I finally cut back in and said, “Mac Foley.” Hey, why not? When was the commissioner going to make himself available to me again? He stopped talking mid-sentence and stared at me, undoubtedly surprised by the interruption as well as the name. I added, “He was your colleague on the investigation. He’s on this investigation now. He’s one of the most successful detectives in BPD homicide. How come you didn’t mention his name?”
Harrison regarded me long and hard. He ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair and leaned back in his chair, his fist under his chin. He suddenly leaned forward, thrusting his elbows on his desk, and asked, “Can we talk off the record?”
This wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to do, but I nodded, too curious about what he might want to say to ruin the deal.
“Mac’s a good man. He is,” Harrison said, talking lower, his off-the-record tone, I figured. “But I worry about the quality of his work as a detective.” His eyes locked on mine, as if willing me toward complicity. I showed no emotion.
“He was way off the reservation back then, to the point where I was worried about him — his psychological state, if you know what I mean. These days, he’s heading to retirement, kind of phoning it in. Soon as he’s gone, I think this investigation will move a lot swifter.”
I asked, “Why don’t you simply remove him?”
He smiled at me, leaning back again. “Politics, my friend. Politics. City hall. Departmental. News media. You name it. You have to balance a lot of concerns in this chair.”
This was interesting to me, every word, especially those about Mac Foley’s psychological state. Could my wildest suspicions be right? Could he have snapped? On his way out the door, could he be killing women, reliving the toughest investigation of his career? Had he completely lost it?
Or here’s another thought: Was he the Strangler way back then, kind of a police version of the firebug arsonists once so common across the country — firefighters who actually lit the infernos that they were called to put out? But if he was the Strangler back then, why would he have been ticked off over DeSalvo’s confession? Could he have felt that someone else was taking credit for his work?
I was pondering these questions when my back pocket vibrated. I casually pulled my phone out and saw it was Martin calling in, and I put it back. Ten seconds later, he called again, and again ten seconds after that. The guy might have had the journalistic brains of Bob Woodward, but at the moment I wanted to wring his neck.
“What’s your relationship like with Foley?” I asked.
“Nonexistent. Lord knows I’ve tried. We started together. We’re leaving together, but he’s refused to be even civil to me in the forty years since Albert DeSalvo confessed — like I was somehow responsible for his cockamamie theories not panning out on the Strangler case.”
My phone vibrated yet again. I cussed Martin under my breath, pulled it out, glanced at it, and saw it was a 702 area code — a call from Las Vegas.
As I put the phone back, I felt Vinny Mongillo’s thank-you note to Bob Walters folded up in my back pocket. So I pulled it out and said, “While we’re off the record, you’ve got to see this. These charges you’ve filed against Vinny Mongillo are bullshit, and this proves it.”
I placed it on his desk and he read it. Afterward, he looked up and said, “This will certainly factor into a complex investigation, and when we empanel a grand jury, I’ll urge the district attorney to allow them to see this.”
“That’s garbage,” I said, my voice thundering out louder than I expected. I knew his game. He was essentially trying to disqualify the Record from driving the story forward by making us a questionable part of it. I could see The New York Times headline now: “Record Reporter Ensnared in Serial Murder Case.” It might be the only time Vinny Mongillo would be called “Mr.” by his peers.
Harrison seemed taken aback, probably not so much by my assertion but by the fact someone would speak to him like that. He said, confidingly again, “So let’s deal. You need me, and whether I like to believe it or not, I may need you at the moment. What else do you have?”
And there we were, at the crux of this meeting, with Commissioner Hal Harrison following the age-old adage that you keep your friends close and your enemies closer, and at that moment, I might have been the biggest enemy to his mayoral ambitions — at least in the way he perceived the world.
I ran a few scenarios through the reporting calculator that was my mind. Do I share? Do I withhold? I decided quickly, perhaps too quickly, that I was better off placing my suspicions of Mac Foley on the proverbial table, if only to see the chain of events that they might cause.
So I said, “I have some concerns about Mac Foley.”
He arched an eyebrow at me and leaned back again.
I said, “You know from your underlings that I’ve received the driver’s license of New York Times reporter Elizabeth Riggs, for all practical purposes targeting her as the next victim. Take a look at who she was with earlier that day.”
He nodded, still saying nothing, obviously intrigued by what I was telling him.
I continued, “And you might try to ascertain how Mac Foley knew the apartment number of Lauren Hutchens over in the Fenway.”
“What do you mean?” Harrison asked, his features scrunched up in thought and curiosity.
I replied, “I never gave it to him. The cops he sent to the scene said Foley gave the apartment number to them.”
Harrison nodded. He was about to ask something else when there was a knock on his door on the other side of the room. Harrison angrily called out, “What!”
The same cadet who led me up walked in and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but Mayor Laird is on the line and said she needs to speak to you immediately.”
Harrison snapped up the phone and barked, “Commissioner here.”
Silence.
He said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. Why are they doing this now?”
My own phone vibrated yet again. It was Martin trying to reach me yet again. This was a lot, even for him.
Harrison stopped to listen to the mayor, his brow furrowed in frustration.
“Well,” he said, “you know what this is? It’s fucking irresponsible. And it’s fucking war. They want to fuck with me, they’re making a big fucking mistake.”
I stepped to the far side of the office, by the windows that held the gray hue of the dull day, and gave Martin a quick call. He picked up on the first ring and without so much as a greeting said, “Justine’s finally agreed with me. She’s running the Phantom’s warning tomorrow — verbatim. This Elizabeth Riggs thing pushed her over the edge. You’re going to write a story, and we’ll put the full text of the note as a sidebar on the front page.”
“Finally, some sense,” I replied, then added, “I’ll call you shortly.”
I hung up just in time to witness Hal Harrison slamming down the phone — on the mayor.
He stared straight down at his desk for a long moment, his hands on either side of his broad head. I took a seat again in front of him. He slowly looked up at me, his eyes darker than they were before, the wrinkles of his face deeper, and he said, “You’re fucking with the wrong guy, Jack.”
He said “Jack” like it was also a profanity, the word propelled from his lips like an arrow.
I said, “Excuse me?”
He stared at me, his eyes as black and distant and angry as any I’ve ever seen. A police commissioner is used to getting his or her own way, especially when the mayor is a weak one with plans to step down.