Cover Story

by Gerry Boyle

  I braced myself with my feet against the seat. He twisted his foot but I had it pinned. The motor was whining, the van shaking and the others screaming now, and then the van was turning, the tires starting to squeal, louder and louder and then no squeal at all.

  And it was turning over and there was an explosion near my head and then a crash and everything was whirling and whipping, tearing and grinding and shouting and screaming, and something was on my legs.

  The van was still. I couldn’t move.

  43

  “I thought I was gonna talk to the newspaper,” Drague said, sitting in the back of Donatelli’s unmarked car, next to the wreck, the ambulances, the radio cars. Children ringed the scene, eyes bright, nerve ends electrified by sirens, lights, guns, and blood.

  “You will,” I said. “I called them. They’re on their way.”

  They’d pulled me free after an eternity, using a tool that pried the dashboard off my shoulder. The Boxer was gone by then, taken to the hospital for treatment of a few broken bones. A cop rode with him in the ambulance. Another rode with the bolt-cutter guy, who had been thrown from the wreck. They called it massive head injuries. They didn’t think he’d live.

  But I was okay. The young guy, the one on the phone, was okay, too.

  The Boxer had told the radio-car cops that his name was Dannigan and he was a police officer, but he didn’t have ID. The guns that had rattled around inside the van had burned-off numbers, and so did the Ruger nine millimeter they found stuck in the Boxer’s belt.

  I said Dannigan and the others were taking us to be executed. And yes, I knew Dannigan was an investigator with the office of the Manhattan district attorney.

  The radio cops had looked at each other.

  “What a cluster,” one of them said.

  I asked them to call Donatelli and Ramirez, and they did.

  And I learned later that in the back of Donatelli’s car, right there in the lot, Drague started talking, pouring the story out as fast as he could, because after all, I had said it was his insurance, his ticket to the big time. He talked about the payments, the hunt for the rich girl, the words gushing out like there was a bilge pump inside him. Ramirez and Donatelli listened, and then Donatelli got out of the car and walked to the radio car where I was telling a Bronx precinct detective the story for the third time.

  “He says he’s gonna make Sammy the Bull look like a fifty-dollar snitch,” Donatelli said to me. “You think he’s for real?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It all adds up.”

  It was another day turned into a blur of endless questions and cold, bad coffee. We finally emerged in the late afternoon at police headquarters. Donatelli said he’d been interrogating the young guy, who turned out to be from Newark and was wanted on a warrant out of Las Vegas, where he’d shot a man in the knee while working as an enforcer for a loan shark.

  This time, he said, he’d been hired by the Boxer to shut somebody up. The Boxer’s lawyer had arrived and told him not to say another word.

  And then, after one last question, glances around the table, it was over. When I left police headquarters, Donatelli and Ramirez walked me down to the foyer. We were talked out, exhausted. Donatelli shook my hand, and said he’d like to bring his wife and boys to Maine sometime, maybe see a moose. I told him to save my number. Ramirez shook my hand, too, her grip more firm than her partner’s. She said she wouldn’t apologize because it was her job to be skeptical.

  “But I’m glad I was wrong,” Ramirez said.

  “Jeez,” Donatelli said. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Let me get that on tape.”

  As we stood there, we heard a rush of voices behind us. It was George Drague being escorted out the front door by two detectives, past a couple of camera crews and a print photographer. Drague waved the cameras off as he was escorted to the Lincoln, the door of which was held open by Gerard, the Times security guard. D. Robert Sanders got out and helped Drague in.

  A very bad man, he was—for that day, maybe for a few more—worth his weight in gold.

  44

  I left the police station and walked through the park, where a woman was feeding pigeons, a guy in a suit was working at a laptop, and tourists were admiring historic City Hall.

  I walked past them and started up the steps.

  The detective inside the door was talking to a pretty woman in a suit. He distractedly asked me where I was from. Turning away from him, I said Maine, but probably could have said Mars. What’s to guard in the henhouse when the chickens have been killed?

  He looked at me for a moment, then ran a metal detector up and down and I was in. I glanced down the hall, past the graceful gates that barred the public from what had been Johnny Fiore’s offices. There was a woman behind a counter, and another security guard, but they looked more somber than watchful.

  I walked past the press office, saw the reporters at their computers, continued on to the pay phone in the alcove, where it always had been. There was a city directory and I looked up the number and dialed.

  A young woman answered and I asked for Dave Conroy. She said he was in conference, could she take a message? I said, “Tell him Jack McMorrow called. I’ll be in the Governor’s Room, upstairs. I’ll wait.”

  So I did, in the second-floor room with the big chandeliers and the walls lined with oil paintings of people who had made their mark. John Jay. George Washington. Alexander Hamilton. All dutifully portrayed for posterity by John Trumbull.

  And then I turned and there he was.

  I was standing at the end of the room, in front of one of the marble fireplaces. There was a security guard at the far end of the room, a woman who was yawning and checking her watch. When she saw Conroy, she straightened up. When I saw him, I smiled, gave a little wave.

  He walked toward me, in his navy suit, his little tasseled shoes. He tried to appear composed but I could see it in his eyes. The wildness of panic.

  “Hello, Jack,” Conroy said, as though he still could make things right.

  “David,” I said.

  We shook hands.

  “I was looking at the luminaries,” I said. “A real who’s who, isn’t it?”

  Conroy looked around at the paintings.

  “Yes. The best and the brightest,” he said. “Some truly amazing men.”

  I looked at him.

  “This is what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

  He looked puzzled.

  “Not for you,” I said. “For Fiore. You wanted him to be the kind of person who gets his painting on the wall. You wanted him to do great things.”

  “He did,” Conroy said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “A hundred years from now, will they care that he locked up a bunch of street-corner drug dealers?”

  “Johnny Fiore did more than that, McMorrow. He was a great man. If he’d had more time, he would have been president. He would have been a great president.”

  “But he had to get there one step at a time, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, McMorrow.”

  Conroy gazed at the paintings, a smile pasted on his pale face.

  “He had to make the next rung on the ladder. From DA to mayor. Mayor to Senate. Senate to the White House.”

  “So? Listen, McMorrow, I’ve got a meeting.”

  “I’ll bet you do. Got a lawyer yet?”

  “Listen, I thought you had something important to—”

  “I do, David. I want to tell you I understand how much you did for Fiore. You haven’t gotten enough credit for what you did for him.”

  “I didn’t do it for credit,” he said. “That’s not my role.”

  “Oh, I know. You’re the behind-the-scenes guy, the worshipful acolyte. The guy who saw the crime numbers coming down in ’88. Remember that?”

  He shook his head.

  “McMorrow, spare me your conspiracist fantasies.”

  “And you knew some people wouldn’t vote for Johnny Fiore if they weren’t afraid. I
mean, the guy was a Democrat, but he still needed to pull those Republican votes in to put him over the top. He needed crossovers. He needed minorities. He needed everybody to be scared to go outside.”

  “McMorrow, I’m sorry, but I don’t really have time—”

  “And crime waves are funny things. Unpredictable. And damn, if things didn’t calm down that summer. Who could have predicted? What, all the criminals go to the Hamptons? And the election a few months away? So you ordered up a crime wave, didn’t you? Kind of like you order Chinese. What did it cost you? Fifty grand? A hundred? You can buy a lot of crime for a hundred grand.”

  “Oh, this is fantasy, McMorrow.”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t think the police think so. They’ve got George Drague over there. But you knew that, right?’

  “They don’t tell me about every petty criminal they arrest.”

  “And Dannigan. They got him at the same time.”

  “So he’s a crooked cop. I’m not his boss. I had little to do with the man.”

  “He’s got a lawyer, still trying to save himself, but he’ll take a deal. He’ll flip. And Drague is absolutely spilling his guts. And you know, he says he’s got you on tape. Smarter than he looks, I guess.”

  Conroy went white. He tried to swallow but couldn’t.

  “So if you wanted to make a deal with me to keep things quiet, I can’t help you. It’s too late.”

  We stood there, not speaking. The security guard woman approached and tapped her watch. He waved her off.

  “And Drague, he’s not just talking to the cops,” I said. “He’s going to the Times today, then tabloids, TV. I think he’s got some idea he can sell the movie rights. ‘A Rapist for Hire.’ You know, these days it might happen. It’s a perverse time we live in, don’t you think? Good guys turn out to be bad guys, and sickos are turned into celebrities.”

  Conroy didn’t answer. His breath was coming in short little huffs.

  “So it won’t leak out in dribs and drabs, David. It’s going to come out in one big splash. The Times tomorrow. Everybody else piling on after that. Did you get the call yet? Did you know what it was about? I figure they’ll have to bring the US attorney in because of Dannigan and you working for the city. What an indictment this’ll be. God, the conspiracy charges alone. And then they’ll want to know what happened to Lester John and Ortiz. That bastard who broke Christina Mansell’s fingers, he’ll flip for sure. He’ll be a regular gymnast.”

  Conroy was gray. Sweat had broken out on his upper lip like a string of transparent pearls.

  “I suppose you could try to dump it all on Fiore,” I said. “I mean, he can’t defend himself now, can he? Or was that the idea, David? Was he in on it from the beginning? What was it, the small sacrifice for the greater good? Or did he find out later and threaten to hang you and everybody else? Is that why you stuck him in the bathroom there?”

  “I didn’t,” Conroy hissed, his little white teeth showing. “I wouldn’t. Everything I did was for him. For the last ten years. Everything. And we did great things. We transformed this city. We made it a place you can live in again. We made it great again. Don’t you forget it.”

  “But it’s all gone to hell, hasn’t it? Even the timing. This’ll come out, and I bet even the second-day story will be right up there beside Fiore’s funeral. Right there in the Times, the newspaper of record. Forever and ever.”

  I looked around at the paintings.

  “No portrait for your boy, David.”

  “You goddamn bastard, McMorrow,” Conroy exploded, and he kept saying it over and over, his white fists clenched at his side, until the words petered out into a gasp and a sob.

  “You know, Dave, if a cop were in this situation, he might eat his gun, as they say. I wonder what somebody like you does. Choke yourself on a memo?”

  And I stepped around him and, with his eyes closed, Conroy said, “It’s all ruined. It’s all ruined.”

  And he was right. Johnny Fiore would be remembered for nothing else but this, for as long as he would be remembered at all. His accomplishments, his contribution, his years of public service, all forgotten. He would forever be the New York mayor who bought a crime wave.

  And as I was leaving the room, I almost stopped right there.

  It was all ruined. Wrecked. Smeared.

  Sullied.

  When I got to the Bull and Thistle that night, the regulars were trickling in, patting each other on the back, hoisting their beers, treating themselves to the fleeting comfort of camaraderie.

  I sat at the same table where I had sat with Butch. The same guy was behind the bar and the same waitress was working the back of the room. I ordered a pint of Guinness, and when the waitress served it, she gave me a second look.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’m the same guy.”

  She went back to the bar and said something to the bartender. He glanced over and then quickly turned away. I sipped and ran through it again.

  It couldn’t have been Conroy who killed Fiore, I thought. But it could have been Dannigan, if something had happened. Maybe Fiore hadn’t been in on the whole thing. Maybe he had threatened to blow the whistle. But then, why Butch? Why was he there? Why were his bloody prints in the bathroom stall?

  Maybe he found Fiore and ran away. Maybe he was stalking Fiore, going to tell him off again. And he walked in on the mayor’s dead body. And he was drunk, so he fled.

  Except he didn’t.

  I pictured Butch, hurrying up the sidewalk after he’d said goodbye to me. His quick, short strides. His call that he’d get me the stuff. I saw him backing away. Something in his eyes. A sharpness. A purpose.

  The waitress passed and I waved her over.

  “That night,” I said, “did you—”

  “I’m not allowed to talk about it,” she said.

  “What about the bartender? Can he talk about it?”

  “He’s not supposed to talk about it either.”

  “Says who?” I said, but she was already walking away.

  I looked over at him. He was making some sort of drink in a shaker. The bartender had known Butch, I was sure of it that night. But when I’d said something, Butch had brushed it off and launched right into that story about somebody shooting somebody else. Was the bartender somebody Butch had put away? God, Butch was lucky the guy hadn’t put something in his whiskey. He was lucky—

  Or was he?

  I got up from the table and walked to the end of the bar. The bartender waited as long as he could and then walked over.

  “Another Guinness?”

  “No, thanks. I just want to talk to you for a minute.”

  “Kind of busy.”

  “It’s kind of important.”

  “Yeah, well, what I do here is kind of important, too,” he said, pouring the shaken drink into a glass.

  “I’ll bet,” I said. “I’ll bet you’re glad to have a job like this. Get to meet all kinds of different people. Actors. Students. Cops.”

  He looked at me.

  “He arrested you once, didn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “Butch Casey arrested you.”

  “Nah. You got the wrong guy.”

  “I don’t think so. Were you the guy who shot the other guy having an affair with his wife? Or was it some other homicide he worked?”

  “Hey, buddy. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but in about two seconds you’re gonna be out on the sidewalk.”

  “Why don’t you just call the cops? I know a couple of detectives. Talk to them twice a day. I think they’d be glad to check your ID, run your prints.”

  “Hey, I’m not doing anything wrong. I’m not bothering nobody.”

  “Did your time, and now you’re keeping a low profile? But I wonder. The people who own this place know where you really were all those years? They know why?”

  He stepped quickly to me.

  “Shut up.”

  “I guess not,” I said.

  “
It’s old news,” the thin man said.

  “I suppose. But what’d you think when Butch Casey came in?”

  “He came in here a lot.”

  “Never blew your cover?”

  He shook his head, almost imperceptibly.

  “Did he want free drinks?”

  “No.”

  “Cops on the mayor thing know you knew Butch? How you knew him?”

  He looked away.

  “I didn’t think so,” I said. “What, you change your name? Come in here with a fake identity?”

  The thin man looked around the bar. The waitress came back with her tray and he looked at me and smiled.

  “Is that right?” he said loudly.

  “Three Sam Adams,” the waitress said.

  He opened the bottles and handed them over. The waitress motored off.

  “So,” I said, “you and Butch had this little secret.”

  “He was a good guy,” the thin man said, looking into the beer cooler. “He wasn’t out to screw anybody. What do you want?”

  “I want to know what happened that night.”

  “I was right here. Got nothing to do with me. I saw it on TV like everybody else.”

  “That’s right. You were right here, serving drinks to the guy who once arrested you, and now they say he went directly from here to killing the mayor.”

  He gave me a hard look.

  “Get lost,” he said.

  I reached over the bar and picked up the shaker.

  “Fine. I’ll take this and have them run the prints on it. See who you really are.”

  He snatched the shaker back. I smiled.

  “Okay, I’ll take my glass. I’ll send somebody else in here and have them get served. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll leave tonight and never come back, never say a word.”

  The guy half-turned, his pale blue eyes narrowed to slits.

  “What do you want? Money? ’Cause I don’t have any.”

  “I don’t, either. Don’t need it. I want something else.”

  He looked at me.

  “I want you to make me the same drink you made Butch that night.”

  He stared.

  “You can send it over with the waitress,” I said. “And then I’ve got to go. The cops want to talk to me some more. Two detectives. Ramirez and Donatelli. I’m sure they’d be glad to talk to you. Or not.”