Charlesgate Confidential

by Scott Von Doviak

  “Why am I even here? So you did that and they said…?”

  “They have no such Charles Finley. Never heard of him.”

  “One shocker after another.”

  “Right, but Sully and I have a theory. Maybe Charles Finley is Chuck Finley. Know who that is?”

  “Former pitcher for the Angels,” said Coleman. “Married the chick from the Whitesnake video. You figure him for this?”

  “No, but you ever watch Burn Notice?”

  “What the fuck is Burn Notice?”

  “TV show. Spies and shit. Anyway, this one character, Sam Axe—”

  “Bruce Campbell,” said Sully. “The guy with the chin, he plays Sam Axe.”

  “Yeah, and whenever he’s undercover, Sam Axe uses the same alias. Chuck Finley.”

  “So we figure this guy is a Burn Notice fan.”

  “Good work, guys,” said Coleman. “I’d say this case is just about wrapped up thanks to your keen attention to detail.”

  “Yeah. Anyway, couple hours ago the realty office finally sent someone down here to make sure she didn’t drop dead while showing this guy Finley around. Which, as we can see here, she did.”

  “Indeed. So presumably, since she was showing this nonexistent lawyer this lovely overpriced condo, she must have had a key. Such key as I’ve failed to find on the vic’s person.”

  “Such key as we didn’t find either, nor did Crime Scene. According to the receptionist, she had the key to every unit in the building on her ring, along with keys to the administrative, storage, maintenance, and function rooms. This Back Bay Modern Living was handling every aspect of the Charlesgate on behalf of some mystery owner, of whom we know not thing one at this point. Now, it’s always possible that some of the residents have changed their locks since they took occupancy, but you gotta assume the perp had access to the majority of the building and had many hours to find whatever it was he may have been looking for.”

  Coleman held Rachel’s lifeless gaze as he fished two small pieces of folded cardboard from her inside jacket pocket and slipped them into his own. This was something different, for sure. It beat chasing down leads on dead drug dealers in the Dot projects anyway. “Officer…”

  “Billings.”

  “Officer Billings. I assume you asked for a comprehensive list of this distinguished old building’s occupants?”

  “You’ll have it in your email when you get back to the station tonight.”

  Coleman stood and cracked his knuckles. He walked to the window and took in the steady flow of pedestrian traffic out of Kenmore Station, past the ticket scalpers and program hawkers toward Brookline Ave. He knew he’d have a full report from Crime Scene waiting on his desk when he got back to the office. Any fibers, fingerprints, or fluids found on the premises or the vic would be accounted for. The ME would do a more thorough search of O’Brien’s intimate areas, but Coleman was guessing that would turn up squadoosh. “Y’know, used to be a homicide detective actually had shit to do when he got to a crime scene. But I guess I’m pretty much obsolete at this point. Except one thing it seems like you geniuses missed.”

  Coleman produced the two small pieces of folded cardboard from his inside jacket pocket. “Two tickets to the game tonight. Pretty damn good seats along the first base line. Now, she obviously wasn’t going with her fiancé, who’s out of town. So the question is, who was she going with?”

  “You think that’s relevant, boss?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s relevant: Two perfectly good tickets to tonight’s Red Sox/Yankees game, which I am going to book into evidence around 10:30 tonight. Maybe 11:30, these Sox/Yanks games always run long. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I need to call my wife and tell her to get a sitter. One thing you should know about my wife, she can’t stand them fucking Yankees.”

  JUNE 11, 1946

  Jake Devlin, his younger brother Shane, and their cousin Pat were on the third night of a booze-soaked bender. There would not be a fourth. This night found them at the Crawford House in Scollay Square, ignoring a comedy duo performing a hackneyed routine on stage. As usual, Jake was the closest thing to a voice of reason among the three.

  “Let’s call it a night, whaddaya say?”

  Pat never called it a night until well into the morning and wasn’t about to start now. “Jaybird, we ain’t leaving until the girls come on, you kiddin’ me? I don’t know about you, but I didn’t come here to see no comedy show. Besides, I heard Albert and Costellich do this one on the radio. The guy playing first base, his name is Who. That’s the whole gag.”

  “Yeah, lighten up, Jake,” said Shane, taking a sip from his drink. “We’re a long way from the Purple Shamrock, am I right?”

  The Purple Shamrock was a now-defunct social club in the Winter Hill neighborhood of Somerville where the three had grown up together. As kids they’d earned candy and comicbook money running errands for the broken-nosed toughs who never left the Shamrock. They came to be known as the Little Rascals, and the crew had assigned them each a name straight out of Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. Jake was Spanky, Pat was Alfalfa, and Shane, who’d been a chubby kid, was Porky.

  Things had changed. If Jake was the brains and Pat was the mouth, Shane was definitely the balls. It had been Shane’s idea to hit Dave T’s poker game. Jake had put the plan together. And Pat had blabbed about it at the Red Room two nights earlier. Not in so many words, but close enough to mean big trouble was coming their way sooner than later.

  Jake allowed the ghost of a smile. “Yeah. Long way from the Shamrock. But third night in a row on the town…kind of attracting attention, no?”

  “We been careful,” said Pat. “Moving around, different parts of town. Come on, who you know comes down to Scollay Square anymore? Especially this place? It’s for sailors on shore leave, not guys like us.”

  The Crawford House was a popular burlesque theater attached to an upscale hotel at the corner of Court and Brattle. A bottle of beer cost about five times as much as it did at the joints the Little Rascals frequented, but then again, those places didn’t offer the spectacle of Sally Keith twirling her tassels. After the fat guy and the slightly-less-fat guy onstage finally got to the part about the shortstop I Don’t Give a Damn, the crowd went crazy in anticipation of the Tassel Queen’s first show of the evening.

  “Here we go,” said Pat. “Pay attention, Jaybird, you might see something you never seen before.”

  “I seen shit you wouldn’t believe.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I know.”

  Jake had been the only one of the three to serve his country during World War II. He’d concluded his stint in the Pacific theater by spending six months as a prisoner of war, including seventeen days packed into the suffocating hold of the Arisan Maru, a Japanese hell ship. On October 24, 1944, that ship was sunk by Allied forces who had no idea it held over 1,700 American POWs. All but nine of them died. Jake came home with a medal and a hollowed-out look in his eyes. Shane and Pat had both been classified 4-F, Pat because of a hole in his eardrum and Shane thanks to the impressive criminal record he’d amassed as a teenager.

  A few weeks after his discharge, Jake paid his first visit to the sixth floor of the Charlesgate, where he met a jaded, sloe-eyed prostitute who called herself Violet and styled herself after Veronica Lake. Over the next few months, he would pay as many visits to Violet as his savings and occasional odd-job earnings would allow. She thought he was falling in love with her, but love wasn’t really part of Jake’s emotional palette anymore.

  Violet liked to talk afterward, and one night she told Jake all about the poker game held once a week on the eighth floor. Jake happened to mention it to Shane over drinks one night and Shane’s eyes lit up. He’d heard about Dave T’s exclusive poker game before, but never knew any details about it until now. He wanted to take it down.

  “You got a criminal mind, brother,” Jake had told him.

  “What do you want to do, mow these guys’ lawns for the rest of your life? This is
our chance to make a score and a name.”

  So Jake talked to Violet. He found out when the next poker game would be held. He found out where the players’ cash was stashed during the game, something Violet had discovered while delivering drinks and sandwiches one night at her pimp Jimmy Dryden’s behest. She agreed to leave a window cracked open on the first floor, on the Marlboro Street side of the building. They could go up the back stairway, avoiding the muscle stationed in the lobby. She agreed to do this in exchange for $300, which Jake now owed her.

  “Can I get you gentlemen another round?”

  Jake turned to the waiter standing patiently behind him and was about to decline when Pat spoke up, twirling his index finger. “Yeah, drinks all around.” The waiter nodded and stepped away.

  “Come on, Jake,” said Pat. “Lighten up. The show’s just starting. Look, here she comes.” The band struck up a sleazy grind as Sally Keith took the stage to whoops and catcalls. She winked over her shoulder, shaking her ample ass to the beat.

  “There ya go, Jaybird! You seen anything like that in the Philippines? I bet them mama-sans didn’t shake it like that.”

  “Shut up, Pat,” said Shane. “You know he doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “He don’t like to talk about anything! It’s over a year he’s been back and he still don’t remember how to have fun.”

  “I’m sitting right here,” said Jake. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not. Maybe I don’t talk enough for your liking, but you talk way too much for mine.”

  “This again? Look, I’m telling you. There’s no point in knocking over a game like that—”

  “Keep it down.”

  “I mean, there’s no point in doing what we did if no one knows we did it.”

  “There’s the money. Which we’re burning through in record time.”

  “But it’s a means to an end.”

  “It’s one thing if they think we did it. If there’s strong suspicion but no proof. You going around blabbing it everywhere, it’s like you’re shoving it in their faces. Nobody likes that, these guys especially.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks. With great effort, Pat managed to hold his tongue until he’d set them down and walked away.

  “No offense, Jake, but don’t talk to me like you know this world better than I do. While you were over there, and God bless you for that, I was out on these streets and in these barrooms. I know these people and how they operate.”

  “And I know ’em better than either of you,” said Shane. “So why don’t you both shut the fuck up and enjoy the show.”

  The Little Rascals stayed for the second show and the third, but still couldn’t figure out how Sally Keith got the right tassel spinning one way and the left one twirling in the completely opposite direction. “Muscle control,” Pat theorized, but that seemed both self-evident and inadequate as an explanation. Shortly after one in the morning, they stumbled out to Brattle Street heading for Shane’s car parked in Pi Alley. A light drizzle had begun to fall.

  “Fun is fun, boys,” said Jake as they rounded the corner into the alley. “But fun is done. It’s time to lay low for a while.”

  “A little late for that, fellas.”

  The voice came from behind them. They spun around, unsteady, reaching for their pieces.

  “Nuh-uh. Hands where I can see ’em. My friends here have a pretty good bead on your heads.”

  Dave T cocked the Colt .45 he held at eye level. He was flanked by two of the Casey cousins from Pawtucket, their weapons of choice already drawn and aimed. He could have called anyone. There was no one in town who wouldn’t back his play against the guys who took down his game. But Dave T preferred to work with out-of-town talent in times like these, and the Caseys brought an extra charge with them thanks to their recent activities in Middleboro. Word got around. Dave T believed the odds should always be stacked in favor of the house.

  “Set your guns down, real slow. My friends here are gonna collect ’em, and then we’re all gonna take a ride,” he said. “I think you’ll recognize the place.”

  ***

  The place was the Charlesgate, specifically the eighth floor, invisible from the street, home of Dave T’s weekly game. The Caseys marched the Little Rascals inside and invited them to be seated at the poker table.

  “Okay, you guys can wait outside,” said Dave T. “I can take it from here.”

  The Caseys did so, leaving Dave T and his Colt .45 alone with the Little Rascals.

  “So. Spanky. Alfalfa. Porky. You comfortable?”

  The Little Rascals kept their mouths shut, but Shane visibly reddened.

  “Oh, you don’t like those names? Especially you, Porky. You were a fat kid, but you ain’t fat no more. And you, Spanky. Did your part against the Axis powers. Came home expecting a hero’s welcome. Except on Winter Hill, you were still just a little rascal. Am I right?”

  “Sigmund fuckin’ Fraud over here,” said Shane. Dave T whacked him across the mouth with the butt of his Colt.

  “But you don’t wanna be the Little Rascals no more. You want to make a big name for yourselves. So what better way than to knock over my card game? I mean, that was the idea, right?”

  Shane said nothing. Jake said nothing. But that wasn’t Pat’s m.o. and Dave T knew it. “You gotta admit, we proved ourselves. Am I wrong? We stepped up like men.”

  “Yeah, you stepped up. And on some level, I do admire that. I could use some guys like you on a thing I got coming up. Only one problem. Actually two problems, but we can solve ’em both at the same time. The first problem is, you guys took down my game. And I can’t let that slide. I can’t be seen to let that slide.”

  Jake saw his moment. “We can make this work,” he said. “We can make this work for all of us.”

  “How so?”

  “We’ll pay you back. We’ll pay you back with interest. And this thing you got coming up, whatever it is, we’ll help you out. Gratis.”

  Dave T scratched his nose with the barrel of the Colt. “That’s a start. But like I said, I got two problems. And the second one is, I only need two more guys on this job. See, I had two guys, but they fucked up. One’s dead, the other’s in the hospital. Now I could use the Casey cousins, you know, the two gentlemen standing outside this door. But I don’t necessarily like them for this type of work. You guys, on the other hand, I’ve seen what you can do under pressure. I think you can handle it.”

  “You know it,” said Pat. “Whatever it is, we can handle it. This could be the start of a beautiful thing, am I right?”

  “Hold your horses. We’ve still got two problems to solve. One, people gotta see I took action against you guys. And two, there’s one too many of you. So here’s what’s gonna happen. One of you is gonna die. Right now. I’m gonna shoot someone in the head and I don’t care which one of you it is. So you decide amongst yourselves. I’ll give you two minutes to talk it over. Then you give me a name, or else I shoot all three of you and take my chances with the Caseys. Your two minutes starts right now.”

  OCTOBER 3, 1986

  The office of the Emerson College newspaper, the Berkeley Beacon, was not coincidentally located at the corner of Berkeley and Beacon streets. The newspaper shared the third floor with the alumni magazine, the poetry journal, and other publications that came and went (such as the short-lived humor monthly Gizzard). The editor’s cramped office was tucked away in the southwest corner, with a window overlooking Beacon Street. The sounds of rush-hour traffic wafted up as I moved a stack of last week’s issue from the chair in front of Mighty Rob McKim’s desk and took a seat.

  “What’s up, boss?” Although a sophomore, I’d just joined the Berkeley Beacon staff at the beginning of the semester. I was on my third major at Emerson: I’d started in television, switched to radio in the second semester of my freshman year, and now I was pursuing a degree in print journalism. Essentially, I was moving backward in time. By next semester, I’d be majoring in cave painting.

 
Mighty Rob leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on the desk. I didn’t know why everyone called him Mighty Rob, but I was the new guy and figured all would become clear eventually.

  “I liked your piece on the volleyball player there, Carol Knickerbocker.”

  “Crystal Nicodemus.” Nicodemus was the leading scorer on the Emerson women’s volleyball team, as well as the team’s emotional leader. She also happened to be deaf. The story practically wrote itself.

  “Right. Good piece. Concise.”

  “That’s what I was going for.”

  “And the game stories have all been fine. I mean, what the fuck, it’s not like there’s a whole lot of drama to be mined from a GNAC basketball game, am I right? Especially here.”

  Emerson had been soundly defeated in all four games to start the season, never by fewer than twenty-five points.

  “They were pretty competitive in the first period on Wednesday,” I said.

  Mighty Rob lifted his left asscheek and offered a long, sonorous fart in response.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can’t argue with that.”

  Rob waved his hand in front of his nose, then straightened up in his chair and fixed me with an earnest gaze. “Look. The sports beat on this paper has always been the bottom of the totem pole. Now, I know why you volunteered for it, so we might as well get this out of the way right now. We’re not getting a press credential for the Red Sox postseason. And even if we were, there’s no way in hell you’d get it. I’ve been busting my hump here for three years, and you’d better believe I’d be all over that like stink on rice if I thought it was a possibility. So just take a minute, come to terms with that, and let’s move on.” I shrugged. I figured a press pass for the playoffs was a long shot, but what the hell. It would have been worth sitting through all those volleyball games to be in Fenway Park when the Red Sox finally won the World Series for the first time in sixty-eight years. “Well, the Lions are playing Emmanuel on Sunday afternoon…”