Strangled

by Brian McGrory

  4

  The rest of the afternoon, it’s worth noting, was an utter disaster.

  Peter Martin and I tried every which way to figure out how we could get some sort of story into print pointing out that the paper had received the original driver’s license of a young woman whose murder remains unsolved. But beyond that one line, there was really nothing else to say. We didn’t know the sender. We knew virtually nothing about the murder. And we had no idea if the sender knew anything more about the murder than we did. The whole thing could have been a cruel hoax.

  Or maybe not. So around we went, getting nothing more than dizzy and despondent.

  All of which is a long way of explaining that when Mongillo pulled up to my desk around about seven o’clock and advised that it would do me some good personally and professionally to accompany him to what he described as a “well-catered affair,” I had neither the energy nor the wherewithal to say no. I was supposed to be in the first-class cabin of a Boeing 757 soaring toward my honeymoon. Instead, I was bound for a stuffy dinner replete with fake smiles and manufactured small talk. Sometimes, too many times, life just doesn’t seem fair.

  They say the most dangerous place in Boston is the position ahead of Vinny Mongillo in a buffet line. Well, all right, maybe they don’t say it, but I do, so I felt especially vulnerable as I stood beside him at a particularly handsome buffet in the grand ballroom of the old Ritz-Carlton hotel in Boston.

  Vinny was actually making moaning sounds as he inspected the contents of each serving dish before spooning huge amounts of food onto his groaning plate. I still hadn’t regained my appetite, which made me look something akin to a dieting debutante. Mongillo kept looking at me like I was completely out of my mind.

  We were here, I had come to learn, for Hal Harrison’s time, time being the old-school Boston parlance for a retirement party or some such person-specific celebration.

  Of course, most retiring cops had their time thrown for them in the overdone environs of Lombardo’s in East Boston or the Chateau de Ville in suburban Randolph. But Harrison’s was no ordinary time. First off, he was the retiring police commissioner. Second, his had been a career doused in glory and seasoned by respect. Third, he was an unannounced candidate for mayor of Boston, so this party actually doubled as a political fund-raiser, meaning Mongillo and I were doubling as working reporters — though the only work my cohort appeared to be doing was lugging around his massive plate.

  “Do you mind if I confide something to you,” Mongillo said in a low voice as we approached the end of the line.

  My reply didn’t matter, so I said nothing as I spooned a few leaves of lettuce onto the empty expanse of my plate.

  “You’re a gold-plated idiot,” he said, looking at the small amount of food I had. “This is great stuff. You’ve got swordfish picatta, you’ve got a rare prime rib, you have twice-baked potatoes, and shiitake mushrooms. The paper’s paying our freight. And you’re eating like Paris Hilton before a day at the beach.”

  “I’m just trying to leave a little food for the poor people behind us,” I replied.

  He didn’t get it, or maybe he did. In either case, he said nothing.

  We took some seats at a table filled with men in tight navy blazers and loosely knotted repp ties — cops all, specifically detectives. You could tell from a mile away. Each one of them knew Vinny by name; each one of them seemed glad to see him; each one of them didn’t have a clue who I was and didn’t seem particularly eager to make my acquaintance. And I consider myself the one who’s in good with the BPD.

  As we were settling into our chairs, Vinny called out, “So, been to any good murders lately?”

  Everybody laughed. Seriously, they really did.

  Some of the cops were asking Vinny how the Atkins diet was going, as if they didn’t already know. I mean, these guys were detectives. A couple of others were talking about so-and-so’s disability pension, and the commander at the academy who was bedding down a couple of the new recruits. I sat in silence, my mind drifting off to my temporarily dismal place in this world.

  The cop to my right, maybe making conversation out of pity, said to me, “My grandkid has a hamster that eats more than what you do for dinner.”

  Even the mention that he had the kid that I didn’t was like a little dagger in my heart, that’s how bad I was at that moment. I mustered a smile and said, “I thought we were paying by the pound, and seeing what Vinny took, didn’t want the paper to go under.”

  He laughed, more politely than heartily, and I can’t say I blame him. He stuck out his hand and said, “Mac Foley, I’m a BPD detective.”

  I contained my enthusiasm, due to how recently I had heard his name, and given how he was something more than a mystery man to anyone outside of the department, the guy behind the curtain pulling so many levers in countless murder cases, only to emerge in the light of the courtroom, always victorious.

  I said, and calmly so, “I’ve heard quite a bit about you. A pleasure to meet you. I’m Jack Flynn with the Boston Record.”

  He said, “And I’ve heard quite a bit about you as well — all of it good, some of it very recent.”

  He smiled a subtle smile at me, not with his teeth but his lips.

  I took another bite of my lettuce, and he returned momentarily to his prime rib. Down the other end of the table, Vinny was telling a joke about a birthing camel and an Egyptian gynecologist — or so it seemed from the parts I couldn’t help overhearing.

  Foley said, “So you’ve landed yourself in an official report on one of our murder cases.” He laughed a shallow little laugh, though his facial expression didn’t seem to think he thought that fact was riotously funny.

  I replied, “Not intentionally. You get the damnedest things in the mail these days.”

  He didn’t laugh at that, and again, I couldn’t blame him. I hadn’t exactly brought my A-game to the Ritz-Carlton that night, and wasn’t so sure I’d have it back for a while.

  “How did the detectives treat you?” he asked. He asked this more conversationally than anything else, taking another bite of prime rib before I answered. If I had told him that they had slammed me against the Record’s front desk, kicked me in the groin, and hit me in the chest with a stun gun, I think he simply would have nodded and looked right through me.

  That said, I give him credit for trying to keep the discussion going. The thing was, I didn’t know where he was leading it, which I found unusual. He basically does what I basically do for a living, except with the benefit of forensics and subpoenas: he gets people to tell them things, even if they might regret it later.

  I replied, “I couldn’t believe how much they had to say about the Jill Dawson murder.”

  He looked like he was about to choke on a piece of beef, but then I added, “Which was nothing at all.”

  He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. I smiled back, a big toothy smile. He didn’t even pretend to think this was funny.

  Up at the podium in the front of the grand room — which, now that I think of it, is probably where the term grand ballroom comes from — Mara Laird spoke into the microphone and asked for everyone’s attention. Everyone, in turn, gave it to her, not only because she was the acting mayor of the city of Boston, but also because she was a terrific physical specimen — tall, blond, and painstakingly fit from a lifetime spent on the ski slopes of northern New England. Not that I was noticing these things in my current state of gloom, but, you know, you can’t help but notice these things.

  Mara had the good fortune of being president of the city council when I wrote a series of stories that cost the previous mayor his job, and after being elevated to acting mayor, she had the better sense of mind to know she wasn’t quite ready to be elected to office. So she stood aside and allowed Hal Harrison, the police commissioner, to launch his campaign, which happened to be against a thirty something multimillionaire hedge fund manager who thought it might be more fun to spend other people’s money running the city g
overnment than investing his own in a bunch of boring biotech companies. And he was probably right.

  The acting mayor prattled on for a while about some of Hal Harrison’s many successes in keeping Boston safe, while the big-ticket contributors in the crowd wondered what kind of access their money would buy, and the regular cops in attendance mentally calculated the size of the pension he had amassed. Laird went on to introduce the senior senator from Massachusetts, Stu Callaghan, who in turn talked about the old days some four decades before when he was the Massachusetts attorney general and Harrison was a hotshot detective quickly climbing the ranks.

  My God, this was worse than watching old home movies; at least there was the possibility of seeing yourself in those. When the waiter came around, I asked, “Could I have a tall glass of hemlock?”

  He looked at me quizzically. Mac Foley actually laughed — as in a real-life, full-on, can’t-keep-it-inside laugh. Then I added, “Just kidding.”

  “I could use a double one of those myself,” Foley said to me, leaning in. But the warmth quickly vanished. He stood up, kept his gaze on me a moment longer than I expected, and walked away into an unlit corner of the vast room.

  Onstage, Senator Callaghan was describing Commissioner Harrison as a “great American,” “civic treasure,” and “courageous crimefighter.” Forget the hemlock and give me a noose. I couldn’t take even another minute of this oral flatulence.

  I mean, don’t get me wrong. Harrison was a good enough cop, I’m sure. At least the city never seemed ready to tilt out of control under his leadership. But my God, politicians laying it on thick for other politicians — that I’ve always found to be an unseemly sight.

  Across the room, I noticed that Mac Foley had settled into another table and was talking intently to yet another cop in a navy blazer and loosely knotted tie. I think they were talking about me. I think this because at one point, the jackass Foley was talking to pointed right at me and Foley said what looked to be “That’s him.” I don’t think they were trying to pick out the guy in the crowd with the most defined abs. This was most definitely strange.

  From the podium, all I heard was more blah-blah-blah, and then amid the white noise and nothingness, I heard a word — or maybe it was a phrase — that struck a nerve. It was as if someone had just slapped me across the face. I quickly dialed back into Stu Callaghan, thinking I must have misunderstood something that he had said.

  “…when the city was in crisis, and he was the one to bring order to it all by cracking that case open like an egg, saving lives and creating calm. He put the Phantom Fiend behind bars for the rest of his dangerous life…”

  My package. My tip. My note. I looked reflexively toward Mac Foley, who happened to be looking directly back at me, a stern look now, his brow furrowed, his eyes cold. He quickly averted his gaze.

  When he did, I got up out of my seat in that crouched way you do when you’re trying to be unobtrusive. The crowd was applauding the senator, who was paying tribute to the commissioner. As I slid past Mongillo, I noticed that he was most definitely not clapping. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning,” I whispered to him. And I was gone. The night had paid off in the oddest way.

  5

  Once in a cab on Arlington Street, I belted out the number to the Record morgue, which isn’t really a morgue at all, even if the people in it can seem half-dead some of the time. No, it’s journalese for the newspaper library. I asked them to check again what I had already failed to find, which was any reference to the term Phantom Fiend in our computer database of Record stories.

  “Where to?” the cabdriver asked as I flipped the telephone shut.

  Good question. I checked my watch — ten o’clock — and thought about how the plane I was supposed to be aboard with Maggie Kane was just touching down in Los Angeles. The plan had been to spend our wedding night at Raffles L’Ermitage in Beverly Hills before grabbing an early-morning connection to Hawaii and enjoying a blissful week of sun and sex at a world-class resort.

  And here I was, the brokenhearted pen pal to a possible murderer, sitting in the back of an idling cab with what smelled like a quasi-eaten Big Mac in a discarded bag on the floor.

  But back to the question at hand: Where to? My head hurt. My muscles ached. I felt like the entire world was a crowded elevator ride, only the elevator was broken and we were all standing still, looking at the numbers above the doors, frozen in time and place.

  “The Hatch Shell, please. Over on the Esplanade.”

  The cabdriver, an older gentleman with a graying ponytail, turned and looked at me for the first time. “Excuse me?” he asked, not so much curious as incredulous.

  “You know, the Hatch Shell. The Fourth of July concert and all that. ‘Stars and Stripes Forever.’ ”

  “You’re aware that this is March twenty-first, right, not the fricking Fourth of July?”

  I replied, “Can you roll the window down? Now that I’m with you, I might as well fling my Palm Pilot away.”

  Truth is, I didn’t actually use a Palm Pilot, but still thought the line was pretty good. He didn’t. Rather, he turned back around with something of an eye roll and a huff, and lurched away from the front doors of the Ritz, bound for Storrow Drive.

  You see, I had an idea, one that involved exercise for the body and therapy for the mind. My gym was closed at this hour, so that option was taken off the table. Last time I shot baskets at the court near my waterfront condominium, someone nearly shot me, so I preferred not to do that. I was indulging in the next best thing.

  My phone rang. It was Howard from the Record library.

  “I’m getting no hits off the phrase Phantom Fiend,” he said. He said this in a voice so soft and a tone so flat that I had to wonder if he was taking this morgue nickname to an unhealthy extreme.

  I thanked him. He returned to his coffin or wherever it is that he goes between pesky calls from reporters. I looked up as the cabdriver was pulling off Storrow Drive into a little parking area next to the famed Hatch Shell, an open-air stage that sits hard by the Charles River in downtown Boston.

  “Where?” he asked, not very polite now.

  “Here’s fine.” I paid him as if this was the most normal destination in the city, and casually got out of the car. He pulled back into traffic. I took a minute to let my eyes adjust to the dark.

  The wind was blowing downriver from the west, colder than I had anticipated, but invigorating just the same. To my left was the lawn where thousands upon thousands of people would cram in with coolers, baskets, and blankets for the annual Fourth of July concert and fireworks celebration. At the moment, it was dark and empty, the grass still brown and spare from a long, snowy winter. To my right was the stage that would be filled with the Boston Pops Orchestra on that same holiday night. Now it was vacant and forlorn, looking like the open mouth of a ventriloquist’s dummy abandoned in the corner of a dark bedroom. I bundled my overcoat around myself and set off toward the water.

  With each step, the traffic noise of the roadway faded, and the sounds of my wingtips on the gravelly pavement grew more pronounced. I felt my muscles start to twitch with adrenaline. I felt my head begin to lighten with the anticipation of exercise.

  I approached the old brick edifice of the Union Boat Club, a rare building on the miles-long expanse of the Esplanade, which is the local name for the grassy bank of this storied river. I pulled my key chain from my pocket and fidgeted beneath a floodlight for the right key. I put it inside a rusty lock on a rickety knob, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.

  The smell was one of all-encompassing mustiness, like another year, a different season, had sat here frozen in time. I flicked a wall switch and an overhead light came on, illuminating a small, barely furnished office. I had taken up rowing the year before, and the club was nice enough to accept me as a member in good standing.

  I opened yet another door and walked into a vast, dark space. Again, I flicked a wall switch and the large storage garage lit up, revealing stacks
of sculling boats hanging on all four walls, as well as piles of weathered oars.

  I yanked open the garage door, which made more noise than I expected, carried the shell down to the nearby dock, and returned to the building. I grabbed a couple of oars, wriggled into a life vest, donned an old down parka that had probably been hanging on a peg since the first Roosevelt administration, and headed back to the dock.

  Let’s not kid around here: it was cold out, and given that I had just taken up the sport of crew, I had never been on the water in this kind of weather. For that matter, I had never been on the water this deep into a dark night. But the moon was bright and the sight lines were good and I’d heat up within the down jacket as soon as I began rowing. The wingtips might be a little awkward, but hey, life’s a little bit awkward most of the time.

  Once on the water, the first push with my legs and pull on the oars felt impossible, like my ribs might crack apart and fall through the black skin of the river. The boat tilted sideways, and I leaned toward the other side to balance it out and pulled on the oars again, a little smoother this time. Still, the boat was wobbly. I straightened it out again and took another pull. Better. And another. Before I knew it, I was thirty yards offshore, the boat’s nose heading directly upwind, which was good, because it kept the howling air at my back.

  Suddenly, I had movement and a rhythm, thrusting with my legs, pulling with my arms and back, sliding across the surface. Thrusting, pulling, thrusting, pulling. The whole thing was as therapeutic as I had imagined, though I probably could’ve been locked up in a special room with white padding for being out there at that hour on a March night.

  Inevitably, my mind wandered. I thought of Peter Martin pressing me earlier that day for a story that I didn’t yet have. I thought of Maggie Kane, wherever she was, running from, well, me. I thought of the Phantom Fiend, whoever he was, and Vinny Mongillo holding court among cops in the ballroom of the Ritz. I thought ahead to the immediate future, how there were too few answers to too many questions on too many fronts — always a dangerous deficit in my line of work. And then my mind wandered far enough afield that I was thinking of nothing at all but my breath and my motion and the little splashes of cold water with each steady row.