Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective

by Jay Atkinson

  The McCain children have been treated to a guided tour of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and young Joseph tells me that he met plenty of other kids there. “One boy told me that his dad died when he was riding a police horse and tried to light a match and the horse went crazy and ran away and he hit his head on a barn,” says Joseph, who wears his hair in a waxed crew cut and has those McCain blue eyes above a smattering of freckles. “Another kid's dad was moving equipment at the police station and there was gas and he blew up. Another man was writing a ticket for his friend and because he was a nice guy he let his friend sit next to him in the police car but the guy had been drinking and he grabbed the policeman's gun and shot him with it.”

  Joseph forms a pistol with his right hand, putting his index finger up to his head. “Right here,” he says. “In the temple.”

  Our bus is being escorted by a police motorcade, and at every crossroad patrol cars block traffic and we go speeding along the Beltway, unimpeded. There are thirty motorcycles paired in a long line behind us, and as Joseph and I crane our necks to watch them downshift into a turn, the eleven-year-old tells me of a dream he once had. “I was sleeping on the futon upstairs, and in the dream I was sleeping on the futon just like I really was and my papa walked into the room and I stood up and hugged him and then— poof— my eyes opened and the room was empty and I said ‘Ohh.'”

  The motorcade drives past the Washington Monument and alongside the Mall and pulls up at the Capitol with ten police cruisers and all those motorcycles streaming in behind. Out the window we can see police officers and their families from jurisdictions around the country heading for the sea of chairs arranged on the Capitol lawn. There are tall cops, stubby, red-eared cops, muscle-bound cops, gray-haired cops, cops in ascots and leather jackets, brown uniforms and blue, tiger suits, jumpsuits, female troopers in knee-high glossy boots, and sheriffs from Alabama who haven't taken a fitness test since Jimmy Carter was president.

  Getting off the bus, Maureen tells young Joseph to zip up his fly. “I said that to my father-in-law once and he said, ‘Dead men don't fall out open windows,'” Maureen tells me, with a laugh.

  A six-foot hurricane fence encircles the lawn, notched with three security checkpoints and guarded by the Capitol Police and the U.S. Border Patrol. High up on the Capitol roof I can make out half a dozen snipers, their binoculars glinting in the sunlight. President Bush is expected and security is tight, although I can't help noticing that there are hundreds of cops and almost all of them have guns. It occurs to me that the government must have enormous faith in the police chiefs of this country. The chiefs supervise these cops and grant them their powers, including the right to carry a weapon in the vicinity of the president.

  A heavy downpour was expected, but so far the wind has staved off the clouds and there's blue sky overhead, scented with flowering trees. It's the sort of May afternoon that, when the McCains were young, Helen, with her hair newly marcelled, and Joe, after putting on a neat-looking sport coat, would've taken the roof down on the Cadillac and gone for a drive up through Lynn and Salem.

  In the shadow of the Rotunda, three sections of folding chairs are arranged in a crescent facing the gigantic temporary stage. Beside me Jack Crowley is wearing a rose-colored Palm Beach sport jacket and fiddling with the zoom lens on his camera. The former Boston detective, a broad, white-haired man with a cropped white beard, retired three years ago after thirty-eight years on the job. Big Joe called Crowley the best police photographer in the business and spent many evenings with him and Joe Doyle on the ground floor of their building at 73 Tremont Street in Boston, at the Fatted Calf.

  The site of the old Waldorf restaurant, the Fatted Calf had a steer's head etched into the frosted glass of the windows facing Tremont, and walls paneled in the original gleaming mahogany of its former tenants. One night Jack Crowley and Joe McCain were having a few drinks after work, making little note of a diner at a table beside them as the man polished off several beers, a huge sirloin steak with all the trimmings, a fine dessert, and two or three glasses of liqueur. When his bill arrived, the man could be seen writing a lengthy message on the back of the slip.

  The manager of the Fatted Calf was a diminutive fellow named Sy, with a few long strands of hair combed over his balding pate. When the waiter retrieved the solo diner's check and carried it over to Sy, the manager turned and stalked across the barroom. Hailing McCain and Crowley, who were regulars, he shoved the check under the detectives' noses, and they read the man's note:

  Due to circumstances beyond my control, at this time I am unable to pay for the wonderful dinner that you have provided for me. I render my deepest apologies, and can only hope that you will forgive my transgression.

  “What the hell is that?” Sy asked.

  “I think it's called a ‘business loss,'” said Crowley, sending McCain into paroxysms of laughter.

  The little bar manager began sputtering. “Aren't you going to arrest him?” asked Sy.

  “We're not gonna lug a guy just because he can't pay for dinner,” said McCain.

  * * *

  SUDDENLY A VOICE BREAKS OVER the loudspeaker, asking all uniformed police officers to form an honor cordon from the middle security checkpoint to the phalanx of chairs right in front of the stage, so the immediate families of the slain officers can be seated. Helen McCain is part of this group, escorted by Joe Jr. in his Somerville Police uniform.

  The cordon of saluting officers divides the great lawn of the Capitol, with the survivors walking in silence between them, wives and mothers and husbands and sons, old men in wheelchairs pushed by New Jersey state troopers and babies in prams manned by deputy sheriffs from Ohio. After a while I see Helen and Joey walk past, but the survivors keep coming and coming, with the clean white spike of the Washington Monument looming in the distance. It's the magnitude of the silence and the sheer number of survivors that finally gets to me, as my sinuses fill up and a line from T. S. Eliot's “The Waste Land” pops into my head: “I had not thought death had undone so many.”

  When everyone is seated, the national chaplain of the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police says the invocation, and a female police officer from Tucson, Arizona, sings the National Anthem. Then a recording of “Hail to the Chief” bursts over the sound system and every cop within a half mile snaps to attention. Wearing a dark blue suit, taller than he appears on television, President George W. Bush descends the stairs of the Capitol, past the color guards from various jurisdictions and a long line of Capitol Police frozen in salute.

  We all stand up amidst the applause and whistles and cheers, beating our hands together until they're raw. Bush settles at the podium, grins for a moment, and gives that presidential wave: a swift half arc from the center of his chest downward to five o'clock as the music dies away.

  President Bush is not a great public speaker, and his staff could use an upgrade in the speechwriting department. He tends to run words together and uses a peculiar halting cadence that has the unfortunate effect of making him appear to be trying to sound smarter than he is. But when he utters the words “The death of a peace officer is a reminder that peace can be fragile,” it strikes me that George W. Bush is a man who lacks any doubt.

  On the dais behind the president are Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, the secretaries of Labor and the Interior, and several congressmen and congresswomen. “You can tell it's an election year,” says Mark Donahue, sitting to my left.

  Jonathan Hoellrich is on my right, wearing a pin-striped suit, sunglasses, and his police badge with a black mourning band around it. He's twenty-eight years old, an average-sized guy in a profession dominated by giant men. I have heard that Hoellrich survives— even flourishes— on the strength of his king-sized wit.

  “I never voted for him, but I gotta admit, George W. has balls,” I tell Hoellrich. “He's done all the things that Clinton should have done and didn't.”

  “Except for the one thing that Clinto
n shouldn't have done and did,” Hoellrich says. “But this is fantastic. We're close enough to be in a scrum with Ashcroft.”

  Also onstage are private-sector boosters of the event, heavy-hitting law enforcement supporters, including the president of Miller Brewing Company, who gets a rousing ovation from the cops, record company mogul Tommy Mottola in what looks like a pair of Sam Giancana's sunglasses, and the pop singer Marc Anthony. In a bizarre piece of theater, the Latin heartthrob rises to sing a number after George Bush sits down. Marc Anthony is a little guy in black slacks and T-shirt, and when the prerecorded introduction to his hit “You Sang to Me” begins, he stands with the microphone, listening through his earpiece and tapping his foot. Behind him, Ashcroft and Bush and the rest of the suits are unsmiling and motionless, looking like members of the Soviet Politburo.

  “This is kinda weird,” says Hoellrich.

  “It's like when JFK would have Sinatra show up,” I tell him. “Bring the mob guys in, entertain, and get 'em out.”

  After Marc Anthony sits down amidst polite applause from George Bush's cabinet, there's a break in the action while each of the surviving parents and spouses is allowed to pose for a photograph with the president. Dozens of press corps members close in, their cameras whirring like locusts, and we're left to kill an hour in the sun.

  “If I had a sausage cart I'd make a fortune,” says Hoellrich.

  After his photo op, Bush departs, and the P.A. announcer states that the Roll Call of Heroes will begin. Three hundred and seventy-seven officers from thirty-four states, several federal agencies, and Puerto Rico were killed on the job last year. Texas has suffered the loss of eighteen cops, while California, South Carolina, and New York have each lost ten. There were two in Massachusetts: Joe McCain and Lawrence Michael Jupin, a patrolman from the Westminster Police Department who was shot by a fleeing suspect in May 1999, lingered in a coma, and died on November 29, 2002.

  As each name is called, the family approaches the podium where the surviving parent or spouse affixes a rose to a star-shaped wreath and is handed a medal commemorating the fallen officer. It's almost like a graduation ceremony, only more solemn; no caps thrown in the air, no cheers or applause, only the breeze ruffling the trees on the Mall and the distant growl of commercial airplanes.

  Back in the last row, Donahue and Hoellrich and the Crowleys and Maureen and the kids and I stand up when Massachusetts is announced. With Joe Jr. on one arm and a large, blue-jacketed trooper from the Mass. State Police on the other, Helen McCain approaches the podium when her late husband's name is called. She's wearing a light green pantsuit and has had her hair done for the occasion. When the police officer hands her Joe's medal and Joe Jr. and the state trooper return his salute, Helen drops her gaze for a moment and is led away, wobbling on her bad knees.

  Bagpipers from several police emerald societies are playing on the lawn adjacent to the stage, the keening of their music punctuated by the boom and rattle of the drummers. Derived from Near Eastern hornpipes and traced to fourteenth-century Scotland, the bagpipes have long been used to celebrate the bardic tradition of brosnachadh— the praise of warriors and chieftains and lament for their passing.

  In a few minutes Joe Jr. and Helen rendezvous with our group by one of the checkpoints, and Joe Doyle and his daughter Jessica walk out from beneath a giant shade tree and join us. The curly-haired attorney settled a big case at the eleventh hour back in Boston and flew down just in time to make the ceremony. He kisses the women and shakes hands all around, pausing to admire Joe's medal. It's inscribed “Fraternal Order of Police Supreme Sacrifice Medal of Honor,” arranged with a blue-and-gold ribbon in a crushed velvet box. No doubt it will take its place on a shelf filled with Joe's decorations back in Helen's TV den in Somerville.

  Joe Doyle has never seen the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, which is just a few blocks away, and we decide to walk over while Helen and the children and the Crowleys hail a cab to take them back to the hotel. Doyle has known Jack Crowley for over thirty years and calls out to him from the sidewalk when the taxi arrives.

  “Be careful, Jack,” says Doyle, resurrecting an old office joke. “Watch out for that guy.”

  “Who?” Crowley asks, laughing. “Arnold Sphincter?”

  “Yeah,” says Doyle. “Don't get rear-ended by Arnold Sphincter.”

  “Don't worry. I won't,” Crowley says, laughing harder now. He waits until the ladies are seated and then makes an up-yours gesture toward Doyle, who roars as Crowley shuts himself inside and the taxi zooms off.

  The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, dedicated by the first President Bush in 1991, is located on the 400 block of E Street NW. It's a grassy site dominated by two “pathways of remembrance” made from blue-gray marble engraved with the names of 14,000 officers killed on the job dating back to 1794. Contained inside the park is a second ring of marble with a smaller circumference, forming a kind of bench where visitors can sit and contemplate the many names. When we arrive, hundreds of people are moving in both directions inside the circle, past an inscription from Tacitus: IN VALOR THERE IS HOPE.

  There are a large number of police officers, as well as senior citizens, young women, men in business suits, and kids of every size, race, and description. On this day every year the Capitol Police allow visitors to leave mementos on the site. Photographs and prayer cards and bunches of flowers are crowded against the berm. While we walk along searching for “Joseph E. McCain,” a black girl about ten years old, thin and very tall for her age, stands in the open center of the memorial in a light blue dress, festooned with white ribbons. I can tell by the look on her face that the name of her older brother or her father has gone up on the wall today, and I want to go over and hug the kid.

  Earlier today, Helen McCain and the Crowleys visited the memorial, and we find Joe's prayer card and a Met patch taped up beside his name. Everyone crowds around for a moment, and Joe Doyle squats on his heels, running his fingertips over the one-inch letters carved into the rock. “There he is,” says Doyle, with the trace of a smile.

  Two hulking state troopers from New Jersey stoop over me when I attempt to make a rubbing of Joe's name with a pen and a page from my notebook. They hand me a slip of paper imprinted with “National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial” in blue letters, along with the stub of a pencil. “Sir, try this,” says one of the policemen, tipping his cap. “It works much better.”

  When I turn around, Joe Jr. and Donahue and Hoellrich are a little ways off, talking to some other cops. Joe Doyle is seated on the opposite bench, his suit jacket removed and thrown over his arm, ankles crossed. The afternoon has grown hot, and he pats his brow with his sleeve and gazes into the distance, a wistful look on his face. No doubt the gentleman from Milton is engaged in some reverie of Joe McCain, a mental motion picture of all the bad guys they investigated, indicted, and put away; all the Scotch they drank, all the practical jokes and the laughs, and all the indelible characters they knew in the dusty corridors of long ago. At that moment, looking at Doyle, I understand that no one who really knew Joseph Elmer McCain ever regretted a minute of it. That despite the bad times and the grief— and a life as big as Joe's brought as much sorrow as triumph— all of Joe's many friends considered themselves lucky.

  Now that the serious part of the day is over, it's time to get down to the real tribute. A few blocks away, the Fraternal Order of Police has cordoned off the street in front of their building and is about to crank up the party. En route we pass through a bazaar of cop paraphernalia, and Mark Donahue and I pick up some trinkets for our kids. Hanging from one of the racks is a T-shirt that depicts a policeman holding a can that says “Whoop Ass” with the caption “Don't Make Me Open This.”

  Strolling past the booths, Donahue reminds me that we're in D.C. to party for Joe McCain, not to bury him. “That bullet saved his life,” Donahue says. “He was fifty-eight years old and way up over three hundred pounds. His heart never would've lasted.”

&n
bsp; As a result of his wounds, big Joe changed his diet, quit drinking, and took up golf with a vengeance. He even hired a personal trainer to help him lose weight. “We had him for thirteen more years,” says Donahue, as we turn into the block party. “So let's get some beers.”

  Beneath a giant white tent anchored by plastic barrels filled with concrete, four hundred cops are crowded around a makeshift bar constructed of sawhorses and planks. Although most are in plainclothes, nearly every one of them is wearing his badge and a gun, their voices rising in a great din.

  “Smell it?” asks Donahue.

  “What?” I ask.

  “All the testosterone.”

  Many of the cops are white guys over six feet tall, and there are a lot of ex-military, especially jarheads. But there are a significant number of blacks, every shade of brown, Amerasian sheriffs from the desert, and Latinas in tight jeans packing .38s. Music is blaring from a stage at one end of the block, and the stench of motorcycle exhaust fills the air as more and more partygoers arrive by the moment.

  Security is lax, almost nonexistent. Each of the dozen or so bartenders— all of them cops— is wearing a T-shirt that says “Staff” and carrying a sidearm. But there's no perimeter, and no metal detectors— not that they would do much good. With all that is going on these days, I have the strange feeling that this is both the safest and the most dangerous place in the entire country.

  “It's like the wild, wild west,” I say to Hoellrich.

  He stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the crowd. “I'd rather finger-bang my own ass than hang around a convention with a bunch of cops,” he says.

  Hoellrich sure is a funny bastard, and Donahue pays his buddy from the Salem P.D. the ultimate compliment when he laughs into his beer and says, “Joe would've liked you.”