Across the street and half a block behind, Ricky walked too. He had tracked any number of suckers with an eye toward taking them off, and he was meticulous about this aspect of his job. He was confident—overconfident—in his ability to size people up. He figured that any semi-intelligent thief could acquire the few basic facts needed to pull off a burglary: the victim’s daily routine, the sort of locks on the door, the jewelry or other things to be taken. What set Ricky apart, he believed, was that his empathy was more acute than that. He thought he understood something about the people he ripped off. When circumstances allowed, he lingered in their rooms, inspected their bookshelves, LP’s, medicine cabinets, and refrigerators, to confirm his impressions. He had a thief’s haughty scorn for his victims, who must be less clever or careful or nimble than he was, otherwise they would not be such easy prey. At the same time, he disapproved of the low-rent burglars—the step-over men and window smashers, opportunists and drug addicts, most of them—who ignored the human aspect of the job. They did not bother to research their victims, let alone study the finer points, lock-picking and the rest of it. They did not prepare, and so they were forced into unnecessary risks. Fools. Between the rich fools Ricky victimized and the poor fools who occupied the bottom rungs of his own profession, it was hard to say whom Ricky disdained more.
The rich ones, probably. As a student of the behavior of rich people—who, after all, had what Ricky wanted—he was stupefied by the mediocrity of the city’s upper classes. To anyone who preached the old fairy tale of America as a meritocracy, Ricky might have invited them to view the wealthy as a burglar would. Was there a more foolish, careless class than these rich old Yankees? They left their inherited jewelry lying around in dresser drawers and strolled out of the house with their doors unlocked, or badly locked—then they stiffed the waitress at lunch on a nickel or dime tip. If this was the ruling class, then it was about time the Kennedys of the world took over. A government run by thieves would, as the saying went, make the trains run on time.
Now here went Kurt Lindstrom loping down St. Stephen Street like some cartoon aristocrat. Something in the young man’s springy walk—like some flightless, fast-running bird—and the stubborn lick of blond hair on his forehead, and the FDR tilt to his chin, signified to Ricky a Yankee jackass of a certain type: foppish, effeminate. It was impossible to accept that this man might have murdered Amy. A musician and out-of-work actor whose only dramatic performances were the Shakespearian speeches he delivered on the sidewalks of Harvard Square, his old college haunt. Amy could have broken this guy in half. But brother Michael believed it, and the cops believed it, so Ricky had set out to prove it.
Lindstrom turned right on Symphony Road and entered number 50, two blocks down. The building was a four-story walk-up. Most of the buildings on the street were of the same type: simple redbrick bowfronts, unadorned except for rough-hewn granite pediments above the doors and windows. This was mostly a student area, and the street had a scruffy look. The bricks needed pointing, the little front yards needed weeding. But there was a genteel Victorian appearance, too, in the uniformity of the buildings, the low scale, the repeating curves of the street wall formed by those bow windows.
Ricky stood across the street and watched the light come on in Lindstrom’s apartment window. After a few minutes he climbed the stoop and noted the apartment number on the entry buzzer.
But he did not immediately leave. He went behind the building, inspected the rear entrance, the garbage cans, noted the cars parked there.
An alley, which was wide enough for a truck to pass through, ran down the center of the block, behind the rows of apartment buildings. About a block down this alley, on the opposite side, was the back of 77 Gainsborough Street, a redbrick bowfront very much like the one Lindstrom lived in. Helena Jalakian—the very first Strangler victim—had lived in a small apartment at 77 Gainsborough Street. She had been murdered there on June 14, 1962, the start of that terrifying summer.
Helena was fifty-six, a seamstress, first-generation Armenian immigrant, and classical music buff. She had taken the apartment in part because it was such an easy walk to Symphony Hall. She had attended the BSO open rehearsals and stood in line for rush tickets. She liked Brahms, disliked Mahler, disliked the new little German conductor who was not warm enough for her taste. She luxuriated in Symphony Hall; the opulence of it would once have seemed unimaginable to her. Had Helena met the young musician who lived nearby, who walked home along the same streets? Had she seen him on stage? Had they chatted by the stage door one day? Would she have opened the door for him willingly, eagerly? Would she have turned away from him to go change out of her housecoat, maybe then to offer him tea and cookies? Helena Jalakian had been clubbed on the back of the head, raped vaginally, apparently with an object (no semen was found; the object was never identified or recovered), beaten, and strangled with the cord of her housecoat, which was tied off in a bow—the first occurrence of that signature knot.
Returning to his own apartment, Ricky found the door smashed, the doorknob dislodged. He eased the door half open with one fingertip, but it caught on something and he had to shove harder.
Inside, the destruction was so complete that the apartment barely resembled the one Ricky had left a few hours before. Drawers were dumped on the floor. The sofa had been stripped down to the frame. The cushions had been sliced open, the cotton batting pulled out and tossed on the floor. The bookcase that had held the hi-fi and the records lay splintered on the floor. Most of the discs were shattered. Ricky would miss them most of all. He had built his LP collection over the course of several years, and sorted it with loving care, alphabetically within jazz genres. What a waste. Leave it to Gargano and his goons—for no burglar would risk making the sort of racket these guys must have made, and no cop would work this hard. They had smashed up a magnificent collection, and for no good reason. Ricky had already told him he did not have the missing stones.
36
“Mikey, let me have those.”
Ricky indicated with his chin that he meant the rolls, and Michael passed the dish.
They ate quietly again. Forks and knives clinked, mouths mashed. No one spoke.
At Sunday dinner, the family felt particularly decimated. During the week it was easier to forget how devastated they had been. Not here. With Joe absent—he was out working another detail—each couple at the table had been halved. There was too much room between the chairs, too much empty space on the table. Kat, Ricky, and Mother Margaret all seemed diminished by the absence of their voluble partners. They were not used to carrying the weight of a conversation. Over the years, they had gotten used to the attacking, serve-and-volley style of their mates. They preferred to respond—to quip, to reply, a withering sentence or two and then shut up. This table had never been the place for long speeches anyway. The words flew too fast, everyone talked over everyone else, babbled, blurted, shouted, insulted, teased. Short, loud, and sarcastic, that was the Daley style. There was only one blusterer left, Brendan Conroy, and his gaseousness was particularly off-key tonight. Between Michael and Ricky there were affronted scowls—that this hammy buffoon was poking their mother seemed outrageous, still—and soon enough Conroy grew quiet, too. Even Kat, armor-plated as a battleship, was lost in her own thoughts.
Dinner lasted twenty minutes. It felt like an hour.
After dinner Michael sprawled on the couch, dazed in front of the television.
One by one the family drifted away. Kat helped with the dishes, then stamped a kiss onto Michael’s forehead before leaving. Little Joe waved dutifully, “Bye, Uncle Michael.” Ricky lay draped across the armchair, then abruptly he got up and went home, too. He chucked Michael once on the shoulder on the way past: “See ya, Mike.” Margaret went upstairs to read and fall asleep.
The sudden turn of the ebb tide left Michael beached on that couch, alone with Brendan Conroy, to their mutual discomfort. Michael would have taken off, but a stubborn sense of turf kept him there. Thi
s was still his home, Michael’s and his brothers’, though soon Brendan would displace them. He would roll that big pink body into Joe Senior’s bed, as he had already enthroned himself in the father’s seat at the dinner table and his armchair in the living room. But for now, as long as Michael remained on the couch, he could stave all that off. He could exercise a child’s life tenancy in his mother’s home, and there was nothing Conroy could say or do to dislodge him. Maybe he would even fuck with Conroy by staying long enough that Conroy would go home to his own bed instead of climbing the stairs to sleep next to Margaret.
If Conroy was troubled by any of this, he was not letting on. He watched the TV through a pair of black-framed reading glasses that rested on his mug awkwardly, like a costume. When he pried the shoes off his feet with much struggle and shoe-scraping, Michael said, “Make yourself at home, Brendan.”
At nine o’clock, Michael insisted on watching The Judy Garland Show instead of Bonanza.
“Bonanza is in color.”
“I know.” Michael would rather have watched Bonanza, too, but he could not help himself.
“You’re a pisser, there, boyo.”
Michael did not respond. He lay on his back, head propped on the armrest, one arm curled around his head. He knew how it must look to Conroy: a fruity pose, Byron come to Dorchester. Fuck ’m. Michael would lie there any way he damn well pleased. It was his couch. He’d lie there all night just for spite. The little fuck-yous are the sweetest.
“How long are you going to keep this up?”
“Keep what up, Brendan?”
“Moping.”
“The word is mourning.”
“Mourning is it? How long will you be doing it?”
“Amy’s only dead a few weeks. You in a hurry?”
“Oh, come on. You’ve been at it longer than a few weeks, boyo.”
“Have I? Must have lost track of time. Been having too much fun, I guess.”
“You’re mourning your dad.”
“Well, he’d do the same for me.”
“Not this long, he wouldn’t. You know, there comes a time, Michael. You don’t mourn forever. Life is for the living.”
“Hm. I thought it was for the dentist’s office. Now, Time, that’s for the living. But Dad does not get Time anymore. Or Life. He got thrown out of the Time-Life Building, the poor bastard.”
“I’m trying to talk to you here, seriously, man to man, and you’re making jokes. I don’t get you, Michael.”
“I know you don’t. Isn’t that always the way with families? Fathers and sons, you know.”
“You blame me for your old man dying, is that it?”
“Should I?”
“Of course not.”
“Then why do you ask?”
“Because something about me pisses you off, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what the hell it is.”
“We’re just oil and water, Brendan. Irish salad dressing. Don’t let it bother you.”
“Doesn’t bother me. Doesn’t bother me one bit.”
“No, it doesn’t seem to.”
“Doesn’t bother me a bit.”
“Alright, Brendan, let’s just be quiet now and watch Judy Garland.”
“Fuck Judy Garland.”
Michael dilated his eyes in mock horror. Fuck Judy Garland?
“If you’ve got something to say to me, say it. Cut with the jokes and the snide remarks, you and Ricky both, couple of little kids. Be a man, for Christ’s sake, would you?”
“I’m trying. For Christ’s sake.”
“Ai-yi-yi, to get a straight answer out of you…You think your dad dying is my fault?”
Shrug.
“Answer me, Michael, yes or no: Do you think your dad dying is somehow my fault?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Affirmative. Roger. Ten-four. Aye-aye.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“He doesn’t know. Well, you’ve got some nerve, boy, I tell ya. I love these armchair quarterbacks. What more should I have done, Michael?”
“Run faster.”
“Run faster?”
“Run faster.”
“And what would that have done? You mean so I could get shot instead of him? Maybe you forget, I did get shot. I’ve got a hole in my gut to prove it. I nearly died. Do you know I still get blood in my shit?”
“No. Didn’t know that.”
“Well, I do. I shit blood. What do you have to say about that?”
“You should watch what you eat.”
“Go ahead, make jokes. You like to forget little things like me getting shot because you’re so busy feeling sorry for yourself.”
“It’s a full-time job.”
“Let me ask you something: If I did die, would that have been enough?”
“Would have been a start.”
“Well, that’s just fine. I’m a little dense, I guess, I’m just a thickheaded old Irishman, but I get it. I’m done with this. You hear me? You want it to be like this forever? Fine. But just so’s you know, I understand what this is really about. Couldn’t be more obvious. Poor little boy doesn’t like to see his mommy with anyone but daddy, so you blame me for anything and everything. What a, a—”
“Cliché?”
“Yes. And for what it’s worth, you’re wrong. Your father’s dying broke my heart. I’d do anything to find the kid that did it.”
“Would you? So what have you done to find him? Tell me, what have you done? Where’s that kid, Brendan?”
“How the fuck should I know? If I knew, don’t you think I’d move heaven and earth to find him?”
“I don’t see you moving heaven or earth.”
“What do you recommend?”
Michael shrugged. “I’m not a cop. Neither was Amy.”
“That’s not an answer. Tell me, boyo, what should I do? What would satisfy you?”
Another voice intervened: “That’s enough.”
Michael twisted to see his mother standing on the bottom stair in her pale blue housecoat, arms folded across her belly. He sat up.
“You two are going to have to learn to live with each other. That’s all I’m going to say. Michael, you show a little respect. Brendan, time for bed.”
“Time for bed, Brendan,” Michael mocked.
Conroy gathered up his shoes and padded across the room to the foot of the stairs. Margaret stood aside to let him pass on the narrow stairs. Even so, there was barely room for the two of them. As he climbed past her, Conroy’s hand lifted the little wood ball out of the newel post at the bottom of the stairs. That wood ball, the size of a large orange, had been loose for almost thirty years. Conroy seemed surprised to see it in his hand, as if it had adhered there. He fitted it back on the post then continued up the stairs unembarrassed. His hand curled over the wobbly banister, incongruously massive on the handrail burnished smooth by children’s palms.
Michael could feel that banister passing under his own hand, the narrow rounded top, a hairline joint that scratched across the palm halfway up, a scabrous patch where the wood grain roughed your thumb pad, the upturn that signaled the top of the staircase.
“You go home too, mister.” Margaret sighed. “Work in the morning.” She did not wait for a response but turned and trudged up the stairs.
37
Parts of the West End construction site were surrounded by an eight-foot plywood wall. Here and there the wall was decorated with propagandistic posters: “Coming Soon: A New Boston” and “The Future Is Now…Here!” Bostonians took these promises with a grain of salt. Politicians and other gasbags had been talking about a “new Boston” long enough that they wondered where the hell it was, just as Old Englanders once upon a time must have wondered where the New one was. So the wall was defaced in predictable ways, lewd and antiauthoritarian. One sign was somehow graffiti-proof, though. It was enameled steel, very large, and it hung at the corner of Cambridge and Charles Streets, near the jail.
The sign showed an architect’s pen-and-pastel sketch of those four white towers in a grassy park—dreamlike, impossibly modern. There were no cars in the drawing; the buildings apparently would be accessed by spaceships. Pedestrians tended to pause before this picture, stumped, awed by it. Buildings like these simply did not exist in Boston. They were too good for Boston, too good for the likes of us. The image arrested everyone who passed, thin-lipped women with shopping bags and gray men in blue suits with brown shoes. They tended to stand there and shake their heads with schoolmarmish disapproval: the ostentation of it all, the naked, gaudy ambition. To the side of the picture was the opportunistic name of the project, JFK PARK, and a long list of credits like the roll call at the end of a movie:
A SONNENSHEIN DEVELOPMENT • CITY
OF BOSTON • MAYOR JOHN COLLINS •
BOSTON REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY •
URBAN RENEWAL ADMINISTRATION •
SONNENSHEIN CONSTRUCTION CO. • FIRST
NATIONAL BANK OF BOSTON • THE NEW
BOSTON TRUST
Moe Wasserman arranged to meet Joe near this sign. It was an unseasonably warm day in early April, an early intimation of spring. Wasserman was agitated. When Joe showed up, Wasserman blurted, “He’s here! Come see!” The old man hustled Joe down Charles Street, along the perimeter of the site, to a chainlink gate where a dozen men loafed around a cafeteria truck. A small army of construction workers swarmed over the site, which occupied about a quarter of the old West End footprint, but somehow Wasserman had found his man.
“There!”
“Which one?”
“In the red jacket. Drinking his coffee like he don’t know I’m lookin’at him. He was there. Not the one in charge, but he was there.”
“You’re sure?”
“Course I’m sure.”
“How sure?”
“Listen to this guy, ‘how sure?’ If I wasn’t sure, I wouldn’t have brung you.”
The Strangler Page 19