Charlesgate Confidential

by Scott Von Doviak

  “Actually you tried to get me to take one when I first went down there. Said you wouldn’t live in a city like Boston without at least one good firearm.”

  “I wouldn’t live there at all.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Can’t set foot out your door without worrying about getting mugged every night.”

  “That’s me. Getting mugged every night in the big city.”

  “Well, you show up here at 3:30 in the morning with a broken nose asking me for a gun, I don’t imagine it’s for show and tell.”

  “It’s not broken.”

  “Hardly the point.”

  “I know. But it looks worse than it is. This is just for protection. I don’t expect I’ll have to use it.”

  “You’re talking like we’ve already agreed to this.”

  “Dad, I know where you keep your guns. I could have just waited for you to go out to haul and taken one.”

  “Why didn’t you? You want me to talk you out of it?”

  “No. I just didn’t see any reason to sneak around. I figured if I told you I needed a gun, there’d be no more to say about it.”

  He nodded. “Ayuh. I’ll let you have my .22. It won’t take down a water buffalo, but I doubt that’s why you’re asking. At least you know how to use it.”

  Once he’d realized he wasn’t going to turn me into a fisherman, our father/son bonding had mostly consisted of listening to Red Sox games on the radio and plinking down at the quarry. On a Saturday afternoon we’d drive out where the streets had no name, set up bottles, cans, milk jugs and whatever else my dad could find bouncing around in his flatbed, and shoot at them. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation beyond “a little low” and “hold your elbow steady,” but that was all right. It beat filling bait bags in ten-degree weather in the middle of Frenchman’s Bay.

  My father rooted around under the driver’s seat of his pickup for a minute, finally emerging with his .22 pistol. He came back and handed it to me butt-first.

  “Nothing fancy,” he said. “I traded a flatlander a bucket of shedders for it. It’s unregistered, so whatever you plan to do with it, it won’t come back on me. You’re on your own.”

  “You sure about this? What if you get carjacked on your way to the Winter Harbor pier?”

  “Oh, I got one of them Ginsu knives strapped to my sun visor. I’ll be all right.” We both laughed. Some annoyed critter in the darkness across the street expressed its displeasure. “That goddam fool across the way. Ever since his wife passed, he’s lost his mind. He’s got chickens, ducks, goats, a horse, a pig, and he had a peacock until a fox got in the dooryard and ate it. And he’s got a room in the back there he calls his roost. Leaves the windows open, he’s got birds flying in and out of there all hours of the day and night. But he brings us fresh eggs once a week so your mother says I have to put up with his foolishness.”

  “That sounds like her.”

  “What are you up to, son? Are you mixed up in something? I have friends, you know.”

  I knew. Downeast lobstermen were a tight-knit clan. They could be vindictive and merciless, and they’d take on the whole Boston Mob if my father asked. “It’s nothing like that, Dad. Just a little misunderstanding. I’m sure I can clear it up.”

  “Use your words, son. That’s what you’re good at. But if you do have to use that thing, you’d best remember what I taught you.”

  “I will.”

  “All right then. I gotta get out to haul.”

  “Yeah. I gotta get back. Give Mom my love.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you were never here.”

  “Right. Well…I’ll see you at Thanksgiving.”

  “Ayuh. Go Sox.”

  “Go Sox.” I climbed back in my Buick and waved as I pulled away. It was another five hours back to Boston. I popped a couple more No-Doz and cranked up WZON, the Bangor rock station owned by Stephen King. “Who Made Who?” AC/DC inquired. I had no answers. At some point along the way I lost the signal, but I barely remember that. It was 9 a.m. by the time I pulled back into my secret parking space, still miraculously unoccupied. I staggered into Charlesgate and managed to get all the way to my bed before passing out.

  My dreams were chaotic but vivid. I was on my father’s lobster boat alone. A much larger ship loomed over me as the waves tossed me from bow to stern. I could barely struggle to my feet. I noticed a terrible taste in my mouth, which filled with a gritty, sandy substance I could not choke down. I spit it into my hand, which filled with my own teeth. I could barely spit them out fast enough to avoid suffocating. A shadow fell over me as the other ship closed in. I looked up. It was the Charlesgate. And now I was inside it and I heard familiar voices and I felt my bed fall away beneath me and…

  ***

  I was awake. I blinked. The Rev was passing a joint to someone. They both giggled. Shane took a hit off the joint. Was I really awake? I was.

  “What the fuck?” I managed.

  “Hey, Tommy. Your grandpa here wanted to try some weed, so I figured why not?”

  Shane handed the joint back to the Rev, held the smoke in his lungs for a beat, then exhaled.

  “Morning, sleepyhead!” he said. He and the Rev broke down giggling again. I looked at my clock radio. It was 3:30 in the afternoon.

  “I overslept,” I said.

  “It’s okay,” said Shane. “I always wanted to try this stuff. One great thing about being an old man, no one can tell you what to do.”

  “And how do you like it, grandpa?”

  He giggled again. It freaked me out. I drove all night to get a gun because I was afraid of this guy? All at once the past twenty-four hours felt like part of one long dream. Had I really seen my dad at my childhood home the night before? I was pretty sure I had, but I couldn’t prove it because I’d been so exhausted when I got back to Boston, I forgot all about the pistol stashed under the driver’s seat of my Buick.

  I sat up and ran my fingers through my hair. “Sorry, did we have plans today, grandpa?”

  “We sure did. And you are now half an hour late.”

  “Think you can give me another half-hour? To shower and whatnot? Seems like you might want to sit still a while and stare at your hands or something. Rev, you mind hanging with my grandfather for a few?”

  “Not at all, chief.”

  Normally Shane might have snapped at me, but for some strange reason he was in an unusually mellow mood. “Do what you gotta do, Tommy. You know we’re all proud of you.”

  I nodded and made a show of gathering my toiletries. I was pretty sure Shane didn’t notice when I slipped my car keys into my bathrobe pocket. The Rev was busy showing him the cover of Wish You Were Here.

  Out in the hallway in my bathrobe, the first person I encountered was Rodney. For once fate was on my side.

  “Good morning, sunshine.”

  “Hey, Rodney. Listen, I need a favor and you’re the only man for the job.”

  He made a show of eyeing me up and down in my terrycloth robe. “Sorry, chief, but if you need someone to scrub your back, I think Brooks is your man.”

  “No.” I tossed him my keys. “There’s a .22 pistol under the front seat of my car.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “A .22? What, are you going squirrel hunting?”

  “Just get it for me, will you? I’ll be in the shower across the hall. This is my towel. Slip the .22 inside it and don’t ask any questions.”

  “I warn you. I am going to use that towel to wipe my fingerprints. So if you’re planning to frame me for something, it’s not going to work.”

  “Duly noted. Thanks, chief.”

  “Anytime.”

  Rodney was true to his word. When I got out of the shower and checked my towel, the .22 was nestled inside. I went back to my room to find that Shane had settled back into his usual irritable form. “You leave any hot water for the rest of the people who live here?”

  “Sorry. I had to
shank a guy who was trying to play Who Dropped the Soap?”

  His eyes flashed with anger. “Get dressed. We’re fucking late.”

  The Rev, who had been noodling on his bass, set it down. “Think I’ll see what’s on offer at the Canteen.”

  “You can stay,” I said, grabbing my jeans and some clean underwear and heading into the back room, towel still in hand. “We’ll be out of here in a jif.” I closed the door behind me and unwrapped the gun. Once I was no longer pantsless, I jammed the pistol into my waistband. I added a WBCN Rock ’n Roll Rumble t-shirt and a Members Only jacket to my ensemble and checked myself in the mirror to make sure the bulge of the gun wasn’t visible. Running the towel through my hair, I opened the door and stepped back down into the front room.

  “Okay, grandpa,” I said. “Ready to go.”

  We rode the elevator down to the basement and went through the usual security protocols (basically looking left and right) before Shane keyed us into the stables. We’d gone through all the boxes stacked in the first few stalls, and the stables had grown increasingly disorganized as we neared the back wall. Items too large to be packed away neatly were piled on top of each other: chairs with cracked legs, precariously perched mirrors, an upside-down grandfather clock. It looked like someone had ransacked an antiques shop in search of hidden treasure, which wasn’t far from the truth.

  “It doesn’t look good,” I said.

  “Let’s just get this over with.”

  For once he was willing to help me move some of the heavier items, but as we got closer and closer to the end of our task, his mood darkened even beyond his usual pissy demeanor. His jolly afternoon interlude with the Rev was now long forgotten. It was nearly nine o’clock when he tossed aside the last stick of broken furniture. Our search had been fruitless. The paintings weren’t there.

  “Fuck!” he shouted, slamming his fist into the side of a heavy oak armoire.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “We tried. It was always going to be a long shot, right?”

  He turned his hot, live-wire fury on me. “A long shot? That doesn’t work for me, kid. You know that nice job I had mopping the floor at McDonald’s? Well, I don’t have it no more. See, my manager, this smug little shit half my age, he was giving me crap this morning about how the floor didn’t have that welcoming McDonald’s gleam. Not up to the company standards. Do it over. Well, maybe he was right. I’ve seen cleaner floors. But I’ll tell you what, I’m all done with smug little shits like him telling me what to do. I took that mop handle and I knocked his teeth out onto that floor. Whole lotta blood, too. That welcoming McDonald’s gleam, right? Anyway, I walked out of there, I came straight here. I can’t go back to that halfway house. My parole officer will be waiting for me. And he’s a smug little shit, too. Just like you.”

  I felt the handle of my dad’s .22 pistol snug against my gut. We were in the danger zone now, as far back in the stables as we could be and with no help to be found. For the first time, it seemed entirely possible that only one of us was walking out alive.

  “So here’s how it’s gonna be,” he continued. “We can’t find those paintings? That’s too bad for you. Because I still need the money, and if I need to get it another way, you’re gonna help me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I need to get gone, which means I need at least five grand to clear town and hole up somewhere until things cool down.”

  “I don’t have five grand!”

  “But you can get it. Someone’s paying for this college, putting you up in this building. Your parents, your grandmother. They have money.”

  “I’m on scholarships. I have student loans. My family doesn’t have that kind of cash on hand, and if they did, they wouldn’t just hand it over to me.”

  “Well then, we’ll have to get it another way. Tomorrow night. Game 6. A chance for the Red Sox to win their first World Series of my lifetime. That bar you like is gonna be hopping. Lotta cash changing hands. We hit it right when they close.”

  “We… hit it? Meaning rob it? Are you crazy?”

  He leaned in close. I felt his hot breath on my neck. “What do you think, kid?”

  I touched the handle of the .22 through my jacket. I could pull it and put three bullets in his belly and end it right here. He seemed determined to meet that kind of end anyway. I’d have to explain it away somehow. Killing a defenseless old man? That wouldn’t look too good on my college transcript. But I couldn’t keep going along with his crazy plans. He was going to lead me into a shitstorm that might end with my own death, or at least a long stretch in prison. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to pull the gun. It was a line I was unwilling to cross.

  Use your words, my father had said. It seemed my words were all used up. But maybe I had one more bluff left.

  “Sure, we could do that,” I said. “But we’re not done looking for the paintings yet.”

  “What are you talking about, kid?”

  “There’s still someone who might know where they are. She’s lived here a long time and she’s seen it all. We need to talk to Mrs. Coolidge.”

  MAY 7, 2014

  Coleman flashed his badge and the uniform nodded, lifting the crime scene tape so he could pass underneath. He’d elbowed past three camera crews on his way to the scene, and now reporters were shouting “Detective! Detective!” at him as if he could tell them a damn thing about what had happened.

  Actually, the media crush did tell him two things: The vic’s identity had already leaked, and someone had pieced together his profession and the location where the body had been found. The Gardner heist was about to be back in the news in a big way.

  Coleman spotted Carny and Lt. Weir huddled near the museum entrance. This wasn’t the original entrance, the one Shane and Jake Devlin had approached dressed as cops nearly seven decades earlier. The Gardner had built a brand-new wing that had opened two years earlier, and now a couple of crime scene techs were combing the entryway for evidence, bagging and tagging everything bigger than a flea’s eyelash. The guest of honor, however, had already been removed from the premises.

  “There he is,” said Carny. “Man of the hour.”

  “I gotta hand it to you, Coltrane,” said Weir. “When you step in it, you don’t stop until you’re neck-deep in the shit.”

  “Woodward on his way to the morgue?” Coleman asked.

  “Yeah, you just missed him,” said Carny. “Sorry you didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, but maybe you’d like to tell us about the last time you saw him? Or maybe you could back up a little bit and tell us how the fuck you know this guy in the first place.”

  “I only met him a couple times. Last time I saw him was Monday night at Grendel’s in Harvard Square. He was poking into the Gardner heist and thought maybe we could combine our efforts.”

  “You having nothing better to do.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “Well, what’s it like, Trane? Cause I gotta tell you, it’s not looking too good right now. And it’s gonna look even worse when the ME pulls those two slugs out of Woodward’s skull and they end up matching the two your friends down in Rhode Island found in your Charlesgate suspect. I figure we’ve got until maybe noon before the FBI swoops in and folds this mess into their ever-expanding investigation. Which is fine for us, less for us to worry about. But I were you, I’d spend that time looking for a good lawyer.”

  “What exactly do you think I’ve done? You think I killed this guy and the other one down Pawtucket?”

  “I really don’t know what to think about you anymore,” said Weir. “What exactly was your plan? You and this Woodward were gonna crack the Gardner case together? Split the money? Only something went bad between the two of you, is that it? Maybe that witness you’ve been fucking got in your ear. Hey, it’s really not my problem anymore, like I said. You are now indefinitely suspended. And honestly, Carny here has been agitating for a new partner for a while now.”

  “Oh, is that right?” Coleman flip
ped his partner the bird. Carny responded in kind. “So no one’s interested in hearing my side of this?”

  “I told you. The FBI will probably be delighted to hear your side of it.”

  “And I told you I barely knew this guy. Yeah, I should have mentioned the Gardner connection, but it seemed so far-fetched. Part of me was just humoring this nice old guy.”

  “But most of you was greedy. See, Carny here read through your file on the Charlesgate. You know, once you’d been removed from the case. Ain’t that right, Carny?”

  “Yeah. Seeing as how you never shared it with me when we were working the case together.”

  “Like you gave a shit. You never showed the slightest interest in that case. I pulled an all-nighter copying those articles at the Emerson library while you were getting shitfaced at the Tap with Sully and the boys.”

  “Congratulations. Let us know where to send your Medal of Valor. Anyway, right there on top, with lots of words circled in red pen, was a 1986 article from the Emerson newspaper. This crazy story about how the missing Gardner paintings were stashed in the Charlesgate in 1946. Fascinating stuff.”

  “Yeah, but the cops looked into it at the time and said it was bullshit.”

  “Which didn’t stop you from pursuing it.”

  “We had no motive for the Charlesgate murder except the dead girl’s keys went missing. I figured if there was even a remote chance the killer was looking for the Gardner art, it was worth investigating.”

  “Well, it makes me wonder. This woman who happens to live in the Charlesgate, this woman you happen to be fucking, it makes me wonder when all that started. This woman whose condo was supposedly robbed. Or maybe that was just a piece of misdirection on your part. Maybe you and this woman cooked it up ahead of time.”

  “Wow. It’s a great feeling, knowing you guys have had my back all along.”

  “Don’t keep turning this around on us. You went off the reservation. You were conducting your own private investigation. Not to solve our case but to line your pockets.”

  “I was trying to solve the case. I didn’t see the harm in looking into the Gardner thing while I was at it. If I found the paintings, it would be a win all around, right? The department looks good. This place gets their art back.”