Strangled

by Brian McGrory

  The phone rang once, twice, three times, then four, before it kicked over to an automated voice system with a generic woman’s voice.

  “Elizabeth, Jack. Call me,” I pleaded.

  I hung up. We were about a minute out, zipping through the South End, Hank intent behind the wheel, the dog stretched out and sound asleep already in the back, and me just about climbing onto the roof of the car.

  About thirty seconds out, and my cell phone rang. Hank whispered, “Thank God.” The dog raised his head. I waited until the second ring, saw that the caller ID said “Unavailable,” which could well be the designation for a big hotel, and answered the phone with high hopes.

  “Jack here.”

  Silence.

  Well, not exactly silence, but a muffled noise, which could have been a woman fighting off an attacker, fighting for her life in a hotel room that might be the last place she’d ever see.

  I just about shouted, “Who’s there?”

  More muffled sounds, as if someone’s hand was cupped over the phone to mask the commotion in the background. And then I heard a vaguely familiar male voice say to me, “Jack, I’m in some trouble. I need your help.”

  Vinny Mongillo.

  But the thing was, it sounded nothing like the Vinny that I knew so well. This Vinny was seriously distressed and somewhat embarrassed. He sounded exhausted, and scared.

  I said, “Vin, I’m in the middle of a world of trouble right now. Tell me fast.”

  And unlike the typical Vinny Mongillo, who would have imparted some sort of sarcastic or even caustic comment here, he did.

  “I’ve been taken into custody by the Boston Police. They’re about to charge me with something in relation to the Boston Strangler case. It’s not what you think. It’s not what they think either.”

  Hank was wheeling around the hotel, pulling up to the side entrance. My mind flashed to Vinny’s letter in the garage on Rodeo Road — a letter that was still in my pocket at that moment. Was I missing something? Was there a link I hadn’t made, a connection I couldn’t grasp? Was Vinny capable of doing something that I couldn’t even imagine?

  He continued, “I’m going to need a lawyer and some bail. I’m in headquarters. This is the only call they’re giving me. And you and I desperately need to speak. Can you get here as soon as possible?”

  This was a lot to process. By now the car was stopped. Hank was out his door. I said, “Vinny, soon as I can. I have something else I’m taking care of right now, but soon as I can.”

  And I leapt out. Hank and I dashed side by side through the door. Inside, I slammed my hand against the elevator call button. A bell dinged, the doors opened, and we were in business. The ride up felt like we were climbing Mount Everest. When we hit the top, we ran left, then right, then right again, and there we were, the two of us, Hank and me, standing directly outside of Room 533. He glanced at me and I glanced at him. That’s when I reached out and firmly knocked.

  33

  Some of the best hotel nights in my life have been spent in the stately rooms of the landmark building that is Boston’s Fairmont Copley Plaza hotel. I spent my wedding night in the presidential suite. I used to stay there when I was a Washington reporter for the Boston Record during my frequent trips home. My own mother would visit me and look around at the valets and the concierge and the turndown service, and she’d smile that smile of hers and say to me, “You think you’re such a big shot.” Maybe I did.

  I’d spent many a night in the Oak Bar with Elizabeth Riggs, listening to great jazz musicians beneath the frescoed thirty-foot ceilings, sipping cocktails served by waitresses and bartenders who counted their tenure not by years but by decades. I once gleaned invaluable information from an old friend named Gus in a corner suite at the hotel as I reported one devastating story after another about the mysterious background of the president of the United States.

  All these good feelings and good memories, along with so much more, were about to come crashing to an end on this night, because when you really think about it, that’s what happens in life — things end.

  No one answered my knock. There wasn’t so much as a whisper of a sound from inside the room, at least as far as we could hear, and Hank should have been able to with his ear pressed up against the door. I turned the knob and it was locked. Hank pulled back a step, looked at me, and asked, “Do you want the manager to open the door, or do you want me to do it?”

  I hated the idea of some nervous hotel manager arguing with me about disturbing guests, possibly summoning police to join us in this search, and then ending with six or eight people walking in on Elizabeth Riggs’s body all at once. I wanted to see her alone, or at least only with Hank, as macabre as that might seem.

  So I pointed to Hank. Before I could even drop my arm, his foot slammed against the door at its most vulnerable point. The door, in turn, flew open, bounced off a door stop, and started closing again. But by the time it had come back, Hank’s foot was already inside. He had a gun drawn. And he stepped into the room, firmly reciting the words “Law enforcement. Hands up. We’ve got a whole crew here.”

  He stood in the shadowy entryway, illuminated only by the dim hall sconces behind us, as I forged past him. The lights were off, and I ran my hand up and down a nearby wall, looking for a switch. When I found one, I said to Hank, “I’m turning them on.”

  And I did.

  I was expecting the absolute worst, and why shouldn’t I have been? Every time I received a driver’s license from the Phantom Fiend, or a video, a pretty young woman was dead, the body left in some gruesome manner by a publicity-seeking killer who immediately reported his misdeeds to me.

  My eyes first settled on the bed, assuming that’s where he’d probably leave her. And so I was shocked to see that the bed, apparently turned down by the maids that evening, was completely empty — just a comforter wrapped in a white duvet cover stretched tight across the wide expanse.

  Hank repeated himself: “Law enforcement. Get your hands up before we shoot.” As he said it, he was holding his gun out like he was Don Johnson on Miami Vice.

  The room, by the way, was a big, elegant affair, what some lesser hotels might describe as a junior suite. The carpet was royal blue, the walls were a pale yellow, and the furniture, every piece substantial in size, was tasteful in an Old World kind of way. The entire room flowed toward a sitting area tucked inside a bow window that overlooked the grassy park at the center of Copley Square.

  And right now, it appeared entirely empty.

  Well, not entirely. As I slowly walked through it, I could see the signs that we were, in fact, in the right place — Elizabeth’s computer case, an overnight bag that I remember loading in the trunk of the car so many times, a barn jacket that I had bought her tossed across an upholstered chair. Another telltale sign: an empty bottle of Tab on her dresser. Who else in this life still drinks Tab?

  As I walked toward the windows, which were near the bathroom entrance, Hank held his big, bearlike hand up to me, the one without the gun. I stopped. He looked under the bed. Then he began slowly walking toward the bathroom door, the gun poised at his side.

  “You’ve got two seconds to come out,” he said.

  No reaction. He arrived at the door, which was slightly ajar, and pushed it slowly with his foot, the door swinging into the dark bathroom. I squinted, remembering full well that at least one of the Boston Strangler’s victims back in the sixties was found in a bathtub. Hank reached his hand inside the door, flicked on the overhead light, and scanned the small space with his gun.

  Again, nothing.

  He looked at me and said in that easy voice of his, “Well, son, at this point, anything that’s not bad is good.” And don’t ask me how, but that made all the sense in the world.

  Now, suddenly, I felt like an intruder, a feeling that was reinforced when two beefy gentlemen in ill-fitting button-down shirts, apparently security guards, showed up at the broken doorway, saying, “If you move another inch you’ll reg
ret it.”

  Hank doesn’t seem to know regret, which is one of the many things I love about the guy, so he walked calmly and casually toward them, gun at his side. One of the guards barked at him, “Hey, Gramps, stop where you are and put the gun on the bed.”

  Hank said, “My only son was killed before he ever had any children, so nice as it sounds, my name isn’t Gramps.”

  The security guard didn’t particularly seem to care, poignant as Hank’s declaration was. He said, “One more step and I will break your fucking face.”

  So then I started walking toward them. No one talks to Hank like that, not when he’s protecting me. Did I mention, by the way, that they were unarmed?

  The two security guards were inside the room now, one of them chest to chest with me. I had no idea what was about to happen, but I know what did. A uniformed police officer appeared in the doorway and exclaimed, “Lookie here, Hank Sweeney, the man behind the myth.”

  Hank beamed. The security detail looked confused. I still considered all this a colossal waste of time, given that Elizabeth Riggs was still either dead or in imminent danger of becoming that way.

  Hank and the cop, a guy introduced to me as Tommy Reilly, made small talk. Another cop showed up, and the first cop introduced the two of them. Then Reilly said to Hank, “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing breaking into a hotel room, but I assume you have good reason. Anything you need us to do?”

  Hank started answering, started explaining about a woman being in extreme danger, when Tommy Reilly pulled his radio from his belt, contacted headquarters, and ordered whoever it was on the other end of the line to put out an immediate all-points bulletin for an Elizabeth Riggs. He stifled the radio for a moment, asked me for her date of birth and a physical description, which I gave him, and he relayed that information as well.

  Reilly said to me, as well as Hank, “Technically, I should take you down to headquarters for some more information, especially since you have information in what might be a — well, might be something that’s pretty dire.”

  Hank replied, “Technically, yeah, but the thing is, we slipped out before you had a chance to ask us.”

  The cop nodded. Hank grabbed my elbow and said in his easy, matter-of-fact voice, “We’re out of here.” And we were, leaving the broken door and the empty room behind, but carrying my deepest fears along the way.

  Down in the lobby, another pair of uniformed cops were rushing into the elevator and up to the fifth floor. A couple — the man in a tuxedo, the woman in an evening gown — were bickering over something that was undoubtedly profoundly unimportant, but ruinous nonetheless to what was supposed to have been a grand night.

  Hank and I faced each other, standing amid the gold-gilded environs of the Copley Plaza, unsure what to do and where to go. I should have been exhausted, but I wasn’t. Rather, I was so frustrated by the events, by the complexities, by my helplessness, by the police higher-ups, by my own newspaper, by Paul Vasco’s bravado, by Vinny Mongillo’s secrets, that I thought I was going to explode.

  It was either this or be sitting on a volcanic beach at one of the best resorts in Hawaii.

  Wearily, I said to Hank, “In the absence of any better idea, we should get over to police headquarters to see what the hell is going on with Vinny.”

  Hank replied, “The better idea might be to have a quick word with Elizabeth before we go.”

  I shot him an incredulous look, as in what the hell was he talking about. He nodded calmly and casually down the long, carpeted hallway toward the front door of the hotel. I looked in that direction, and in the distance, Elizabeth Riggs was walking toward us, accompanied by Boston Police Detective Mac Foley.

  “Wait for them here,” Hank said softly, not even turning to face me. So I did.

  She was wearing a sweater and a pair of jeans, carrying a notebook in her right hand, her hips swiveling in that way they do, her hair framing both sides of her face. My body nearly went limp at the sight of her — limp with joy, with relief. It was as if the only emotion that had been propping me up was that of utter fear.

  At the same time, the sight of Mac Foley with Elizabeth gnawed at some nugget of suspicion buried deep within my brain — or maybe it was buried inside my gut. It was nothing overt, but I felt a latent sense of unease for which I wasn’t yet able to provide words or thoughts.

  The two of them were walking and talking. Elizabeth wasn’t wearing or carrying a coat, indicating that they had been in the Oak Bar, which was just closing for the night. They would have walked right by us without noticing, except I said, “Hello there, Elizabeth Riggs.”

  She stopped, looked, and allowed a big smile to spread across her face. “Hello there, Jack Flynn.”

  At the same time, Mac Foley exclaimed, “I don’t believe it, the legendary Hank Sweeney, in the flesh. Look at you, you look like you could step back into roll call tomorrow.”

  Hank smiled. Elizabeth said to me, “What are you doing here?”

  “I was about to ask you the same question.”

  “The Times has me nipping at your heels on the Phantom Fiend story. Jack, this is really terrifying.”

  She was about to find out just how terrifying.

  I asked, “Did you lose your driver’s license?”

  Hank and Foley began chatting amiably about the old days and the new ones. More stragglers from the Oak Bar wandered past us. Elizabeth gave me a surprised look and said, “Yeah, someone swiped my wallet when I got into Boston this morning. How’d you know?”

  “Because I have it,” I said. “I hate to tell you this, though you have no idea how happy I am to be given the chance. It was sent to me by someone claiming to be the Phantom. There was no note, no nothing. The way I took it, the Phantom was telling me that you were his next victim. I’m so thrilled to find you alive that I almost can’t speak.”

  She stood in uncharacteristic shock for a long moment, her eyes staring into mine, trying to process what I had just said. Foley glanced over and said, “Hey there, Jack.” Then, to Elizabeth, “Everything all right?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead she looked at me, her laudable first instinct always to protect a reporter’s information, rather than share with authorities. I said to Foley, “Just some more dramatics in the case. Your colleagues up on the fifth floor can fill you in.”

  Hank spoke up for the first time, saying to Elizabeth, “You’re one hell of a pretty sight for a lot of reasons.”

  Elizabeth gave him an exaggerated wide-eyed look, then a kiss on the cheek.

  I said to her, “Let me grab you for a second over here.” Not literally. But I pulled her aside as Mac Foley watched us walk a few paces away.

  “Listen, the cops are going to offer you protection. I’d just as soon have Hank watch over you. There are too many moving parts, and I can be sure he’s not one of them.”

  Truth is, I was so relieved as to be almost euphoric, but at the same time so exhausted as to be a zombie. And yet something, some distant feeling, a little emotional tic, kept tapping at my gut.

  She stared me straight in the eyes, her look a cross of confusion and vulnerability, and she said, “I’ll do what you think is best.”

  I let my guard down a bit and told her, “I’m just glad you’re okay. This isn’t what I expected to find: you alive, talking to me, the two of us figuring out a plan. This isn’t what I expected to find at all. Thank God I did.”

  Elizabeth took a step toward me, maybe cutting in half the distance between us. If I took a step forward as well, there wouldn’t be any distance between us, and maybe that’s what I was supposed to do. But I didn’t. Didn’t matter. She said, “Why don’t you stay here tonight. You love hotels.”

  I did, and the invitation was an extraordinary one, the type of offer that could boost your spirits for hours or weeks or maybe longer.

  I had been up the entire night before, after Edgar Sullivan was killed. I had flown to Vegas early that morning, hunted through the boxes in the desert h
eat, jetted back here, met my friend Rover in the darkest sliver of Boston, learned that my ex-girlfriend might be dead, burst into her hotel room, found her alive in the lobby, and now I’d just received an invitation to stay with her.

  I was about to answer in the affirmative when the vision of Vinny Mongillo popped into my mind. This isn’t a good thing to have happen at any time of any day, but it’s especially bad when it happens at two-thirty in the morning and essentially means you’ve got to take a rain check on any extracurriculars with a woman you once loved and perhaps still love.

  I said, “I’d love to, but believe it or not, this day’s not over.”

  She replied, “You’re about to kick the shit out of us on this story, aren’t you?”

  She was designated as a Phantom victim. And she’s worried about getting beat in the next day’s paper. No wonder why I feel the way I do about her.

  “I hope so,” I said.

  With that, I kissed her on the cheek. I told Hank his new assignment was to make sure she stayed alive. Then I gave Mac Foley a long look before I walked out the hotel door.

  On the street, I opened up Hank’s back door and beckoned the black Labrador to come with me. I hailed a cab, and the two of us settled into the backseat, sitting side by side.

  That little tic was turning into a hard rap, and I was beginning to get a better handle on why.

  34

  The aging desk sergeant at Boston Police headquarters at Schroeder Plaza barely looked up when he asked, “What do you need?”

  What did I need? Where to begin. How about starting with a fresh lead on the Phantom Fiend, a way to tie the murders to the person I believed was in all probability committing them: Paul Vasco.

  Then how about giving my dear colleague Edgar Sullivan the final years he deserved in peace?

  How about giving me the real Peter Martin back, the one who would never tolerate the publisher checking in with city officials before deciding what to print — or, more relevant in this case, what not to print? How about letting me be just an everyday excellent reporter, and not some mouthpiece for a crazed serial murderer who seems to have emerged some forty years later?