Charlesgate Confidential

by Scott Von Doviak

  MYTH: Eugene O’Neill died in the Charlesgate.

  REALITY: This one is easily disproved, although the confusion is understandable. O’Neill did die in a Back Bay hotel that is now a “haunted” dormitory, but it wasn’t Charlesgate. Boston University owned the Charlesgate in 1953, so it’s unlikely O’Neill would have died there unless he happened to be dating a young coed. It did not yet own the Shelton Hotel, however, which is where the author of The Iceman Cometh and Long Day’s Journey into Night spent his final days. He died in Room 401 on November 27, 1953, and rumors persist to this day that his ghost haunts the fourth floor of Shelton Hall. It’s easy to see how one ghostinfested dorm might be mistaken for another.

  MYTH: The sixth floor is haunted by the ghost of a little girl who fell down an elevator shaft to her death.

  REALITY: This story has surfaced in several articles about Charlesgate’s alleged paranormal history, but at press time, the ghost had yet to respond to the Beacon’s interview requests. One version of the rumor states that it was Putnam’s daughter Elsa who fell to her death and now haunts the Charlesgate. We know this to be false: Elsa lived in Boston until 1979 and had four children of her own. Most versions of the story entail the little girl looking for her ball, or the ball rolling out of nowhere down a long hallway, followed by the ghost child. “It was two little girls,” sixth-floor resident and confirmed believer Jules Van Cleve insisted during a recent interview. “I came around the corner and saw two little girls standing at the end of the hall, staring at me.” When reminded that this happened in the 1980 Stanley Kubrick film The Shining, Van Cleve said, “Oh, that’s right. That movie scared the [expletive] out of me.”

  MYTH: Ouija boards are banned in Charlesgate by the Emerson administration.

  REALITY: No Emerson administrator contacted by the Beacon was willing to admit this on the record. “Are you kidding?” said Charlesgate resident director Gerald Torres. “Like we don’t have enough to worry about with you scofflaws smuggling refrigerators and beer and illegal narcotics into the building? I’m going to confiscate a board game by Parker Brothers? Get out of my office.” However, one RA speaking on condition of anonymity insisted that Ouija boards were singled out as contraband during an orientation meeting. Clearly some mysteries of Charlesgate were meant to remain unsolved.

  JUNE 11, 1946

  “Your two minutes are up.”

  The Little Rascals had said nothing since Dave T presented his ultimatum. They’d exchanged a number of meaningful looks, but the meaning remained unstated. If Dave T had to guess, though, he’d peg the meaning as something along the lines of, “What the fuck are we gonna do? Besides shit our pants?”

  Finally Jake spoke up. “Come on, pal. You’re not just gonna shoot one of us in the head.”

  “Oh, I assure you, I am. I’m either gonna shoot one of you in the head or, if you don’t give me a name, I’m gonna shoot alla ya in the head. And it’s gonna happen right now, so give me a fucking name.”

  Dave T aimed directly at Jake’s nose. Jake swallowed hard. “Pat,” he said.

  Shane didn’t hesitate. “Yeah, Pat.”

  Every vein in Pat’s neck popped. “What? Fuck you guys! I vote Shane!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Dave T. “You could vote for the Pope of Rome, but you’ll still be outnumbered two to one.”

  “Oh, Jesus!” Pat clutched his head, leaned forward, and ejected the contents of his stomach. Jake and Shane looked away. The choice was really no choice at all. Jake and Shane were brothers. Pat was a cousin—a cousin they’d grown up with, as close as a brother—but a cousin nonetheless. And it was his big mouth that had gotten them into this mess.

  “One thing, though.” Dave T stood and walked to the door, keeping the gun trained on Pat all the while. “Your friend here was right. I’m not just gonna shoot you in the head.” Dave T rapped his knuckles on the door. It opened and the Casey cousins stepped inside. “You’re gonna take a ride with my associates here. So say your goodbyes, because there’s no coming back from this one.”

  Pat sat up, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and stared down Jake, then Shane. Neither would meet his gaze. “No need for goodbyes. I got no family here.”

  Dave T gestured for Pat to stand, which he did on unsteady legs. A Casey grabbed him by each arm and escorted him from the room. Dave T closed the door behind them.

  “What are they gonna do with him? Where are they taking him?” Shane asked.

  “What do you care?” said Dave T. “You were ready to see his brains splattered all over the wall a minute ago. It’s like I said, the cousins are taking him for a ride. All you need to know is, you’re never gonna see him again. He’s part of your old life. Your new life starts right now. It’s gonna be better than the old one, I guarantee you.”

  Jake and Shane both stared at the floor, saying nothing.

  “I’m gonna assume your silence infers I have your full attention, so here’s how this is gonna go. You boys are going home. You’re gonna collect all the money you stole from me and my friends, minus whatever you’ve already spent on whores and booze. We’ll figure out how much that was, and you’ll pay me that amount out of your share of the job we’re gonna do together. Plus interest. Let’s call it twenty percent. At some point tomorrow afternoon you’re gonna get a phone call. I’m gonna call the pay phone at the Rosebud Diner, so you be there with the money all afternoon tomorrow. I’ll call with a time and a place for us to meet. You’re gonna meet me there, just you two. You try anything funny, you say anything to anyone else about this, and you won’t see me at this meeting place. You won’t see anything. You might hear a couple of gunshots right before a bullet passes through each one of your tiny brains, courtesy of the cousins. You got all that?”

  Jake and Shane both nodded.

  “All right. You follow these instructions to the letter and we’ll talk about that job I mentioned. You boys stand to make a lot of money. More than you ever dreamed or, quite frankly, deserve. So don’t fuck this up. All right?”

  They nodded again.

  “All right. You can go now.”

  The remaining Little Rascals opted to walk the two miles back to Pi Alley. The first mile passed in silence. Finally Shane spoke up.

  “What do you think they did with Pat?”

  “I doubt they sent him on an all-expenses-paid trip to Havana.”

  “So what are we gonna do about it?”

  “What do you want to do about it?”

  “I dunno…I mean, Pat’s family. We’ve been tight since we were kids, but…on the other hand, Dave T would have been well within his rights to kill all three of us. Maybe we should consider ourselves lucky to be alive.”

  “Right.”

  “And not only that…you heard what he said. We stand to make a lot of money. I mean, I feel terrible for Pat, wherever he is, but this thing may work out for us after all.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean, if I’m wrong, tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re wrong. You may not have noticed, but that man back there? He pulled the trigger on all three of us in that room. You and I, we just haven’t hit the floor yet.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  “Look. Why do you think he doesn’t want to do this job, whatever it is, why do you think he doesn’t want the cousins for this job?”

  “Like he said. This type of work, whatever it is, he prefers us.”

  “That’s right. He prefers us because he can’t just kill the Casey cousins after the job. Some very dangerous people down Providence might take that the wrong way. But us? He sure as shit can kill us when it’s over, and nobody says boo. They might even applaud.”

  Shane processed this piece of intelligence the rest of the way back to the car. He kept his mouth shut for most of the drive, but finally spoke up once they were safely inside the Somerville city limits.

  “So what are we gonna do?”

  “We’re gonna do just what he says. We’re go
nna follow his instructions. We’re gonna play along, and somehow, somewhere along the way, we’re gonna figure out how to kill him first.”

  OCTOBER 4, 1986

  Things were moving. Things that shouldn’t have been moving. I was perfectly still. I was clutching my pillow to my head, holding on for dear life. Images from the night before came into my brain unbidden. I clenched my eyelids tight, trying to ward them off. No good could come of remembering.

  I detected movement in the room. Clanking noises. A light. I weighed my options. If I held the pillow tightly against my face, could I smother myself to death? Probably not, but I would eventually pass out and that wouldn’t be so bad.

  But…things were moving, as I mentioned. Any second I might have to pray to the porcelain god. Yorking all over my bed would do me no good. So, with great care and no sudden movements, I peeled the pillow from my face. The light hit me like a prison shiv to each eyeball. I made out a shadowy figure looming over me. It could only be Murtaugh.

  “On second thought,” I said, “let’s not go out last night.”

  Murtaugh shook his head. “Too late for that, chief. Do you remember anything about last night?”

  “Trying not to.”

  “I bet.”

  “We went to the Fallout Shelter. We had…a few beers. There may have been some shots.”

  “Oh yeah. Shots of Jack. You bought the first round. And the fourth.”

  I sat up. Very, very slowly. “Decent jukebox. They had…Prince.”

  “You reenacted the entire ‘Kiss’ video. Solo.”

  “How did that go over?”

  “You got a standing O.”

  “So far, so good. And stop shaking your head at me. You were drinking, too.”

  “Yeah. The difference is, I’ve been drinking since I was a sophomore in high school. Whereas you were a good boy.”

  “Jail.”

  “What?”

  “The Charles Street Jail. I’m seeing the Charles Street Jail in my mental slideshow from last night.”

  “Yeah. We went to Buzzy’s.” Buzzy’s was a sandwich stand right outside the walls of the Charles Street Jail. They were famous for their roast beef sandwiches, which were inedible any other time of day but really hit the spot at two in the morning after a long night at the Fallout Shelter.

  “Oh yeah. Buzzy’s.”

  “Ask me how my sandwich was.”

  “How was your sandwich?”

  “I don’t know. Because you yuked all over our table, then you grabbed my Fabulous Roast Beef out of my hands, wiped your mouth on it, and tried to hand it back to me.”

  That did sound vaguely familiar. “Oh. How did you not punch me in the nose?”

  “It’s not too late.”

  The room had gradually come into focus around me. One problem: It wasn’t our bedroom. It was the back room. The study room. The TV room. Or…the Love Room.

  “So…why am I not in my bed?” I had my blanket and pillow, but I was lying on the futon we kept in the back room.

  “Cast your mind back through the hours. Is there a particular face you remember? A face…really close to your face?”

  “No, I…” But wait. There was such a face. “Oh no. Purple Debbie?”

  “Purple Debbie.”

  I weighed my options. There was a slight chance the five-story drop into the Pit wouldn’t kill me, so I decided to press on. “Details. I need details.”

  “Well…we got back here around quarter to three in the morning and you thought it would be a good time to go ghosthunting. Research for your great investigation. You dragged me down to the basement and started banging on this locked door, because you were sure that’s where they were hiding. When I finally convinced you to give it up and come upstairs, you decided that would be a good time to run through the halls banging on everyone’s door and inviting them to a party in our room. You also stopped at all the bathrooms and turned on all the showers, which was just so hilarious.”

  “Oh my goodness.”

  “So about eight or ten people decided to take you up on your offer. It was as if I had brought home an exotic animal specimen and everyone wanted to get a look before the zookeeper showed up to take you home. Any of this ringing a bell?”

  “Um…did I flip somebody off?”

  “Oh, you flipped everybody off. That was your big move. And the more people laughed, the angrier you got. Finally you told everyone to get the fuck out, which they did. All except Purple Debbie. She was concerned. She thought she should tuck you in and stay by your side to make sure you didn’t choke to death on your own vomit.”

  “That sounds like her.”

  “Yeah, I thought so. And after all, what could happen? She has that legendary boyfriend from high school she’d never, ever cheat on. Her future husband, you know.”

  “Brad. No—Chad.”

  “Chet, I think. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because Brad or Chad or Chet, whatever, he called Purple Debbie the other night to let her know he met someone else.”

  “He’s fucking another girl?”

  “No. He’s smoking some dude’s dick up there in Haverhill. Which I think comes as no big surprise to the rest of us, but Purple Debbie…well, you can imagine.”

  “Oh, Jesus. This is turning into the worst John Hughes movie ever.”

  “No shit. So anyway, Purple Debbie tucks you in. She kisses you on the cheek. You seem like you’re completely passed out. She kisses you on the forehead. Still nothing. She kisses you on the lips. Now, all of a sudden, you’re making out with Purple Debbie.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yeah. And it’s like really loud and slurpy. So finally the Rev, who’s been trying to sleep this whole time, he yells, ‘Get a room!’ So Purple Debbie takes your hand and helps you up, grabs your pillow and blanket, leads you in here, and locks the door behind you. None of this sounds familiar?”

  It did, very, very vaguely. “So then what?”

  “How the fuck should I know? If you want the details, you’re gonna have to get ’em from Purple Debbie. If you’ve got the balls.”

  “Well, what time did she leave?”

  “No idea. She was gone when I woke up, which was about five minutes before you woke up.”

  “Ugh. Jackie wasn’t around for any of this, was she?”

  “No. But she’s gonna hear about it. You know how it goes around here. Besides, I keep telling you to forget about her and get laid. Looks like you did. Maybe.”

  Once again I pondered my options. “It’s not too late for me to transfer to another school. The University of Maine would still take me.”

  “But you can’t use your fake ID up there.”

  “That doesn’t matter, because I’m never drinking again.”

  Murtaugh was unconvinced.

  APRIL 25, 2014

  Coleman woke up slumped in a chair, the contents of the Charlesgate file spilled all over his lap. Still groggy, he collected himself, stuffing the various articles back into the folder. He checked his phone. It was 4:30 in the morning.

  He wandered through the stacks until he found the research desk. Sheila was still there.

  “Good morning, Detective Coleman.”

  “Are you closed? Why didn’t you wake me up?”

  “We’re open 24/7 for the two weeks before finals. And I didn’t wake you because you looked like you needed the rest. We do have a policy against overnight napping, but what was I gonna do, call the cops on you?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Find anything interesting in that file?”

  “Umm…maybe.” In fact, Coleman had found something very interesting. So interesting it just might be a valuable lead, if only he could believe a word of it. “Do you have a copier I could use? Or a scanner?”

  “Sure. Can I see your student ID?”

  “Uh…what?”

  “You need a student, faculty, or staff ID to operate the scanner. So we can charge your account.”

  “Well, Sheila, seeing
as how I’m not a student or faculty or staff, do you think I could talk you into scanning some documents for me?”

  “Maybe. Of course, you understand if I do that for you, my account will be charged.”

  “Right. Well, let me ask you this: What time does your shift here end?”

  “Six in the morning.”

  “Okay, so how about this: You do this for me, and I’ll buy you breakfast. How does that sound?”

  “Breakfast where?”

  “Breakfast wherever. I usually do Dunkin’, but…”

  “Oh, no. No Dunkin’. The Bristol Lounge.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s in the Four Seasons. It’s got four and a half stars on Yelp.”

  “Fine. But I’m gonna need one more favor from you.”

  “What’s that?”

  “These articles I want you to scan for me, they’re from the Emerson newspaper. I’d like to get in touch with the guy who wrote them, name of Tommy Donnelly. Have you got access to some kind of database of former students, you could look this guy up for me?”

  “I do. It’s called Google.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Or you could contact his agent. We’ve got a few of his books here, you could look up the name.”

  “I don’t follow…wait a minute. Thomas Donnelly? Zuma Nine Thomas Donnelly?”

  “One and the same.”

  Thomas Donnelly was a famous true-crime writer, Coleman knew, because his wife was addicted to Donnelly’s books. His best-sellers included Zuma Nine, the story of a gang of surfers who, inspired by the movie Point Break, began robbing banks up and down the California coast, and Army of Angels, an exposé of a white supremacist group operating a Christian summer camp in the Texas hill country.

  “I didn’t make the connection. Well, now I really want to talk to him.”

  “Take a number. The alumni office has been trying to reel him in for years. They’d love him to come back and speak at graduation, and they’d really love him to open his wallet and put a new wing on the journalism building, but no such luck.”