by Gerry Boyle
I walked back to the table and sat down. I took a swallow of Guinness. I waited. And in a couple of minutes, the waitress delivered my drink.
It was whiskey, a double shot in a rocks glass. I held it up and sniffed. Felt the blood drain from my face, then a heavy, pressing sadness.
I took a sip.
“Oh, well,” I said aloud and pushed the glass away.
Butch hadn’t been drinking. He’d been sober. He’d been ready.
He had been drinking tea.
So they gave Drague good play in the Times the next day, right side above the fold, in a package with two other stories: an advance on the route of the funeral procession, and a political analysis on maneuvering within the Democratic Party as a result of Fiore’s death. There was a refer line to a Lifestyle story about how the city already was dressed for mourning because everyone wore black.
But Drague was the lead.
In the story, written by Sanders, Drague called himself “a terrorist for hire.” He said he was paid by high-level officials in the office of Manhattan District Attorney John Fiore to commit a crime that would strike fear in the hearts of law-abiding New Yorkers. The police commissioner said Drague’s claims were being investigated, as would any charges of police or prosecutorial corruption.
When asked if there appeared to be any basis to the accusations, the commissioner said only that Drague’s claims were being taken “very seriously.”
And then it unfolded, a mushroom cloud of scandal.
The morning the story broke, David Conroy was found dead in his SoHo co-op. He’d taken an entire bottle of Seconal, washed down with Absolut. The Daily News was the only paper to report the flavor of the vodka as citron. According to a police source, Conroy had served it to himself ice cold.
He left a note apologizing for his actions and the disgrace he brought on the city. He said Fiore knew of the crime-wave plan in concept, but was kept insulated from the particulars. The mayor left it to Conroy to keep the secret, which is what he had been trying to do, right up until the end. He said he didn’t expect anyone to be killed, but the criminals got carried away.
Leslie Casey was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And who could have known the woman would be a policeman’s wife? Conroy wrote. What were the odds?
That was reported Friday in all the dailies. On Friday night, my friend Stephanie Cooper broke a story that said the Boxer, Matthew Dannigan, and the young guy from Vegas were negotiating a plea bargain. The young guy was fingering the Boxer. The Boxer was laying the whole thing at the feet of Conroy and Fiore.
The Boxer said he was ordered by Conroy to orchestrate the crime wave in 1988 in order to “bump” the numbers. The general plan was approved by Fiore himself, the Boxer understood. Conroy later ordered the murders of Ortiz and Yolimar because they wanted more money. Lester John made the mistake of coming back to New York; he was buried at sea in a bale of garbage. Mihailov was killed because he was a loose end and I was asking questions; Drague would have been dead if I hadn’t found him first.
And that night the guy thrown from the van died of his injuries.
And it went from there, story after story, news spot after news spot. And of course, none of it could be denied, not by dead men. Not by Johnny Fiore.
That, after all, was the plan. I knew because Butch told me.
After he’d pleaded guilty.
45
Butch took the plea in exchange for life without possibility of parole.
The killing of his wife was the mitigating factor, but still this caused a couple of days of uproar in the city, where many people thought Butch should be executed. His plea also caused much disappointment in the media, which had to scrap big plans for coverage of his trial.
Having denied the press and public those small pleasures, Butch went quietly.
We met at Riker’s in November. I came down from Maine with Roxanne to spend that promised weekend at the Meridien and to attend Christina’s opening at a gallery on Broome Street. The paintings were part of a series called Scars: New York City. They showed minutely detailed sections of pavement, each with a bloodstain and a flower or a blade of grass.
The Times covered the show. Christina was there with her new beau, her orthopedic surgeon, who did knee replacements for heads of state. He looked like Warren Beatty; Christina looked lovely, in a short black sheath and red splints on her surgically repaired fingers.
She kissed me, hugged Roxanne.
“You doing all right?” I said.
“Sometimes,” Christina said, and then she turned away to her newfound public.
For them, she was charming. Many of the people there were apparently celebrities, the kind who get their pictures on the Times party page. As we were leaving, she was telling the Times critic that the attack had forced her not only to learn how to paint again, but to learn how to see. He nodded seriously and took notes. Three weeks later, Christina would make the cover of New York magazine. In the photo, she stared unsmiling, a palette knife between her splinted fingers.
“Out of the Ashes,” the headline said. “Painter Christina Mansell Ushers in the Post-Fiore Era.”
At the hotel that night, I turned off the light and opened the drapes and Roxanne stood naked by the bed in the city glow and then slipped in beside me.
“Hey, darlin’,” I said, as she nestled against me.
“You’re sure you wouldn’t rather have a glamorous big-city blonde?”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t rather.”
“What would you rather?” Roxanne asked, and then she kissed me and touched me in the place Christina had touched, in the city where Christina had wanted me and part of me had wanted Christina. And Roxanne’s touch was like absolution.
After we made love, she slept.
I got up early and caught a cab to Riker’s Island. It was raining and there was something very solemn about the long bridge and the river, with its dull gray chop. The penitentiary was gray and dull, too.
So I sat in the little visiting booth, with the Plexiglas wall and the speaking grill, and the obscenities carved in the counter. And then I heard that universal prison clank and clunk, and there he was, dressed in pale blue like a hospital intern.
We couldn’t shake hands so we held them up, like an Indian greeting in an old movie. We picked up the phones.
Butch smiled and asked me how my trip was. I said it was fine. I asked him how he was and he said he was okay. He asked me how Roxanne was and I said she was good.
“And your buddy there? Clair?”
“He’s fine. Back in Maine, getting wood in.”
“That’s right. Gotta keep the farmhouse warm.”
“Right.”
“You can have the cold. I can’t stand it. Guess I don’t have to worry now, huh?”
He smiled. Looked down at his hand. I thought of us as kids, all the times he’d given me a hand up, a pat on the back. Butch scratched at something on his finger and then looked up at me.
“So, Jackie.”
“So.”
“It got a little rougher than I thought it would. Sorry about that.”
I shrugged but didn’t answer.
“But I had to bring you in. You were the only one I knew who could pull it off. Get it out there. And Jesus, we brought down the whole house of cards, didn’t we?”
He grinned.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“You see, I didn’t know anybody else who could do the reporting part. I knew they couldn’t just blow you off.”
I didn’t answer.
“I mean, I coulda just gone to the press first, but you know what would’ve happened. They would’ve said, ‘Ah, he’s just some ex-cop with an ax to grind.’”
“Maybe.”
“And even if they tried to check it out, you know what Fiore would have done. He’d have had all the answers. An explanation for everything. And who are they gonna believe? Butch Casey or Johnny Fiore? You know what I’m s
aying? He would’ve laughed them out of his goddamn office. They’d all have had a good laugh on old Butch. A good laugh after they killed his wife.”
He drifted away for a moment, then came back.
“Well, I guess we know who had the last laugh, don’t we?”
I looked at him.
“So that was the plan? ‘Kill. Sully.’”
“Yeah. Did I tell you about that?”
“No, I read it on a napkin at that Sisters place.”
“No kidding? Huh. Well, it worked, didn’t it? He’s gone. And there ain’t gonna be any statue for Fiore now, is there? And kids won’t read good things about him in the history books. I mean, he’ll be right in there with CIA traitors and all the other goddamn cowards.”
“Maybe.”
“And you know, Jackie, that hits him where it really hurts. The man wanted to be remembered. For good things, I mean.”
“Right.”
“He wanted to get his name on some building, on plaques and all this shit. Ha.”
Butch leaned forward, his eyes bright, his mouth fixed in a toothy, voracious smile.
“I fixed him. I fixed him forever.”
“You could have gotten me killed, Butch,” I said.
“Ah, Jack. Those mutts? That punk from Vegas and Dannigan? The guy’s a loser. You know, I heard when he was a rookie in California someplace, he ran on his partner and got him shot. And Conroy, that little wimp.”
“That little wimp was calling the shots.”
“And now he’s offed himself. Sayonara, sucker.”
“Butch, they killed three people. They could have killed three or four more.”
“Jack.”
“You shouldn’t have done it, Butch. You shouldn’t have done it to me. You shouldn’t have done it to the city.”
He leaned back and his expression hardened.
“Hey, Jackie,” Butch said. “The city? They can’t stand the truth, tough. And you, Jackie, you’re a pal. We go way back. I mean, right to the beginning. Our dads and all that. I like you a lot. Love you, even. Like a little brother.”
I waited.
“But I loved Leslie more. And I wasn’t gonna let her just get forgotten. I had to get them back. For her. And this was the only way to do it. The only way.”
“Was it just that?”
Butch didn’t answer.
“How many murders did you investigate over the years, Butch? How many of those people—the survivors, I mean—how many of them got over it?”
He shrugged. His face was somber.
“Most, right? They may not have ever been the same, but they didn’t throw their lives away. What was it you told me when we were kids? You suck it up and you keep going. But you didn’t.”
Butch looked away. He licked his lips, then turned back to me and smiled.
“Jackie the reporter,” he said. “Always got one more question. Well, my friend, maybe that ‘Suck it up’ advice doesn’t apply when it’s your wife who got shot in the face. And you don’t have a house full of kids to come home to. And you’re just alone—I mean, so alone it’s like this weight is on you, just crushing you to death, every minute, every second, until you don’t know whether you can go on. You don’t know if you can take your next breath.”
“Was it just being alone that was crushing you?”
Butch smiled.
“Oh, Jack, I told you I’d tell, didn’t I? Tell you why I was late to pick her up.”
“Yeah, you did.”
I waited. Butch took a deep breath.
“It’s kinda stupid, really. I wish it was more earth-shaking. I really do. I was supposed to pick her up. She was gonna leave her car in the lot at the hospital and we’d go home together. But I was having a coupla drinks. With this TV reporter. She had questions about a case I was working. Then we got talking about my book idea. I kept saying to myself, ‘Just ten more minutes.’ But she was cute and was kinda cuddling up to me. Vanity is everything and all that.”
Butch gave an unfunny laugh. Shook his head.
“So you used me,” I said. “Because you felt guilty.”
He shrugged.
“Yeah, in a way. But it was Fiore who gave the order. Said it was okay to do all this. Pound that lady into a vegetable. Rape that girl. Hammer that kid for his Beemer. And kill my wife.”
Butch leaned forward, looked through the glass at me.
“It was the principle, Jackie. You should understand that. You of all people.”
I looked away, thinking of Christina hung up by the hands, my name on her skin. I remembered being chased across the roofs, the gun on my head. The guy asking, Could he kill me now? So they’d deserved what they’d gotten. And Fiore himself?
I remembered a little boy who fought for his father’s honor on the school playground. It was the principle.
So no, I didn’t condone. Yes, I did understand.
Me, of all people.
“So,” I said, after a moment. “How did you get at him?”
“Well, I had to be on my toes,” Butch said, excitement in his voice. “That’s why I didn’t drink or anything. I’m in the back of the room and he’s in there, all the mucky-mucks kissing his ass, and he says something to Conroy and Conroy comes back, and he doesn’t see me but he says to the detective, ‘Clear the men’s room.’ So the detective, he goes in and checks it out. He comes out, somebody calls to him. Fiore’s still working his way through the crowd. I slip behind the cop, go in and stand on the toilet, wait for Fiore to come in. But he comes through the door in about two seconds. I had gloves, but I’m trying to get ’em on quick and I poke a hole in one of the fingers. I guess that’s how they got the print. Then again, it’s not like I really cared about getting away with it. Just so the job gets done, right?”
I nodded.
“Anyway, his pants jingle in the next stall. He’s sitting down. I pop the door open and there he is. His eyes bug out. And I’ve got this ice pick, sharpened like a needle.”
I took a deep breath.
“So did you say anything to him before you did it?”
He hesitated.
“Two words,” Butch said. “For Leslie.”
“Did he know what you meant?”
“He knew. I could see it in his eyes.”
“And what’d he say?”
“Nothing. For once in his goddamn life, Johnny Fiore didn’t say a word.”
EPILOGUE
It was November and the roadside was thick with leaves washed from the Prosperity woods by a cold, heavy rain. As we walked, Roxanne leaned against me.
“So what did he say in this letter?” Roxanne said.
“About the same. Said he saw Donatelli and Ramirez on Larry King. I guess she had a makeover. Talking about investigating the homicide of the decade or something like that. I guess they have a big book contract or something.”
“Huh.”
“And Butch asked me if I knew Ramirez had a kid who died. And he wanted to talk about books. He said he’s going to read everything by Nathaniel Hawthorne because he heard Hawthorne came up with all these great ideas just sitting in a little room.”
“Like being in solitary.”
“Right.”
“So he acts like nothing happened?”
“Yeah, in a way.”
“You going to write back?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“You really can forgive him?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t feel betrayed?”
“Sure, I do. Used. Burned. But mostly I feel like that little circle of people you think you really know and trust has gotten a little smaller. But maybe that’s life. The circle gets smaller until you’re the only one left. Come in alone. Go out alone.”
“Jack,” Roxanne said, “don’t think that.”
“I don’t, really. And I don’t want to be all angry and bitter forever. We only have so much time here. I don’t want to spend my time like that.”
“
How do you want to spend it?”
“Like this,” I said.
Roxanne took my hand and we kept walking. We passed Clair’s house and then his barn, where smoke was coming from the chimney above the workshop. Through the window, we could see Clair working. From the road, we could hear Mozart.
And then we were home.
Since Butch and Fiore, we’d stripped it as bare as the trees, our haven from what Clair called the culture of distraction.
The walls were painted white. There was a bed, a desk, a table and a computer. The shelves were full of books, the television gathered dust, and the phone line ran directly to an answering machine. I returned calls from Roxanne, from the Times Boston bureau, from Ellen Jones, who had included me on a couple of national projects.
I didn’t return calls from George Drague’s lawyer-turned-agent, from nutcases who read the Fiore assassination web page on the Internet, from talk-radio hosts, newspaper reporters, and television producers who still phoned occasionally. One had phoned that afternoon, while we walked.
He was from a television news show. Its name didn’t matter, nor did his. But I listened to his breathless pitch as he tried to convey the urgent need to talk that day, that afternoon, that minute.
“I think it’s time,” the man said, “that we put this Fiore thing in perspective.”
Oh, but I’ve already done that, I thought, as he futilely recited his phone numbers. Fiore and Conroy wanted that painting on the wall. Butch wanted revenge. They wanted all of it too much. There was a lot of good in them, but it was tainted.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gerry Boyle is the author of a dozen mystery novels, including the acclaimed Jack McMorrow series, and the Brandon Blake series. A former newspaper reporter and columnist, Boyle lives with his wife, Mary, in a historic home in a small village on a lake. He also is working with his daughter, Emily Westbrooks, on a crime series set in her hometown, Dublin, Ireland. Whether it is Maine or Ireland, Boyle remains true to his pledge to send his characters only to places where he has gone before.