For a few seconds, Black was riveted by the photographs. Then he felt his head spin, his stomach grow queasy. The smoke continued to float up from the cigarette across his face. He looked away from the pictures at the empty wooden expanse of the table.
"I'm Kevin Morrissey. Lieutenant Kevin Morrissey. I assume you've been read your rights?"
Black continued to look down.
"Well, it's probably worth repeating the highlights. You have the right to remain silent. You also have the right to a lawyer. If you should want a lawyer, we will cease talking to you immediately and give you the opportunity to call your lawyer. You are free to do that any time you please."
Morrissey paused, and his voice became more confiding. "My advice to you right now, Curtis, is that a lawyer would not help and may well hurt. We can work together a lot more easily without someone getting in the way right now." Change of tone again, back to the original one.
"But again, that's your call. You do have the right. I just want you to know that."
Black nodded and said nothing. He didn't have a lawyer, didn't even know a lawyer. A lawyer was never part of his program, never necessary, not until the FBI and Boston Police had showed up at his Chelsea apartment that afternoon.
Morrissey eyed him expectantly, nodded himself, and said, "So what went wrong? You don't usually kill people, Curtis. That's not your style.
And look at this guy. Good husband. Good father. You know he was an usher up at St. Paul's Church. He's dead. And look at his family.
They've got to live a life without him. I wonder if those girls will even be able to go to college now."
He said this not in a taunting tone, but flat, matter-of-fact, curious.
Black sat in silence. Morrissey took a last puff of his cigarette, stubbed it out on the table, tossed it on the floor, then lit up another one.
The smoke continued to wash over Black's face. The faces on the photographs smiled up at him. The room seemed so painfully small and shrinking by the moment, the stains on the wall clawing at him.
Morrissey said, "You ever hear of the charge of felony murder?" He paused, got no reaction from Black, and continued. "We have it here in Massachusetts. It's when a victim dies in the commission of a felony, just like last week on Hanover Street. Everyone involved in that felony, whether they pulled the trigger or were some flunky driving the car, they're all going away for life. That's the sentence: life."
Morrissey was silent. Black gazed down at the table. This, he was coming to realize, was the dreaded climax not only of a tortuous week, the longest, most painful week of his life, but the climax of what had until then been a successful career of crime. Successful criminal careers, he was realizing, don't end with a banquet and a gold watch.
One way or another, they usually end in court, then prison. For the last seven days, Black had awaited his destiny. He could have fled like a couple of the others, just taken his cash and boarded a plane and gone somewhere he had never been before, never to return. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Some odd part of him, a part he had never felt before, kept him back, told him he had to face the consequences of that deadly dusk on Hanover Street. He had already lost his wife and their son in a hit-and-run crash the year before.
After that, he felt he had nothing left to lose.
"We have an informant," Morrissey said, his voice still so calm, so easy. "This informant tells us that you were recruiting for a job a couple of months ago. You were getting ready for a heist. This heist."
Morrissey paused, stubbed out another cigarette, and threw it on the floor, Black continued to look down at the table, away from the photographs.
"We have a witness, an employee of the city of Boston's Transportation Department, Parking Enforcement Division. He saw someone double-parked in that blue cargo van outside of the bank. He tried to get that person to move, then wrote out a ticket. He picked your photograph out of a lineup, an old FBI surveillance photo we have, and identified you."
Black flinched, his almost imperceptible movement the only betrayal of a wave of sheer terror working its way up his spine. If there was even a scintilla of doubt about his fate, it was decided with those foreboding words. We have a witness. Black lifted his head up. His eyes rested on Morrissey. The two men locked stares in total silence.
"There is a way out," Morrissey said finally, the two men still eyeing each other, Black in desperation, the detective providing at least the veneer of help. "There's a way out." He shuffled some papers around purposefully. "Let me tell you how."
Black continued to stare at Morrissey, who lit up yet another cigarette, took a fast drag, and put it down right on the table.
"I don't believe you fired the weapon," Morrissey said. He paused, letting that thought hang out there with the cigarette smoke and the awkward adolescent smiles of Paul Boyle's two daughters. "Judging from where we believe you were during the commission, and the ballistic tests, we don't think you could have fired the weapon."
Silence, Black just staring back.
"Not your style." Morrissey raised his graying eyebrows. "And who knows, I may be able to find another witness who says you never got out of that van, which would make it impossible for you to have fired the gun, because Mr. Boyle was shot by someone standing over at the doorway to the bank."
Black continued to stare at him, his blank face masking a hurricane of thoughts and questions churning in his head. What kind of deal? Could he avoid doing time? What would that mean to the rest of his life?
What would it mean to the others involved?
Morrissey continued, "So we cut a deal, me and you. I'd still have to convince the FBI to go along with this too, and they're not as easy and they're not as eager, but the worst of the charges in this case is in state court, this felony murder count. Life in prison, just for being there. It takes a long time to live a whole life in prison, you know."
Black could only imagine, which is what he was doing sitting in the chair trying not to breathe in the smoke, trying not to let his eye linger on the photographs of Paul Boyle's two daughters, trying not to let his guard down and be trapped by this man across from him.
"We cut a deal," Morrissey said. "You give me the names. You tell me who fired the shot that killed Paul Boyle. You tell me who else was involved. I'm especially interested in a convict by the name of Rocco Manupelli, who has strong connections to the Boston branch of La Cosa Nostra. You help us, we protect you, we put you in the federal program, we send you out of state with a new identity and a new way to make a life, an honest way to make a life. You make out. We make out.
The only losers in this thing are the fucking murderers who killed this man." With that, Morrissey reached across the table and waved the Boyle family portrait in front of Black's face. "These girls don't have a father."
Black stared at him, still silent. He wondered to himself if he could do it. Could he be a rat? He didn't know these guys well. He didn't owe Manupelli anything. They had bungled the job. He had it teed up perfectly for them. Just follow orders and adhere to the plan, and they'd be all set now. And what was the alternative? If he didn't rat, what would happen?
As if reading his mind, Morrissey said, "And think about it. You're the only one we have right now. If you don't cough up the others, we come down on you in state and federal courts with a fury the likes of which you've never seen before. You'll never see a free day for the rest of your life. You won't even make bail."
Morrissey stubbed out another cigarette and flicked it on the floor.
Black just wanted out of this room, out of his life, for that matter.
He needed time to think. He should talk to a lawyer, if he could find one. He knew that much. That thought emboldened him to speak.
"We may have a deal. I need to speak to my lawyer first," he said.
Morrissey jumped up out of his seat, the chair almost falling backward because of his sudden force. He yanked out the chair closest to Black and sat back down, their faces now a few inche
s apart.
"This deal holds right now," Morrissey said, almost seething. "You get a lawyer involved, that creates a whole new level of bullshit I have to go through. I still have to talk those jamokes from the federal government into this. If you hesitate, I hesitate. Let me state it another way. You call a lawyer right now, I want to be the one who swings that prison door shut on the rest of your life."
Black put his hands up to his head, through his hair, across his forehead and eyes. When he opened his eyes, he was accidentally staring at those pictures, the smiling girls, the dead father, the times past they would never have again.
Looking at the photos, Black said, "I'll give you the guys." His voice was so low it was barely audible. Morrissey still sat right next to him, still just a few inches away.
"How many?"
There were five involved, plus him. Black hesitated. "All four," he said.
"Who was the shooter?"
"I don't know." As he said this, he thought of Stemple pitching his handgun into the harbor.
"Bullshit. How the fuck do you not know?"
Black gulped. "They wore masks and identical clothes. They were a good distance away from me. It was getting dark. I couldn't tell which one it was."
"Fuck it. No shooter, no deal." Morrissey got up as he said this and walked the few steps to the other side of the room, then turned toward Black, leaning on the table with his two hands.
Black's mind went into overdrive. Does he make it up? Does he tell him Stemple because it was Stemple who ditched his gun? But maybe Stemple fired a shot that missed. Does he tell him Rocco Manupelli because he doesn't like Rocco, thinks Rocco was destined to fuck this thing up, knows that Morrissey wants to hear that it was Rocco who was the killer?
Black said, "Then no deal. I don't know which one fired the deadly shot."
Morrissey lit up another cigarette and walked a slow lap of the table, cutting close behind Black.
"You're missing a guy too, right? Five guys at the scene, including you, and a driver at the fish pier, right? We have witnesses."
Black said, "Three guys were on the guard when he came out of the bank.
One guy was on Boyle. I was in the van."
"Yeah, and what about the driver at the pier where you dumped the first getaway car?"
Black hesitated, collected himself, and said, "There was no other driver. We planted a car there, and when we got there, I drove."
Morrissey shook his head. When he spoke, his voice sounded tired now.
"Bullshit again. I know how you work. You wouldn't risk leaving a car there unattended and having it be towed or watched or whatever. You like having a man on every job, a live person. You don't leave things to chance."
Black thought of his getaway driver on the pier. Older guy, no record, not even any criminal experience. He had needed the money, but didn't need it so bad he wanted to be part of the holdup. He took the driver's job for a smaller cut and said it was the only job he'd ever do. Black recalled the way the driver watched as the men arrived on the pier, angry and scared. He had watched as Black vomited, then fearfully asked what had gone wrong.
Black would spare him. He'd spare him. To Morrissey, he simply shook his head.
In response, the detective tossed his half-smoked cigarette, still lit, against the wall and strode silently out of the room, flipping the door shut behind him.
Maybe five minutes later, the door opened and another man in a navy blue suit entered the room.
"Curtis," Morrissey said, "This is special agent Kent Drinker of the FBI. He's a liaison between the bureau and the witness protection program. He, along with the U.s. attorney here in Boston, has to sign off on anyone entering the program."
twenty-one
Present Day Monday, November 6
There is nothing like a funeral to spur a dreaded bout of introspection. First off, I defy anyone who has ever sat at such services to say they haven't looked around the room and wondered how many people they might attract to theirs, what the mourners might say, how sad those closest to you would be. I mean, I admit, I joined the National Press Club just so it would take up another line of my obituary and because maybe the club's board of governors might feel compelled to show up at the church, even though they had never met me and I don't even vote at the club elections.
I bring this up because as I gazed across the vast expanse of the Sacred Heart Church, at the hundreds upon hundreds of people crammed into the pews to mourn Steve Havlicek's passing-the Little League coaches, the fellow PTA members, the governor of Massachusetts, the entire congressional delegation, the high school and college classmates, the kids who grew up on the same block, the Neighborhood Watch members from down the street, I couldn't help but fear that my own death wouldn't lure any more than a few of Boston and Washington's better-known bartenders and the couple of interns who I used to take out to lunch as another excuse to use my company credit card.
Second, these occasions serve as an abrupt reminder of our own mortality, especially this one, especially for me. I don't think I need to remind anyone, I was supposed to be in that car when the bomb went off. I was supposed to be dead. The only thing that saved me is my mediocre memory-forgetting the tape recorder-and a sense of courtesy that harks back to a more chivalrous time. Had I pulled the keys out of the ignition and left Steve Havlicek in the cold to open my front door, I'd be somewhere between heaven and hell right now, the good Lord and Satan engaged in a game of dice to determine my eternal destiny.
Martin had warned me not to travel to Boston for Havlicek's memorial service. Well, screw Martin and his warnings. I felt like I didn't have a whole lot left to lose. So come Monday morning, I snuck out of the Jefferson through the kitchen, hailed a cab to Baltimore-Washington International, the farthest away of D.c."s three airports, and grabbed a flight to Logan.
Anyway, like I said, the funeral, held in Havlicek's native Boston neighborhood of Roslindale, was packed. Margaret Havlicek, in a dignified black dress, sat in the first row, flanked on either side by her two children, both of whom, notably good-looking, seemed to have more of her genes than his, at least from an aesthetic point of view.
The publisher of the Record was there, as were all the top editors and representatives from the other major newspapers. Everyone knew Havlicek, and to know him was to like him. I knew that better than anyone.
Despite the sickening session with Appleton and Martin the day before, I was treated with an utmost sense of respect and dignity, even if I had been ordered to stay away. Margaret Havlicek had even called me in Washington and asked me to deliver a short eulogy. Once I was there, General Ellis, the publisher, pulled me aside and lauded what he described as my "constant acts of heroism" on the story. Appleton himself stopped at my pew as he walked slowly down the long aisle and put his hand on my arm. I quelled my first impulse, which involved a kidney punch.
For me, if I looked beyond the languid angst of it all, the forever sadness that would mark this day, it was good just to be out of that goddamned hotel room. I mean, I love a nice hotel as much as anyone, and more than most. But I had been held captive at the Jefferson Hotel all day Sunday, not even allowed to leave to visit my recuperating dog, who, by the way, seemed to be doing better, according to Kristen and Dr. Parins.
In church, Havlicek's oldest son, Paul, walked slowly up to the altar to deliver the first eulogy of the morning. He told of how his father never missed a single one of his baseball games as a kid, how he would fly home through the night to drive him to hockey practice in the cold predawn hours of a Boston winter morning, how he took an adult course in advanced calculus at Roxbury Community College just to help him with his homework in advanced-placement math. He recalled how his sister's junior high gymnastics coach quit in the middle of one season. I remembered that. The coach was actually indicted for having sex with a minor, but Paul wisely left that part out, given the surroundings and the occasion. So with the season on the brink of shambles, Steve Havlicek stepped in as the new
volunteer coach, even though he knew about as much about gymnastics as Elvis knew about weight control. For the next month, he left work early every day. He told the team if they won the division title, he would learn how to do a backflip. They did, and he did, though he had a lot more trouble than the group of young women.
As Paul left the altar, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, nor a face that saw a wide smile. His departure was my cue to speak, and I walked to the front of the church, the guy who could and probably should be dead instead. Perhaps, I thought as I walked in the eerie silence of the massive church, it had been time for me to join Katherine in some form of afworld. Perhaps I had defied destiny by mistake.
That aside, I told the gathered mourners of my first days at the Record, of this funny man named Havlicek who immediately insisted that I take him to lunch so he could show me the ropes, but was so busy eating that he only had time to tell me what a great guy he thought I was, and oh, yes, I could feel free to use the company credit card to pay the tab. After that, though, he was always the first one with a compliment, a suggestion, a bit of valuable advice.
In the last week, I saw more of him than I ever thought possible. That line seemed to raise a few chuckles. I talked about his brutal work habits, his ability to stay up around the clock, his commitment to the story, his steady stream of scoops, his unfailing good news judgment, his generosity as a colleague.
I mentioned the moments before the explosion, how he looked at me in my living room and asked if I would change my life if I inherited a couple of million dollars. Some people in the church laughed, understanding that it was a typical Havlicek question. I described his answer, how he said he wouldn't change a thing. This whole endeavor, he said, is too much fun, too worthwhile, to alter even a single part.
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