Cover Story

by Gerry Boyle

  “I know what it means,” I said.

  “And do you have a vehicle here at the hotel?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could we take a look at it?”

  “Butch was never even near it. But be my guest. It’s a Toyota truck with a wooden bed and Maine plates.”

  They looked at me with a hint of new suspicion.

  “So where to?” I said.

  “We could go to Midtown South, but there’s no privacy there, and the brass, they want this one done by the book, and then some.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Could we ask you to come to police headquarters downtown, Mr. McMorrow?” Ramirez said. “That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.”

  “No, fine,” I said. “Whatever you need. Should I take my bag? Because checkout is at eleven, and—”

  “You can leave it,” Ramirez said. “They aren’t gonna be cleaning this room, or renting it. Not for a while.”

  I looked at her for a moment before I got it.

  “But you will?”

  “We may want to have a look around. If you don’t mind.”

  “You mean, you need my permission?”

  “No,” Ramirez said.

  So down the hall we went, me and Donatelli first, Ramirez bringing up the rear. Donatelli asked me where in Maine I lived, and I told him. He said he’d never heard of Prosperity or Waldo County or Belfast, but he had been to Portland once, to visit a buddy from school who had joined the Portland PD.

  “Kinda quiet,” he said. “But this musta been fifteen years ago.”

  “Has gangs and heroin now,” I said.

  “No kidding?” Donatelli said. “Well, I guess that’s progress.”

  We rode in silence in the elevator, the three of us and an expensively dressed couple who eyed Donatelli’s gun and whispered to one another in French. Ramirez rubbed her forehead wearily, closed her eyes and opened them. Donatelli was whistling silently to himself.

  And then the doors opened. The women behind the registration desk, the friendly French-speaking women, stared at me. The concierge, a smiling, professionally gracious man, stood stone-faced, his arms held out to keep guests out of our path.

  The knot of us moved toward the 57th Street doors, and I could see them through the amber glass.

  TV crews, some with cameras pointed, some kneeling, still assembling equipment. We started for the revolving door but a doorman held the swinging door to the right open.

  “Would you like something to cover your face?” Ramirez asked.

  “Why?” I said, as we swept toward the door.

  And then we were out, and the heat of the morning hit me and then a swarm of cameras, giant eyes, microphones waving like batons, all of them jostling, shoving, shouting.

  “Can you tell us why he did it?”

  “Get back now, guys.”

  “How long had he planned this?”

  “Did you have any indication that something was going to happen?”

  “Out of the way, now. Move.”

  “Hey, asshole, look over here.”

  “Hey, Jack.”

  “This way, Jack. Over here.”

  “I’m Kate Moynihan. Call me at the Post. Here’s a card.”

  “Detective, is Mr. McMorrow in custody?”

  “Why’d he do it? Was it revenge?”

  “Is he under arrest?”

  “How long have you known Casey?”

  “You help your friend kill the mayor, you bastard? Hey, you.”

  And then there was a car, it was white, and Donatelli held the door for me, and a camera bumped my forehead and I shoved it back, and the cameraman said, “Fuck off!” and I started to shove him, too, but the cops moved me toward the car. Hands held my shoulders, and I stooped and got in. Ramirez got behind the wheel and Donatelli sat in front beside her. The cameras knocked against the glass, the faces pressed close, all of them baying, like hounds under a treed raccoon.

  “Mr. McMorrow, look over here . . . Hey, McMorrow, look at this.”

  And they followed, running alongside the unmarked car as it moved down the street. The shouts were muted, and then they faded and we were passing Carnegie Hall.

  “They’re like bugs, swarming all over you,” Donatelli said. “You gotta keep wiping ’em off.”

  At One Police Plaza, flags were at half-mast. I could see them out the window of the interview room, where I sat at a big table and sipped orange juice from a can. The table top was veneer. One window in the wall was gray and one-way. There was a small wooden plaque that said NYPD 1845–1975. It was painted blue and looked cheesy.

  I told my story to Ramirez and Donatelli, an older detective sergeant named Donovan, and a red-faced broken-nosed boxer of a guy who came in late and wasn’t introduced. Ramirez just said he worked for the Manhattan DA, whom I knew to be a buddy of Fiore’s named Ralph Baldwin.

  The cops didn’t talk to the Boxer. He didn’t talk to them.

  There were a couple of tape recorders on the table as I talked. I started at the beginning, in Maine, a lifetime ago, and ended at the end, back at the hotel. They looked at me most of the time, once in a while at each other. For the third time, Ramirez asked me to go over exactly what Butch had said about the mayor. I did.

  “And he was angry at Fiore?”

  “He wasn’t happy with him.”

  “Did he make any reference to the mayor’s whereabouts?”

  “No.”

  “But his theory centered around the mayor hiding his critics?”

  “No, more like there being a lot of people who felt they’d been shafted by Fiore. And some sort of manipulation of the system. ‘A pattern of abuse,’ he called it.”

  “And Mayor Fiore was at the center of this?”

  I considered the question.

  “Yes.”

  It sounded damning. It was.

  And then we talked about Butch’s demeanor. His need for a bathroom, whether he had seemed to be feeling ill anytime earlier in the night. They asked if Butch mentioned the Algonquin, and I said no. They asked if he was carrying a weapon, to my knowledge. I said no, not that I could see. They asked if he had threatened the mayor that night, and I said no, just called him names. They asked if he’d threatened the mayor ever, and I said no, not that I’d ever heard. They asked if I felt an obligation to protect Butch Casey, and I said no, but he was my friend.

  They looked at me skeptically. The red lights on the tape recorders flickered like votive candles. It had been more than two hours, and I figured we were done, but I waited for them to say so. Donatelli started to get up, but then there was another question.

  “This conspiracy stuff,” the Boxer said. “Did he bring you anything? Papers? Documents? Diaries? Anything that might have said something about what he was thinking?”

  It was the first time the Boxer had spoken.

  “No,” I said. “But he said he had some stuff he wanted to show me.”

  “But he didn’t?”

  “No, he didn’t bring it to the bar.”

  “Didn’t send stuff to Maine?”

  I shook my head.

  “So you’ve never seen any of this supposed material Casey was talking about?”

  “No,” I said.

  “And you don’t know where it might be located?”

  “No idea,” I said.

  “He ever mention a locker? A post office box? House in the country?”

  I shook my head.

  He stared at me as though he could bore through my skull and hear my thoughts.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” I said. “I just can’t help you. If I could, I would.”

  “I’m sure,” the Boxer said, in a tone so flat it couldn’t be read at all.

  9

  Standing in the foyer of police headquarters, Ramirez and Donatelli offered me a ride back to the hotel. I said no, that if they’d drop me, I’d walk a while and clear my head. They said this was just the initial interview, and asked where they could reac
h me.

  “Dump Road, Prosperity, Maine.”

  “Better off in Manhattan,” Donatelli said. “ ’Cause you aren’t gonna be doing any hiding in Maine, Jack. Your little town up there in the woods just got put on the map.”

  I looked out at the mall, where TV reporters were doing spots, their backs to us. Reporters and photographers were standing and waiting.

  For the cops. For the DA. For me.

  I was the guy who gave James Earl Ray a ride to the motel. I was the guy who went drinking with his buddy Lee Harvey Oswald. I didn’t know if Butch was guilty or innocent, but I knew what he was supposed to have done. And it had rubbed off on me and on everyone around me. They’d come to Prosperity. They’d come to Portland. They’d come after Roxanne and Clair. They’d be all over the Times.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “Hey,” Donatelli said, “that’s the understatement of the year.”

  So we went out the back door of the police garage, this time in a blue Crown Victoria. I slumped in the backseat, and sat up on Canal Street. I asked them to pull over and they did, into an alley, with trash cans on one side and stacks of wooden vegetable crates on the other. Both cops gave me their cards with their pager numbers scrawled on the back.

  “We’ll be in touch,” Ramirez said.

  “Likewise,” I said, “I’m sure.”

  “How ’bout we buy you a meal, give you a ride back to the Meridien,” Donatelli said. “We’ll set up another place for you to stay.”

  “I like it there. The service is impeccable.”

  “It’s gonna be surrounded, I’m telling you.”

  “I’ll be okay.”

  “Watch yourself,” he said.

  “And if I don’t, you’ll do it for me?”

  They didn’t answer. I walked.

  It was 12:35, and the sidewalks were packed. The throng absorbed me, and I walked down Canal, past tables of silk scarves, hats, postcards, CDs. Glancing behind me, I saw the Ford double-parked, the cops watching and waiting. I turned away and kept walking, then stopped.

  Tucked behind the tables, between a restaurant and a Chinese grocery, was a place that sold electronics. It was long and narrow as an alley, but inside I could see the aisle was full. I went to the door and eased my way in, along the wall of CD players, boom boxes, cellular phones, all ignored.

  The crowd was facing a television. Even the clerk had come around the counter to watch.

  It was Dan Rather again. This time he was outside the Algonquin, gazing at the camera, his expression thin-lipped and grim. The hotel looked almost festive, festooned with more police tape.

  “Again,” Dan intoned, “CBS News has learned of new developments in the murder of Johnny Fiore, the beloved mayor of New York, who, single-handedly, his supporters say, took this city from the criminal elements that had plagued it, and handed it back to the law-abiding residents. As he so often put it, ‘the real New Yorkers.’”

  The crowd was silent. The woman in front of me shook her head and listened.

  “As you probably know by now, Mayor Fiore, in one of history’s more astounding ironies, has become a crime victim himself.”

  Rather turned and held his arm out toward the facade of the Algonquin. The camera zoomed in on a somber cop, then back to Rather.

  “To cap this historic and tragic and so very discouraging story, the mayor of New York City was killed here sometime around midnight last night, stabbed to death in the restroom of this famous New York landmark, authorities say. One man is in custody, former New York City Police Detective Patrick ‘Butch’ Casey. Casey was arrested at his Greenwich Village apartment this morning.”

  “They oughta just kill him,” a man murmured.

  “But now CBS News has learned the identity of a second man also questioned today. This man—”

  An inset showed a crowd, a cop, and then there I was.

  Donatelli was beside me.

  I looked into the camera, scowled, then lunged.

  In the store, the crowd gave a perceptible jerk. Rather looked down at a notebook.

  “—was picked up by police at a Midtown hotel. Sources have identified the second man as Jack McMorrow, a former reporter for the New York Times. We’re still working on this startling new angle, but CBS News has learned that McMorrow no longer works for the Times, that he left the newspaper after a dispute with management there several years ago.”

  “Kill him, too,” the same man said.

  “Kill ’em both,” someone else said.

  They ran the clip again, and there I was. Walking, scowling, lunging.

  “He looks like a killer,” the first man said. “You see that scar?”

  “And the eyes,” a woman said. “You can tell by the eyes.”

  “Now, we continue to work to bring you more information about both men. Back to you, Jane.”

  The crowd fell back. People started to leave the store.

  I turned toward the CD players and froze.

  “I’ve felt sick all day,” a woman said behind me.

  “Half the people in my office went home.”

  “That’s because it’s the city, right?” another woman said. “City employees must be just devastated.”

  “Oh, they are. Big-time.”

  I waited. My chest felt tight and I was sweating, the perspiration running down my temples.

  “You want to buy?” a man said behind me.

  I turned away from him. As I shook my head, I kept it turned and eased my way toward the door.

  “Two of them,” a man behind me was saying. “I didn’t think one guy could pull that off himself.”

  “No way,” another man said. “They got security.”

  “He was too quick to go to the crowds,” a woman said, in Chinese-accented English. “He walk with the people and that’s not good.”

  I was outside, my head down.

  “Got him right on the pot,” I heard the man say.

  “That’s low.”

  “Death penalty’s too good for these guys.”

  “Oughta let ’em loose, see how long they last,” the second man said.

  I was on the sidewalk again, the people passing by me on both sides. I ran my hand across my forehead, let it linger in front of my face.

  A woman walked toward me and our eyes met. I turned away, toward a shop full of souvenirs. An old woman was sitting on a metal chair toward the rear of the store, watching a television. She said something in Chinese and a boy hurried in from the sidewalk. She pointed at the screen. The boy, in baggy shorts and big sneakers, stared at the TV.

  The woman spoke in Chinese again and the boy replied in Chinese. The woman nodded and the boy turned back toward me. I picked up a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses. He was behind me.

  “Those are ten bucks,” he said.

  I nodded, still turned from him, and thumbed a stack of T-shirts. I picked a gray one that said, “The Big Apple” on the left breast and had a softball-size apple with a bite out of it on the right.

  “That’s sixteen, with tax,” the boy said.

  I moved to the caps, grabbed a blue one with a red Statue of Liberty on the front.

  “Fifteen, but I give it to you for eight. On sale, today only.”

  “Fine.”

  Looking away, I took bills from my pocket and handed the boy two twenties and a five. He counted off the change quickly.

  “You want a bag?”

  “That’s okay.”

  “How do you like those Yanks?” the boy said mechanically. “This is the year.”

  “Right,” I said, and I started for the door, head down.

  “It’s two now,” the boy said behind me. “They got another guy.”

  I looked up and down the street, spotted the Crown Victoria. In front of a vegetable stand, I eyed the cabbages, picked up the peppers, put on my hat and glasses. As I stepped slowly along, I readied the shirt, rolling it up to the neck. It went on in three movements, first the neck, then the two arms.
This still was New York; nobody cared.

  Hand shading my eyes, I watched the traffic, spotted the police car. Would they follow me in the subway? Follow my cab? Was I really a suspect, or was the media making a giant leap?

  Picked up, Dan Rather had said. True, but I hadn’t been in custody. I was being a good citizen, doing my duty by helping the police. But did they believe me? The people on the streets obviously didn’t. To them I was tried and convicted, only the sentence left to be determined. That depended, I supposed, on whether I was the mastermind and Butch was the functionary, or the other way around.

  I could hear the editors, the TV producers.

  Find out who these guys are. Who is this cop? How long has he been out? Is he a nut? What makes him tick? What made him explode?

  And who’s this McMorrow? God, that name sounds familiar. Why did he leave the Times? Where did he go? This guy has a life, and I want it on page one of this paper tomorrow. Find out where this guy is from and go there. I don’t care if it’s in Katmandu.

  Or Prosperity, Maine.

  10

  My phone was listed, under Jack McMorrow. All they had to do was call all the Jack McMorrows on the Internet directories. Call until something tipped them off to the right Jack McMorrow, the one on the television. Or maybe the cops would just tell them. Maybe they already had.

  I went to a pay phone and dug in my pocket for change. The booth was papered with phone-sex flyers, and the women leered lewdly as I dialed and the phone rang in Prosperity. I punched in the answering-machine code. It clicked, hissed, and the robot voice said, “You have nineteen new messages.”

  A record. Not good.

  I hit the numbers and they began, in the order in which they were received.

  “Jack. Clair. Got a deal for you, buddy, assuming you want to get off your butt, which I know is a big leap. Anyway, I got an in on some stumpage over in Knox. Not bad terrain, and they want the hardwood taken out by someone with a delicate touch. I might take it, and I’m gonna need somebody to get me coffee. Also I got wind of a good deal on a Stihl 066. Nice saw. So stop by when you get back to Portland, or stop by when you get home. Hope you didn’t get corrupted in the big city.”