The Strangler

by William Landay

  “No way.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just know. ’Cause they understood. People want to see this stuff. That’s why they put up all those crosses. That’s why they built the Colosseum, so people could go see the fights and see people dyin’ and whatnot, and they’re happy. People need to work it off a little. You gotta let ’em. You gotta do that. For the people.”

  “They can go to the movies and see all that.”

  One of the mooks chimed in, “Like Ben-Hur. You see that one?”

  “The fuck are you talkin’ about, Ben-Hur?”

  “It’s a movie.”

  “I know it’s a movie. Stugatz.”

  “I’m just sayin’, Vin. You were talkin’ about goin’ to the Colosseum and see people gettin’ killed, and then Joe here said they could see all that shit at the movies, so I said they can go see Ben-Hur and see people gettin’ killed—at the Colosseum. It’s all in there. That’s what I’m sayin’.”

  “And I’m sayin’ it’s a fuckin’ movie.”

  “So what, it’s a movie?”

  “So it’s make-believe.”

  “Ben-Hur? I thought it was nonfiction.”

  “That’s Spartacus.”

  “They’re both nonfiction, Spartacus and Ben-Hur.”

  “Would you guys shut the fuck up. I’m not talkin’ about fuckin’ movies. I’m bein’ serious here. Jamokes. Listen, the Romans lasted a thousand years. Or whatever. You know why? ’Cause they didn’t fuck around. That’s my point. Jesus comes along and tells ’em, ‘I’m God’ or whatever, and they say, ‘Too fuckin’ bad, get up on the cross.’ They didn’t give a shit, these guys.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said, “but Jesus won.”

  “How did he win?”

  “Vatican’s in Rome.”

  “How does that help Jesus? He was dead.”

  “I don’t think you really get the whole Jesus thing, Vin.”

  “No, you’re the one who doesn’t fuckin’ get it. What I’m sayin’ is, there’s a proper use. There’s a proper use. Hitler, same thing. If they’d a killed Hitler back when he started making trouble, they’d a had no problems, none whatsoever. Instead we had to go send millions of guys over there. And what’d we tell ’em? ‘Go kill as many of these fucks as you can.’ That’s what I’m talking about. A proper use.”

  “Hitler? What are you talking about Hitler?”

  “I’m sayin’ a guy like that you got to take care of. You can’t just look the other way, even on the small stuff.”

  “That was a war. It’s different.”

  “It’s not different. Same rules. It’s always war.”

  “You’re crazy, Vince.”

  “Yeah? If I’m so crazy, how come you work for me?”

  “Because I’m stupid.”

  “And these guys? They stupid, too?”

  “Is that a real question?”

  They laughed, Gargano, the mooks, everyone but Joe.

  “Here’s what I’m sayin’. Bein’ a cop and all, you know I’m right. I’ll make you a bet: The guy that killed that what’s-her-name, the girl you know that got strangled, the reporter…”

  “Amy Ryan.”

  “Amy Ryan. I’ll make you a bet: That wasn’t the first one he did. That’s a guy with a history. He’s been in the can, too, I betcha. They had him and they let him out so he could do that there.”

  “So?”

  “So she was a good girl, wasn’t she, this Amy? Didn’t deserve what she got?”

  Joe did not answer.

  “So if they’d a taken care of him the first time he did it, like they should have—”

  “You don’t know what a guy’s gonna do. In the future.”

  “Trust me, sometimes you know.” Gargano gave him a look.

  The mooks hummed and nodded some more. Vinnie The Animal, after all, did have some expertise in this area.

  58

  Kat at Ricky’s door again. Defeated.

  “What’s wrong, Kat? What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know what to do. I’m just…”

  “Jesus, come in.”

  Ricky attempted a series of solicitous little gestures, a palm laid on Kat’s shoulder, an arm outstretched toward the couch, a reach to relieve her of her purse. The resulting display was a little ridiculous, like a sailor semaphoring, and Ricky wondered again at his new awkwardness. It was a new role, Ricky After, and he had not learned to play it yet. Ricky Before—detached, irresponsible, bored, charismatic—had been a closer fit. But Kat’s very presence here seemed to confirm the change in Ricky, or at least the change in the family’s perception of him. He had never been the type that weeping women turned to. He had not, for that matter, been in very direct touch with the female side of the family at all. For years Amy had represented him among the women. She had explained him to Margaret and Kat and the various aunts and cousins who materialized at family functions. But now Kat was here, and Ricky wanted to be what she needed.

  Kat, though, seemed to gather strength as she came into the apartment and observed the mess there. She regarded Ricky’s apartment as if it were a direct reflection of his interior life, and she seemed to calculate that, whatever problems she might have, Ricky might actually be worse off.

  “Where’s your record player? And all those records?”

  “Somebody broke in.”

  “Somebody what!?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Sorry, Ricky. It’s just…” She snorted.

  “Can’t trust anyone these days.”

  “I can give you back that Miles Davis record.”

  “No, you keep it.”

  “New couch?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thief took the old one?”

  “Sure.”

  “That’s weird, thief taking an old couch like that.”

  “Long story.”

  “I bet.”

  Kat sat on the new couch and ran her palm over the cushion.

  It had been eleven weeks since Gargano’s goons turned Ricky’s place upside down looking for the stones. In that time Ricky had bought a used couch and coffee table and a new hi-fi, but that was it. He did not feel the same connection to the place. He thought he might move. He had no idea where. Someplace far away.

  “You got to help Joe.”

  “Help him how?”

  Kat lowered her face into her hands.

  “What, is he catting around again?”

  “No, it’s not that. I think he’s in trouble. He’s betting. And we’re broke. I mean literally broke. You know? We have no money, Ricky. I don’t even—I have nothing to give them for dinner tonight.”

  “Jesus, Kat, why didn’t you say so? I have plenty of cash. It’s no problem.”

  “It is a problem. He’s not acting right. I think he’s in trouble.”

  Ricky fished some cash out of his pocket. He peeled off two twenties and a ten, and handed it to Kat.

  She gawped at the bills in her hand. “This is—I can’t take this. It’s too much.”

  “Take it. I’ll get you more.”

  Kat kept a twenty-dollar bill and put the rest down on the coffee table. “Thank you. We’ll pay you back, Ricky, I promise.”

  “You don’t have to pay me back, Kat. It’s for you.”

  “Ricky, do you know what’s going on with Joe? You do know, don’t you?”

  “I—He told me a few things. Not the whole story.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “Nothing, Kat. Really. It’s nothing you need to worry about.”

  “Ricky, you gotta tell me.”

  “I really don’t know the whole thing. Joe and I don’t talk much, you know that. All I know is what you know: He likes to bet, he got himself into a hole, he’s a little short of cash right now. It’s not so bad.”

  “Not so bad? He steals from us! He steals—from us! We have bills. You can’t imagine the bills.”

  “Give them to me. I’ll
pay them.”

  “I can’t do that. He’d kill me.”

  “So don’t tell him. Just put them all in a paper bag and give them to me.”

  Kat rubbed her eyes. Her hand was jittery, with fatigue or strain Ricky could not tell. “Ricky, you won’t let anything happen to him, will you?”

  “He’s a big boy. He doesn’t need my help.”

  “Ricky, you look at me and you promise you won’t let anything happen to him. He’s your brother.”

  “You overestimate me, Kat.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Look me in the eye.”

  “Alright, alright. I promise.”

  Kat exhaled a long sigh, as if the thing was agreed: No harm would come to her Joe. The twenty was still in her hand—that made two prayers answered. She folded the bill in half, then folded it again, so those magical digits, 20, showed in the corners. This piece of paper would change her life, it would stave off catastrophe. Kat had never thought much about money until the last year. Now she thought about little else. She opened her pocketbook and got out her wallet to put it away carefully. On twenty bucks she could feed her family for a week, maybe more.

  Ricky retrieved her coat, which she had dropped on a chair. On the pretext of holding it open for her, he slipped the other thirty into her coat pocket.

  59

  Margaret answered the door looking bulletproof in a wool twinset and skirt. “Michael,” she said. “What are you doing here? No work today?”

  “No.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No. All wrong, actually.”

  “What does that mean? Did you call in sick?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think you should? What if someone’s looking for you?”

  Michael hunched past her, as a porcupine trundles across a road with its load of erect quills.

  “I really think you should,” Margaret repeated. “What if they’re looking for you, Michael? Why don’t you go use the phone in the kitchen? It’s the responsible thing, dear. It’ll just take a second.”

  Michael stood in the center of the small living room. One of Conroy’s Mickey Spillane novels lay on the table by the big saffron chair.

  “I need to ask you about Dad.”

  “Okay.”

  “Did you ever ask Conroy about him? Since we talked that morning?”

  “I wouldn’t insult him.”

  “You wouldn’t insult him? So you insult Dad instead?”

  “You take that back, Michael.”

  “Well, you have to insult one or the other. It’s awkward that way.”

  She pulled her cardigan tight around her and crossed her arms. “Why do you say these things?”

  “Tell me what happened with Dad.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Those last few months, something was wrong. Dad was upset about something. Moping around, drinking too much, smoking like a chimney.”

  “Your father had a stressful job. I’d think you’d know that. He had ups and downs, same as everyone else, same as you. There was nothing unusual about your dad taking a drink, either. He was not Superman.”

  “That’s what I figured, too. He was not Superman, so what? So maybe he took a pop at night, who cares? Happens to everyone. Only then he got killed. Now, that doesn’t happen to everyone, does it?”

  “He got killed on the job. What did smoking and drinking have to do with it? He was in good shape. He was always in good shape, your father.”

  An image flickered in Michael’s mind: Dad on the beach, not muscular but sinewy and lean.

  “Help me, Mum. I need to know. There was one night at supper, a few months before, and Joe was saying how great it was to be a cop and all that, and Dad said something like ‘It’s not as great as it used to be.’”

  “Oh, he said that all the time. Your father was getting old. He was tired. You try working those hours someday. You’d be tired, too.”

  “No. He didn’t say he was tired, he said he was tired of it. He loved being a cop. So what was he tired of?”

  “Tired is tired. He worked hard.”

  Michael frowned. “You know what’s funny? When Joe got into trouble—that business with the bookie—we all knew just who to turn to: good old Uncle Brendan.”

  “I don’t see what one has to do with the other.”

  “Well, it’s just, if Dad was in trouble…All those years he and Brendan were partners.”

  “And?”

  “And Brendan isn’t exactly the kind of cop Dad was, now, is he?”

  “I don’t like being cross-examined, Michael. This is not a court. Anyway, you seem to think you have all the answers. Why don’t you just say what’s on your mind.”

  “Two murders in one family in the same year. That’s a hell of a coincidence. And no answers. No help from the cops—everything stays unsolved, unsolved, unsolved.”

  “Michael, you have to let go of it—”

  “No. I don’t want to let go of it. I went to see Amy’s friend at the newspaper. You remember Claire Downey?”

  “I remember the name in the paper next to Amy’s.”

  “Well, I asked Claire what she knew about it. Why would Amy think Conroy would ever want to harm my dad? I mean, even if Conroy is crooked, what would the motive be? Turns out, according to Claire, Amy was looking into the West End—two-legged rats in the West End.

  “So then I went and talked to an old friend. Well, not a friend exactly. She thinks I’m the devil on earth—and I am—because I got her thrown out of her apartment so the tenement could come down so Farley Sonnenshein could put up one of his new buildings and make a few million more than he already has—all for the betterment of our fair city, of course. Mrs. Cavalcante, her name is. Nice little Italian lady. She told me there were bad guys—delinquenti—threatening her, trying to scare her out of her building so they could get in there and build those new apartments. Nothing too surprising there, right? A lot of money at stake, a guy like Sonnenshein probably isn’t above playing hardball. But get this: Mrs. Cavalcante says some of the delinquenti were cops.”

  “Michael, you’re not suggesting your father was one of them!”

  “No. Don’t be ridiculous. Dad might not have been Superman but he sure as hell was a Boy Scout, next to your boyfriend anyway.”

  “Oh, Michael, you’re not turning into one of those conspiracy nuts.”

  “Not a conspiracy. I’m talking about business as usual. Just a few cops on the take.”

  “Business as usual is a couple of bucks here and there.”

  “That’s right. And as long as it’s business as usual, the good cops like Dad are willing to look the other way. That’s how it works, right? The whole department isn’t crooked. Only half. But the good half has to shut its eyes—or at least its mouth—while the crooked half runs around with their hands out. But what if something changed? What if Dad started seeing things that weren’t business as usual, even for Boston, and he couldn’t look the other way anymore?”

  “Good Lord, Michael, what does any of this have to do with Brendan?”

  “Brendan would do things Dad would never do.”

  “Michael, I don’t know what’s going on between you and Brendan, but I want you to understand something. Whatever Brendan did, whatever he might have got up to, your father did too. They weren’t just partners, those two, they were friends. They were Ike and Mike. You talk like it’s all good Joe, bad Brendan. It just wasn’t that way. It wasn’t that way at all.”

  “Amy thought different.”

  Margaret shrugged. “Then she was wrong. Bless her heart, she was a living angel, but she was not perfect, either. Now, I know how you felt about Amy. Sometimes we see with our hearts, Michael. Let me ask you something. How do you think your father put you through Harvard on a cop’s salary?”

  “I worked my way through.”

  “Yes, you worked, more power to you. But you had plenty o
f help. How do you think your father did that for you? How many other cops’ kids were there at Harvard with you? We’re not the Kennedys, Michael.”

  “Well, that’s for sure.”

  “Your father had three children. Sometimes he did what he had to. He didn’t invent the system.”

  “I’d have no problem believing that except for one thing: In the end, when Dad died, the only other man in that alley was Brendan Conroy. If Dad decided he couldn’t just look the other way, if Brendan had gone too far and Dad was getting ready to blow the whistle—well, look, I can explain why Brendan might be in that alley with a gun. What’s your explanation, Ma?”

  “I don’t need an explanation.”

  “When you crawl into bed with him tonight, you might feel different.”

  She slapped him. “I’m still your mother. Whatever you might think of me.”

  60

  Joe, big dismissive smirk: “What are you, crazy?”

  Michael shrugged.

  “What about you, Rick? You believe this shit?”

  “If Mikey says it…”

  “If Mikey said the sky was green?”

  “I’d go have a look.”

  Joe mopped his hand across his mouth. “No way. There’s just no way.”

  Ricky swigged his beer and lounged back in his chair. They were at a place in the Fenway called Herbie’s Cactus Room, around the corner from McGrail’s and with fewer ears. Of course Ricky might have rejected the idea out of hand, too, but Amy had believed it and that changed everything. For her sake, he had to consider it, at least. And the more he considered, the more the audacity of the idea—Brendan Conroy killed Joe Senior—argued in its favor. A lot of people, no doubt, slept a little more soundly the night Amy Ryan died and took her headful of secrets with her. Maybe Conroy had been one of them.

  Joe was having none of it. “I know Brendan. I know him way better than you two clowns. Way better. There’s no way. I just can’t, I just can’t…Okay, okay, okay. Michael’s got a hair across his ass about Brendan. That’s fine, that’s your business, Mike. But this is nuts. You don’t go around accusing people like that.”

  “I’m not accusing. I’m just saying there’s enough there we ought to look into it.”