The Nominee

by Brian McGrory

  “Ah, the ex,” he said, shaking her hand. This was getting entirely too bizarre, so I went beneath and pulled out two bottles of Sam Adams Boston Lager. When I came back up and handed her one, Nathan bade us farewell, winked at me on his way out, and left.

  We sat across from each other on two teak chairs on the forty-foot boat. She said, crossing her arms close to her body, “Do you have a sweater? It’s getting cold out here.”

  There’s that thing with women and men’s clothes. So I went back down and retrieved my favorite cotton pullover, navy blue and ribbed. As she put it on, I took a long pull on my beer. I’d be lying if I said she didn’t look good in my clothes, and she probably still had half my wardrobe to prove it.

  I’d also be lying if I didn’t say that I had thought about this moment, this face-to-face encounter, every day for the past few months, hashing and rehashing all the things I wanted her to hear, from my profound disappointment to my so many nights of lonely, relentless hurt to my eventual realization that I just hadn’t been ready back then for something as serious as what we had, and that my mind just shut down, maybe defensively, maybe offensively, but I just stopped functioning as part of what we once were.

  Instead, I said, “A long day,” took another swig of beer, and stared straight up at the star-studded sky. This reticence, this silence, is what it meant to be a man, or at least what it meant to be Jack Flynn. Still, the air felt warmer with her in my presence, like she was some sort of blanket protecting me from the increasingly cold world.

  “What do you mean you were shot at?” She sounded concerned.

  I told her.

  Always the reporter, “What were you doing down in Florida? Don’t you have enough going on up here?”

  I shook my head. “Long story. Boring story. And a fruitless story.” I lied. I think. I hope.

  “You called the police, right?” She knows me that well. When I stared out at the black harbor in silence, she looked at me with alarm and said, “C’mon, Jack, someone tried to kill you. Tell me you called the police.”

  I explained to her that if I took the time to report the incident to the Florida Police, I would have been stuck down in Florida while I had too much work to do back in Boston. It wasn’t a viable option at the time.

  “So have you reported it to anyone up here.”

  Yet again, my mouth got away from me. “Well, the guy running the case up here is Travers, and I have no particular desire to go to him with any of my problems and no particular sense that he has the ability to solve them.”

  That line, and that line of thought, deflated any resuming familiarity between us. She became quiet, looking down at her beer, thinking God knows what. I was thinking of Travers and her, which was like being hit in the face with a cold cloth—wrapped around a brick.

  I looked at her carefully and she returned the gaze. Travers. Fucking Travers.

  Nothing means forever anymore. Never doesn’t mean never.

  She was here, but she wasn’t mine. She was sitting inches from me, this woman whose body and mind I knew better than any other, but I couldn’t have her, mostly because I wouldn’t allow myself to have her for reasons that were too complex to fully grasp in my current state. This only fueled my latent anger.

  She said to me, obviously trying to change the subject, “You saw the gossip item about Robert this morning, I assume.”

  “A cheap shot,” I quickly replied.

  She asked, “You sure?”

  I was surprised by the question. She used to agree with me that Fitzgerald was the victim of jealousy. Before I could answer, she said, “I’m the one who researched that story. I was trying to do a follow-up with their real names. Jack, I don’t think those people exist.”

  By now, my skull was pounding, as if somebody—maybe that guy in the Florida swamp—was taking the business end of a crowbar and gradually whacking it against the back of my brain. Images of Travers kept flashing in my mind.

  “So you fed that item to the gossip column?”

  “It’s legit.”

  I shook my head and laughed a shallow, humorless laugh. My mind was now ahead of my mouth, and I said with great certainty and unmistakable finality, “Thanks for stopping by. Time for you to go.”

  She’s a beauty, this woman, as ambitious as she is gorgeous, which made me wonder anew what the hell was she doing here?

  I got up. She did, too. She pursed her lips, and her features seemed to sag as she massaged my face with her eyes. She stared at me for a long moment, silently, such that I could see the little black etchings beneath her stunning eyes, and then she knelt down and gave Baker a big kiss on the bridge of his nose. I seem to remember this happening before.

  “Good luck, Jack,” she said, straightening up. As she stepped onto the dock and walked away, my eyes were riveted on her. Her walk was my walk. Her face was my face. Her thoughts were my thoughts. There was a time not so long ago when I didn’t know where I ended and where she began—which was the way I always thought it would be.

  I watched her until she was engulfed by darkness, until the emptiness of this vast space was overwhelming. And then I thought of Katherine, and wondered not for the first time what she would think of Elizabeth. She’d like her, I thought. She’d like her a lot.

  And then I realized that she had left with my favorite sweater. It occurred to me that I’d more than likely have the chance to get it back.

  Sixteen

  Wednesday, April 25

  THE EAVES WERE FILLEDwith the haunting strains of “Amazing Grace” as I and five other pallbearers carried Paul’s casket slowly down the long center aisle of Trinity Church, through the massive double doors, and into the probing sunlight where, with a quiet heave, we loaded him into the gleaming black hearse that waited on the brick plaza outside.

  I know I was supposed to spend the entirety of the hastily arranged service reflecting on all things Paul, what he had done with his life, his family, his city, and most of all, his newspaper. I know I was supposed to be thinking about what a rabbi he had been, a father figure after I had no father, a great newsman and journalistic servant. I was supposed to recall how when other big-city papers around the country slashed staff and shrunk their news holes, Paul would hear nothing of it, and in fact, took advantage of the dour economy to hire more reporters and position theRecord to be even stronger when better times arrived.

  I knew all this. I knew I loved Paul, I knew I admired him. But forgive me for spending most of the hour—my eulogy aside—wondering if I’d soon join two members of the Cutter-Ellis clan lying on my back in an ornate wooden box—pardon my bluntness—dead to the world. And if I was, would it be Brent Cutter, the new publisher, who would insist on standing before a crowded church and deliver a eulogy about a reporter he never understood.

  The fact of the matter is, arriving home the prior night to a missing dog served as a bracing slap, a real life’s lesson in the reality of my vulnerability. I became increasingly obsessed with the Florida gunman, where did he go, and most momentous of all, where was he now? Lurking on some nearby roof with a laser-scope rifle waiting to cut me down like an animal? I don’t think I slept more than five minutes the night before—though admittedly, thoughts of Elizabeth Riggs might have had a thing or two to do with that.

  While organ music floated through the soothing darkness of the church, I made a few important decisions about my life, which I hoped would carry on for a while yet—my life, though the decisions as well. First, I’d report the murder attempt, and I’d do it quietly to the Boston Police commissioner, John Leavitt, asking for his discretion and his help with Florida authorities. I didn’t want to become the focus of any story. Second, I would reluctantly accept any police protection that he offered, and if he didn’t, I would ask Justine Steele to authorize newspaper funds to hire my own guards. Third, and perhaps most importantly, I would use my standing within the newspaper and the Cutter-Ellis families to suggest, urge, recommend, whatever, that Robert Fitzgerald, on
e of the most respected men in New England, a voice of reason clearer than any other, and my mentor, be the interim publisher ofThe Boston Record. Not bad, ladies and gentlemen, for a guy who still bore a passing resemblance to Swamp Man.

  On the issue of Fitzgerald, think about it. He was a fully formed adult with a long, distinguished track record in journalism that included a Pulitzer Prize. He was well known in the industry at large, better known in our community and as faithful as me to the Cutter-Ellis clan.

  And to name him meant I didn’t have to serve in the post myself, an expectation that became immediately apparent when Vinny Mongillo approached me on the sundrenched bricks and said, “All anyone in the newsroom is wondering, all anyone in town is wondering, is whether Fair Hair has the cajones to try to become the next publisher and save the paper.”

  His face was close enough to mine that I could smell the pesto sauce on his breath. He was wearing a black undertaker’s suit and a car-crash of a purple-and-brown–patterned necktie. Sweat dripped down his forehead and over his eyes.

  He added, “I’m telling them all that I know him better than anyone else, and that he does.”

  “Robert Fitzgerald would make a great publisher,” I said.

  The sun shone from above, businessmen and tourists passed through the plaza, and students lolled on the immaculate lawn that separates Trinity Church from the Boston Public Library, reading classic books likeThe Sun Also Rises.

  “Jack, don’t even think about it.” Mongillo said.

  “I’m going to recommend him.”

  He gave me a look like I had cuffed his mother upside the head.

  “You’ve got to be shoving a fuzzy donkey dick right up my fucking pie hole.”

  I unconsciously shot a look toward the hearse to make sure no one heard his rather descriptive proclamation, including Paul.

  Mongillo continued, growing even more animated with his big, furry hands, “He’s a liar, Jack, a fucking liar. Didn’t you read theTraveler yesterday? He pipes stuff. I know it. I can prove it. I will show it to you. Do not use your influence to make him the publisher of the newspaper that we both love.”

  My face flashed red and I said, “We’ll talk this afternoon.” And I turned and walked back toward the limousine. Mongillo pursued me, putting his hand on my shoulder. I turned and said, “Not here, not now. I need your help, not your petty personal bullshit.”

  “It ain’t petty or personal, and it ain’t bullshit. Give me ten minutes this afternoon.”

  I said, more calmly, “I will, I will. And we also have to talk about the Randolph story. We need it in print before we lose it. Life is getting in the way.”

  When I broke free and walked toward the crowd of mingling mourners, Cal Zinkle approached me. Cal is one of the city’s most prominent lawyers, a longtime friend of the Cutter-Ellis family who was also one of the most vocal members of theRecord ’s board of directors, sometimes with some impact, sometimes not. He grabbed my arm softly and said, “I’m very sorry about Paul,” then quietly added, “We have to talk.” Apparently, he meant sooner rather than later, sooner as in now, because he guided me back to the perimeter of the masses, not giving me a whole lot of choice to go anywhere but with him. I looked around with a sense of unease. It struck me here and now that I was more than exposed to potential gunfire.

  Safely out of earshot of anyone else, though not gunshot, he wrapped his arm around my shoulders in fatherly fashion and said, “Jack, I’ll keep this short and sweet.”

  In another time, in another circumstance, I might have had to quell a laugh at that introduction, mostly because Zinkle is, in fact, short, though I don’t know about sweet. Short, as in, very short. He’s as polished as a debutante’s fingernails, charming, personable. He was dressed in a perfectly pressed navy suit with a matching bright yellow necktie and pocket square—a nod, no doubt, to the season. He had jet black, Reaganesque hair and spoke in fluid sentences as if he was always performing before a jury. If you looked at him without scale, you’d think he stood six foot five, he carries himself that well. But inevitably someone else would come walking into the frame, and you quickly realize that Zinkle stands no more than five foot five, and I’m probably being generous at that.

  “Jack, theRecord needs you,” he said. “The community needs you. You have to offer yourself up as the next publisher. Yeah, yeah, I know it might cause some strife, but you know as well as I do that the alternatives are not particularly good.”

  This intrigued me—not the request, but his early assessment of a field of potential publishers. I looked back at the crowd slowly making their way to their cars for the procession to the cemetery. I looked around at the periphery of Copley Square. I edged closer to him and asked, “What are the alternatives?”

  He replied, hushed, “Brent Cutter called me and several other board members last night. He wants the job, and he wants us to meet in emergency session today or tomorrow to approve him. He says he’s the heir apparent, the only family member with the executive experience to take over the newspaper at such a troubled time. And in many ways, he’s right.”

  I was afraid of this, and being afraid of this implies that somewhere inside my cranium, I was expecting it. I mean, of course Brent Cutter would try to be the next publisher, for every logical reason. Still, to hear the fear put to words, to hear that he had launched an active campaign to take control of our newspaper, my newspaper, enraged and emboldened me. I didn’t want a newly joined feud to be waged in the public eye, nor did I want the paper to be turned over to Brent Cutter for the sole reason that a Cutter or Ellis always served as publisher.

  “Is there a board meeting scheduled?” I asked.

  “Not a full board meeting, but tomorrow, fiveP.M. , in the newspaper’s executive conference room, there’s a meeting of the executive committee. Brent was pushing for today, but in deference to Paul, a few of us insisted that we should hold off another day.”

  I hesitated, and said, “I have another plan.” Zinkle looked at me clear-eyed, expectantly. I said, “What about putting Robert Fitzgerald’s name before the board, perhaps even on an interim basis until we get under solid footing again.”

  He nodded as he considered this. I looked behind him again and saw that most of the crowd was now in their cars and the procession was actually waiting for us. If I was destined to be shot at Paul Ellis’s funeral, now would be the time.

  “Interesting idea,” he said. Like so many other power brokers in this town, Zinkle claimed a slot on Fitzgerald’s long list of prominent friends. “Have you talked to Fitz yet?”

  “Not as yet.”

  “Jack, you know I love him, and I don’t believe any of that bullshit about him fabricating, but he’s a throwback. He’s old. You were like a son to Paul Ellis. You’ve made an enormous name for yourself at this paper, and in turn, given the paper a huge credibility boost, national prominence. Maybe it’s your responsibility, your destiny, to take charge.”

  Everybody’s engines were running by now, and people were looking our way and murmuring about the delay. I was standing so close to him they might have been wondering some other things as well, but their issues, not mine.

  I said, “Maybe, but maybe I’m not the best one for the job right now. Let me talk to Fitzgerald first.”

  “We need a plan in place by noon tomorrow, because the other option isn’t a very appealing one.”

  With that, I walked hurriedly toward my car, noticeably flinching when a truck backfired on nearby Boylston Street. On my way, Brent Cutter stepped out of the back of his limousine, extended his hand, and said, “Wonderful eulogy, Jack. Thank you. We’re all going to get through this together.”

  Great. He’s trying to save his ass while I’m trying to save my life, the newspaper, and while I’m at it, the world. I wondered at that point, though not aloud, whether it would be inappropriate to bloody the company president’s nose at a family funeral. Probably, so I didn’t.

  I pulled open the heavy wood door o
f St. Sebastian’s Church in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston and paused for a moment while I let my eyes adjust to the dim environs. I’m not sure of the difference, but to me, this was more cathedral than church—with curved, soaring ceilings, massive pillars, and massive stained glass windows that cast an eerie light across the hundred or more rows of empty wooden pews. I was here on a mission of mercy, though it was more secular than sacred.

  In the distance, on the altar, I saw a lone figure, and as I walked slowly down the center aisle, I realized he was intently polishing a collection of silver chalices that were spread out across a small table. When I got within a dozen rows of him, he looked up, smiled hard, and said, “Well Jack Flynn. May lightning strike me now.” With that, he put a chalice down, climbed down off the altar, and shook my hand.

  “Hello, Roger,” I said. I pointed at the cleaning rag that he still held in his left hand and said, “You really are a man of the cloth.”

  He laughed, God bless him, even though it wasn’t all that funny.

  His name, by the way, was Roger Sullivan. He was my age, a high school classmate of mine, a talented and ferocious hockey player who could outskate and outfight just about anyone he played against, which explains why he made the all-city team twice. I’m not intimate with the church celibacy rules, but I do know that Sullivan, still ruggedly handsome these days, used to get more tail than a zookeeper when I knew him.

  Of course, all that changed sometime in his early twenties, when he heard the calling, quit his job as a stock researcher at a downtown mutual fund company, and joined a seminary. Now he had his own parish hard by the old neighborhood where we had grown up so many years ago.

  “I’m waiting for the walls to begin shaking and the roof to cave in,” he said to me. “I’m wondering what in God’s good name brings you here, because knowing you, it’s not God’s good name.”

  We stood just below the altar in the otherwise barren church, he in his priest’s collar, me in my suit fresh from Paul’s burial. I said to him, my tone serious now, “I need some guidance.”