Charlesgate Confidential

by Scott Von Doviak

“Obviously, I never shared that piece of information with my court-appointed counsel. Which didn’t help my case any.”

  “So this is your great story? I mean, I’d love to hear it, I really would, but…I don’t see what this has to do with my story. Charlesgate.”

  “We’ll get to that. First you’re gonna buy me lunch. Then we’re gonna go back to that bar from the other day, the Fallout Shelter, and we’re gonna watch the Sox game and you’re gonna buy the beer. And I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “Okay, first of all, the Sox are finished. Did you see the game last night? The way the Angels came back? It’s over. Clemens can’t go again in the series. The bullpen is toast. You can stick a fork in ’em.”

  “Let me tell you something, kid. There is a baseball game this afternoon and the Red Sox are playing in it. It may be the last game they play this year. It may be the last game I ever see. I got some health issues, I don’t want to get into it. Point is, I ain’t dead yet and neither are the Red Sox. So I’m watching that game this afternoon, win or lose. I’ve been waiting my whole life to see these sonsabitches win the World Series. So as long as they still have a chance, I’ll be cheering ’em on.”

  “Fair enough. But I’m telling you. They’re done.”

  ***

  Shane Devlin wanted a steak, but I talked him down to splitting a pepperoni pie at Pizza Pad. I tried to get him talking, but he put me off while he enjoyed his slices. The most I could get out of him was that the pizza was better than the variety served in the prison cafeteria.

  At four o’clock we were seated at the bar in the Fallout Shelter in time for the first pitch of ALCS Game 5. On my way in the door, I’d caught a glimpse of Murtaugh and Rodney sharing a booth. They spotted me too, and Murtaugh started to wave me over, but I drew a line across my throat. I had a lot invested now, and the last thing I wanted to do was spook my new friend.

  I ordered a couple of Knickerbockers. Shane took a long swig, emptying half his bottle in one go. “Ahhh. This is the life. Sitting in a bar watching the game. I missed this so much, I forgot I missed it. If I could do it all over again…well, that’s a given, right? I would have done almost everything different.”

  “No doubt.”

  “Well, go ahead, kid. You’re a reporter, right? Start asking me questions.”

  “Okay. I guess my first question is, why the hell are they still hanging those empty frames in the museum? Why don’t they just get some new paintings? Or, you know, some new old paintings. Replacements.”

  He laughed. “They can’t do it. The old lady, Isabella Stewart Gardner, she had it all in writing that nothing could ever be changed. Her collection was her collection and nobody could add to it. So really, they had no choice. Better to hang the empty frames than nothing at all.”

  “I guess. People seem to like ’em.”

  Cheers went up in the bar. Boston had taken an early lead in the top of the second.

  “See, kid? Not dead yet. Next question.”

  “Did you really rob that museum?”

  “Are you a cop?”

  “You know I’m not. You checked me out.”

  “I’m just joking, kid. Yeah, I did. Wasn’t my idea, the robbery. My brother Jake and I, we had to do it. We got into some trouble with this connected guy. Dave T he was called, but that wasn’t his real name. Anyway, he had us over a barrel and he had this big score planned. He needed two guys, expendable guys. Guys nobody would miss.”

  “And that was you and Jake?”

  “Yeah. See, this guy Dave T, he was…unaffiliated. He could work with the Italians, he could work with the Irish. Turned out he was really a Jew. Who knew? Anyway, he planned this job so no one would know about it. He knew certain people would be very pissed off if they didn’t get their cut, and if they found out he did this thing, they’d cut his fuckin’ head off. In particular this guy Marko who ran the whole North End back then. Everyone was terrified of him. So Dave T had it all planned so me and Jake would be found dead on the scene, he and his wheelman would blow town, and no one would ever see him again.”

  “But you’re sitting here, so I’m guessing it didn’t go down that way.”

  “It did not. I can give you all the details later, how the heist went down, how we got the drop on him, all that. Suffice it to say, Jake and I left Dave T dead on the scene. But what we didn’t know is that he’d already made a contingency plan. He was a smart guy, he probably thought there was about a one in a hundred chance we were gonna get the better of him. But on that off chance, he was gonna make shit-sure we didn’t get away with it. He was gonna have his revenge, even from beyond the grave.”

  The Angels got a run back in the third on a solo homer by Bob Boone. I ordered a couple more Knicks.

  “So this brings us to the bodies in the trunk?”

  “Right. We should have seen it coming. They had us park in a very specific place. South Station, overnight lot. They must have been watching when we parked, watched us walk away. The wheelman, Cahill, he was a whiz with cars. He popped the trunk and they planted the evidence. A frame job.”

  “And they just happened to have a couple dead bodies on hand?”

  “They had one. My cousin Pat. He robbed the poker game with me and Jake, and he was the scapegoat. They killed him and stashed the body somewhere. Meanwhile this guy Dave T gives us a canister of ashes, says ‘here’s your cousin out of respect.’ Knowing all the time he was gonna fuck us. Those ashes probably came straight out of his fireplace.”

  “What about the cop?”

  “Transit cop patrolling South Station, probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe they knew he’d be there. Just to double fuck us. Someone finds my cousin in a trunk, hey, he’s just some lowlife. No need to call in the cavalry. Dead cop, though, even if he’s just an MTA cop…anyway, they plant the murder weapon in the glove compartment, call in an anonymous tip, then pick us up in front of the train station as planned. This way Dave T knows even if things go bad for him, they’ll go bad for us, too. And they did go bad for him.”

  “And for you.”

  “Yeah. They caught up to me the next morning. I was home, I was trying to figure out what to do next, and the cops show up. My fingerprints were all over Jake’s car and I had a pretty extensive record. We’d dumped some clothes in the garbage at South Station when we changed into those cop uniforms. Dave T told us to do that, so he’d know where to find those clothes. Eyewitnesses put me and Jake on the scene in those clothes earlier that night. When the cops found the clothes, they were soaked in blood, matched the dead cop’s. That’s all they needed.”

  “You had no alibi.”

  “What was I gonna say? No, officer, you’ve got the wrong guy. See, I was robbing the Gardner that night.”

  “But at least robbery is a lighter charge than cop-killing.”

  “Well, remember, they had a murder at the scene of the robbery. Dave T. Not that any cop would miss him, but murder is murder. More importantly, I figured if I kept my mouth shut about the paintings, they might be waiting for me if I ever got out.”

  “They gave you the death penalty. How did you last forty years?”

  Shane stared at his beer bottle for a long moment, picking at the label. “Extenuating circumstances. I don’t really want to talk about it. Let’s just say, the authorities were given good reason to show me a little leniency.”

  In the bottom of the sixth, Bobby Grich gave the Halos a 3−2 lead with a two-run shot that bounced off Dave Henderson’s glove and over the fence.

  “There it is,” I said. “That’s how we lose this one. Hendu gets to the ball and somehow knocks it into the stands. Perfect. This is how the season ends.”

  “Lotta baseball left, kid. You gotta keep the faith.”

  “You just spent forty years in jail, you’re telling me to keep the faith?”

  “Who would know better?”

  “So you went to trial, you went to jail…what happened to your brother Jake?”
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  The old man took a long pull off his Knick. “Well…he wasn’t around for the trial. We had split up that night, and…tell you the truth, I don’t know all the facts. He disappeared. Cops beat the shit out of me trying to get his location. They really wanted him. The bodies were found in his car and the murder weapon was registered in his name. See, Dave T had confiscated our guns when he caught up to us after the poker game. Fuckin’ guy thought of everything. But I couldn’t tell the cops shit about Jake’s whereabouts. It was a mystery to me.”

  “And you don’t like mysteries.”

  “Like I said.”

  The Angels tacked on two runs in the bottom of the seventh. I spared a glance at Murtaugh and Rodney. Murtaugh mimed pointing a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. I nodded in agreement.

  “So,” I said. “Let me guess. You have reason to believe those paintings are somewhere in my dorm. That’s why you want me to get you in there.”

  “Hey, you might make a good reporter after all.”

  “And these paintings are worth some money.”

  “Kid, there’s a standard reward out there for information leading to the recovery of those paintings. It’s five million dollars.”

  The contents of my Knick bottle ended up in my lap. The bartender was kind enough to lend me a rag.

  “You okay, kid?”

  “Yeah, sure. So…five million dollars.”

  “That’s right. Now, I can’t just waltz into the Gardner with the paintings and say, ‘Here they are. Give me my five million dollars.’ They don’t give rewards to thieves, otherwise there wouldn’t be a painting left in any gallery in the world. But you, a reporter, you could do it. You could come up with some story about your research, how you figured it all out, and lead ’em right to the goods. And then after it’s all worked out, you and I split the money. I’d say eighty-twenty.”

  The eighth inning came to an end with the Red Sox trailing 5-2. They had three outs left in their season.

  “Meaning eighty for me,” I said.

  “Fuck you. I mean eighty for me.”

  “Why you?”

  “Because without me, you don’t have shit.”

  “But you’re old! You could never spend four million bucks. I’m young! Look, you get a million, I get four, I mean, that sounds reasonable, right?”

  “Shut up, kid. This game is getting good.”

  “You’re crazy. This game is fucking over.”

  There was one out in the top of the ninth. Buckner had singled, followed by a Jim Rice strikeout. A pinch runner, Dave Stapleton, stood at first. Don Baylor was at the plate. With the count full, Baylor lifted an outside fastball into the left-field bleachers. The score was 5−4.

  “Here it comes, kid. The comeback of a lifetime.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Dwight Evans was retired on a pop fly. There were now two out in the top of the ninth. Angels manager Gene Mauch pulled the starting pitcher Witt and brought in Gary Lucas to face Rich Gedman. On the first pitch, Lucas hit Gedman in the right arm, putting the tying run on first. Mauch brought in his closer, Donnie Moore.

  “I’ll make you a deal, kid. If the Red Sox lose this game, you get eighty percent. If they win, I get eighty percent.”

  Let’s be perfectly clear. At this point, I was almost positive Shane Devlin was completely full of shit. I certainly had no illusions that I’d be finding a cache of priceless artwork somewhere in my residence hall. And I sure as shit didn’t think the Red Sox were going to win the game with one out remaining in the ninth. Judge me if you must. I took the deal.

  And:

  Donnie Moore got two strikes on Dave Henderson. The Angels were one strike away from the pennant. Security workers lined the stands, bracing for the impending celebration, and the Halos’ lockers were lined with plastic in anticipation of the champagne showers to come.

  Henderson fouled off a pitch. The catcher, Boone, walked to the mound to have a word with Moore. Henderson fouled back the next pitch, prolonging the agony. Moore threw a splitfingered fastball and Henderson didn’t miss it. “To left field and deep and Downing goes back,” said announcer Al Michaels. “And it’s gone! Unbelievable! You’re looking at one for the ages here.” The Red Sox had the lead and the Fallout Shelter went apeshit. Murtaugh came flying out of nowhere to tackle me off my barstool and knock me to the floor. But the game wasn’t over yet.

  The Angels tied the score in the bottom of the ninth and had the winning run on third base with one out, but Red Sox reliever Steve Crawford induced a shallow flyout and caught a liner to end the threat. The game went to extra innings. The Red Sox got the tying run to third in the top of the tenth, but a double-play got the Angels out of trouble. The bottom of the tenth was uneventful. In the top of the eleventh, the Red Sox loaded the bases and Hendu came through again with a sacrifice fly to give Boston a 7-6 lead.

  Schiraldi set down the Angels in order in the bottom of the inning, and the Red Sox were still alive, coming home to Fenway for Game 6. The Fallout Shelter was a madhouse. I was drunk. At some point, I looked up to see Shane Devlin winking at me.

  “Hey kid,” he said. “A million bucks is still nothing to sneeze at.”

  MAY 2, 2014

  Jackie woke from a nap clinging to the ragged edge of a dream. As usual, she’d found a hidden passageway in her bedroom, a looping corridor that wound its way through Charlesgate past. She recognized no one. They were young, she was not, and they stared as she walked past, averting her eyes and murmuring apologetically. Now she was in the back staircase, guitar music echoing up from below. She pushed through a doorway, hoping to find herself out on the street, but instead she was in the ballroom. A shadow moved across the far wall and the fear was back, as if it had never left, as if that night had never ended…

  But now she was on the couch and light was streaming in the windows and the intercom was buzzing. She shook off the dream and answered it.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s Detective Coleman. Mind if I come up?”

  She buzzed him in through the front entrance and waited at her open door for him to arrive.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said. “I would have taken a shower.”

  “This ain’t a booty call,” he said. “Official business.”

  She led him inside and he once again marveled at the spare, modern elegance of her condo. Gleaming hardwood floors and granite countertops, a spacious living room with cozy furniture tucked into its corners, a TV the size of a highway billboard, and probably a golden shitter for all he knew.

  “Butler have the night off?”

  “I told you I never could have afforded this place on my own. My husband wanted it.”

  “And you didn’t object.”

  “Would you?”

  “Hell, naw.” He took the two steps up to the glass doors leading to the rooftop patio.

  “Should we sit outside? It’s finally May. Summer is almost here.”

  “That’ll work.”

  “I’ll get a couple of beers.”

  “Official business, I told you.”

  “So that’s a yes?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Coleman slid open the door and stepped out into the early evening air. It still had the crispness of spring, without the bite. He pulled up a chair at the patio table and took in the view of the setting sun reflected in the Prudential building. He was a long way from the Dorchester projects. Hell, he was a long way from the cookie-cutter suburbia of Medford.

  Jackie brought out two ice cold bottles of Harpoon Ale and joined him at the table. They clinked bottles.

  “I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight?” Coleman said.

  “So what’s the official business?”

  “Got a lead on our murder here. And I need to ask you a couple questions.”

  “Should I call my lawyer?”

  “I don’t think so. But then, I would say that, wouldn’t I?”

  “I’ll take my chances.”
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br />   “Do you know a Charles White?”

  “Sure. He works in the Emerson alumni office. He was helping me set up this reunion.”

  “Was?”

  “Well, he hasn’t returned my calls in a few days.”

  “That’s probably because he’s no longer with the Emerson alumni office.”

  “Huh. And…how do you know this?”

  “I had a meeting yesterday with an art detective. Digging into the Gardner robbery again. And he met with this White about it, trying to get in touch with your friend Donnelly.”

  “What? Why does this Gardner thing keep coming up all of a sudden?”

  “Well, the way this art detective Woodward, tells it, a documentary filmmaker got in touch with him about the Gardner heist. She’s an Emerson grad herself, and her idol is your pal Tommy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, so it’s like a chain reaction. She contacts this Woodward and in the course of trying to track down Donnelly, he meets with White. White can’t help him, but he’s really intrigued by the five-million-dollar reward.”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Exactly. So since White knows you’re trying to lure Donnelly back for your reunion, he figures you’ve got his contact information.”

  “And?”

  “And you tell me.”

  “Wait. You don’t seriously think Charles White killed that realtor…what? To get the keys to my apartment? Just to find Tommy’s email address?”

  “Well, let’s break it down. You live alone.”

  “You know I do.”

  “So most people who live alone, in my experience, do not bother to password protect their personal computers.”

  “Okay.”

  “So the laptop that was stolen…was it password protected?”

  “It was not.”

  “So if someone else, say this guy White, was to open your browser, he’d have access to your email. And he’d be able to email other people as you.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah. He could have emailed your friend pretending to be you.”

  “It wouldn’t have done him any good. I didn’t have a working email address for Tommy until recently. The one that would have been in my contacts, he doesn’t use anymore.”