by John Philpin
“Ray, you gave me shit about getting back into it.”
“You can give me shit about not getting out of it.”
Bolton paced his office.
I thumbed through lead sheets. One of them caught my attention.
“Have you been through these?” I asked.
“Those are the ones that have been checked.”
“An officer responded to each of these?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“This description is pretty damn good.”
“It’s been all over the tube.”
“Near the Sears building … man running … carrying a riot gun.”
“A unit went out there, there wasn’t anybody. There’s a fucking blizzard going on.”
I had probably heard Ray Bolton swear a dozen times in twenty-five years. He was the epitome of the placid, probing detective. Felix Zrbny, the assault on the courthouse, and mention of Theresa Stallings were more than enough to crack his relaxed exterior. Inside, he was at a boil.
I walked to the window and stared at the snow. The wind was stronger, blowing from the northeast.
I turned as two detectives escorted Albie Wilson’s half-brother, Nicky Noonan, to the interrogation room. A third officer brought Bolton the report he was waiting for. Technicians had identified Noonan’s prints in the abandoned getaway car.
“Has he waltzed with Miranda?” Bolton asked.
“Signed a waiver of rights,” a detective said.
“He have anything to say on the way in?”
“Weepy about his brother.”
Bolton nodded and entered the interrogation room. I went as far as the observation area.
“Albie’s dead,” Noonan said immediately. “You should have some respect for the dead.”
“Your brother didn’t show much respect for the three people he killed.”
Noonan turned away.
“We found the car,” Bolton said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You didn’t do a very good job of wiping it down. Your prints are all over it.”
Noonan spun around. “Big fucking deal. Maybe I stole a car. What’s that? Six months? Probation?”
“Life,” Bolton said.
“Bullshit.”
“No eligibility for parole.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” Noonan said, panic creeping into his voice.
“Accessory to homicide, three counts. The court will not look kindly on the murders of a sheriff’s deputy, a prosecutor, and a judge.”
Noonan fell against the back of his chair as if Bolton had slammed him with a two-by-four. “What the fuck are you talking about? This ain’t right.”
Bolton was silent.
“Fuck,” Noonan yelled, and smacked his hand on the table.
“Who bought the kill?” Bolton asked.
Noonan tapped his fingers. “Albie never said nothing about a hit. Shoot up the place and run. Make noise. That’s what he told me.”
Bolton said nothing.
“I figured it was a Vigil thing. Albie was into that. I never asked, and he never said. I just figured. My piece was a grand. Boost the car, drive it, dump it. That’s all. I heard the fucking cannons blasting and I got out of there.”
“J-Cubed?”
“Albie knew him. I never had anything to do with those assholes.” Noonan yanked back his sleeves. “Look. No fuckin’ tattoos.”
“Your brother’s dead. You’re going to do his time in Walpole.”
Noonan slapped his hands on top of his head, his eyes wide. “I don’t fuckin’ know anything.”
Bolton stood and, in a brilliant reversal, said, “You need a lawyer.”
Cops never want perps to lawyer up. They ease through the Miranda warning, slide into interrogation, and hope the perp doesn’t cry for his attorney. Noonan was dumb, but he had been around enough to know that Bolton would advise him to run for cover only if Bolton was certain he had Noonan nailed.
“I don’t want a fuckin’ lawyer,” Noonan said. “I want to work this out. Right now. I can’t do no life. Jesus. I stole a fuckin’ car.”
“You sit here and think about that,” Bolton said. “Maybe I’ll be back.”
“Nice piece of work,” I said when Bolton joined me.
“I’ll let him cook for twenty minutes. He’ll confess to the crucifixion after that.”
I leaned back in my chair and swung my legs onto the corner of Bolton’s desk. “What if Noonan’s telling the truth, that it wasn’t supposed to be a hit?”
“What difference does it make? We’ve got three dead.”
I did not know if Vigil’s or Albie Wilson’s intent made a damn bit of difference, but it bothered me. “What’s standard security at the courthouse?” I asked.
“One officer on the doors, one beside the bench.”
Wilson could not have known about the increase in personnel. He jumped from the car and ran up the steps waving his Mac-10 to scatter the crowd. Then he crashed through the doors and ran into two deputies, not one, and two shotgun-wielding tactical officers.
“You were standing on Wilson’s right and you were firing at him. He didn’t return fire. He shot all his rounds to his left. He even hit the fucking wall.”
Bolton shook his head. “I’m not following you.”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure where I’m going.”
Bolton had stood twenty feet in front of Wilson and rapid-fired nine-millimeter slugs at him. Wilson had ignored him. I had no idea what that meant, but even an idiot in that situation will try to avoid getting his head blown off. Maybe Wilson was that crazy, but I wanted to find out.
“See what you can get from Noonan,” I said.
“Where you gonna be?”
“Riddle’s Bar. I could use a Guinness.”
“Lucas, I had a call from Fran Raymond. She’s one of the Zrbny estate attorneys. She saw you and Waycross on TV walking out of Zrbny’s house. She was pissed. It took ten minutes to talk her out of filing a complaint.”
“I’ll be more careful, Ray,” I said.
“Take some company to Riddle’s,” he added. “People have been known to come out of there bruised. A few haven’t come out at all.”
DANNY KIRKLAND STOOD IN THE HALLWAY. “It’s a pleasure to see you get your ass in a sling,” he said. “It was especially enjoyable to see it televised. I didn’t have to lift a finger. For the record, how many illegal entries does this make?”
“You got something you want flushed?” I asked.
“If you weren’t such a prick, we could compare notes, make life easier for both of us.”
“If you weren’t such a sleaze, I might believe what you had to say,” I said, walking down the hall to the conference room in search of my posse, Neville Waycross.
THE CAR SWERVED AND SKIDDED TO A HALT thirty yards away. I gripped the gun and waited.
A man climbed from the snow-covered Toyota and stared at me. Despite his bulky coat and stocking cap, he looked familiar. After a moment he raised his hand and waved tentatively.
“Felix? It’s me, Ben Moffatt.”
I waited.
Ben approached through the snow. “What are you doing? What happened? I heard there was an accident. On TV they said you killed a police officer.”
“Go home, Ben,” I told him.
He froze, continuing to stare at me. “I can’t do that, Felix. You have to go back to the hospital. Every cop in the city is looking for you.”
“Go home. Watch TV. Eat dinner.”
He gazed over his shoulder at his car, then again at me. “I can’t force you,” he said, finally arriving at a conclusion.
I said nothing.
He shrugged helplessly. “I have to tell the police I saw you.”
A powerful gust of wind churned the snow between us.
“I don’t have a choice about that, Felix.”
“Go home, Ben,” I said again.
“Come with me right now, Felix. We ca
n try to sort out things. You’ll be safe in the hospital.”
I removed the handgun from my pocket and aimed at Ben’s chest. “Get in the car and drive away,” I said.
It was curious. I still had no wish to kill Ben Moffatt.
He raised his arms and backed to his car. The tires spun in the snow, then grabbed, and the Toyota skidded down the Riverway.
Sable stood in her doorway. “Who was that, Felix?” she asked. “He knows you.”
“I’ll be back,” I said, and shuffled through the drifts to the bridge.
THE OLD MAN CONTINUED TO PUSH SNOW with his scoop. “I can’t keep up with it,” he said.
He looked fatigued, and breathed heavily.
“Let me do some,” I said. “I haven’t shoveled snow in a long time.”
He stepped aside and watched as I cleared a swath the length of the esplande. “You’re young and strong,” he said. “You make it look easy. Where’s your lady?”
“Waiting,” I said.
He nodded and lighted a cigarette. “My social security ain’t enough to live on. The rest of the year, this job’s okay. I cut the grass, tend the flowers. Most winters we don’t get storms like this. You from around here?”
“Ravenwood.”
“The old fort,” he said.
“You know it?”
“I remember them taking turns up there watching for U-boats. Seemed like everybody saw one, or thought they did. I never went there. Just heard about it. After the war they built all them houses. You ever go in the dungeons? I hear some people got lost in there.”
“I played in the tunnels,” I said.
“Kids ain’t scared of things the way grown-ups are.”
I considered that. I had no memory of fear. I remembered helplessness, but I did not remember caring that there were things I could not do. Time passed, and I mastered what had seemed impossible.
I finished clearing the snow from the esplanade and moved to the first wide step. Under the most recent four inches of wet snow, the cement was cracked and permanently stained black. Bricks in the wall at the side of the stairs were chipped, some replaced with bricks of different colors.
“I thought this building was new,” I said.
“Maybe ten years,” the old man answered, following my gaze to the damaged wall. “Maybe eight. Places like this ain’t built to live long. They’ve got no personality, know what I’m saying? This here’s a place to eat, sleep, and make money. It’s like a toy that breaks on the day after Christmas, only this takes a little longer.”
“Who pays you?” I asked.
“Pouldice Media. They own the whole place. They wanted me to poison the sparrows and the pigeons, but I wouldn’t do it. They don’t know it, but I give seeds to the birds, and pieces of orange when I got one. I do it round the side there where nobody can see.”
I pushed the scoop across the bottom step.
“I ain’t got much,” the old man said. “Can you use a dollar?”
I shook my head and leaned the scoop against the wall. “My name is Felix.”
“Eddie,” he said, and we shook hands. “You maybe just gave me a little longer to be on this earth.”
I RODE THE ELEVATOR TO THE SECOND floor, turned right, and walked to the studio doors. The red On Air light was switched off.
A man sat immediately inside the doors. I showed him the card that Wendy Pouldice had given to me at the hospital. He stared at it, but said nothing.
“Is she here?” I asked.
Then the doors opened, and she walked in.
“Felix, I’m so glad you’re here. I have everything arranged for us. We’ll tape you for six o’clock. By eleven tonight you’ll be coast-to-coast.”
Pouldice was heavily made up, not at all like she looked when she visited me.
“I don’t want to be a news bulletin,” I said. “I want people to see me, to know my life. That’s what we talked about.”
“It has to start this way, Felix. Trust me. I know this business. Right now, you are news. In six months or a year, then we go with a made-for-TV docudrama.”
“It’s all the same,” I said. “Maybe you don’t know your own business. It’s all entertainment, a competition for ratings and sponsors and money. There isn’t any news. There is only opportunity. For fifteen years people have been asking me questions. I want to answer those questions.”
I gazed at the pockets of darkness in the studio. A single light illuminated a long desk and, behind it, a mural of the Boston skyline at night. A sign on the desk front read BTT Evening News with Bob Britton.
“This is Donald Braverman,” Pouldice said, indicating the man who sat holding the card I had given him. “Donald is my assistant. I think I told you about him.”
He did not look up.
“Who is Britton?” I asked.
“Bob is our news anchor. He’ll play the tape on his show, and he’ll do the commentary.”
“Does he smoke cigars?”
Her forehead creased. “Yes. Why?”
“How did you know I would come here today?”
She frowned and held out her hands, palms up. “That was our agreement, Felix.”
“I said that I would come here when I was released.”
“Oh, I understand. We knew about the accident, of course, and … the shooting. We’ve been covering the story all day. When I heard that you walked away from the crash, I expected you to come here.”
“I don’t like this.”
Something about the setting and the players bothered me. Wendy Pouldice offered me the audience of millions that I wanted, but she was not the woman who touched my arm and talked slowly when we met at the hospital. What she offered now was minutes on a newscast.
“You told me that you wanted to talk about … that day,” she said.
“There’s more.”
She glanced at her watch.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
“Felix, a lot of things can happen between now and then.”
Donald pushed himself from his chair.
“Sit down,” I told him.
“I’ll handle this, Donald,” she said. “I want to do this the way I’ve always seen it in my mind,” I said.
Braverman sat down.
“Who told Eddie to poison the birds?” I asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Do you know Eddie?”
She looked at Braverman, who shrugged.
“I don’t know Eddie,” she said. “Felix, we need to decide what we’re going to do.”
I heard a soft whistle, then a whisper. My head hurt, and my eyes were tired.
“Something isn’t right,” I said.
“You’re safe here,” Pouldice said, her words arriving from a distance.
I pushed open the doors, a buzz in my head, a pain creeping down the back of my neck.
“Felix,” Pouldice said.
I walked to the elevator.
MR. GUZMAN WAS CLOSING HIS SHOP. “FELIX,” he called as I walked to the exit. “I remembered your name, right?”
“And you are Mr. Guzman.”
He smiled. “Will you be seeing Sable tonight?”
I nodded.
He ducked into his store and emerged with a small bunch of flowers and a paper bag. “I would only have to throw these away,” he said. “It’s a waste.”
He slipped the bag over the bouquet. “Tell her to put them in water right away.”
“She will like these,” I told him.
He grabbed his broom. “Good night,” he said.
A SCARRED MAHOGANY BAR DIVIDED RIDDLE’S.
On one side, a patron labored over burger and fries. The second, larger area attracted the neighborhood’s serious drinkers.
Blue-gray smoke spiraled from overfilled ashtrays. Conversation was sparse and muffled, and Dennis Day crooned from the jukebox. Riddle’s had ignored the passage of thirty-five years.
It is trite to say that Boston never changes, that the city�
��s deep cultural rifts just grow deeper and molder with the passage of time. Beantown’s melting pot never did have much of a flame, and no one stirred the ethnic stew. Racial, religious, and ethnic enclaves defined geography and politics. This turf happened to be owned by white, Irish-American, Roman Catholic, clean-shaven males.
Two men sat at the bar nursing whiskey shots and draft chasers. Three more occupied a table and watched a basketball game on a silent TV. J-Cubed—Dermott Fremont—sat with a newspaper, a mug of Guinness, and a young girl on his lap. The kid’s age was indeterminate—twelve? fifteen?—but she had no business in Riddle’s. She leaned across the table doodling on a placemat.
Behind Fremont the wall was decorated with Vigil’s flag and other memorabilia, all displaying the same logo: black lightning bolts slicing through a black V on a dark blue field. The insignia resembled a bad, oddly shaped bruise.
Neville Waycross positioned himself near the bar. He had been eager to “go to work,” if only in an unofficial capacity. He feigned interest in San Antonio’s dismantling of the Lakers.
I walked to Fremont’s table.
“My name is Lucas Frank.”
He continued to read his newspaper. “You’re not a cop,” he said, and sipped his Guinness.
“I want to find Felix Zrbny before anyone else gets hurt.”
He flipped through the Herald sports pages. I sat opposite him.
Fremont glanced at the bar. “Willy, show this gentleman the door.”
There was a brief skirmish at the bar, followed by the sound of glass breaking and a low moan behind me. Waycross told one of the obstreperous patrons under his care to stay put.
The girl pushed away from the table, staring wide-eyed at the front of the bar.
“You’re in deep shit, old man,” Fremont said.
“Willy,” I called. “Bring me a mug of that Guinness.”
I pointed my finger at the kid. “You, child, go home.”
She grabbed her coat and ran.
“Who the fuck you think you are? You’re fuckin’ dead meat.”
“Let me remind you of your first observation, Mr. Fremont. I’m not a cop, which means that I’m not constrained by the rules of criminal procedure. If I want to shoot off your balls with the thirty-eight I have aimed at them, there won’t be any Internal Affairs investigation.”
