Strangled

by Brian McGrory

  “As you can see, this camera is trained on the front desk in the lobby. A camera mounted on the wall behind the front desk facing the other way, but was out of order this morning, which is, of course, our bad luck.”

  On the screen, Scully flipped the pages of the Traveler, probably from the gossip column to the horse race results. I took Edgar’s counsel and didn’t say this out loud.

  “And here comes our visitor,” Edgar said. He now had a pointer in his hand and pointed out the reflection on the shiny tile floor as the big front door opened, then a shadow which was really little more than a fuzzy glare.

  The figure seemed to approach Scully from the side of the desk, as if whoever it was had knowledge of the camera angle and was walking outside the line of vision.

  “Here’s where we see actual flesh,” Edgar said. And just like that, an arm appeared on the screen, handing Scully the manila envelope that was delivered to my desk shortly after. The arm was partially concealed by what appeared to be Scully, who barely looked up from his paper. Maybe he was trying to figure out if he had hit the trifecta the day before. The arm disappeared, and the shadow receded out the door.

  “And that’s it,” Edgar said. “That’s our courier.”

  And probably our murderer, I thought.

  Martin said, “We’ll have to turn that over to the cops, even though it doesn’t show anything. But let’s make a duplicate and keep a copy for ourselves.”

  Edgar nodded and shut down the DVD player. He said, “We could dust that driver’s license for prints.”

  I asked, “You know how to fingerprint something?”

  “No idea. I’d send it out.”

  Smartly, Martin interjected, “Even if we got any prints off it, which is doubtful, we have no database to run them through. It’d be meaningless to us.”

  I sat back in my chair as those two got up to leave the conference room. I said, “So I call the cops with the news of the license. I offer them the tape. They’ll want to talk to Scully. They’ll probably want an original copy of the note. And we get nothing. Peter, right now, I don’t even think we have a story.”

  I swear to God, Martin’s nose twitched like the little news rodent he can be, though I’m not sure if it was out of nerves or because he had the scent of something very big. He said, “It’s only ten o’clock in the morning. This cycle’s just begun.”

  And with that, prescient as ever, he walked out the door.

  My first official call on the case, if there is such a thing that a reporter can make, was to the lieutenant in the homicide bureau of the Boston Police Department, an FOJ (friend of Jack) by the name of Leo Goldsmith.

  Leo is just old-school enough that he doesn’t have the current-day mentality nurtured in precinct houses and at daily roll calls that reporters are the real bad guys and that the only time you should ever talk to them is to mislead them.

  Back in the old days, from what I’ve been told, cops and reporters used to be comrades in arms. Newspaper photographers and police reporters who cruised the city with a dashboard filled with scanners and a car roof groaning under the weight of antennas would often beat cops to crime scenes. They’d see the same things, crack the same jokes, and at the end of their shifts tell the same stories about the same cases over a pint of beer in some bucket-of-blood bar.

  But somewhere along the line, there was a gargantuan split. I think it might be Woodward and Bernstein’s fault. After they brought down a president and, more important, had their work glorified by Hollywood, newsrooms suddenly drew a better-educated brand of reporters who hailed from wealthier backgrounds. They didn’t carry names like Tommy and Billy anymore, but Jonathan and Eric. They took lunch at fancy joints downtown, which I personally don’t have a problem with. But suddenly, the two sides weren’t even speaking the same language, or if they were, they certainly didn’t speak them with the same words. Suspicion eventually, perhaps inevitably, turned to animosity. Now cops and reporters, often seeking similar truths for the same greater cause, are from two different planets.

  Because of this, I take no small amount of pride in my ability to relate to my friends in blue, an ability that I’ve used to my significant advantage over my entire career.

  “I’ve got something for you, and I’m hoping you’ve got something for me.”

  That’s how I opened the bargaining session with Lieutenant Leo Goldsmith. He may not have realized it, though probably he did, but a set of negotiations were about to take place, and he represented one side of it.

  “What I’ve got is about one minute,” he replied. “We’re getting called out on another case.”

  All right, this wasn’t going exactly as planned. The thing about reporting is that few things ever do. The one phone number you need will always be the unlisted one. The crucial official that you need to supply the last key fact in a story is invariably going to be away on vacation, probably in a Third World country, often on a river cruise without any use of a phone. The file you need in federal court is inevitably the one that’s inexplicably missing.

  “Jill Dawson,” I said.

  Before I could continue, he interjected. “I’ve got nothing on that one for you. Absolutely nothing. And take that at face value. I’m not being told anything about the case, and best as I can tell, the decisions on that one are being made way above my pay grade.”

  “I’ve got her driver’s license,” I said. “It was delivered to me at the Record this morning with a note that appears to have been written by her killer.”

  Silence. A long silence, which turned into a longer one, until Goldsmith sighed loudly and said, “I’m going to inform the detective running the case, Mac Foley. He’s going to send someone over to pick this stuff up and we’ll want to talk with you. Make yourself available.”

  I said, “You know I’m always available for Boston’s finest.”

  “Jack, take my advice: Don’t screw around on this case.”

  He was serious. At least he sounded quite serious. His words lacked any trace of the locker-room-style bullshit that we’ve exchanged over the past ten or so years.

  I tried to match his intensity. “Lieutenant, I’m not screwing around. I’ve done the right thing. I’ve called you about the license. I’m hoping you’ll do the right thing in return.”

  I was hoping for an answer. What I got was the sound of a phone hitting the cradle. This negotiation was going to be a little more protracted than I had hoped.

  There’s not a whole lot you can do in life to hurt the great and famous Vinny Mongillo, the second most talented reporter at the Boston Record. You can insult him, which I often do, but insults merely roll off his olive skin like water off a duck’s behind, or however that phrase goes. You can ignore him, and he barely notices. But the one thing you can’t do is cancel a meal with him. I’m afraid that might actually send him into an institution.

  Which explains why noontime found me walking through the august doors of the University Club on the edge of Boston’s Back Bay for our prescheduled lunch. This was supposed to be a celebratory send-off right before my wedding. That wedding was, as we say in the business, yesterday’s news — or perhaps no news. Now, circumstances and decisions had made this an entirely different affair, though Vinny didn’t know that yet.

  When I walked into the dining room, he had already parked his enormous frame in a corner booth and was talking with a man in a jacket and tie about two opened bottles of white wine that were sitting prominently on the table. Vinny, by the way, had just become something of an oenophile — a fact that made dining with him virtually impossible.

  “Apples,” Vinny said as I slid onto the bench across from him. “I taste apples. Tart apples.”

  The man in the jacket and tie snapped his fingers and said, “You nailed it. That’s exactly what it is. Try this one.”

  With that, he poured a little wine into a second glass, and Vinny picked it up and pushed his long nose toward the liquid without taking a sip.

  “I t
hought I’d smell more oak than I do,” Vinny said, looking up at the man respectfully.

  I rolled my eyes and also looked up at the guy in the jacket and tie and said, “I’ll have a Fresca.”

  He ignored me. So did Vinny. It was like I never arrived. Vinny took a sip of the wine and exclaimed loudly, “That is a fantastic finish.” He looked across the table at me for the first time and said, “You’re going to love how this goes with our oysters. By the way, say hello to Pedro, the new wine director at the club.”

  Before I could say anything, Pam, the best food server in the city, arrived at the table with what looked like an ocean’s worth of freshly shucked oysters and said to Mongillo, “The chef culled out the very best ones for you.” To me, “Oh, hey, Jack. Great to see you.” Her tone didn’t quite match the meaning of the words, if you know what I mean.

  And then came Chef Bill, padding through the dining room in his tall hat and chef whites straight toward our table, or more specifically, toward Vinny. By the way, I have the same feeling seeing a chef in a dining room as I have watching a pilot wander the cabin of an airplane: Enough of the meet-and-greet, grip-and-grin, feel-good stuff. I’d feel a lot better if they were back where they belonged.

  “Mr. Mongillo, we’re so delighted to have you back,” Bill said to Vinny. Vinny beamed in return. I might as well have been a stain on the white linen tablecloth.

  “My favorite restaurant in town,” he replied.

  That’s just great. It’s probably worth noting here that I was the one who was the member in good standing at the University Club. In other words, I was the one who paid the significant monthly bills, who spent my monthly dining room minimum, who tipped the entire staff each Christmas — or, to use the politically correct term, holiday season. Vinny suggested eating here as often as he could, fully realizing that the dining room doesn’t accept cash, meaning he would never face the burden of a tab.

  Chef Bill returned to the kitchen. Vinny said to the wine director, “Why don’t you decant the cab, Pedro. The nose had a tiny bit of funk to it.” And then we were alone.

  To me, Mongillo raised his glass of white wine, the one with the fantastic finish, and said, “To matrimony. To Maggie. To a lifetime of happiness. The gods are forever smiling on you, Fair Hair. I can’t believe you’ve scammed your way to another great woman.”

  The funny thing, and I mean that not in any literal way, is that nobody had actually poured wine into my glass. I didn’t even have any water. Vinny didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy sucking down a chilled oyster and dreamily exclaiming, “And I can’t believe I scammed my way into a Wellfleet and Chardonnay combination this good.”

  I said, “I’m not marrying Maggie today.”

  He sucked down another oyster and took a sip of wine, his eyes intently on the food and drink rather than on me.

  Finally, he looked up and said, “We’re still going to finish lunch, right?”

  I ignored that. He eyed my face and said, “You’re serious.”

  I nodded.

  He said, “Can I ask you something.” Pause. “Are you fucking stupid?”

  I kept my look trained on his. “It’s not a big deal,” I said, which, of course, was a lie, and a rather obvious one. “I’ve got a story breaking, and we’ve had some complications, Maggie and me.”

  “The complication meaning you’re acting like an asshole again, pulling a classic Jack.”

  Truth is, I probably would have been, if Maggie hadn’t pulled a Jack before I had the chance. So in a rare moment of revelation, I said, “I do have a story going. But Maggie needed some more time.”

  He finally sucked down the oyster that he had been holding in his fingers all this time. Pedro came back and refilled Mongillo’s wineglass. He put the bottle down and walked away, leaving me to pour my own. Pam showed up with a crabcake on a small plate, placed it in front of Mongillo, and said, “Chef wants you to try his new aioli sauce.”

  Maybe I should just join the Y.

  Mongillo looked at the crabcake admiringly, like an accountant looks at a finished tax return, then peered up at me and said, “I’m really sorry, Jack. I really am.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to advertise this around, but I was having doubts this morning as well. I didn’t think I could go through with it. And then, well, then she told me she couldn’t go through with it. And here I am.”

  We both sat in silence. Well, not exactly silence. Mongillo made a long slurping sound as he inhaled yet another oyster.

  I took my first sip of wine, prompting Vinny to break the silence. “What do you think?” he asked.

  “Kind of a runny nose,” I replied.

  He regarded me for another moment and said, “Even as a sympathetic character you’re still a complete jackass.”

  “Thank you.”

  More silence. Pam came over and took our orders. I asked for a turkey sandwich and a Coke. Vinny ordered a butterflied filet mignon with an extra-large baked potato with a side of creamy spinach. He was supposedly doing that Atkins thing, in that he was eating all the meat he could get his hands on, but I’m not so sure he realized you have to cut out the carbs on the other side of the ledger.

  Regarding Vinny, he’s huge, and I don’t mean huge like Tom Brady is huge — tall and broad-shouldered and all that. I mean huge like a wooly mammoth is huge, only a whole lot woolier. The guy didn’t so much have hair on his arms, but fur. His skin always had a sheen to it. His chocolate-colored eyes were the size of doughnuts. His odor was that of a pizza parlor.

  And his heart, when you got beyond everything else, was the size of a boulder, though that may not have been in evidence on this day.

  He said to me, “I don’t mean to speak out of school, Jack, but Maggie’s smart, she’s gorgeous, she’s got a body with curves like the Tour de France, and she loves you. You’ve probably freaked her out without even realizing it. You can salvage this thing.”

  Could I? That question was becoming increasingly more bothersome to me than the other particularly obvious one, which was, Did I want to?

  And there was another nagging question as well: How many good women come along in a single life? I had Katherine, who was the greatest woman I’ll ever know, and the only one I’d wanted to raise children with. There was the alluring Samantha Stevens, perhaps more of a rebound woman than anything else. Of course there was Elizabeth Riggs, who I continued to think about every single day, a woman I undoubtedly would have married but for my inability to get over Katherine’s death. And now Maggie Kane. I’m not sure what went wrong there, with either of us.

  Time to change the subject.

  The food was delivered to the table, mine by Pam, and Vinny’s by a team of University Club servers carrying his various plates and trays, along with a decanter filled with a maroon-colored wine.

  I asked, “What do you know about the Jill Dawson murder?”

  Mongillo surveyed all that was his, from the steak to the baked potato to the spinach to what he announced was a Frog’s Leap Cabernet. Then he looked at me and said, “The same as everybody else outside of BPD. Very little.”

  He cut his steak in half and checked the center to see how it was cooked. Pam waited by his side to make sure everything was okay. Nobody asked me whether my turkey was properly roasted.

  Vinny said, “Found dead in her Beacon Hill apartment on January third. Case unsolved, last that I know. Police are being even more tight-lipped about this one than usual. They ain’t even talking to me. And the people who usually whisper about these things aren’t whispering about these things.”

  I don’t know who those people were, but still found this interesting. I took a bite of my sandwich, realized what little desire I had to eat, and put it down. Meantime, Mongillo attacked his steak as if it were about to attack him. I was just hoping that no strangers approached the table unannounced and lost a finger or a limb for their mistake.

  So I told him about the license and the note and my call to the cops.
He whistled a low little whisper, actually put down his fork for a moment, and said, “Prediction: You and I are about to embark on a wild ride.”

  You and I. For some reason I liked that just then, though I wasn’t exactly sure why. We talked about the story, or lack thereof, for a while longer. He did little to hide his disappointment when I informed him that I didn’t have time for dessert, advised me to leave a good tip when the bill came, and concluded, “Well, even if you didn’t get married, it was still a good excuse to have lunch.”

  On the street, Vinny jumped in the first cab that ambled by to head to wherever it is that he goes when he’s not in the newsroom. I stood on the curb, trying to flag another taxi. I checked my cell phone for the time and it was three o’clock.

  The thought struck me that I should have been on my way to city hall to marry Maggie Kane. But she was somewhere far away and I was wondering where Jill Dawson’s death was going to take me and where my life might ultimately lead after that. All of which made me feel somewhere beyond empty.

  I had experienced indescribably lonely moments in my life — most notably when I returned to my house the night that Katherine died and realized that I would never lead the life that I had always dreamed. And there was the morning that Elizabeth Riggs shook her head at me with tears in her eyes before walking down the jetway at Logan Airport to begin a new life in San Francisco; another woman whom I loved was gone. But even in those times, lonely as they were, the past seemed to provide some small amount of solace, even warmth, like a gentle surf lapping up against soft sand.

  Standing on Stuart Street, with a frigid wind cutting through my overcoat and rustling my hair, I began to wonder if my life wasn’t becoming a compilation of mistakes, and if my own past was exposing me rather than protecting me.

  A cab finally pulled up to the curb. I settled into the backseat and felt the heat on my face and legs, which probably should have felt good, but really didn’t feel like anything at all. I knew only this much: not in a long, long time had I felt so very much alone.