Charlesgate Confidential

by Scott Von Doviak

  “No way of knowing. But it was big news at the time. This Mrs. Coolidge would have seen it. Mixed it up in her head with all that Kennedy shit. It means nothing.”

  “These paintings. One of them was a Vermeer, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  I thought about a hazy night spent with an occult expert in the Bay Village. A sketch I’d drawn of the Rev as a skeleton. A sketch I’d signed “Vermeer” for reasons I could no longer recall.

  “There’s one more guy we should talk to,” I said.

  “Kid, you are on thin ice right now.”

  “I understand, but—”

  “Who is he?”

  “His name is Sprague. He’s a…uh, he’s an expert in the occult.”

  “The occult. Witches and shit.”

  “I know how it sounds. Just let me call him. If it doesn’t pan out, we’ll go to Plan B.”

  “Plan B.”

  “Like you said. Game 6 of the World Series. Packed house at the Fallout Shelter. Lotta cash for the taking.”

  I hoped I sounded convincing, but the truth was I would never let that happen. I’d tip off the cops and have them waiting as we came through the door in ski masks or whatever Shane had in mind. But I sure didn’t want it coming to that.

  After spending a long moment lost in thought, Shane finally responded. “Okay, kid. Call him. But two things.”

  “All right.”

  “One, if this is another blind alley, that’s the end of it. No more bullshit, you and me take down that bar tomorrow night.”

  “And two?”

  “Like I said, I can’t go back to the halfway house tonight. And I don’t have money for a hotel room. So I’m staying here with you.”

  “I don’t know as my roommates are going to be too thrilled with that.”

  “What makes you think I give a shit?”

  MAY 9, 2014

  The FBI agents had agreed to meet Jackie in a conference room at her lawyer’s office—not that she actually had a lawyer aside from Block & Mairs, the firm that had handled her divorce. But Gary Mairs had recommended a criminal attorney, Merle Bertrand, and it was in his conference room, with Bertrand at her side, that Jackie now faced off with Agents Hoff and Afshar.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us today, Mrs. Osborne,” said Hoff. “I’m sure your lawyer here advised you otherwise.”

  “I have nothing to hide and I just want to get this over with.”

  “And yet your lawyer is present,” said Afshar.

  “As is my right.”

  “Of course. Just noting it for the record.”

  “That’s good,” said Bertrand. “I’d like my client’s cooperative attitude on the record.”

  “And so it is. Mrs. Osborne—”

  “Could you not call me that? I’m divorced and I plan to go by my maiden name from now on.”

  “Very well, Ms.…St. John. Can you tell us how you know Charles White?”

  “He was the director of alumni records at Emerson College. I met him when I started planning my upcoming class reunion. I just wanted to put together a mailing list of everyone in my class but Mr. White thought he could be a lot more help to me.”

  “Nice guy, then.”

  “He seemed that way at first. But it soon became clear that his helpfulness was just a cover for…well, trying to get close to me.”

  “In a sexual way.”

  “It seemed to me.”

  “How many times did you meet with him?”

  “Four times at his office. He would try to get me to meet him out for coffee, but I wanted the…protection, I guess, of the workplace environment. But even that didn’t work, because the last time I met with him, he kept leaning in, touching my arm. Nothing you could really pin down until I was leaving, he grabbed my arm really…inappropriately. Like a vise grip so I couldn’t get away until I agreed to have dinner with him.”

  “Did you?”

  “I agreed, but I never had dinner with him. I programmed my phone so all his calls would go straight to voicemail.”

  “But you never reported his actions to anyone. The police or a college authority.”

  “No. I thought about it, but on reflection it all seemed a little thin. I figured avoidance was the best strategy.”

  “Did Mr. White express a particular interest in any of your other classmates?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “So he never expressed any interest in Thomas Donnelly? Or an article he wrote for the Berkeley Beacon back in 1986?”

  “Agent Hoff,” said Bertrand. “This line of questioning doesn’t strictly line up with what we had discussed prior to agreeing to meet with you.”

  “Some new information has come to light.”

  “In that case, I’m going to have to advise Ms. St. John not to cooperate further.”

  “It’s okay,” said Jackie. “I don’t have a problem with the question. Yes, as a matter of fact, he was very curious about Tommy and whether he’d be attending the reunion.”

  “And this article,” said Afshar. “About the Gardner museum heist and the rumors that the paintings might be hidden in the Charlesgate. He asked you about that?”

  “Yes. And I told him what I know, which was that the police investigated after the article ran and found no evidence that the rumor was true.”

  “And when you discussed this matter, was anyone else present?”

  “Was anyone else…I don’t follow.”

  “It’s pretty simple. Where were you when you and Mr. White discussed this matter?”

  “In his office, like I told you. I only ever met him there.”

  “And could anyone overhear your discussion?”

  “Well… I guess his assistant could have. Her desk was maybe ten or twelve feet away in the outer office, and I don’t think he had his office door closed. In fact, I’m sure he didn’t because I insisted on keeping it open.”

  Afshar reached into a manila folder, pulled out an 8x10 photo, and slid it across the table to Jackie. “This assistant, is this her?”

  Jackie examined the photo. “Yeah. Wendy Tucker.”

  “When is the last time you saw Ms. Tucker?”

  “Well, she took over Charlie’s job after…well, after. So I met with her on…Tuesday.”

  Afshar pulled another photo from the file and slid it across the table. “Do you recognize this gentleman?”

  Jackie eyed the photo. It appeared to be a mug shot of a man in his early thirties: shaved head, goatee, a hard stare. “No. I don’t…wait a minute.” Jackie noticed a scar running across the bridge of the man’s nose and a memory clicked into place. “Yes. Last time I met with Wendy, on my way out of the building, I almost ran smack into this guy. He was on his way up the stairs and he was…intense.”

  Afshar nodded to Hoff.

  “All right, Ms. St. John,” said Hoff. “That’s all we have for you today.”

  Jackie and Bertrand exchanged a puzzled glance. “That’s it?” she said.

  “That’s it,” said Afshar. “We have your contact information if we need to pursue this further, but for now we’re done here.”

  Afshar collected the photos and slipped them back into his folder. He and Hoff stood, nodded and walked out of the conference room.

  “What the hell was that?” said Jackie.

  “I don’t have a clue,” said Bertrand. “I have to say, Ms. St. John, I was not expecting this session to go well for you. Maybe you have a guardian angel looking out for you.”

  “I seriously doubt it.”

  AUGUST 9, 1947

  Over a year passed before Jake returned to Boston. He’d left town the morning of June 16, 1946 aboard the Tori Kay bound for Morocco. Jake essentially began his time aboard the ship as a stowaway. His new friend Art Donnelly walked him aboard just before dawn, telling the seaman standing watch that Jake had an urgent message for the captain from the harbormaster. The seaman showed little interest as he waved them aboard.

&nbs
p; Donnelly brought Jake to his quarters and told him to stay put until told otherwise. He tracked down the three other seamen with whom he shared the cabin and notified them that a brother from the fleet would be staying with them and that there was no need to inform the bosun’s mate until the Fort Point Channel had disappeared over the horizon. None of them had a problem with that.

  Between shifts Donnelly brought Jake to the sick bay. There wasn’t actually a doctor aboard the ship, just a deckhand with some first aid training, and the sick bay wasn’t much more than a medicine cabinet and a cot, but Jake was able to get his wound cleaned and redressed sufficiently to ward off any infection.

  Jake spent his first two days aboard the ship doped up on antibiotics and painkillers, drifting in and out of consciousness, barely eating the scraps Donnelly brought back from the mess. By day three he was ready to start earning his keep. Donnelly presented him with a new able seaman’s license, forged by a Swede who worked miracles as the ship’s cook. Jake’s new name was Louis Albertson and he hailed from San Diego, where Jake had done his basic training.

  The bosun’s mate was suitably pissed off when Donnelly introduced him to his new deckhand Louie, but before long they were swapping stories of their time in the Pacific theater. In the end, it was easier just to add Albertson to the crew’s registry than to make a big deal about it. The captain would never even notice.

  On the morning of his sixth day at sea, Jake stood in the aft second deck, a raw wind cutting through his borrowed denim shirt, and tossed his dogtags into the Atlantic. He was Louis Albertson from then on, or at least that was the plan.

  By the time the Tori Kay pulled into the port of Tangier five days later, Louie was one of the guys. An exotic haven for postwar expatriates, the city offered countless diversions for sailors far from home. It was also a hotbed of espionage and criminal activity, as Jake learned when an ex-swabbie who ran a bar near the waterfront directed him to a forger who could provide him with a passport for a price. Donnelly advanced him the money, and by the time the Tori Kay pulled out of port fortyeight hours later, Jake’s Louis Albertson identity was airtight.

  He remained in the employ of the Tori Kay as the ship unloaded and reloaded in Southampton, Antwerp, Rotterdam, and a half-dozen other ports of call. He stood the engine room watch, washed and painted the deck, chipped rust, repaired lines, handled tow lines in and out of port, and generally did whatever the bosun’s mate asked. While in port, he availed himself of every amenity the local red-light district had on offer. His old life receded behind him like the evening tide. That night at the Gardner museum faded like a half-remembered dream.

  Boston news was hard to come by in any case. One night in Galway, he happened upon a news item about the Gardner heist in the Irish Independent. The FBI agent assigned to the case gave only the sketchiest of details, but it was clear that there were no real leads. A sidebar noted an uptick of violent crime in Boston in the days surrounding the heist, including a double murder and the presumed gangland slaying of Mob boss Anthony Marko. A suspect named Shane Devlin was awaiting trial in the former case while another, his brother Jacob, was being sought. Jake got so drunk that night in Galway his shipmates had to carry him back to his bunk.

  After three months at sea, the Tori Kay was ready to return to its home port, but Jake was not. He shook hands with Donnelly, thanked him for all his help and promised he’d make it up to him someday. But Donnelly never saw him again. He continued to work the Tori Kay for another four years until he’d earned enough to buy his own boat—one equipped for lobster fishing. He and his wife Maddie and their eight-yearold son moved to a small town on the coast of Maine, where Donnelly lived out the rest of his days, eventually passing the family business on to his son. He lived long enough to meet his grandson, Thomas Arthur Donnelly, born in 1967, but a lifetime of hard work, hard drinking and heavy smoking put him in the ground by the time the 1970s rolled around.

  As for Jake, he took his leave of the Tori Kay and signed on aboard the Chanticleer, a freighter out of Amsterdam. He was Louis Albertson now and nobody could say any different. Louis was tightlipped about his past, but that was common among his peers. It turned out a lot of people went to sea to escape who they were and become somebody else. He didn’t stand out at all.

  One night in Liverpool he got drunk with a chief engineer from Fall River and let his cover slip. After a beer or twelve, he was anxious for news from home.

  “It’s been about a year,” Jake said. “I missed the World Series, but I guess I didn’t miss much.”

  “It was an exciting series. Just the wrong ending.”

  “You know what was in the news around the time I left, was that museum robbery. You know, up there not far from Fenway.”

  “The Gardner, yeah. They’re still scratching their heads over that one.”

  “Really? Those paintings never turned up?”

  “Not last I heard. My guess, whoever took ’em got ’em out of the country in a hurry. Left two dead guys behind. Nice haul from what I understand. You’d think they could have split it four ways and been happy about it.”

  “Yeah, who knew art thieves could be so cutthroat?”

  “Crazy, huh?” He motioned to the barman. “Hey, two more pints of bitter down here.”

  “It was also around that time, that double murder. The copkilling. You hear anything about that?”

  “Oh, them poor bastards they found in the trunk up to South Station?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I heard they caught one guy but not the other.”

  “Right. The one they caught, that sonofabitch is gonna fry. His trial lasted about five minutes, but that’s how it goes in these cop killings. The other guy is his brother and he ain’t shown his face since. Can you believe that? He’s gonna let his little brother take the rap while he’s probably sunning himself on the beach in Acapulco or somewhere.”

  “Yeah. Sounds like a real piece of shit.”

  Jake said good night, then waited outside for the chief engineer from Fall River, whose face was barely recognizable when a couple of his fellow engineers found him in the morning and helped him back to their ship.

  It was time to go home. Jake worked his way back the way he’d come, hooking on with a transatlantic freighter in Tangier where his new life had begun. One sweltering August morning in 1947, he set foot in the city of Boston for the first time in fourteen months. He wasn’t too worried about being recognized from his picture hanging in the post office. He’d grown a bristly beard, shed nearly twenty-five pounds, and his skin was baked a ruddy brown. He bore little resemblance to the pasty, clean-shaven fugitive who’d fled town with his arm hanging useless at his side.

  He checked the newspaper and saw the Sox were in town and scheduled to play the Yankees at one o’clock. He walked all the way, up State Street to the Common and the Public Garden, then Beacon Street to Charlesgate East. He leaned on a parking meter and watched the Charlesgate entrance for fifteen or twenty minutes. A steady succession of young women, late teens, early twenties, streamed in and out of the building. They looked nothing like the young women who used to frequent the Charlesgate. It was clear that these were students. Even before he’d left town, rumors had circulated that Boston University was interested in buying the building for use as student housing and that was evidently what had happened.

  He continued on Beacon to Kenmore Square, hooked a left up Brookline Ave and grinned as the left-field wall came into view. He paid two dollars at the gate and took his seat ten rows behind first base, hot dog and beer in hand. The Yankees took a 3−2 lead into the sixth, but the Red Sox scored two in the bottom of the inning and ended up winning 6−4.

  After the game ended and most of the crowd had filed out, Jake remained, staring out at the lush green field. His return home had been everything he could have dreamed. But now it was time to go see Shane. And after that, nothing would be the same.

  OCTOBER 24, 1986

  I searched through my wallet for the phone num
ber of the “occult expert” Sprague, but I couldn’t find it. “Hey, Rev,” I said. We were all sitting in the Love Room drinking beer: me, Murtaugh, the Rev, Rodney, Brooks, and “grandpa.” A regular guys’ night in.

  “Whuzzat?”

  “You know that guy Sprague in the Bay Village? The one with the killer hash?”

  “Oh, hell yeah.”

  “You didn’t happen to get his number, did you?”

  “Of course. Anyone who can get shit like that Turkish delight, I’m gonna need his number.”

  I tossed the phone to the Rev. He dialed the number and handed me the receiver. After a few rings, the answering machine picked up. “There are things known and things unknown,” said Sprague’s recorded voice. “Either way, I’m not at home. Leave a message.” Beep.

  “Oh, hey there. This is Tommy Donnelly, we met a week or two back and you said you’d be really interested in checking out the Charlesgate sometime. Well, this is a good time if you’re up for it. Just punch in 629 on the intercom downstairs and we’ll come get you. Later.”

  I tossed the receiver back to the Rev and he hung it up.

  “Well?” said Shane.

  “That was an answering machine, grandpa. Some fancy ’80s technology you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Hey, don’t be mean to your grandfather!” said Brooks, who was busy painting his fingernails black.

  “Thanks, lady,” said Shane. Brooks turned beet red while the rest of us tried to stifle laughter.

  “Brooks is a guy, grandpa.”

  “Oh. Sorry, Brooks.”

  “It’s okay, Mr. Donnelly.”

  “Let me ask you, Brooks,” said Shane. “Are you a queer?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Grandpa, come on. This isn’t 1952.”

  “Hey, no offense. If he likes boys, he likes boys. He wouldn’t be the first I ever met.”

  “I don’t like boys,” said Brooks. “This is what girls like nowadays, Mr. Donnelly. You should let me take you clubbing. You’ll be painting your nails black in no time.”

  “I think I’ll pass, Bruce.”