The Nominee

by Brian McGrory

  As Sweeney might ask, when is a dog not a dog? When it’s a wolf.

  “What’s your gut tell you?” I asked.

  “Well, on one level, it tells me I wish I had eaten dinner with you at that Louis place, because I’m starved.”

  I didn’t laugh, so he added, “On quite another, it’s unsettled. There could be an easy explanation for all this. Someone might have been lazy and just didn’t bother with the requested reports. Maybe they did the reports and the sheet fell out of the folder. I don’t know.”

  “Or?”

  He looked at me square in the face, his features pitched back and his eyes stern, and said, “I really don’t know, son, but now aRecord publisher has been murdered, and I’d like to find out damned quick whether his predecessor was killed as well.”

  I leaned back on the bench, a little more relaxed now that I sensed most of the news of the moment was already out. “I appreciate that very much,” I said, “but I have to ask you, why? Why are you doing this? You don’t know me from a hole in the wall.”

  “Son, don’t take this the wrong way, but it’s not really about you. Somebody might have disobeyed one of my orders, and I don’t like that, especially since it was the last one I ever gave as a Boston cop. Somebody might have been disrespectful toward the dead, and I like that even less.”

  He took a deep breath and slowly exhaled toward the sky.

  “Don’t think I’m strange,” he said. “But you’re a homicide detective, you have a kinship with the dead. They’re your clients, and sometimes, they become your friends in some odd, imaginary kind of way. You see them shot up or carved up or unspeakably mangled, and you have to imagine what they were like in life, so you talk to others, you pry into their pasts, you put a personality with the cold flesh that’s lying in a refrigerated roll-out locker at the medical examiner’s office. And you have to look around the room where they died or on the street or in their car, and imagine what those last moments must have been like, the terror, the pain, the sorrow, and the regret. They’re gone, and in many respects, you’re their only representative left in life, and it’s your job, your one and only job, to achieve justice.”

  He paused again, staring out across the pond at the empty expanse of blackness.

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  I thought of Paul being wheeled down the long aisle of Trinity Church, his casket on the bricks of Copley Square outside, the gun-metal black hearse glinting in the noontime sun, the bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace” as he was slowly lowered into the open earth.

  Then I thought of John Cutter drawing his last breaths in his bed at the condominium overlooking this very park that he loved so much. Was he awake when he died? Had someone poisoned him? Did he have a heart attack and pass gently in his sleep?

  I turned toward Sweeney, who continued to look straight ahead, and said, “Well, I’m sure John Cutter appreciates it very much, and I know I do. I wish you were on Paul Ellis’s murder as well.”

  He asked, “Any more sightings of the guy in the swamp?”

  I shook my head again. He said, “Well, you smell better this time, anyway.” Then he laughed.

  His laugh was infectious, so I started laughing too, almost despite myself. It’s as if, sitting here with a retired detective, being watched by two guards, a pressure valve had been released. I couldn’t stop laughing.

  I said, “Talk about mucking things up.”

  “Swamp Man.”

  We both laughed again—more of a giggle, actually.

  When we stopped, he looked at me and asked, “Do you know Robert Fitzgerald?”

  I said, “Of course I do. He’s one of the best in our business, and a great guy to boot.”

  He didn’t reply, so I asked, “Why?”

  “Oh, he’s famous. Just wondering what he’s like. I used to read him all the time when I was in Boston, and I used to see him around crime scenes now and again. I think he used to be tight with the commish.”

  “He’s tight with a lot of people,” I said. “It’s amazing how many officials he has feeding him information.”

  Sweeney looked down at the grass in front of us, then at me again, and asked, “So why do you have an ex-girlfriend that beautiful and friendly.” He stressed the prefixex in a demanding kind of way.

  “Life’s complicated.”

  I wanted to leave it at that, but he didn’t earn his stripes as a homicide detective for being passive.

  “Exactly, which is why you don’t want ex-girlfriends. You want current ones, good ones, beautiful ones, and then you want to make her into your wife.”

  “If only it were that easy.”

  “Well, you’re right, it isn’t.” His voice was lower now, fatherly, confiding. “But good things usually aren’t, are they? Me, I’ve been married so long I can’t even remember what it’s like not to be married to her, and I’d never have it any other way.”

  “You’re lucky,” I said. “Maybe it’s generational. My parents had such a great marriage that my mother died of a broken heart right after my father’s death. These days, it just doesn’t seem as easy, you know? I don’t know. I don’t know what it takes. I did have a good marriage, but then my wife died, and I don’t know what it’s going to take for me to get over that.”

  “Time,” he said somberly, staring straight ahead. “It takes time.”

  The mood had become far too heavy, so I asked, “Where are you staying tonight?”

  “Oh, I’ll find a place. You’re me, all you need is a place to lay down between trips to the bathroom.”

  I had this awful image of him ambling past the Four Seasons Hotel, where John Cutter lived and died, a solitary silhouette in a dark night, heading for one of the cheap flophouses on the outskirts of the theater district. So I said, “It’s not much, but why don’t you come crash in my spare bedroom, provided you don’t mind sleeping on a boat.”

  He looked at me amused. “A boat? What do you have, one of those yachts with a foreign-speaking captain who takes you down to the Caribbean every winter?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Well this is awfully nice of you. Can we get a bite to eat on the way?” And just like that, I had a roommate, and I’d find out very soon, something far more.

  Twenty

  TIRED DOESN’T COME NEARto describing how I felt as we pulled into the gravel lot above Long Wharf, Kevin and Gerry, the two Boston cops, in the front of their unmarked cruiser, and me and Hank Sweeney in the back.

  Exhaustion. Complete and total mental and physical incapacitation. I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to move. The walk from the car down the docks to theThe Emancipation loomed in my mind like a journey across Death Valley on foot. If my protectors had wanted to carry me like a bride over a threshold, I would have said fine, but no offer was proffered, so I opened the rear passenger door and struggled to my aching feet.

  The first thing I saw was my own convertible, sitting in a different spot from where I usually parked it, the sight of it triggering the recollection that my ex-girlfriend had brought it back to my seaworthy abode. She might be waiting for me inside. Elizabeth, hi, you met Hank earlier. Hank, yeah, this is Elizabeth.

  Oh boy.

  The next thing I saw was another, unfamiliar car, a gold Lexus, parked a few spots away, closer to us. The rectangular lot was usually empty at night, because even in April, I was the only fool desperate enough to be sleeping on a boat. Perhaps someone had come back north for the season. Or perhaps someone was as desperate as me for a place to call home.

  As we walked by the Lexus, the quiet creaks and taps of its cooling engine penetrated the haze surrounding my brain with some larger meaning, but what that was, I wasn’t quite sure. I only know that I grew agitated, and suddenly more aware. I brushed my hand across the hood of the car, which was warm, which only made me more tense.

  “I wouldn’t mind catching a Red Sox game while I’m up here,” Sweeney was saying, his comments directed as much to Kevin and Gerry, who we
re walking alongside us. “I saw them in spring training this year, and they looked a little rough up the middle.”

  I hastened my pace, moving several steps ahead of them. My eyes cut through the dark toward the boat, where a dim light was shining from below deck. As I walked by Nathan’s shanty, I noticed another light reflecting from one of his windows. It was about midnight, late for him to be up.

  When I hit the long, wooden dock, my legs were moving so fast that I was nearly running, though if anyone asked me why, which I think my police cohorts were about to do, I couldn’t have provided a proper explanation. Nervous, easily excitable, suspicious, maybe paranoid. Probably all of that and more. But I couldn’t stop. I heard the guys behind me start to move at a similarly fast pace.

  When I rounded the last turn and got within about twenty yards of the boat, with the dock creaking and heaving beneath me and the bracing salt air slapping my face, I thought I saw something move on deck, some shadowy object pass briefly in front of a ray of light. Maybe it was an insect or an illusion or simply a shade blowing in the breeze. But now I was in a full-out run.

  At ten yards away, my focus grew sharper and I saw the object move again, this time in a darkened crevice of the deck. He or she or it was hunched low to the ground, and moved slowly, deliberately, as if it were trying to hide.

  “Freeze,” I screamed, my voice thundering through the night air before evaporating over the vast harbor. My legs were hammering toward the boat.

  At five yards, my eyes deciphered a human form—a dark jacket, a black ski mask, a stout pair of eyes staring back at me, the eyes darting from me to the three men stampeding from the rear. Then he—or she—turned from me and, in one quick, short motion, jumped overboard and into the sea. I barely saw a splash, and asked myself, is this some sort of exhaustion-induced mirage?

  Time to find out. I leaped from the dock onto the boat without ever breaking stride. When I got to the aft side, I stared into the water, saw a murky form briefly surface about ten feet away, and dove in.

  It’s probably appropriate to note right about now that I don’t think Flipper spent as much time performing daredevil water acts as I had in the last few days—no small irony considering that I barely know how to swim. I’ll also point out that it was April in Boston, meaning the water wasn’t so much cold as frigid, almost frozen, a fact I hadn’t considered until my head broke through the surface and I was met with the sudden assumption that I was probably going to die.

  Cold? Picture the dead of winter in Glacier National Park in the northernmost point of Montana, with a Dairy Queen Mr. Misty in your hand and your feet in a puddle of slush. Picture being soaking wet and stuck in the freezer case of your local supermarket, your clothes adhered to your purple skin. I wasn’t in the water but thirty seconds when my limbs began going numb and my vision blurred because my head hurt so much. Mark Spitz I was not, but screw him because this wasn’t any Olympic-style pool.

  I treaded water, lifting my head as high as I could in search of the intruder, but saw nothing.

  Shouts suddenly filled the air, and I turned toward the boat and saw the massive form of Hank Sweeney at the edge, yelling, “Son, I’m with you.” With that, he jumped through the air and cannonballed into the black sea, the resulting waves splashing over my head. Maybe we could get a job as the comic warm-up act at Sea World.

  “This way,” I cried back, and began thrashing toward shore, figuring that was the direction that the intruder was headed, and also assuming that if we didn’t get to shore quickly, we would all suffer from hypothermia.

  The moon cast a yellowish glow over the water, and in the dull light, I thought I made out a splashing form about twenty paces ahead. I tried yelling out “In front of me,” but the words barely came out, and as they did, they for some reason sounded like “Enema.” Go figure.

  I swam harder, my arms ripping through the freezing water and my exhausted legs, weighed down by my shoes, thrashing behind me. I was gaining, but not enough, mostly because I paused a couple of times to make sure Sweeney was all right behind me. The cops onboard had thrown him a life preserver and were trying to pull him to safety, which meant they weren’t waiting on shore where I really needed them.

  I picked up the pace and appeared to be gaining on him. Icy water splashed into my mouth. My private parts felt as if they were eternally numb. I plodded onward, suddenly angry that in my childhood swimming lessons at Carson Beach, the recalcitrant instructors declined to graduate me to anything beyond the level of Minnow. If my Dolphin friends could only see me now.

  And then I thought of Elizabeth. Was she on the boat, or had she simply dropped my car off and gone home? If it was the former, did I scare off the intruder before he harmed her, or after? Could he have thought Elizabeth was me and shot her, Elizabeth the innocent victim of a mistaken identity, or was he waiting on deck to ambush me when I came home?

  I felt sick over the possibilities. Together, apart, lifelong lovers, mortal enemies—didn’t matter. I began pulsing through the water even harder, the intruder still about a dozen paces ahead, but the gap closing.

  In Boston Harbor, shore isn’t anything so pleasant or easy as a sandy beach, such that I could step from the water and give simple chase to the man or woman who wanted to be my executioner, which is not to be confused with my executor, though maybe I’d soon need one of those as well.

  Rather, there are tall, concrete seawalls built to protect the streets and seaside parks from the occasional nor’ easter that sends mammoth waves catapulting toward land. I bring this up as I pulled close to shore and saw just such a wall looming over me. I also saw my intruder, up on his feet, lurching across the few feet of litter-strewn, rock-covered dry land between the wall and the water. I stood in the harbor, realized I was only waist deep, and pushed toward land.

  When I hit terra firma, my lungs were desperate for air. My extremities were so cold they felt like they might just crack and clunk on the ground (loudly, I might add). I stumbled and fell hard onto the rocks, picked myself up, and staggered toward the wall. That’s when a rock, moving at no slow velocity, grazed my head. I never saw it coming, but felt its impact on my temple. I crumbled to the ground yet again, summoned every bit of strength I had, and pulled myself back to my feet.

  I gazed upward and saw the intruder scaling the top of the ten-foot wall. He was no longer wearing the mask. He looked down at me as I looked at him, and I was sure, one hundred percent positive, that it was the same guy I had seen in Florida and on the basketball court in the North End. As I made my first move to climb the wall, I looked up and saw him from behind sprinting off into the night.

  As I put my hands on the wall, getting ready to climb, the next thing I saw was a floodlight descend from the sky. The pulsing sound of a helicopter filled the air. A man on a megaphone hollered, “State Police. Move away from the wall and lie flat on the beach.” So I did, I did, spreading myself out face down on the ground with my arms above my head and my legs a few feet apart, relief overcoming frustration, but fear still coursing through my brain. What I feared was the unknown, and what I didn’t know was whether Elizabeth was still alive.

  And then it was bedlam. The helicopter landed on the street above the seawall with a blast of noise and a gust of wind. The urgent wail of police sirens filled the air, the lights from the cruisers flashing red and blue in every conceivable direction. As I lay on the ground, soaking wet, quaking uncontrollably from the relentless cold, a floodlight focused on me and a cop yelled from the top of the wall, “Massachusetts State Police. One move and you’re dead.”

  Great. You tell me how to stop shivering. One more minute in this cold and I was dead anyway.

  Someone flung a rope ladder down the wall and I watched from the ground as two uniformed troopers quickly descended it. Then I heard another voice from the top of the wall, a familiar voice, that of Gerry, one of my bodyguards, call out, “Hold any fire. That’s Jack Flynn. He’s okay. He’s okay.”

  Was I?r />
  Was Elizabeth alive?

  The troopers, on the rocky ground now, still approached me warily. They had me roll over, felt for a weapon, pulled my newspaper ID from my front pocket, and helped me to my feet. One of them yelled, and I’m not lying about this, “Medics!” It felt like we were on the set of a movie, only I wish my contract provided for a stuntman to play these action scenes.

  Within minutes, there was a stretcher, which I refused to lie on. A youngish man in a jumpsuit wrapped me in what looked like an aluminum foil floor-length coat, and, beneath that, helped me pull off my soaking wet clothes. Normally I wouldn’t allow a man to disrobe me, but right about now I would have let anyone do anything they wanted, provided it would help me get warm and dry.

  A second paramedic, his face just inches from mine, yelled, as if I had suffered ear or brain damage during my nautical exploits, “Can you climb this ladder?”

  I replied in a regular tone, at normal volume, “Yes.”

  As I walked to the wall, a uniformed trooper came alongside me and asked if I saw which way the intruder—killer?—had escaped.

  “He went that-a-way,” I said, pointing to the peak of the concrete wall. I don’t know why I thought that was funny, but I did. The officer didn’t.

  When I hit the top of the wall I again declined to lie on the rolling gurney—what is it with paramedics and their stretchers?—and searched the crowd for Gerry, the bodyguard. There were a dozen State Police and Boston Police cruisers parked at every possible angle, all their lights flashing and pulsing. Police radios cackled in the night. Floodlights were aimed every which way. Another chopper, I think with a television station, hovered overhead. I saw Gerry about ten yards away gesticulating wildly to an older man in a suit.

  As I walked through the crowd toward them, wrapped in my faux spacesuit and flanked by nervous paramedics, I saw exactly what I didn’t want to see: The State Medical Examiner’s van lumbering around a corner and slowly pulling across the gravel lot of Long Wharf.

  Elizabeth.