For the first time, Wit sounded somewhat suspicious. He asked, “What’s your interest in some old retiree living out his years in the sun?”
“Former member of the Boston Police Department — a homicide detective, and a damned good one,” I said. “I’m just making sure he’s well tended to in death.”
Wit seemed to appreciate that, as I suspected he would. He said, “Well, it looks like there was a pair of eyeglasses, broken, found near the body of the deceased at the bottom of the stairs.” He fell quiet again, probably reading from the screen. I heard him press a button a couple of times, like he was scrolling down. Then he said, matter-of-factly, “And there was a single key on a small key ring retrieved from the bottom step. The assumption is that he was carrying it downstairs.”
A key. His eyeglasses. An accident really may have been an accident. Bob Walters might have forced himself out of bed after I left, struggling down the stairs to get something that was locked away before I returned. And he fell. But what was it?
I asked, “Sergeant, off the record, can you share next of kin?”
“Well,” Wit responded, “it’ll be in tomorrow’s obituary anyway. He leaves a wife, Patricia. And I’ve got here a Deirdre Walters Hayes, a daughter who lives in the area.”
“Number?”
And he gave it to me — Deirdre’s telephone number. Boston PD should be so kind. I hung up with sincere thanks.
When I looked up, Vinny Mongillo was standing over me, a king-size box of Junior Mints in one of his oversize hands, a small reporter’s notebook in the other. The box of candy, I noted for no particular reason, was larger than the pad.
“Let’s go,” he said. “And bring your A-game. This is no time for us to choke.”
Choke. Strangler. Get it? Neither did I.
24
It was to the point where minutes, even seconds, felt like they mattered, not only to the women who would become victims to the Phantom Fiend but to the people whose help I was seeking. Everyone kept dying, naturally and unnaturally.
Which would explain why I was speeding through the city of Boston, taking a left on red, among other automotive transgressions. And it would furthermore explain why a Boston Police cruiser came racing up behind me, its overhead lights whipping blue and white, its headlights pulsating on and off. I had no idea that Boston cops bothered pulling anyone over for speeding anymore.
“Who the hell knew that Boston cops pulled anyone over for speeding?”
That was Vinny, taking a quick break from gabbing away in the passenger seat on his cell phone. Great minds, it seems, really do think alike — or at least one great one and a slightly above-average one. No need, I hope, for me to distinguish whose is whose.
An old Irish gray-haired cop walked up to the driver’s window of my car after I pulled to the side of Cambridge Street near Government Center in downtown Boston.
“Quite the hurry, aren’t you?” he asked.
This was a good thing. It was a good thing because when a cop engages you in any way during a traffic stop, it gives you the opportunity to squirm your way out of the citation. It’s the cops, almost always younger cops, who act robotic and make no conversation as they issue you a ticket, who are a lost cause.
“Just trying to save the city, until you got in my way,” I said.
Actually, I didn’t. What I said was, “Too much of one, sir. I shouldn’t have been going as fast as I was.”
He nodded. I handed him my license and registration without him having to ask — another gesture that I think they like. Vinny continued to chirp on the phone, talking at that point about the prior night’s Celtics game.
“Any special reason?”
With that, I was reasonably certain I was off the hook.
“There is, sir, but it doesn’t change the fact that I was speeding, so I won’t bore you with it.”
I mean, shit, someone should write this stuff down and put it in a manual for how to avoid traffic fines, or, for that matter, maybe any other prosecution.
“No, go ahead. I want to hear.”
Vinny was yelling that Paul Pierce doesn’t play any defense. I noticed half of humanity slowing down on their way by to get a glimpse of the poor bastard who had been yanked to the side of the road. The officer’s radio cackled like a dying chicken, though I’m not sure what a chicken actually sounds like when it’s about to take leave, so that may be inaccurate.
I sighed, not at the cop but at life, and said, “Sir, I’m a reporter for the Record. I’m writing about the serial murderer. I’m on my way to an important interview and didn’t want to be late. That’s the reason why I was speeding, but I by no means offer it as an excuse.”
I was lighting it up here, and Vinny wasn’t giving me a second thought, let alone a first one. At least the cop was. He looked intently at my driver’s license, hunched down toward the window, and said, “You’re the guy who’s been getting the letters from the killer?” He said this softly, casually, his voice a little hoarse. When you’re a cop, even a street cop, maybe especially a street cop, you’ve seen a lot of the world, some of the good, but more of the bad. You know how easily people slip into the abyss, breaking through the flimsy little barriers that separate normalcy from desperation. And you begin, in some odd way, to understand, and understanding more often than not leads to empathy.
I nodded and said simply, “I am.” I didn’t know the reaction I was about to get. Maybe it wouldn’t be a reaction at all but a ticket, which I suppose was a reaction as well.
He handed me my license and registration and said, “Keep at it, young man. Tell the truth. Because in this matter, too many people aren’t.” And just like that, he walked back to his cruiser, leaving me to go on my way.
Even Vinny looked at me with the phone still pasted to his fat ear and said, “Wow.”
The neighborhood of Charlestown is, among other things, home of the Bunker Hill Monument, the occasionally contentious host of the nouveau Olives restaurant, and creator of the infamous code of silence that let so many murders go unsolved in the 1980s. But it is arguably best known for producing more bank robbers per capita than any other neighborhood in the country. It’s as if “Safe-cracking” and “Demand Notes” are curriculum requirements at Charlestown High.
I bring this up only to point out that the halfway house that Vinny and I had just pulled up to was something of a rite of passage for what seemed like half of Charlestown’s native male population. These men are known as townies, though they don’t live in “the Town.” No, “the Town” is South Boston, also known as Southie. But natives there are called, well, residents, I guess. Yet another little point of confusion about my little hamlet of Boston.
But more to the point, I pulled the car to the curb across the street from the state-operated halfway house where Paul Vasco was supposed to be in temporary residence. It was a big, gray, nondescript wood-shingled house, four stories high, butting right up against the sidewalk, sitting on the side of Charlestown that had not yet been transformed by wealthy young professionals who, depending on your point of view, either cleaned up and added value to city neighborhoods, or sucked the spirit and history right out of them.
On this particular house, the paint was chipping. Old coffee cups, candy wrappers, beer cans, and corroded newspapers had gathered in the wells around the basement windows. Hinges that were supposed to hold shutters held nothing at all but rust. The mismatched front door looked like it was made of untreated plywood. I suspect it had been kicked in a few times.
“Remind me never to cheat on my expense account ever again,” Vinny said, gazing upward at the structure from the passenger seat of the car.