her mind and only the echo of the bass drum remained, fading step-by-step as it moved away from her.