Runner in Red

by Tom Murphy

  “She listens to you. You could talk sense to her.”

  “Listens to me? I don’t think so.”

  “You’re all I’ve got,” she said, and I saw she was looking at me, into my eyes as we ran. We crossed the bridge at Mass. Ave. and began the final leg of our run back to the hotel, when suddenly she reached out to touch my hand, and I lit up warmly.

  I rose as quickly as I did in baseball because I could hit the curve.

  I could previsualize the spot in the strike zone where the ball would dip as it zipped across the plate, and while other hitters might be fooled, I anticipated the break. “Stay back, stay back,” I had taught myself well, and I waited on the curveball and hit it hard into the gap for an opposite-field double.

  I could see the spin on the ball here, the pitch Ellen was throwing me, and I knew I had a choice to make: if I was going to have a chance with Ellen I was going to have to get involved. That meant stepping into the middle between her and her mom, a place I had avoided all my life, the confrontation zone, a place of ultimate vulnerability.

  We returned to her room, and she closed the bathroom door. She turned the water on in the shower and I used the opportunity to sit in the big stuffed Ritz Carlton leather chair beside a tall window.

  I listened to the pinging spray of the shower beyond the door and I recalled a line my father had recited when I was a boy and family crammed our tiny yard in Hicksville with Rheingold and ribs on warm summer days. “I wonder what the lonely people are doing today,” my dad would say.

  I smiled, thinking of my dad as the sun warmed my face, the muted horns of cars played below on Arlington Street, and the spray of the shower splintered off Ellen’s golden body beyond the paneled door.

  “Well?” she said, calling through the door and the sound of water. “Will you?”

  I knew what she meant.

  I closed my eyes against my reluctance to get entangled that went back not just ten years but all the way back, and I savored the moment—her interest in me—and I sank deep in my chair as I pondered my choice: I might be getting into the middle of something dangerous, getting in deeper by the minute, but damn it, I wasn’t lonely anymore.

  “For you, I’ll do anything,” I said.

  The next morning I was shaving in my apartment when my cell rang. It was Bridget.

  “Come to the window,” she said. When I looked down I saw her in her car at the curb, motor running. “Get dressed, sweetie, you’re not on banker’s hours.”

  As we drove south on Dorchester Avenue through knots of traffic I asked her where we were going.

  “Pop’s house,” she said. “Young John said Jock believed Pop had a girl on his team in 1951. I want to take a look.”

  “You never told Ellen what Pop said to you at the finish line in ’71, did you? Does she know you’re adopted?”

  “Yes, she does.”

  “But she doesn’t know the circumstances about how you learned, does she?”

  “Nobody knows, Colin. I never told anyone, other than you.”

  “Any chance we could drop this whole thing?’ I was taking a wild chance, hoping against hope, but I was not surprised by her response.

  “No way!”

  When we got to the front door of Pop’s house Bridget took out a key and opened the door.

  “You have a key?” I said.

  “I lived here, sweetie, till college.”

  “Aren’t you worried about barging in like this, that you might surprise him?”

  “Pop goes to Mass every morning at this hour. That’s a habit he learned from my mom, Mrs. Gallagher, and if there’s one thing about Pop, he’s habit-bound.”

  “What about Ellen? She’s been staying here.”

  “I got a note from Jack, she’s with him this week helping him with his books at his office in Waltham.”

  I followed her through the dark anteroom to the stairs and she knew right where she was going. At the top of the stairs there was a small room, an office, that had served as Pop’s “Boston Marathon headquarters” for more than twenty years from the late 40s till Pop was released from his duties following his altercation with Bridget in 1971. It was a room she said she had been forbidden to enter while growing up, but now she made a beeline.

  The room was filled with trophies, including the tall skyscraper size trophy from 1951 when Pop’s D.A.A. won the team prize. Pictures of races from the 30s and 40s lined the walls, including heated contests between Pop and his arch running rival, Jock Semple, during the old days when both were young. Medals, dozens upon dozens of them, crammed the shelves of bookcases. As I perused the medals, Bridget opened the lid on a pink box. She smiled, as she picked through a series of frilly young girl’s dresses.

  “Ah, look at these, I haven’t seen these in a lifetime!”

  She told me how her mom, Mrs. Gallagher, had made them. “My mom, Pop’s wife, was such a sweet woman. She was from Ireland and didn’t say much. But she would take in laundry so she could afford to buy fabric to make me dresses, pink like this with bows. Every Saturday we would visit her sister in South Boston so she could show me off.”

  “Where was Pop?”

  “He would drive us, but he never came into the house. He would sit outside in his car and do calculations for his road race the next day, in whatever town the race would be—Lynn, West Roxbury, Arlington— all over town. He lived for his D.A.A. boys and those Sunday road races.”

  Next, she opened a large oak box with a heavy top.

  “This is Pop’s treasure chest. This is where he keeps his most valuable items.”

  She sifted through the contents, handing them to me to inspect as well—including more photos from Pop’s running days along with photos of the D.A.A. runners from the 50s pounding out victories on the roads.

  “Whoa!” she said suddenly. “What’s this doing here?”

  She stood up straight as she examined a photo of three young nuns. They were smiling as they stood arm in arm in a garden. The photo said Kodak and had serrated edges. The date was March, 1959.

  “This is a picture of Sister Josephine with two other nuns. I wonder what this is doing here, in Pop’s treasure chest?”

  I shrugged, but she said, “I better send this down to Roman in New York, see what his team can come up with.”

  Late Saturday afternoon that week, I called Ellen and asked if I could take her for a walk through downtown. She had said she wanted to go slow with relationships, but I chose to push the pace.

  She agreed to come and I took her hand as we walked through the Public Garden and the Common under a crisp, blue October sky.

  “You ever hear your mom talk about a Sister Josephine?” I said.

  “No, who’s that?”

  “I was just wondering,” I said and I dropped it.

  We came to Fanueil Hall and passed the Bill Rodgers running store. She asked if we could go in. “My obsession with shoes,” she said. “I can’t help myself, I have to see what’s new.”

  Charlie Rodgers, Bill’s brother the store manager, recognized her and had her sit down so he could pull out samples of shoes that had come in since she’d been in the store last time, which from their banter back and forth indicated the interval had not been too long. Charlie was a warm, congenial guy with a handlebar moustache and he piled dozens of boxes in his arms.

  “How about these?” he said, opening a box of “Women First.”

  “God, no,” she said. “They stink!”

  All three of us laughed, and what seemed like a hundred fittings later, Ellen and I were back out walking through the marketplace when we passed a Boston sports memorabilia kiosk. Ellen stopped when she spotted a baseball card, a shot of a guy—me—with a bat on his shoulder.

  “Hey, look what we have here! This is somebody’s rookie card.”

  “Yes, it is,” I sai
d, and I positioned myself in front of her with an imaginary bat on my shoulder. I struck a pose as if waiting for a pitch. “Stay back, stay back, that’s how the good hitters do it. Stay back, wait as long as you can to see the pitch as best as you can, then you turn on it.” I swung, smooth as can be, and laced the imaginary pitch deep into an upper deck.

  “Stay back, huh?’

  “That’s baseball talk. But I don’t want to do that in life anymore. I don’t want to do that with you.”

  She smiled sheepishly and tapped the card. “They want three bucks for this.”

  “You won’t break the bank.”

  “I’ll keep it, see if it goes up in value,” she said, and she bought the card.

  Late Monday afternoon I was at the station when I got a call from Bridget. She was in New York and she wanted me to get my butt down to Manhattan as fast as I could. Obviously the photo of Sister Josephine had been significant.

  “Roman’s got big news for us,” she said, and she gave me the name of the hotel where she was staying, the Waldorf, in room 890. “Fly down tonight. I’ve already booked you a room on my floor.”

  When I arrived at the Waldorf about midnight, I knocked on the door to Room 890 and Roman answered. He was in his pajamas, and none too pleased. He closed the door. Slam!

  I was taken aback that Roman was in Bridget’s room, and I turned a few circles trying to think what to do next, when I saw Bridget in her bathrobe come through the door at the end of the hallway. She was carrying a bucket of ice and had a big smile as she walked toward me.

  “Roman’s in your room,” I said.

  “I know,” she said, matter of fact.

  “You really think that’s a good idea?”

  “Why not?” she said, and she took a key from her bathrobe and opened the door to Room 896.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “My room.”

  “I thought you said…”

  She got my drift and smiled very wide, amused. “I gave Roman my room, and I took this one. You’re down the hall a bit further, Room 899.”

  “Then you’re not in bed with him, so to speak?”

  Another big smile. “You’re my cameraman, Colin, you don’t have to be my babysitter. See you bright and early at Roman’s office on Park Ave. and 53rd.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  The cell phone rang on the nightstand in my hotel room, waking me up in the dark.

  “Colin, I need you to warn my mom.”

  “Huh, what?” I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. It was 5 am.

  “My Dad went to New York to punch out Roman. My Dad’s a hotheaded Irishman, Colin. I need you to warn my mom so she can stop him before he gets into trouble.”

  I tried calling Bridget at 7 am when I got up to get ready for our meeting with Roman at his office, but got no answer. I tried again before leaving for the meeting, but again got no answer so I went straight over to Park Ave and 53rd.

  Roman’s office was on the 50th floor. The lobby looked south offering a breathtaking view of lower Manhattan on a bright blue day. Bridget had not arrived and the receptionist had me sit in a waiting area in front of the main desk. I sat down beside a genial looking guy, tall with sandy hair, chiseled features, and a broad smile.

  “Hi, you here to see the Robber Baron in Short Pants?”

  “I’m waiting for Bridget Maloney.”

  “Me, too. Hi, I’m Jack Maloney,” he said, and he extended his hand, with a firm grip.

  Just then Bridget walked in, and Jack stood. He walked to her, as comfortable as if welcoming a guest into his own living room. “Hello, honey.”

  “Jack,” said Bridget. “What are you doing here?”

  “I came to look in on my old running partner,” he said, adding, “Well, now that the gang’s all here, shall we go in?”

  He walked to the tall paneled doors that led to Roman’s office and opened the door, making a long arching sweep with his arm to usher Bridget and me in ahead of him.

  “Hello, asshole,” he said to Roman, who sat behind a teak desk with an expansive view of the city behind him. An associate stood behind the desk at Roman’s side looking over some papers with him. Roman looked up at us, but he did not smile.

  “Too bad you didn’t apply this same intensity to your running thirty years ago, Jack, you might have helped the team.”

  “I got the girl on the team, didn’t I?”

  “Then lost her.”

  “Now, guys!” Bridget said, but Roman didn’t miss a beat. He stood at his chair and directed everyone to seats around his desk.

  “Nice to have you join us, Jack, truly. You can see some work we’ve been doing to help your estranged wife advance her news career. Make yourself comfortable everyone, please. This is my research man, Steele. Usually I save Steele for bigger projects, but he has produced some interesting findings regarding the photo Bridget sent us.”

  Steele was a humorless guy, scrawny with slicked brown hair and designer glasses he wore, I’m sure, to upgrade his image. Roman passed out copies of the photo of the three nuns Bridget had found in Pop’s chest.

  “Go ahead, Steele,” Roman said, “Share your news.”

  “We discovered that the photo is a picture of Delia Delaney standing with her sister, Sister Josephine.”

  “What?” Bridget said.

  “Both Delia and Josephine were nuns. They’re sisters. The photo was taken the day of their father’s funeral in March 1959, in the backyard of their home in Dorchester.”

  “There’s more,” Roman said, and he gave Bridget a wink.

  “I checked local road race results in the Dorchester area. Before she went into the convent, Delia Delaney volunteered as one of the organizers for Pop Gallagher’s Dorchester A.A. team.” Steele passed around a copy of a paper. “Here’s a copy of the race results from a local race in 1951. As you can see, Delia Delaney signed it. And if you look at the picture of her we found, she’s sitting at the registration table wearing a red hood.”

  Roman beamed. “So add it up. Delia Delaney signs a race result card. That makes her a runner. She’s shown in the picture wearing a red hood. That makes her the runner we’re looking for. Last but not least, go back to Freddie Norman’s comment, that Finn called the runner in the red hood in the 1951 Boston Marathon ‘Delaney.’ What more do you want?”

  “How do you know Delia Delaney is Sister Josephine’s sister?” Bridget said.

  “I checked city records and matched the number on the house with similar numbers in the neighborhood. The people who owned this house in this picture in the 50s were named Delaney. They had several girls in the family, one was named Delia and another Josephine.”

  “Plus there’s more,” said Roman. He gestured to Steele to share copies of his next paper, then Roman picked up the narrative. “Notice on this page, titled ‘Birth Certificate,’ the baby’s name is ‘Bridget Marie.’ Bridget, that’s you, and obviously this page is familiar to you. But you’ll notice where it has a space for ‘Birth Mother,’ that space is blank.”

  Steele held back the next page, waiting for Roman to signal to him. When Roman gave him a nod, Steele passed out copies.

  “Now, this is the important page,” Roman said, continuing to lead. “I’m sure, Bridget, you’ve never seen this one before because this was not publicly available and it was difficult to locate, but we did find it in the records. You’ll see this page is called a ‘Consent Form.’ This is how things were done when adoptions were made back then and the mother wanted to remain anonymous. Note how the name of the baby is the same on this page, ‘Bridget Marie,’ but you’ll see in space marked ‘Birth Mother,’ the name says ‘Delia Delaney.’”

  I looked over at Bridget and she looked as if she’d just been punched by Mike Tyson.

  “That’s how they did adoptions in 1952 when you were born,�
� Steele said, underscoring the obvious. “The baby’s name went on the birth certificate, while the consent form, which was recorded separately but not made public, showed the name of the mother who gave the baby away.”

  Roman, ever tactful, said, “Delia Delaney’s your mother, Bridget. You’ll have to send her a Hallmark when you find the Runner in Red.”

  It was all too much for Bridget. She walked to a tall window across the room and stood with her back turned. Jack walked to her and put his arm around her.

  “Where did you get all this?” Bridget said in a firm voice as she turned back to Roman.

  “We have our ways,” said Steele, beaming like a perfect toady. “Would you like to talk to your aunt?”

  “What?”

  Again, Roman took the lead: “Sister Josephine is alive. She’s in a nursing home in upstate New York, or so we believe.”

  Bridget’s face showed another punch from Tyson.

  “Where?”

  “We don’t have the address yet, but we will tomorrow. We will call you once we make confirmation. You can visit her and ask her for Delia’s contact information, but Bridget,” Roman paused for effect. “I need to wrap up this project. You’ve fallen a bit off the pace with your end of the investigation.”

  “I’ll get it done.”

  “I need you to have Josephine put us in touch with Delia immediately.”

  “I know.”

  “Time is becoming a premium. I can’t stress that enough.”

  “Don’t worry about me, I’m going back to Boston tonight, but I’ll drive to upstate New York tomorrow and get it done.”

  “Great,” Roman said. “So there you go. I solved the mystery of the Runner in Red for you, now all you have to do is find her.”

  Jack caught up to Bridget and me on the sidewalk outside Roman’s building after we left the meeting.

  “It’s hard to feel sorry for you anymore, Bridget, the way you’re letting anger rule your life,” Jack said, as he stepped in front of her, making her stop.

  She looked him in the eye. “I’m trying to find my mother, Jack.”