Among Thieves

by David Hosp

  Finn let the notion percolate for a moment. “It’s the kind of a case that DAs love,” he admitted. “It’s high-profile, and Johnny hasn’t made many friends in the press, so it’s not likely that he’ll be seen as a sympathetic defendant. It could actually be the kind of a case that some ambitious prosecutor would jump at.”

  “That’s what I figured. It could actually get me out of this in the long run.”

  Finn shook his head. “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself. The DA’s office would still want you to do some time, but it could reduce the stretch—if you can actually deliver. Did you ever deal with Gilberacci directly?”

  Devon shook his head. “I only talked to Murphy. That’s why we gotta get Eddie Ballick on board. The whole thing swings on him.”

  Finn shook his head. “There’s got to be someone else.”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “Think harder.”

  Devon sighed. “You know how shit works, Finn. Eddie keeps everything under his control. He only deals with his boys—like Murphy—and they only deal with the people who need to know about a particular job. The fewer loose ends, the less chance that the cops can get a clear shot at anybody.”

  “They got a clear shot at you.”

  “I’m tellin’ you, the only person who might be able to connect the dots straight back to Giberacci would be Ballick. There’s nobody else.”

  Finn rubbed his temples. “The Fisherman,” he said. “I’m not really that anxious to have this conversation.”

  “You ever meet him?” Devon asked.

  Finn nodded. “I did work on a few jobs for him back when I was hustling. Grunt stuff. He probably wouldn’t even remember. Not exactly a warm, fuzzy guy.”

  Devon agreed. “No, he’s not. But he’ll remember. He remembers everything.”

  “He still down near Quincy?”

  “Yeah. At the shack on the water. You couldn’t pry his ass away from there.”

  Finn looked at his watch. “Okay,” he said. “Fuck it, why not? We have your arraignment tomorrow, and I need to know what kind of cards we’re holding.”

  “Do me a favor,” Devon said.

  “You’re about out of favors, Devon.”

  “Give me a call when you’re done with him, okay? I wanna hear what he says.”

  Finn got up and walked over to the steel door, pressing the button by the side of it to let the guards know that he was ready to leave. The buzzer sounded on the electronic lock on the other door, to let Devon back into the cell block.

  “Wait, Finn,” he said before he left the room.

  “What?”

  “How’s Sally? She okay?”

  “Yeah,” Finn replied. “She’s okay. She’s a piece of work. I like her.”

  Devon smiled. “She’s a fuckin’ pistol. Hell of a lot smarter than either of her parents. Her mom’s a real fuckup. No one ever gave Sally a chance. Shit, I didn’t even know she existed until a year ago.”

  “She seems to be getting by,” Finn said.

  “Yeah, getting by,” Devon said. “She’s a survivor, that’s for shit-sure. I should be doin’ better by her than this. With all the crap she’s been through she deserves better than just getting by.”

  “We all deserve better than just getting by,” Finn said. “Sometimes, that’s the best we can hope for.”

  “Yeah,” Devon said. He was back into the thousand-yard stare. “Sometimes that’s right.”

  Chapter Nine

  It was lunchtime at Nashua Street just after Finn left. Devon moved through the chow line like a zombie. Food was ladled out onto his tray without his notice; he walked alone over to a table in the corner. He sat with his back to the wall, and kept his head down. He felt as if he were underwater as he pushed the mush around on his tray with his fork. He couldn’t have eaten if he’d wanted to.

  Devon felt bad for Murphy. Not nearly as bad as he felt for himself, but bad all the same. Murphy had tried for him. Even after the others had given up on him, Murphy had kept him afloat, even if just. Had things been different, maybe the Gilberacci’s job would have been enough—the beginning of a comeback. A comeback clearly wasn’t in the cards now, though. He’d made his choice and there was no going back.

  He turned his thoughts back to Murphy’s murder. It was hard not to leap to the obvious conclusion. It fit with the rumors he’d heard. It would make sense. But he still wasn’t certain. Murphy’d led a dangerous life. He’d pissed off lots of people, and he’d run with a vicious crowd. His murder could be a coincidence. It wasn’t likely, but it was possible, and Devon clung to that possibility.

  There was only one way to be sure. Ballick was the key. They’d made their mistakes, but they’d made them together. Until he knew for sure, Devon was safer in jail.

  He thought back over the past decades and wondered whether he’d have done anything differently. Probably not. He was who he was, and nothing would have changed that. Even if he’d known.

  The Irishman didn’t trust Devon. It didn’t take a lot of brains for Devon to recognize it. In some ways, Devon could understand. Devon was undisciplined. He talked too much. The Irishman had a singular purpose, and from what Devon knew of him, he had dedicated his life—everything he was or would become—to waging a war that required the kind of commitment Devon would never understand.

  It had been more than four weeks since they’d met at the Body Shop, and Devon still hadn’t delivered. They’d made one try, and it had been a farce. Two weeks earlier they had acted out a pathetic pantomime in front of the museum off Fenway. The Irishman and Devon pretended to assault another one of Murphy’s crew out on the street late at night, well within the range of the outdoor security cameras. The third man then ran to the museum’s side entrance and started banging on the door and ringing the bell, calling out for help. The guards, though, had been more cautious than Devon had expected, and had simply called the police, staying locked up in the museum themselves. The three of them had just barely cleared the area before the cops arrived.

  “Don’t worry, Irish,” Devon had said. “I got another plan.” It was a lie at the time, and for three days Devon hadn’t slept or eaten. He knew his life was on the line. It took some time, but eventually he hit on another idea.

  In some ways, the new plan seemed as foolish as the first. They were parked on the street in a beat-up red Toyota on a Saturday night, just a hundred yards or so from the museum’s main entrance. It was St. Patrick’s Day, and Boston was consumed in a spastic, celebratory madness. Even Dublin didn’t debase itself the way Boston did in recognition of Ireland’s savior.

  It was just the two of them, Devon and the Irishman, and they were dressed in police uniforms, complete with caps, badges, and fake mustaches. Devon felt as if he were in a cheap Laurel and Hardy remake, and he had to stifle a laugh at the thought. He’d been around the Irishman enough to understand that he was not a fan of levity.

  They had planned to make the move just after midnight, but there was a delay. A party was in full swing in an apartment building near the museum and there were too many people out on the street. They decided to wait until the party broke up, and they just sat there in the car, for all the world to see. If they got caught, Malley knew that the Irishman would kill him as soon as he had the chance. Even if that didn’t happen, one of Bulger’s guys would push a button on him in jail, just to cut the line to the boss. Any way he looked at it, failure at this point would be fatal.

  At one o’clock in the morning, the party in the nearby apartment building was just starting to break up. People were stumbling out of the building and moving on. A group of revelers broke away and started heading toward the car.

  “Fuck,” the Irishman cursed. Devon’s heart stopped in his chest.

  “Just wait,” he said. He pulled the brim of the police cap lower on his forehead.

  There were four of them, all male, headed straight toward the car. They looked young and drunk. The Irishman reached into his pocket for
his gun. “Not yet,” Devon said.

  They sat there for what seemed like an eternity as the boys approached. Out of the corner of his eye, Devon saw two of them look into the car, and he considered getting out. They moved quickly past the car, though, and picked up their pace.

  “Kids,” Devon said. “They’re underage, and they’re more scared of us than we are of them.”

  The Irishman reached up and swiveled the rearview mirror so that he could get a look at them. They were nearly a block away and still moving quickly. “Maybe,” he said. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t see us.”

  “All they saw was the uniforms. They’re drunk. They won’t be able to tell the cops shit. Don’t worry.” Devon turned to look at the Irishman and smiled reassuringly. He could tell that the other man wanted to kill him.

  “We move now,” the Irishman said. “We’re not sitting here anymore.”

  “The party’s almost over,” Devon said.

  “I don’t give a fuck. We’re not waiting anymore.” The Irishman opened the door and stepped out onto the street.

  Chapter Ten

  Stone stood before Sanchez’s front door in Brookline, just to the west of Boston. She’d called in sick. Word at the station was that she would likely be in later in the day, but he had no idea when. He checked the address listed in her personnel file and headed out. She didn’t know he was coming, and he figured she’d be pissed, so he was holding a container of chicken soup he’d picked up at a local deli, hoping it would allay her annoyance. Probably not, but he figured it couldn’t hurt. Ultimately, he didn’t care; he wasn’t going to spend his life with a partner who wouldn’t discuss cases with him. He’d decided to push the issue.

  When he’d visualized Sanchez’s home, he’d pictured a small, dark apartment somewhere in one of the city’s worst neighborhoods. Two, maybe three rooms, sparsely decorated, with few pictures and no personal items. A place befitting this woman who was so focused on her work, and so distant from those around her willing to help. It was a dark, lonely, angry life he’d envisioned for her.

  The dwelling that matched her address from the personnel files met none of his expectations. It was a medium-sized house in a nice neighborhood right off the Green Line. Two blocks from Commonwealth Avenue, it had a large well-tended yard, and flowers flanking the covered entryway. The driveway had been swept, the flower beds had been edged, and there wasn’t a hint of peeling or cracking in the bright yellow paint on the home’s exterior. The place exuded contentment.

  He rang the bell and waited. It took a moment, but the door opened, and a young boy stood in front of him, wearing pajamas. “Hello,” he said. He had dark hair and dark skin—far darker than Sanchez’s. His eyes were bright and trusting. He couldn’t have been more than six years old.

  “Hello,” Stone replied. “I may be in the wrong place. I’m looking for Detective Sanchez.”

  “Mom!” the boy shouted. “She’s here,” he said. “I’m Carlos. I have the flu.”

  “Carlos, get back in bed!” Sanchez’s voice was unmistakable, though the tone was softer than Stone was used to.

  A moment later, Sanchez was standing in front of Stone. She was dressed in chinos and a loose blouse, and he barely recognized her. The difference wasn’t so much in the way she was dressed, it was in her face. She normally wore her hair pulled back from the temples, giving her face a severe, angry look accentuated by the scowl she wore as a permanent expression of contempt for the world. Now her hair was down and her features were relaxed. She resembled less a bitter cop, more an attractive middle-aged woman.

  She recognized Stone, and her expression changed. She morphed before his eyes into the angry woman he knew from their time together. “What the hell are you doing here, Stone?” she demanded.

  “I heard you were sick,” he said. “I brought chicken soup.”

  The boy, who had disappeared for a moment, was standing behind Sanchez now. “I don’t like chicken soup,” he said.

  “I asked you to get back in bed,” she said to him.

  “Aw, Mom,” he replied sullenly. He headed back into the house.

  She looked back at Stone. “This is my personal, private space,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”

  Stone stood his ground. “We need to talk.”

  “He’s adopted.”

  Carlos was in the family room, watching television, and Stone was alone with Sanchez in the kitchen. He was sitting at the table; she was cleaning the breakfast dishes. The question had been unspoken. He was glad she’d answered it without his having to ask it, though; he wasn’t sure he’d have had the guts. It was clearly a question she had to address fairly often. She was a single cop in her fifties. A six-year-old calling her Mom didn’t fit.

  “He’s normally in school, but he woke up this morning with a fever, and the woman who takes him in the afternoon isn’t available this morning.”

  “Seems like a cute kid,” Stone said.

  “He was two when he came to this country. Now you’d never know he lived anyplace else. Funny how the world works that way, isn’t it?” she said. “Time moves on; kids forget the bad.”

  “Is he your only child?” Stone asked.

  “I had a daughter,” she replied. “She was murdered. So was my husband.”

  He had no idea what to say. “That’s why you became a cop.” It was the only thing that came to mind.

  She glared at him. “Yeah. That’s why I became a cop. And that ends our discussion of my personal life. You wanna talk work, fine, but talk quickly. Then I want you out of here. You shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

  “Fair enough,” Stone said. “Let’s talk work. Why would the IRA kill a Boston mob boss?”

  She sat down across from him at the kitchen table and stared at him warily. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m not stupid,” he replied. “I know how to use the Internet. Padre Pio. It’s a form of torture used by IRA enforcers. Named after some Spanish monk from the 1960s who had the stigmata—bleeding from the palms and feet where Jesus was nailed to the cross. IRA enforcers tie their victims’ hands together and shoot clean through, so it looks like they’ve been nailed to the cross. They say they save it for people who’ve betrayed the cause. So why was it used on Murphy?”

  She tilted her head. “Not bad,” she said grudgingly. “But I gave you that one.”

  “Fine, you gave me that one. I thought that was what partners did—they gave shit to each other.”

  “Keep your voice down,” she ordered him. “If my son hears you swear, it’ll be the shortest partnership in departmental history.”

  “It already has been,” he said. “It’s never been a partnership at all.”

  She took a deep breath. “Look, you seem like a decent kid—”

  “No,” he interrupted her. “I’m not a decent kid. I’m a good cop.”

  “You may be,” she said.

  “No, not I may be. I am. You’d know that if you gave me a chance. So I’ll ask you again, what is the IRA doing knocking off a Boston mob boss?”

  “I think it’s about art,” she replied after a moment.

  “Art who?”

  “Not art who; art, as in paintings.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. What does this have to do with art?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. How old were you in 1990?”

  He thought for a moment. “Ten,” he replied.

  “Jesus,” she said. She rubbed her forehead wearily. “I’m too goddamned old.”

  “What happened in 1990?”

  “You remember the theft at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum?”

  He sat back in the kitchen chair. “Not from back then, but I know about it now. Two guys got away with a couple of paintings, right?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Another way would be to say that it was the greatest art theft in modern history. They say the stuff that was stolen would be worth close to half a billion dollars today.”
>
  “Billion? With a ‘b’?”

  “Yeah, billion.” She stood up and walked over to the kitchen counter. “Coffee?”

  “Sure. Black.”

  She pulled out a coffee brewer. It had tubes coming out of it and looked as if it would take a degree from MIT to operate. He wondered where her money came from.

  “It was the easiest robbery imaginable, too,” she said, her back to him as she continued to brew the coffee. “There were just two of them, and they faked their way into the museum. The guards were amateurs; not real security guards at all. They weren’t properly trained; they didn’t follow proper procedures. The robbers tied the guards in the basement and spent an hour and a half pulling artwork off the walls, then left. The paintings have never been found.” She brought two mugs over to the table.

  “Interesting,” he said. “What’s this got to do with Murphy’s murder?”

  “People have searched for these paintings for twenty years,” she said. “The police, the FBI, Interpol, private detectives, insurance detectives, art historians, treasure hunters. People have spent an enormous amount of energy trying to find these things, but no one has done it yet. There have been lots of theories about who was responsible. The most popular is that the IRA teamed up with the Boston mob to do the job, then split the take between the two groups.”

  Stone considered this. “It’s an interesting idea. But it seems like a pretty big stretch to assume that this is what Murphy’s murder was about, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” Sanchez said. “But one of the works stolen was a painting by Rembrandt. It was one of the most valuable pieces the thieves got away with. The title of it was Storm on the Sea of Galilee.”

  It took a moment for the connection to register with Stone. “‘The Storm.’ You think that was the message that was being sent? That whoever did this was coming for the paintings?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have anything better to go on at this point,” she said. “Do you?”