Murder in the Charlestown Bricks: A Dermot Sparhawk Crime Novel

by Tom MacDonald

  Other Dermot Sparhawk Novels by Tom MacDonald

  The Charlestown Connection

  Beyond the Bridge

  The Revenge of Liam McGrew

  ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗ ∗

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9967332-3-6

  ISBN-10: 0-9967332-3-X

  Copyright © 2018 Tom MacDonald

  All Rights Reserved

  For Cheryl Bliss Waxman

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  1

  The first time I saw her was at an AA meeting in Powder House Square in Somerville, not far from Tufts University. She was accompanied by a man with a silver ponytail and a craggy face, who wore tan Dickies and work boots. She was wearing blue jeans and a red button-down shirt, with the shirttail untucked and falling freely around her backside. Her face was tanned, her cheekbones were full, and her nose was somewhat prominent, but by no means unattractive.

  She sat in front and crossed her long legs. I studied the back of her head, the slender neckline and level shoulders. Her chestnut hair shined with highlights, and the highlights looked natural, not from a bottle. Everything about her looked natural, the way she talked and gestured, the way she listened and waited, it all seemed unaffected. The ponytailed man handed her a cup of coffee and sat next to her. She raised the cup and grinned. I don’t know if that was the moment I fell in love with her, but it might have been. I know my heart jumped, and it hadn’t jumped in quite a long time.

  After the Lord’s Prayer she left through a side door.

  The next time I saw her was at the Sparrow Group in the South End, near Titus Sparrow Park. She was wearing white pants and a black pullover with the words Carlisle Indian School written in red. The Sparrow Group attracted Native American alcoholics, mostly working men and women — house painters, window washers, restaurant people, ironworkers. The meeting’s founder was Ike Fivekiller, a full-blooded Cherokee from Memphis who drank with my father. How Ike ended up in Boston, nobody knew, and he wasn’t saying. She whispered something to him, and Ike tilted his head back and laughed. I found myself smiling, as if her magnetism reached across the room and put joy in my heart.

  The building had oversized windows that allowed the sun to brighten the room, most notably the gold in her hair. She raised her face and she pushed up her sleeves and let her arms dangle at her sides. Did she look my way? The man with the silver ponytail came in and gave her a hug, the type of hug a girl gets from a devoted father. Seeing the chaste embrace elated me. When I looked for her after the meeting she was gone.

  The next time I’d see her would be in a jailhouse.

  2

  Just before midnight on a mild May evening, just moments after the Red Sox beat the Tigers in Detroit to break a four-game losing streak, I heard a police siren racing by the front of the house. I folded the newspaper and looked out the window to the street below. A cruiser sped into the projects and stopped on O’Reilly Way, followed by an ambulance. Probably an overdose. I didn’t pay much attention. Hearing a siren in the Charlestown bricks is like hearing bells in a church steeple. You expect it at regular intervals. I was about to go back to the newspaper when I saw an unmarked car drive to the scene, and it was moving.

  This was no overdose.

  I laced up my sneakers and left the house, and when I got to O’Reilly Way a crowd of tenants was gathering on the sidewalks. They lit cigarettes and spoke in hushed tones, the gossip already starting. I saw Officer Partridge, wearing a jacket and tie, standing next to the unmarked car, busy on his cell phone. The man next to him also wore a jacket and tie. I went up to them.

  “Officer Partridge,” I said.

  “It’s Detective Partridge now,” he said, hanging up. “I was promoted last month.”

  “Congratulations,” I said. “Who’s your rabbi?”

  “Superintendent Hanson, of course, but you knew that. He’s my guy. For some reason he likes me.” Partridge, a tall man with sandy hair and a trim mustache, motioned to the cop next to him and said, “This is Detective Scott McClellan, my senior partner. He’s showing me the ropes.”

  I extended my hand, but McClellan ignored it and walked away.

  “What happened in the building?” I asked Partridge.

  “Robbery-homicide,” he answered. “A junky beat an old lady to death. Did a nasty job on her, really busted her up.”

  “What’s her name? I grew up in that building.”

  “One second.” Partridge looked at his notepad. “Gertrude Murray.”

  “My God, not Gert.” I had known Mrs. Murray my whole life. “I loved that lady.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, Sparhawk.”

  Partridge walked back to McClellan, while I thought about Gertrude Murray. She cared for me when I lost my mother. I was seven at the time. And when my father went on a toot, as in toot aloo Dermot, hello Jim Beam bourbon, Gert was there for me, shielding me from state authorities. How she did it I’ll never know. A single mother with three boys, all of them Charlestown crazy, she treated me like one of her own. In the projects, we looked out for each other back then.

  The two detectives went into the building, accompanied by the forensics team. I waited outside. I wouldn’t leave until they carried her out. At sunrise two morgue men rolled out a gurney carrying the body and brought it to the ambulance, with Partridge and McClellan escorting.

  I went up to them and said, “Can I see her?”

  “It’s ugly,” Partridge said.

  “Please.”

  Partridge looked at McClellan, who nodded.

  Partridge unzipped the bag and exposed Gert Murray from the shoulders up. Her head was dented, a round dent that could have been made by a flying shot put. Scratches and welts marred her face and throat. The jaw was lopsided. When I was a kid I’d tear baseball cards in half and match the top half of one card with the bottom half of the other, creating a Picasso effect. That was Gert’s face, a grotesque distortion.

  “What the hell did he hit her with?” I said.

  “A bowling ball,” McClellan answered, speaking to me for the firs
t time. “To be specific, a candlepin ball. I was about to say at least it wasn’t a tenpin ball, but what’s the difference? She’s dead.”

  Was McClellan dissing Gert as a way of dissing me? Some cops will do that. They’ll taunt you, hoping you’ll take the bait.

  “Gert kept the ball on a shelf,” I said. “She bowled when she was younger.”

  The thought of a man crushing Gert’s head with a bowling ball sickened me, and my stomach started to churn. I walked into the street and with my hands on my hips, shaking my head, pissed. Partridge came over to me.

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Sparhawk,” he said. “We’ve got the guy, a doper with a long criminal record, and he’s going away for life.” He paused for a moment, as if reflecting on the scene. “I don’t get the drugs. Killing an old lady just to get high? I don’t get it.”

  I couldn’t sit in judgment, being a recovering alcoholic myself, so I said nothing. Poor Gertrude Murray, dead in the bricks, all because of a man’s addiction. At least they caught the son of a bitch. I was about to leave when Detective McClellan came up to me and extended his hand and said, “Sorry about the tenpin remark, Sparhawk. It was callous of me. I understand you knew the old lady.”

  “I did. She lived next door to me —”

  “Ehhh!” he mocked. “You’re too easy.” He started back to the unmarked car. I took a step toward him, but Partridge intercepted me and said, “McClellan is nuts, as in PTSD nuts. He saw too much action in the Kandahar region, too damn much. Noggin shrapnel, too. He can’t go through a metal detector without triggering the alarm.”

  “He triggered my alarm, Detective,” I said. “Ridiculing Gert like that, I’ll put him in the hospital.”

  “I didn’t hear that remark,” Partridge said. “Go home.”

  3

  The next day I was eating lunch in Chinatown when I got a call from Buck Louis, my downstairs tenant and business partner. Buckley Louis III, or Buck as he likes to be called, is a practicing attorney who had recently passed the state bar exam, after collecting a sheepskin from Boston College Law School. I poked my chopsticks into a platter of pan-fried noodles and answered the phone. We exchanged hellos and Buck got to the matter at hand.

  “We have our first case,” he said.

  “Shit, that was fast.”

  “There might be a slight problem.” Buck hesitated. “I’m not sure you’ll want to take it.”

  “Why not?”

  “The client’s name is Victor Diaz.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “It will in a second. Last night the police charged Diaz with the murder of Gert Murray.”

  Diaz killed Gert?

  “No fuckin’ way, Buck. We’re not taking it.”

  “I understand your reluctance.” His voice gathered momentum to present his case, to build an argument to get me on board. “Victor’s mother is sitting across the desk from me.”

  “Tell her to sit in the visiting area at Cedar Junction, because that’s where Victor will be living for the rest of his life.”

  “Dermot —”

  “I’m not touching it, Buck.”

  “There are extenuating circumstances. It’s not what it seems.”

  “Give me a break,” I said. “Diaz broke into Gert’s apartment and killed her. The cops found him standing over her body.”

  “That’s not what happened, not exactly, and exactitude is central to this case. Details, Dermot, this case hinges on details. All I’m asking is that you hear me out before you make a decision. Will you do that for me?”

  I hated to be coerced, but when Buck did it, it didn’t bother me too much.

  “I’ll give you ten minutes, no more,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

  I took a cab to the Charlestown Navy Yard, where Buck and I leased space in a warehouse on Pier 3, overlooking Dry Dock 2. We had formed an alliance of sorts, a two-man team that played to our strengths — that’s what we told ourselves anyway. Buck handled the lawyering, while I handled the investigating. Our office is located on the ground floor, which suits us fine, because Buck is a paraplegic.

  I went into the office.

  Buck was sitting in his wheelchair behind a big oak desk, whistling a song I didn’t know. His handsome brown face glowed with health, and his nearly shaved head painted a five-o’clock shadow on his scalp. I sat in the client’s chair and stared at the exposed ceiling rafters. The whistling stopped.

  “Thanks for hearing me out,” Buck said. “I know this isn’t easy.”

  “You said something about extenuating circumstances.”

  “The evidence, Dermot, all I’m asking is that you look at the evidence. If you still think Diaz is guilty, I won’t take the case. Deal?”

  “Why do I feel like I’m getting conned?”

  “The DA’s office sent the preliminary discovery package. Read it and tell me what you think.” He handed me the report. “You’ll see what I mean about details.”

  I went through the discovery, page by page, studying the pictures and reading the text. The first photo showed Gert’s apartment torn apart — framed pictures smashed, cushions cut open, drawers emptied on the floor — the place was a mess, but a methodical mess.

  “Diaz was looking for something specific,” I said. “You don’t dump drawers and slice cushions unless you’re looking for something specific.”

  I continued to read. One photo showed a bloody footprint next to Gert’s body. A yardstick indicated it was twelve inches long. The footprint wasn’t just long, it was wide, too, the print of a big-boned man. According to the report, Diaz’s shoes were free of blood, and so were his socks and pant cuffs. The police found blood on the tiles leading out the rear of the building. Diaz was arrested coming out the front. I stopped reading.

  “He didn’t do it,” I said. “The lack of blood on him proves it.”

  “The police disagree.”

  “Do they think Diaz changed his socks and shoes after the murder? His clothes would have been spattered, too. He didn’t kill Mrs. Murray.”

  “And a twelve-inch footprint translates to a size fourteen shoe,” Buck said. “Diaz wears size eight. The print was made by a waffle sole, like a work boot. Diaz was wearing running shoes, and the soles were bald.”

  “Why do they think he’s guilty?”

  “Keep reading,” Buck said.

  On the next page I saw a picture of Gertrude Murray sprawled on the floor. Her pockets were slashed open, and, of course, her head was smashed hollow. I looked away and said, “The killer hit her with a bowling ball.”

  “Broken cheekbone, broken jaw, fractured skull,” Buck said. “In my opinion the crime scene is contradictory. The murder looks like a crime of passion, the result of an enraged man who went berserk. But the room looks like it was carefully dissected, the work of a criminal in search of a particular item.”

  “Fuckin’ bastard, I’ll dissect him.” Then I read something that would be a big problem for Victor Diaz. “When the police arrested Diaz, they saw another man running out the back of the building.”

  “And therein lies the problem.”

  “Diaz had an accomplice,” I said.

  “The police think the accomplice committed the actual murder.”

  I read further.

  “Diaz admits there was an accomplice, but he won’t name him.” I stood and paced the room, a luxury Buck would never enjoy. “He will go away for this, Buck. Diaz was in on the crime that led to Gert’s death. He has to pay.”

  “If that’s the case, he should pay,” Buck said.

  “What do you mean, if? Diaz broke in with another guy, and now Gert is dead. If you think Diaz is getting railroaded because of the accomplice, get him to plea.”

  “Diaz refuses to plea. He insists he didn’t kill her. He also insists his accomplice didn’t kil
l her. Diaz swears that Gert Murray was already dead when they broke in.” Buck grabbed the wheels but didn’t move. “How’s that for an opening statement? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, Gertrude Murray was already dead when my client broke in to rob her.”

  Buck was right. It would be a tough sell to a jury.

  “You said Diaz has a sheet.”

  “A long one, but nothing violent.” Buck opened a manila folder and began to read. “Car thefts, muggings, B&Es, selling hot merchandise, and then there’s the drug stuff. Possession with intent, sale in a school zone.”

  “I don’t like the school zone charge.” I took the sheet from Buck and I glanced at it. “But murder seems out of step for him.”

  “Diaz is hooked on scat, Dermot. He steals for drug money. He just got out of yet another rehab, according to his heartsick mother.”

  “It’s not an excuse.”

  “The DA is charging him with felony murder. An eighty-year-old woman got her head bashed, and he’s the fall guy. Diaz will take the hit on this.”

  “Where are they holding him?”

  “Nashua Street,” Buck said. “They booked him in this morning.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” I said. “If I sense that he or his accomplice murdered Gert, I’m out.”

  “Thanks, Dermot,” Buck gestured to the door. “I won’t hold you up.”

  In other words, get moving.

  4

  The Nashua Street Jail is located in Boston’s West End, a short distance from the Charlestown waterfront. As I was walking there, sweating in the afternoon mugginess, I thought about the unlikely friendship that developed between Buck Louis and me. Buck is African American, a country boy from rural Kentucky. I’m a half-breed, a city kid from Charlestown. We met at Boston College as freshmen on the football team. Buck played running back, I played linebacker, and somehow we hit it off.

  A coach’s dream, Buck outclassed the competition with speed, balance, and power. Even if you caught him, you couldn’t knock him down. After two days of contact, Buck was first on the depth chart — as a freshman. This was unheard of at Boston College. Doug Flutie didn’t see the field until he was a sophomore.