John Finn

by Vincent McCaffrey

  I think the very worst of the place, in December, is the feeble display of lights artlessly strung in various leafless trees for no avowed purpose. Just a knee-twitch of tradition now that the city government has disallowed Christmas itself for being politically incorrect. The lights now have the soulless aspect of all cheap decoration. They are not happy lights. Matty once told me, as we walked through here when she was about six years old, that they were “clown lights, but without the clown.”

  The Central Burying Ground directly at my back is not even a quarter-mile from the main tourist traffic, but few make the detour. Especially in cold weather. Once you’ve seen one old graveyard, you’ve seen them all, I suppose. None of the ‘big’ names are buried here in any case. No Revere. No Adams. No Mother Goose. Many of the occupants have Irish names and I suspect that they were Catholics. If the saintly Quaker Mary Dyer is buried near here, there is no marker for it that I know of. Lawbreakers were not to be memorialized. Criminals were to be forgotten and their history expunged. But then again, the official designation of this grave yard is 1757, much too late for that first great Boston rebel in any case.

  The ground of the cemetery is raised above street level by stone walls and uneven in a rough way that might reveal some of the topography long since smoothed over elsewhere on the Common. When you stand where I was on the Boylston Street side, the gravestones are head high and the slate can dully reflect the street lights like windows with thin curtains drawn. The top of the encircling stone wall is mounted with iron fencing. At one end of the space, the land falls away into a great trench occupied by a long stone crypt. This crypt rises about four feet and is perhaps three yards wide and fifty yards from end to end by my pacing. This structure built to contain the many individual graves found to be in the way, that were moved in later years to make room for more important needs than the rest of the dead—for the sidewalks and streets of the living.

  I had looked for the accounts of murders in the photocopies of Boston Gazette at the Historical Society as well as the trials of the murderers. Executions were usually noted, and there were a few. But before the Revolution, and after, New England had been a more civil place than most—that is, if you were not an Indian, a negro, a Quaker, or a Catholic. Several of those executed were undoubtedly beneath this ground and their graves lost, if indeed they were ever marked.

  As he rode on that famous night toward Medford, Paul Revere himself had noted the spot where the rebellious slave Mark Codman was “hung in chains,” twenty years before. Executions were that exceptional a matter. And though murders increased dramatically during the period of the Revolution, trials did not. Even the ever-popular public hanging appears to have been disrupted by the rebellion.

  The deadly cadence of public order was not restored until Gage was finally gone. Only two weeks after the British evacuated the city in 1776, a sneak thief named Peter Hansen of Cambridge had been hung for a “vile offense” unnamed and buried somewhere here, in this same graveyard. His recorded larcenies were mentioned as additional justification to whatever his unnamed offense had been. I had wondered if he might actually have been the first criminal executed by a civilian court in the newly independent Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

  The remains of Gilbert Stuart are here as well, near the crypt. He was a damned good painter whose most famous work is familiar to most wallets on the lowly one-dollar bill, but sadly, he was never eccentric enough to be immortalized by a made-for-TV movie or, to my knowledge, his torso abused on the cover of an historical romance.

  There is no church close-by this place today. It is watched over only by a small stone outbuilding used for the park services. By contrast, crowds flock to the Granary Burying Ground, just beyond the Northeast corner of the oddly angled Common. That cemetery is nestled below the much-photographed white steeple of the Park Street Church. The space there is closely contained by a secular guard of surrounding office buildings and the back of the Athenaeum Library. And for some reason, in the winter, it looks more to me like an abandoned construction site. But that’s where Revere and Adams and Mary Goose rest in ground hardened year-round beneath the constant patter of tourists in faux athletic shoes.

  Unfortunately or not, the Central Burying Ground was never completely blessed by its immediate attachment to the broader open space of the Common. True, it's relatively quiet, even in the best weather. The gate is often closed. And now, in the crepuscular dark of winter, it is more like a graveyard should be. It is a fact that many of those who died during the British occupation of Boston were buried in this less romantically designated place. Some the Regulars who fell at Bunker Hill are here as well, though their stones have long since fallen. And at least some who did not survive their wounds on that April morning when Mary Andrews’s life was ended have been laid to rest in this soil. All of them nameless now. I have looked. The earliest grave I found was much later. The historical rolls offer little more.

  I had in fact come here several times looking for names to follow in my search for clues to the death of Mary Andrews, but too many of the graves were long ago shifted about for the convenience of the walkways through the Common and the straightening of the bordering roads that became city streets through the years. Worse, the surface of the slate stones which still stand has often dissolved in the weather of time, erasing the cut of the names. The accounting of graves at the Historical Society is of liitle help.

  I suppose the greatest indignity to the site occurred during the building of Boston’s first subway, when many hundreds of remains were dug up and placed in the crypt. This, to my mind, better fits the character of Boston. ‘Bean Town Babbitts’ my friend Gary Apple calls them. Preserving history here only gained importance when it became profitable as a tourist draw. The rights of the living were often disrespected, so the dead had even less of a chance.

  In the same way, the best of this city remains standing, it survives purely out of the long neglect that occurred when business declined during most of the twentieth century, making ‘improvement’ unwanted and unnecessary. Thus, the great rehabilitation which began in the 1980’s after the politics of urban renewal had destroyed what it could, still had a lot of the old to work with.

  At least, for that much, I should be happy.

  But preservation isn’t the matter. If nobody gives a damn, why preserve it? The past only really matters to the ones who lived it. And maybe their children. By the time the grandchildren come along, it’s just talk on a winter’s night. All that’s left is the story. But when there is nothing sacred left, what does that even matter?

  And why write about it?

  The idea is, of course, to make it important again. To get the story right so that it matters to someone. Some one, at least. I wasn’t really interested in monuments or gravestones. Even gravestones. Even those few words on the stone, I suppose.

  I have seen this burying place often enough in summer and it looks far better when the green of the grass is thick between the gray slabs. In the autumn the acorns fall and are shattered by the squirrels and clutter the ground in drifts of shells. I have had the squirrels follow me and sit atop the stones as I tried to read the ancient script of the stones, staring down at me in expectation.

  The inscriptions which have survived are mostly simple ones: ‘Miss Mary Crawford daughter of John & Mrs. Jane Crawford who died of the epidemic October 1802 aged 37.’ Or: ‘In memory of Sally Morse who died July 25th 1799 of the cramp in her stomach after about one hour of illness aged 26 years & 2 months.’ And, on a doubled stone, ‘In memory of Mr. Moses Haskell who died September 28 1798 in the 33rd year of his age. Also Mrs. Hannah Haskell wife of Moses Haskell she died March 22 1799 in the 22nd year of her age. Thus in less than six months this amiable family became extinct. They were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their deaths they were not divided.’

  Early on a Saturday morning, when the leaves are still full and the sun first breaks through the trees and there is little traffic on the streets, y
ou can stand on the eastern side looking away from the street and possibly believe this is a country graveyard and thus be transported into the past. I have done that too, stopping on my way home from night duty in some downtown lobby.

  But on this night, it’s poorly lit, and the gate is locked, and I am buffeted by the fumes and passing noise of Boylston Street traffic. All of this is offering little illumination to my own thoughts—and not helping my mood in the least. Unless you could count the murk of it as some comment on more current matters. This is what uses up a tired mind with nothing better to do.

  I just wanted the story.

  And there it was. Just as I stood there cynically disparaging my own efforts. As simple as that. I knew it. Hadn’t I encountered that name elsewhere? Didn’t I already know Peter Hansen?

  I repeated the villain’s name aloud to myself, “Peter Hansen.” It was absorbed by the rattle of traffic.

  I wanted to run home again and open the computer and do a word search of my notes.

  Instead, I stood at the wall there, well out of the constant passing of cars on Boylston Street, sipping faster from a large Dunkin Donuts coffee cup, just to stay warm. In just a few months working for Connie, I had already grown accustomed to the boredom of waiting. That was most of what a security guard ever does.

  The problem now was this: I was too early. I had called the ticket office at the Colonial to get the time when the show ended but this process is all automated. A prerecorded voice leads you to everything but what you want. Wading through one menu option after another gets you to a final voice which says the office is currently closed. Please call back during business hours.

  I used to know a girl named Judy who worked the booth at the Colonial. She could take calls, make change, help people choose seats, give out show schedules, and flirt all at the same time. A marvelous young woman. I have no idea what happened to her, but I hope it was something good. In any case, the woman behind the booth this evening only wanted to sell me a ticket. She could not help me with anything else.

  The sidewalk by the side of the graveyard is empty. It usually is. Especially at night in cold weather. But my eye catches some movement in the murk to my left. A guy is walking close along the iron fence but looking out as if he is going to cross against the traffic on the street when he sees a break. He is wearing a parka with the hood up. He gets within a few feet of me before he turns to me.

  In a sharp voice he says, “You got any money?”

  I just about laughed out loud.

  There I was, standing by the graveyard, minding my own damn business, in full sight of the people in every car passing on Boylston Street, to say nothing of the hundred or so people on the opposite side walk less than fifty feet away, and this idiot wants to rob me. Not that it makes any difference. Most people will avoid getting involved if they can find an excuse. But what made the whole thing ridiculous was that I normally don’t carry enough cash on me to buy a pack of cigarettes. And right then I had close to a thousand dollars in my pocket.

  He dances with impatience. “Give me your money.”

  His voice is hoarse. He sounds sick. Worse. He’s about six inches shorter than me, and about thirty pounds lighter. I try to see his face, but he keeps his head down.

  All I can say is, “Have you even got a brain?”

  He’s got his fist in his coat pocket and he raises this up a bit as if he might have a gun.

  He says, “I got enough to shoot your fuckin’ brains out of your head.”

  On reconsideration I decide that either his gun is pretty small, or the barrel is made out of something bent.

  I say, “Get outta here. Screw.”

  He laughs. I know the laugh.

  Burley pulls his hand out and goes “Bam!”

  I say, “You got me. You son of a—but I like your mom way too much to use an expression like that.”

  He punches my shoulder like it’s a body bag.

  “You’re waiting for me, right?”

  “Good guess.”

  “My truck is around in the alley. I saw you when I went by. Come on.”

  Burley’s little red pickup truck has the bench seat. Lowest priced model they made back in ’04. We settle into the cab. He has it parked right where he can see the stage door.

  As if he had been the one waiting for me, I say, “What’s up?”

  He was on to that. “I’ll bet you know what’s up. When Therese shows, there won’t be enough room in here for the three of us.”

  I nodded. “No. I just wanted to check in with you. Find out if you can do me a favor.”

  ​He guesses, “What? You going to pay a visit to Mr. Lugano?”

  “No. I already took care of that myself.”

  He gave me a stare out of the corner of his eye and waited a beat. I knew he’d want to know more. He said, “Should I know what you did? Can I ask?”

  I shrugged that off. “I went to where he lived. That’s what he did to me. I figured to return the favor.”

  “So how did that go?”

  “Finding out where Fabian lived wasn’t that difficult. The address the cops have on file is old. But I knew the guy had season tickets for the Bruins, right? He should have had them mailed to a Post Office box. But he didn’t. It’s the kind of stupid mistake anybody could make. I know a lady who works in promotions at the Garden and she has access to the subscription files.”

  Burley shook his head at me. “You know too many ladies.”

  I told him, “She’s the wife of my old neighbor in Arlington. I used to have it out with her husband every Saturday morning because he would mow his lawn before seven a.m. all summer long. She liked me for that. She didn’t like listening to it either. And she used to bake brownies for us and then sit in our kitchen and eat her own brownies and tell us how she hated him. Their house was only twenty feet away and you knew her husband was sitting in their kitchen drinking his morning coffee and listening to every word. They were a great couple.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Nothing. What could I do? I just went out in my PJs every Saturday morning and told him he was an asshole. Or a son of a bitch. Or whatever.”

  “No. I mean about Fabian.”

  I shrugged again. I suddenly felt like I was getting as bad about my tales as Ricky Havens. I wasn’t wanting to make too much of this one, though.

  “So I went over there by myself. I didn’t think you should get involved any further now that we knew the guy was unreasonable.”

  “When did you do that?”

  “The night before last. But the place was dark. But there was somebody else watching the place already. And I didn’t want them watching me.”

  “Were they cops?”

  “Definitely not cops.”

  “Norris?”

  “Somebody connected. Probably. Norris couldn’t be all that happy about Fabian trying to blow me up, all on his own. Anyway, they ought to try driving SUVs instead of sedans and they should avoid the heavily tinted glass. You see glass like that and you notice it right off. It’s either a politician or a hood.”

  “Same difference. So, what did you do?”

  “I went home and read a book. They were gone the next day. The place was empty. I looked in every window. Fabian’s moved. Everything. Nothing hasty. I figure he’d done it even before he’d missed me with his surprise.”

  Burley nodded at that and studied the stage door. Nothing was moving there yet except a rat at the base of the stairs.

  “Where do you think he went?”

  “Well. Two possibilities. If it was voluntary, he’s somewhere far enough away to be inconvenient for anybody looking for him. Like Florida. He knows Florida. It’s a good bet he spent time down in Panama City in the early nineteen-nineties with the Marines training for his EOD unit. If it was involuntary, then he’s probably somewhere out in the salt grass in Lynn, out near Route 107. My guess is Florida.”

  “That’s funny.”

  “What’s funny?” />
  “People keep disappearing on you.”

  “Yeah, that’s funny. But I still need you to do me a favor.”

  He shook his head. “I already told Connie. I can work days. But I can’t do nights right now.”

  I said, “No. I know that. But I need a favor. It’s mostly a day job.”

  Problem was, I had no idea yet how many days, and there were probably some nights attached and I was going to take my time telling him the worst of it.

  He says, “You mean you need a favor. For you? Not for Connie? Why didn’t you say so?”

  I said, “I did.”

  He doesn’t have his father’s mustache, but he can do his father’s face perfectly, right to the dropped jaw with the mouth closed and the eyes rolled back. He knows he’s doing it. He knows I know where he got that from.

  He says, “Sorry. I’ll get my phone turned on again next week. Connie has some day work coming up and he’s going to give me an advance if I show. At this point, I’ve got to show. I’m broke.”

  I said, “Are you free tomorrow?”

  He bounced in his seat enough for a nod. “Sure.”

  “And for a day or two after?”

  “Sure. I guess”

  I handed him the bills from my wallet. A little more than $900. All I could scrape up on short notice. I had already hit Connie again for cash myself.

  I say, “Use that for now. If it takes another day or two, I’ll come up with more.”

  He pushed the money back at me. “You said it was a favor.”

  I told him. “For expenses. But it’s still a favor. A big one.”

  Just then both of us caught sight of several figures coming out the stage door. The second one out, as if she’s all excited and in a real hurry, is Therese. Her blonde hair practically doubled the reflected light in the ally.

  I said, “Call me later. I’ll tell you all about it,” and started to get out.

  He said, “Fine. But wait a minute. I want to introduce you.”