Lesser Evils

by Joe Flanagan

  Father Boyle finished his coffee, then stood and put his black blazer on. “Will you be in late tonight?” he asked Father Keenan.

  “I think so.”

  “I might be up late drawing.”

  “I’ll stop in and say hello.”

  Father Boyle went out the veranda door. Mrs. Gonsalves stopped what she was doing and leaned against the counter, looking at Father Keenan. He looked up briefly from the paper. “I would ask you not to start, Lucy.”

  “Yeah, you don’t want me to start, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know what you’re gonna do with that one.”

  “Leave it alone.”

  “Hm. What time you gonna be home?”

  “Ah, let me see.” He took a small leather-bound appointment calendar out of his top pocket and opened it on the table. “I don’t think I’ll be back before seven.”

  “O.K. I’ll leave the dinner out on the counter. Put it at 350 when you get home. About fifteen minutes.”

  “All right.” He was still examining the pages in his booklet.

  “Put the bread in tinfoil and put that in too, if you wanna have it warm.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Mrs. Gonsalves sat across from him at the table. “He goes and I don’t know even what he does.”

  “Father Boyle?”

  “Yeah. Where does he go?”

  “Well, right now, he’s going over to Nazareth Hall.”

  “Yeah, but you know—”

  “He goes to the hospital. I know that.”

  “O.K. When you go someplace. Say on the weekend. I know. You go to Cambridge to St. Anselm’s. You go to your sister’s in Fall River. I got a number I can call you at. With him, you never know. You don’t know where he goes.”

  “Are you supposed to know?”

  Mrs. Gonsalves’s mouth fell partway open. “Well, what’s the big secret? And yeah, sometimes I gotta get in touch with someone, you know? Someone come here and they need the priest. Like last week when that lady come in here with the drunk husband all crying and everything else, by God. Nobody here.”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re gonna do with that one.”

  Warren had forty-two patrol officers, ten cruisers, and two detectives to cover the seven villages and seventy-six square miles that made up the town of Barnstable. Before Marvin Holland had his heart attack, Warren’s schedule had been unpredictable at best. Days were fairly dependable but he pulled plenty of evenings and the occasional midnight shift, depending on what was going on and what Marvin’s concerns were. He was usually able to get someone in to stay with Mike, if not Jane Myrna, one of the women who lived in the neighborhood. Now that he was acting chief, he worked days only, but the job seemed larger than ever, sitting squarely in the middle of his life and displacing everything else. He kept a radio with him at all times, sat it on the round Formica table in the kitchen while he fixed dinner, washed the dishes, and did the laundry, then took it to his bedroom when he retired, placing it on the nightstand with the volume on low.

  Warren had aspirations, half-formed plans that thrilled and embarrassed him simultaneously. He hoped to become an agent with the FBI. It was a cherished wish but it chafed his practical nature and caused some kind of disquiet to his natural modesty even while it gave him a zest for the future that was otherwise absent.

  The application sat in the top drawer of his dresser with just the first lines filled in. He had no college but hoped his experience might make him a good candidate. Three and a half years with the state police; three years in the Pacific during the war; Australia, New Guinea, the Philippines; seven years with the Barnstable police.

  Three months after the war broke out Warren was in Australia, the staging area for the Pacific theater and teeming with hundreds of thousands of servicemen waiting for orders, performing unglamorous work, or blowing off steam. The Army soon found itself faced with a situation for which it was ill-prepared.

  Desperate for officers with police experience, they came personally for Warren one day at his tent in the fields outside Townsville. He was designated to take charge of a stockade where the Army had incarcerated five thousand from its own ranks: murderers, rapists, thieves, mental cases, and every other strain of malcontent imaginable. This was an aspect of the war that no one, it seemed, had considered, and it had, in fact, been Warren’s stock in trade for most of his life: behavior outside the social contract, aberrant acts. When his unit finally loaded its equipment onto a train for Port Moresby to join the fighting, Warren was tamping down race fights in Townsville.

  It was his great disappointment and the source of no small shame that he missed all the fighting in the Pacific. He had traveled farther from home than he’d ever dreamed he would and had seen things that years later would seem unimaginable, but in the end he shipped back to the States with a deep sense of failure.

  It was dusk and the streetlights hadn’t gone on yet. He was driving through West Barnstable on his way back from Cameron’s boatyard, where he’d gone to see if they would have any work for him on the weekend. Warren drove slowly with one arm out the window, watching the roof peaks and TV antennae float across a sky that was like a broad swatch of flannel, light gray and shading toward charcoal by the minute. The postwar years gathered like a bad weather system on the horizon in his mind. It was a mood, generally, but it produced images, too: interiors of rooms, rumpled bedsheets, a dripping faucet, Little Mike in diapers. There was, briefly, the erotic frisson of Ava’s thighs and how they had looked in profile as she bent to step into her panties, the graceful swell above the knee. The way the pines swayed when they’d prayed with the baby before the grotto at Our Lady of Victory. The anger, the frustration, the rage at Ava as she changed into something that disgusted and frightened him.

  He approached a flashing red light where the road crossed a set of railroad tracks. The roadside was crowded with day-lilies and crickets peeped in the descending dark. The radio came on and filled the car with the sound of shouting voices, and then went silent. He sat at the flashing light and looked down at the radio, waiting. Again, the speaker in the dashboard came alive, frantic, unintelligible sounds, obscured in a universe of static. He was about to speak when the dispatcher cut in.

  “This is KCA374. Identify yourself.”

  Warren sat in the middle of the tracks, waiting for a response. People had turned their porch lights on and a sprinkle of stars was visible above the treetops.

  “Forty-six Eel River Road! Forty-six Eel River Road!”

  As soon as he heard the address, Warren stomped on the accelerator. Eel River Road wasn’t far away. He flew down Old King’s Highway for a half mile, then cut left into a road that passed through thick woods. There were few houses out this way. It was dark and mosquito-infested, dismal year-round.

  Warren radioed dispatch that he was practically there and tossed the mike on the seat. He switched the searchlight on and pointed it through the trees. After repeated calls for the officer to identify himself, dispatch got a response. Warren heard the words “Easy three!” shouted over screaming in the background.

  “Easy three,” Warren said into the mike, “this is Easy seven. I’m out on the road right now.”

  “I see your light! You just went past us!”

  Warren stopped and backed his unmarked up to the last dirt turnoff he’d passed and then nosed it into the woods. At the end of the track he found a nondescript shingled cottage with the lights ablaze inside, the cruiser parked out front. The place looked threatened with imminent consumption by the woods. Warren took a nightstick from under the front seat and walked across the yard. The door was ajar and he stepped inside. To his left, a summer hire whose name he could not remember was attempting to keep a middle-aged woman pinned to the wall with his forearm across her throat. He was a college k
id, like most of what they called the “summer specials,” and he looked scared. The woman, a tough-looking local with the pale, doughy look of heavy smoking and confinement indoors, rolled her eyes toward Warren when he entered. There was an iron on the floor a few inches from her reach, and while the rookie pressed her against the wall with one arm, his other was struggling to prevent her from grabbing it.

  Chairs were toppled and the sofa was overturned and lying on its back. In the middle of the room stood a huge man, his belly hanging over rumpled trousers that stopped between his calves and his ankles. He was fair-haired and balding, with a great porcine face and massive forearms covered with dense russet fur. Blood was trickling in rivulets down his head and neck. He stood there gaping at Warren, swaying on his feet. “Hit the breeze, fucker,” he said.

  Warren saw movement in the kitchen and Don Petraglia, whose voice he had recognized from the original call, emerged from behind the stove. “Lieutenant!” he gasped, in what sounded like a combination of surprise, relief, and chagrin. “Lieutenant, he’s crazy.”

  “Where is your weapon, Petraglia?”

  “I still got it.”

  Warren glanced down at the young cop and the woman on the floor, thrashing and grunting, both of them running out of steam. He looked to see that the rookie’s weapon was still in its holster, then swept the iron away toward the front door with his foot. “You have that under control, patrolman?”

  “I think so.” Sweat was pouring off his face.

  “I don’t want her coming up on my back.”

  “I think I got it, sir.”

  The big man’s head was covered with knots and lacerated in a dozen places. He took two steps toward Warren. “I said hit . . . the . . . breeeeze, fucker! Get out of my house.”

  Petraglia said, “Lieutenant, we beat the hell out of him. He doesn’t even feel it.”

  “Come on out here, Petraglia.”

  The fat man spat a bloody glob at Warren. He shuffled his feet and flexed his fingers and started huffing breath through his mouth. Petraglia froze.

  “Petraglia, get the woman cuffed.”

  The policeman sidled out of the kitchen with his back to the wall, watching the man. His shirttail was out and all the buttons torn off his shirt. He was moving as if he were injured. “Watch him,” he said. “He’s nuts.”

  The man rushed Warren. The ceramic knickknacks on the windowsills clinked together as his bare feet pounded across the floor and shook the house. Warren timed the fat man’s approach, one, two, three steps, and got into a slight crouch. When the man was about four feet away, Warren launched himself forward headfirst and drove the crown of his skull into the fat man’s face. There was a sickening pop. Warren fell off to the side, collided with an end table, and found himself sitting on the floor, covered in the contents of an overturned ashtray. A sixteen-ounce can of Ballantine Ale was spinning across the floor spewing foam. He saw lights, a profusion of them like small detonations in his vision. He had trouble getting up and thought for a second he was about to lose consciousness. The man remained standing, looking down at him. A hot line of pain was beginning to grow in a steady throb across his scalp.

  The wife was shrieking at the two policemen as they worked her arms behind her back. Her husband made his way unsteadily toward them. Warren got up, set himself, and went at the man again. He managed to hurl Warren off to the side, sending him crashing into a hi-fi set on the other side of the room. He scrambled to his feet as the man punched Petraglia twice in the face and wrenched his nightstick from him. Petraglia was down and inert. Warren leaped on the man’s back. The man wheeled and tottered, flailing with the stick. The summer cop stood gawking at Petraglia on the floor. “Get the stick away from him!” Warren yelled. The kid rushed in and tried to disarm the man, but his movements were tentative and within seconds, the man had him pinned against the front of his own body with the stick against his throat, pulling the cop into himself with both hands, crushing his windpipe.

  Warren got the crook of his left arm around the fat man’s neck and squeezed with everything he had. Every muscle in his body was contracted to its limit and it was as if he were paralyzed in a seizure. While Warren held on, the man was ramming him against the wall repeatedly. The drywall gave and Warren was driven into the space between two studs. There was a pop, a shower of sparks, and the house went dark. Warren called Petraglia’s name, now at the point of desperation. Their radios were crackling with the voices of the responding officers, voices that now betrayed fear as their calls for a location went unanswered. The entire four-to-midnight shift was coming.

  Warren heard the stick drop on the floor. The man grabbed a fistful of Warren’s hair. Warren was still squeezing but he was at the edge of fatigue. The grip on his hair slackened, then suddenly Warren felt a great release beneath him. He sank toward the floor and emerged out of the wall as the fat man’s legs buckled and he went down, taking Warren with him. The man was lying facedown, making a snoring sound. The young officer was partially pinned beneath him. Warren quickly got a handcuff on one wrist but the man’s body was too big to bring his other hand around. “We have to get this guy cuffed right now,” Warren said.

  The patrolman went into a fit of coughing.

  “Right now,” said Warren. “Before he comes to.”

  They linked two sets of cuffs together and got the man’s hands restrained. Warren found Petraglia sitting up with his head hanging between his knees. “Shit,” he croaked. “Sorry, lieutenant.”

  Cars were rolling up now, filling the house with their headlight beams and flashing red lights. Doors were slamming and there was a commotion of voices. They hog-tied the man with a section of rope from the trunk of one of the cruisers. He let out an occasional series of grunts and halfhearted invective. “Fuckers. Alla you fuckers. Hate you, you buncha fuckers.” His wife was just a dark shape in one of the cruisers, sitting still now.

  Warren saw the silhouette of a smallish man in civilian clothes moving among the others with a slight bounce to his gait. He recognized Detective Jenkins coming up the driveway toward him. “Everything all right, lieutenant?”

  “Yes. Aren’t you supposed to be off duty?”

  “Me and Gladys were just over at the Neptune Lounge and I seen one of the radio cars go by.”

  “You didn’t bring Gladys out here, did you?”

  “No. I left her at the bar where she’s happy.”

  Warren found Petraglia and his partner. “We’re sending the husband over to the hospital,” he said. “I want you two to go with him. See if they’ll lock him in the mental unit until we know what his status is. Make sure he’s restrained and no one gets hurt. Let me get a look at you guys.” Warren examined their faces, necks, and hands with a flashlight. “I want you both to get looked at while you’re there. Call me when you’ve done it. Don’t put it off, Petraglia.” Warren clicked off the light and joined a group of officers at the head of the driveway.

  Petraglia lit a cigarette, then offered one to the summer special. “How was that for a fucking caper?”

  The rookie shook his head and inhaled. His hands were shaking. They smoked in silence for a while. Jenkins joined them. Nearby, a patrolman named Welke was sorting through the contents of the fat man’s wallet. Petraglia said, “How about the lieutenant?”

  “Shit,” said the summer special.

  “I mean, yeah, he’s got a stick up his ass,” said Petraglia, “But he can be one serious son of a bitch to contend with.”

  “Man. I heard stories,” said the summer special. “But I couldn’t believe . . .”

  They watched Warren talking with the other cops, who were gathered around him in a semicircle at the head of the driveway.

  “I heard stories too,” said Jenkins. “But I been there for a few of them. I don’t care what they say about him. When you walk in on something like this”—he gestured with his cigare
tte toward the house—“or worse . . . That’s the guy you want to see walking in the door.” Welke spoke up from off to their left. “Look at this,” he said. He was holding up a condom in its square foil packet. “Warren should have used one of these. Then he wouldn’t have that kid on his hands.”

  Jenkins turned to him in the darkness. “Someone ought to bust you in your fucking mouth, Welke.”

  The officer tossed the packet down on the hood of the cruiser with the scattered contents of the fat man’s wallet. “Would that be you, Jenkins?”

  Suddenly, the paddy wagon lumbered up the dirt road, its headlights illuminating the bent, knobby trees and the scrubby underbrush, revealing the random details of the little clearing in which they stood, like some kind of subterranean grotto. One of the cops said, “I wouldn’t live out here if you paid me.”

  4

  Warren woke with a headache, his scalp tender to the touch. When he got to his office, he fumbled through the contents of his desk drawers in search of aspirin. Jenkins came in, closed the door, and sat down. “We got a call from Elliott Yost this morning. He’s giving the Weeks case to the state police.”

  Warren stood. “What?”

  “He wants the staties to take it over. He says he thinks they got the experience. They got that new guy, you know, Stasiak, and he was a pretty big deal up in Boston. But we aren’t a bunch of amateurs down here, you know what I mean? And that’s what burns my ass. I told him that, too.”

  “Don’t hand over any files just yet.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to see Elliott.”

  At the courthouse, Warren walked down the hallway to Elliott Yost’s office beneath high vaulted ceilings. The floors shone with new wax and there was a long procession of gleaming dark wooden doors. The effect was ecclesiastical. Warren found the district attorney in his office.