He reached into his coat pocket, pulled out a rumpled sheet of paper, and unfolded it.
“Paul Vasco,” he said, his voice now taking on an official tone. “Age: sixty-two. Occupation: former handyman. More recently, convict. Most recently, ex-convict. Residence: 652 Bulham Avenue, also known as the Bunker Hill prerelease facility. Criminal record includes convictions on rape and first-degree murder. Notable characteristics: known to have an IQ that exceeds the level of genius.”
I said, “Well, the two of us will have something in common.”
“You’re a handyman, too?”
As he said this, Vinny shoved the paper back into his coat pocket. He added, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, he may be killing all over again. It’s on Jack and Vinny, Vinny and Jack, to stop him.”
Obviously, some of this stuff I had heard already. The handyman part I hadn’t. So he’s adept with his hands as well as his mind. I asked, “Our strategy?”
“First we have to get to him. My sources at the Department of Correction tell me it’s pretty easy access — hit or miss whether there’ll be an unarmed security guard around the house. They suggested that he was assigned to a room on the second floor, facing the rear, number twenty-seven, but couldn’t guarantee me that he hadn’t switched with someone, which they say is reasonably common.”
“Carlton Fisk,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Twenty-seven. That was Carlton Fisk’s number. He hit the most famous home run in Red Sox history” — to win the sixth game of the 1975 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds — “which maybe is a sign that we’re about to hit a home run.”
It should have been obvious to him. You’re in Boston, these numbers mean everything — 33 is Larry Bird, 86 is the year the Red Sox lost the World Series to the New York Mets, 4 is Bobby Orr, 9 is Ted Williams, 12 Tom Brady, 16 the number of Boston Celtic championships — a figure, by the way, that seems to be stuck in time. I could go on, but I won’t.
Vinny looked at me funny. “Right,” he said. Then, “He has supposedly been assigned to a job with the state highway department, picking up trash on median strips and the like, but it doesn’t start until tomorrow. He’s wearing an electronic bracelet that requires him to be home when he’s not either at work or commuting to and from work. My guy over at DoC said he was home this morning.”
I can’t say it enough, you’ve got to love Vinny Mongillo. If I ever become a good reporter, I want to be just like him.
I said, “Well, let’s go see if we can make hay of a diabolical murderer.”
“It’s about time.”
Interested parties, by the way, might notice that we had no interview strategy, Vinny and I — or maybe that’s Vinny and me. There was no discussion of the good cop and the bad cop. We didn’t review possible questions and the most probing follow-ups. We didn’t set a sequence. We didn’t plot out our tone. No, Vinny and I are from what would best be described as the wing-it school of American journalism, raised with the belief that reporters have to adapt to the situation, and not try to dictate it in any sort of preordained or formulaic way. Nothing drives me crazier than watching a blow-dried television interviewer sit and read a bunch of questions off a pad of paper that one of his or her producers had already sketched out. No conversation, no flow, just one preordained question following the next.
The aforementioned front door was unlocked, which was our first bit of good fortune on this mission, though maybe it wouldn’t prove to be so fortunate. It opened into a dark, bland hallway characterized by a threadbare carpet and peeling floral wallpaper illuminated by a single bare low-wattage lightbulb. The Department of Correction might seriously think about hiring a new interior designer for their interim housing. I’m a criminal spending more than an hour in a shithole like this and I’m doing everything in my power to get myself back into prison, including committing new crimes. At least the jailhouse color scheme — gray — is pretty uniform.
We were both silent and tiptoeing, though I’m not entirely sure why, and Vinny tiptoeing is like anyone else walking — with a sack of cement on their shoulders. Vinny motioned upward and we both began ascending the steep, creaky wooden staircase, which sounded very much like it might collapse before we got to where we were hoping to go.
The second-floor landing was neither better nor brighter. Think of a men’s room in a highway rest area, only this place smelled worse — a roundish, biting, aggressive odor that seemed to reach right into your nostrils and hit the back of your eyes. If hopelessness had a smell, this was it.
The hallway was longer than I thought it would be. If there had ever been carpet laid down, it wasn’t there now. Instead, the floors appeared to be made of scratched and grooved particle-board, stained in various shapes and sizes and colors. The dingy walls hadn’t been painted since the Republicans and Democrats in Washington all got along. I could hear the tinny sound of cheap televisions and radios, and was picking up the fumes of cigarettes. All in all, not a pleasant place.
“This feels like my old college frat house,” Vinny whispered to me.
“I had no idea you went to college,” I whispered back.
He ignored that and motioned for me to follow him toward the rear of the house. We passed several dark, old-fashioned doors, some with numbers on them, others not. The floors creaked, the air reeked, and it kept getting darker the farther back we walked.
Mongillo stopped in front of the last door on the right. It had the metal number 7 on it, and you could see the outlines of where the 2 used to be but wasn’t anymore.
I put my fist next to the door, waited for Mongillo to nod, and I knocked, twice softly, then three times firmly. We both stood and listened intently in the dark.
Nothing.
Well, at least nothing from behind this particular door. Down the hall, we heard a bolt get pushed into a lock. We heard a television set get turned down. We heard someone urgently dragging an unknown object across an unseen floor. And then we heard nothing at all.
I looked at Mongillo. He nodded back at me. I knocked, even louder this time, four firm raps with the side of my right fist.
Another lock turned down the hallway. Someone somewhere fell into a coughing, wheezing, hacking fit. A fly buzzed between our two heads.
But again, nothing from this unseen room.
I said, loud enough to be heard inside, “Mr. Vasco. Are you there? Mr. Vasco?”
The sound of my voice bounced off the bare hallway walls and melted into the hazy darkness. If Mr. Paul Vasco was indeed inside, as he was supposed to be, then he was either an incredibly sound sleeper, or he had no designs on entertaining visitors right about now.
I put my hand on the knob and began to turn it slowly. Mongillo squinted at me like I was some sort of maniacal nut, but did nothing to stop me. The knob, to my surprise, kept turning, turning, sliding all the way to the right. Just as it got to the end and I was about to slowly push it open, a latch opened across the hall and the door matter-of-factly swung open.
Vinny and I whirled around simultaneously. I half expected to be shot right between the eyes, gunned down in my own cold blood in a dingy halfway house on the fringes of Charlestown while I was in hot pursuit of the most befuddling story of my otherwise stellar career.
There was no gunfire, though, not even the flick of a knife. Instead, a voice from inside the darkened room called out, “You looking for me?”
It was a voice that was at once gravelly yet pointed, weary yet strong — the voice of someone who was energized by his newfound freedom, yet at some deeper level not quite sure, after all these years in prison, how to handle it all.
I asked, “Are you Paul Vasco?”