The Strangler

by William Landay

  “That’s right, Joe. Let me up.” Conroy tapped Joe’s wrist.

  The contact seemed to jolt Joe back from his thoughts. Reinvigorated, he agitated Conroy’s shirt and pressed him down into the floor more firmly. He straightened his fingers and balled them again to harden his fist.

  Conroy made a short-armed gesture of surrender, palms up.

  Michael said, “Joe? You okay?”

  “What’s he been telling you, Joe?” Conroy nodded toward Michael. “He’s been filling your head up, hasn’t he?”

  Joe shook his head slowly, but the questions diverted him, complicated everything, flooded him with facts and speculations and unknowns, all Michael’s and Ricky’s theories which Joe half understood for a moment only to lose them again. “What about me, Brendan? Did you treat me like a son, too?”

  “You know I did.”

  Joe shook his head again. He yearned for the words. It was an affliction, this constant clutching for words. It felt as if he had been excluded from a conversation. Intuitions murmured past, thoughts that could not be condensed into language, and were lost before Joe could hear them. He imagined there was more to himself, a secret unrealized Joe hidden in all those mutterings, a Joe that would never be accessed. Now, what did he want to say to Conroy? The simple truth—I loved you, you broke my heart—was unsayable, and was not the whole story anyway. But no other words were available.

  Joe said, “You’re not my friend.”

  Immediately he was embarrassed. What a childish, stupid thing to say. He wished he had not said anything at all. He wished he could go back ten seconds into the past, before he had exposed himself as a dumbshit. But the declaration mesmerized Conroy and Joe’s brothers too, and seeing its impact Joe began to feel he had stumbled onto the right formulation almost by accident, as if he had sat down at a piano and banged the keys and somehow a song had emerged, a miraculous perfect little song. He let go of Conroy’s shirt.

  Joe said, “I’m through with you, Bren. Just answer Mike’s question.”

  “What’s he been telling you, Joe?”

  “Just answer him.”

  Conroy labored to his feet. He retreated to the opposite side of the room.

  Ricky came over to offer Michael a hand up. “You alright, Mikey?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You and your new daddy seem to be hitting it off pretty good.”

  “Yeah, I think he’s warming up to me.”

  Conroy tugged his clothes straight. “You boys act like you’ve discovered some original sin. Well, I’m not very original, I hate to tell you. It’s the way things work.”

  Michael said, “Oh Christ, Brendan, nobody gives a shit you were on the sleeve. But from Capobianco? The guy’s a murderer, for Christ’s sake.”

  “So what, I took from Capobianco? You think your old man was too good to take Capobianco’s money?”

  “Yes.”

  Conroy shook his head. “Just let it go, Michael. You don’t know your ass from a hole in the ground, alright? You hear me? You don’t know from Capobianco, you don’t know what it means to be a cop, you don’t know shit from Shinola, and I’m telling you, as a friend: Just let it alone. The hell do you care about Capobianco, anyways?”

  “I’ll tell you what I care. Turns out your boss Capobianco killed my father—I mean my real father, Brendan, the first one, remember him?”

  “Wha…? How do you know that?”

  “A little bird.”

  “What little bird?”

  “Goombah named Paul Marolla.”

  “Who the hell is Paul Marolla?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Well, according to you, he’s a witness in a murder. I’m in Homicide. I want to talk to him.”

  “That’s not going to be so easy. He’s tied up.”

  “The fuck does that mean?”

  “He’s in the trunk of a car in Revere somewhere. They’ll probably find him in June or July, first good heat wave. The way I heard the story is Marolla took some of Charlie Capobianco’s money and Charlie was not willing to just let it go. So Marolla goes into the trunk and on the way out he starts blabbing: He knows about the West End, he knows about my dad. So you see where this is headed, Brendan: You worked for Capobianco; you were there when Joe Daley died—maybe Capobianco wanted Joe Daley dead. A plus B equals C. But what am I telling you? You’re a homicide detective, you know how this works.”

  “You got it wrong.”

  “So enlighten me. Just answer the fucking question! What did you do for Capobianco?”

  “Same as your old man did! Same as half the department does for someone or other! Capobianco runs bookie joints. It’s not like we don’t know where they are. I didn’t bother with them. That’s it. We let him operate.”

  “He pays you too much for just that. I heard you’re one of the highest-paid guys he’s got.”

  “He pays me more because I have stripes on my sleeve. Doesn’t mean I do a goddamn thing for him. I worked my way up, same as everyone else. Besides, most of what he gives me is for other people. I’m a middleman. It’s part of my job.”

  “Come on, Brendan. I always thought a crooked cop—”

  “You righteous little pri—”

  “—I always thought a crooked cop had to do a little more and a little more, know what I mean? You fix a ticket, then you fix a little case in the BMC, then maybe you make some evidence disappear, then someday you find yourself picking up the phone if there’s going to be a raid and Mr. Capobianco might want a little fair warning. Work your way up, like you said.”

  “What does that have to do with murder?”

  “How far up did you work, Brendan?”

  “Now that’s enough. This conversation is over.”

  Joe parallel-parked his grumbling Eighty-Eight in front of the old house, under the basketball hoop.

  In the front passenger seat, Michael realized that, for the first time, he felt no connection to this house. Just a pile of boards, barely distinguishable from the other double- and triple-deckers lining the street, all of them peeling brown and white, and tilting slightly on sunk foundations like uneven teeth. Had he really grown up here? It felt like a hundred years ago. Maybe he would try to convince his mother to sell this old dump, go somewhere nice, maybe near the water, maybe the Cape. She never would, of course. She planned to live here. With Conroy.

  Margaret appeared at the top of the stairs before they even got out of the car. The sleeves of her sweater, a fuchsia cardigan, were pushed up to her elbows. Her hair was held back by a headband, a girlish detail, but she did not look young. Her face looked pale. Her thin, lipsticked mouth stood out like a red incision in her porcelain face.

  Old women had to be careful about lipstick, Michael thought. They could look so red-mouthed and smeary and ridiculous.

  “What are you three up to?” Without unfolding her arms, Margaret glanced at her watch and frowned. They should be at work now. Honest people were all at work now.

  Michael said, “We need to talk to you, Ma.”

  “Talk,” Ricky advised, “or Joe’ll beat the crap out of you.”

  Each of the boys bent to bump-kiss her cheek as they passed. She received these kisses impassively, arms still folded, with a swivel of her head to offer up her cheek.

  Michael thought she gave him a particularly cool look, but he could not be sure and in any case he did not, for once, feel quite as vulnerable to her. He felt, vaingloriously, like a prince sweeping past with his retinue.

  It was Michael, after all, whom Joe had sought out to confide what had happened up in Revere and to share the tip that the mob had some kind of role in Joe Senior’s murder. It was Michael who had counseled his brothers to solve the mystery together, not so much to pool their various talents but because the outsiders whose job it was to find Senior’s killer had failed and, worse, seemed to have given up. And it was Michael who had directed Ricky to break into Capobianco’s headquarters—though his goal had been to corrob
orate Marolla’s tip, to find some scrap of evidence that would link the Capobiancos to the murder. The discovery of Conroy’s name in the ledger had been a surprise. Maybe it should not have been.

  The Daleys sat in the kitchen, at the little breakfast table. This table had just four seats, so it had been used when Joe Senior was at work during mealtimes. But then, Joe Senior had been at work during most mealtimes. A detective’s work schedule did not have much to do with the ordinary nine-to-five workday. Homicide had been the worst; he would disappear for days at a time, working a case while it was hot. The boys had come to think of this table as theirs—the place where they could laugh out loud and stick green beans in their noses and fight over the sports page. It had an avocado Formica top flecked with little gold asterisks and a scalloped aluminum band around the sides, like you would see in a diner.

  When the situation was explained to Margaret, minus a few gruesome or worrisome details, she did not seem to find anything especially new in it. Her husband was still dead, under mysterious circumstances. And Brendan Conroy was still what he was: a bit of a blustery politician but a good man and an old friend. She did not believe Brendan was corrupt, merely that he lived in a turbid atmosphere—you could hardly walk around in this city without it leaving a little grime on your nose. So her boys had scratched up a couple of new details. What had changed, really? Nothing. Michael did not like Brendan—that was what it all boiled down to. Well, those two were just oil and water, and they would have to find a way to get along. That was Michael’s problem, not Brendan’s, and certainly not hers.

  But now there was something new. It was not just Michael anymore. Now he had Joe believing it, too, that Brendan was some kind of villain. And Ricky! Joe had always been a get-along go-along sort of boy, an easy mark. But Ricky? God bless ’m, he was a living saint—but Ricky looked out for Ricky. Ricky was the kid who stole the quarters Michael collected to send to the pagan babies in Biafra. Yet here were all three of them, her all-grown-up children, ganging up on her.

  Michael said, “I don’t think he should be here anymore.”

  “Oh, good Lord, Michael, haven’t we been all through this?”

  “Just till we know.”

  “I already know. I know Brendan. It’s enough for me.”

  “He can’t stay here anymore. When this is over, if I’m wrong, I’ll set it straight with him. But for now it’s better he gets out.”

  “Why, Michael? Because some gangster knows Brendan’s name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ma,” Joe said, “just do what he says.”

  She flicked a withering glance at Joe. Who asked him? “He’s still Brendan. He’s been our friend a long time, Michael, longer than you’ve been alive. You don’t just turn your back like that.”

  “Look, you tell him anything you want. Blame it on me. Tell him I’m crazy. But I don’t want him around here, I don’t want him around you. Just till we get this straightened out.”

  She shook her head in a noncommittal way.

  “Did Dad ever talk to you about Capobianco?”

  “No. He never talked about work. He went off to work and he came home. He was never much of a talker, you know that.”

  “You ever hear him mention that name? Capobianco?”

  “Not to me. He and Amy used to talk about it.”

  “Amy?” Michael’s head wavered, as if knocked back.

  “You know how Amy was. If she wanted to know something, she wasn’t afraid to ask.”

  “What did she ask him about?”

  “Well, she was always after your dad for stories. Dope about the police department, about whatever she was working on. It was not a big deal. They were family. They chatted.”

  “He was the source.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t call him a source—”

  Michael shook his head. His right hand went to his brow, smoothing the eyebrows with two fingers absently—

  and he sensed somewhere in his skull, afloat behind the thick bone-wall of his forehead, the first dim presence of pain, like a ghost.

  He saw the two women.

  Claire, the career-girl newspaper reporter. Two-legged rats in the West End. Lots of money to be made there. That’s the kind of cheese those rats like. Find the cheese.

  And of course he saw Amy, too, the night before she was killed. Why would Brendan Conroy kill Joe Senior? What motive? I have an idea. A wiseacre smirk. I have an idea. And of course she did have an idea: because Senior had been spilling what was going on in the West End. The West End had to be cleared. The New Boston had to come.

  The pain hovered in his skull, settling now behind the right eyeball. A tumorous weight leaned against the back of the eyeball. An ache. It draped itself over the ocular nerve like a boa on a tree branch. Still faint.

  He tried to empty his head of thought, of stress. He was not his body; he was in his body, and he could control it. Maybe the storm would pass him by, blow out harmlessly to sea.

  “You alright, Mikey?”

  “Yeah. I’m okay.”

  “You don’t look okay.”

  “We got to go. There’s something—”

  The three of them stood to leave. Michael put his hand on the table to steady himself.

  Ricky grabbed his arm. “Sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Michael let his eyes close.

  He was not his body. He was in his body. Empty the mind. Release the pressure.

  But it was already too late. The thing was inside him. The anxiety of the last few days. Plunging from one lead to the next, feeling the solution closer and closer. He wished he was not there. He wished he was at home. He did not like people to see him when the migraines came. It was a weakness, this inability to regulate one’s own body.

  “You know what?” he said. “Maybe I better just—”

  There had been no aura this time. No illusions—no melting surfaces or mosaic vision, no sense of wonder. The aura did not always come. Sometimes it was just pain.

  “Mike,” he heard Joe say, “want me to drive you home?”

  “No. I’m just gonna go lie down for a while. I’ll catch up with you guys later. Sorry. I hate this.” He shuffled toward the kitchen door. “I hate this.”

  Later. An hour, several hours.

  There was a sound in the dark, in the deep space: a ticking like the tip of a tree branch tapping a windowpane.

  Near its peak, Michael thought. Had to be. It squeezed his head like a helmet. In the interior of his skull there was throbbing, synchronized to his pulse. He felt, or imagined he felt, the beating of vascular arteries as they piped the toxic fluids into his head, the rhythmic earthwormy bunching-and-stretching of peristalsis.

  Again, he caught that sound in the darkness. Less faint. Rhythmic. Approaching. Chink-chink-chink. More insistent now, like a child’s finger tapping on the window, demanding to be let in. Chink-chink-chink.

  He lay on his side, utterly still, and searched for the sound, but the signal was weak.

  Chick-chick-chick-chick.

  There it was! Footsteps.

  The pain subsided momentarily.

  Chick-chick-BANG! As if a door had slammed open and the sound that was distant and external was now inside his head, chick-chick-chick-chick-chick-chick.

  He saw feet running, close up, black patrolman’s shoes in a dead sprint, soles scratching the sandy pavement.

  Joe Daley, Sr., so vivid! So thrillingly close! His cheeks jounced with each step. His nylon windbreaker luffed and crinkled as the wind filled it. He held one hand over his heart to keep his junk—reading glasses, notebook, smokes—from jumping out of his shirt pocket.

  Michael could reach out and touch him. Inches away. Touch his father’s face.

  But Joe Senior pulled away. Michael was behind him now. Saw his leg-kick as he ran. Eastie warehouses to the left, harbor to the right.

  Farther behind Joe Senior—well behind—was Conroy. He chugged along slowly, then jogged, then stopped a
ltogether. He grimaced. What had he done? What had he done to his friend?

  Joe Senior seemed to sense his partner had dropped away. At the corner of one of the big redbrick buildings, he turned around and spread his hands: The hell are you doing, Brendan?

  “You go,” Conroy wheezed. “I’ll catch up.”

  Joe Senior shook his head. Conroy was a character. How they had lasted this long together he would never know.

  Senior disappeared around the corner of the building into the alley.

  Enough!

  Michael had seen enough. He turned off the movie. He knew how it ended. He knew how to make the pieces fit. There would be time to confirm it later. For now, sleep.

  Margaret opened the door and the young man swept in with it, as leaves that have accumulated in a doorway will be pulled inside when the door is opened. He did not step all the way into the house. He stopped directly in front of her.

  “Hello, Margaret.”

  There was a delay, a fraction of a second, during which Margaret placed him—there were bruises on Kurt Lindstrom’s face, one of his hands was bandaged—then she slammed the door against him with a yelp of surprise and fear. He warded off the door, pressed it open again. Margaret continued to push for a moment but realized she would not be able to force him out, so she stepped back. She behaved as if she had invited him in, as if she was not distressed by his presence. What choice was there? She retreated to the living room.

  “Oh, come on, Margaret. What are you so afraid of?”

  “I’m not afraid.”

  “No. No reason to be.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Course you’re not. Nothing to be afraid of.”

  “My sons will be home soon.”

  “Will they?” He checked his watch. “It’s late.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting.”

  He ambled into the small room. His posture was lazy and pliant, like a teenager’s.

  She got out a cigarette from a pack on the coffee table and lighted it in an actressy way. They were talking, at least. That seemed to matter, to suggest that she had a say in what might happen here. She could engage him, steer him.