The Nominee

by Brian McGrory

  I showed her the picture of Eric Glass and said in a voice that was entirely too loud, “Have you seen this man?” She held the sheet for a moment, brought it over to her friend, and exchanged words in Chinese. Well, I think they were Chinese, but how was I supposed to know? The store, by the way, was crammed full of enormous rolls of fabrics in every possible stripe, check, plaid, and solid color, not to mention other assorted patterns that included Thai elephants and what Martha Stewart might call “Meadow Flowers.” This last one seemed to hold a certain appeal to Mongillo, because as I was following the shop-keeper to the counter, my compatriot had unspooled some of the fabric, held it across his large trunk, and said, “My next suit.”

  “Your next suit,” I replied, “is going to be all white, with arm restraints.”

  The tiny Chinese woman came up to me, handed me the sheet, and said, “We no see.”

  How do you saylie in Cantonese?

  I thanked them and led Mongillo to the door. We walked a block toward Boston Common and stopped at a morose looking bar with red paint peeling from the door and a dingy sign above proclaiming, “Something Fishy,” followed by, in smaller letters, “Ladies invited.” How nice. I’d have to remember to tell Elizabeth about it the next time we happened to cross paths.

  We pushed the door open and went in. The stench of stale smoke hit us in the nose like a heavyweight champion’s fist. I mean, there are West Virginia coal miners who would get sick in this place. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dark and my olfactory systems to come back from their hyper-defensive mode, but when I did, I found myself looking at an establishment that might as well have been the set for the bar scene inStar Wars.

  The bartender was, I don’t know, coming along eighty years old, a toothless afterthought of a man with a shoulder holster that displayed a Colt .45—and I don’t mean the malt liquor. The room was long and narrow, taken up almost entirely by the bar. The first two stools closest to us were occupied by a pair of overweight transvestites in miniskirts that didn’t—in fact, couldn’t—cover nearly enough. They were smoking stout cigars, gulping Bud Light from the bottle, nattering on about a guy named Stork they both wanted to bed.

  I heard Mongillo whisper to himself, “Holy shit. I don’t even think I’d get a drink here.” I heard the bartender say in a shrill voice, “Help you boys?”

  “Two Buds,” I replied. I don’t think I’d drunk a beer this early in the morning since Paul Newman Day at Wesleyan College. You know, Paul Newman Day. The entire day, from the moment you wake up until the second you pass out, is dedicated to drinking a case of beer while going about your daily routine. In some parts, like my old college campus, it’s considered a high holiday, at least when I was there.

  “Glasses?”

  Oh God, please no. “No thanks, they come in one.”

  One of the transvestites thought that was pretty funny, turned around and said in a gruff voice, “Hey sailor, not only do you have a sense of humor, but you’re really cute.”

  I had the feeling that I had mistakenly wandered into the employee lounge at a circus freak show.

  “Naw, you should see me when I’m out to sea,” I replied. I don’t even know what I meant, but now both transvestites were doubled over in laughter. They turned completely around in their stools to face us, and when one of them saw Mongillo, (s)he exclaimed, “Whoa there, you’d be quite a little handful.”

  I quickly scanned the bar, which looked like a regular Ellis Island of the depraved—blacks, whites, Indians, Hispanics, Chinese, mostly unshaven, huddled over cheap drinks made from watered-down rail liquor, barely talking to one another. It’s worth stressing that it wasn’t yet ten o’clock on a Saturday morning. Country clubs all over the region were packed with white, middle-aged, upper-class men giddy at the prospect of a round of springtime golf. Yogi Bear cartoons filled television sets all across the land. And here, free drinks for all my friends, as Mickey Rourke once said. Well, not free, but that’s not the point.

  “Buy you a drink?” one of the transvestites asked, the one, I might add, with the slightly less hairy legs.

  “I just did,” I replied.

  They even thought that was funny. I was starting to think that this wasn’t such a bad place, that maybe the University Club was overrated. Then Mongillo struck without warning. He pulled the envelope from my hand, showed them the picture, and said,

  “You people know where I can find my friend, Glass?”

  Their expressions quickly changed as they eyed the picture, then Mongillo, then me. The one with the hairier legs and the deeper voice asked, “You lawmen?”

  “Only in bed, only with the right implements,” I replied. The other one stifled a guffaw. I said, “I’m not. I’m just looking for a favor, and the guy in the picture is the only one I know who can give it to me.”

  “Well, don’t tell him I told you this, but walk to the far end of the bar. He’s almost always back there, on the end stool, sipping brandy and counting the night’s receipts.”

  “Probably figuring out what his tax vulnerability is,” I said, kind of casual, not wanting to look overeager and spook anyone.

  The less hairy one couldn’t contain his laughing now. He slapped a hand, polished fingernails and all, on his friend’s shoulder and said, “Tax vulnerability. Get it?” I turned to Mongillo and said, “Let’s go.”

  The two of us walked along the back mirrored wall—why, by the way, would an establishment like this, with the patrons that it has, want so many mirrors?—to the far end of the bar, where we saw nothing more than an empty stool with a mostly empty snifter glass. Mongillo put his nose up to it and proclaimed, “Drambuie.”

  We weren’t there but ten seconds when a nearby door to what the people of the University Club would call the men’s lounge, but the clientele here probably describe as the shitter, popped open, and out stepped a handsome black guy dressed in a crewneck sweater and a pair of khakis looking like he was about to head to theology class at Harvard.

  I was so surprised I exclaimed, “Glass?” Mongillo hit me in the small of the back, but too late. Glass whirled toward me, put his hand up under his sweater like he was about to pull out a gun, and said, “Who wants to know.” It’s an old line, but a good one.

  I said, “Jack Flynn. I’m a reporter for theRecord. This is Vinny Mongillo, another reporter. We’re doing a story. We need your help.”

  “I don’t deal with no fucking reporters anymore.” For the uninitiated, the wordanymore was the most interesting one in that sentence. Then he said, “Glass don’t deal with anyone he don’t want to deal with.”

  I said quickly, “Sir, we need your help. Could you just hear us out for a minute. You don’t want to help at that point, you just tell us. We’ll go away. But I don’t want you to say no until you know what the hell I’m asking.”

  He gave me an angry sidelong glance as he sat down at the bar, emptied his snifter, and hollered to the bartender, “Another Drambuie here, old-timer.” The bartender, who apparently had no love lost for the charming Mr. Glass, wasn’t exactly going to set a record getting down to him, but eventually he did, with a fresh drink.

  Glass sat with his elbows on the bar facing away from Mongillo and me. We stood over either one of his shoulders. Every once in a while, someone would come by and slam the door to the shitter. When the toilet was flushed, the sound was so loud, so intense, you had the feeling of being in a Caribbean resort during a September hurricane.

  “Remember a police raid five or six years back?” I asked. “Cops go to an apartment house in Mattapan. They knock down the outside door. They race inside and slam down the door of the wrong apartment. A minister dies, a cop dies. It’s a disaster.”

  He didn’t react, which I think was better than a denial. I think. So I said, “You were the police informant.”

  He swerved around on his stool, his fists clenched and his eyes white with anger. “I’ve never been a fucking police informant in my whole fucking life, you li
ttle puke. Get out of my fucking face before I shoot you in the balls.”

  Mongillo, God bless him, stepped forward, closer. I said, “Look, we’re not here to argue over whether you were the police informant. We have the documents right here”—I waved the handy manila envelope—“that show that you were. If there’s any question, I’d be glad to pass it down the bar and everyone can take a vote.”

  He continued to look at me, raging but quiet. I continued, “What we want to know is, did you tell your handler the drugs were in Apartment 11 or in Apartment 12?”

  His rage turned to incredulity. He stared at me and said, “Even if I was an informant, which I’m not, you expect me to remember this all these years later, which apartment I sent them to?”

  A valid point. Mongillo’s phone rang and he stepped away to answer it. I shook my head and said, “It’s easy. Do you remember at the time thinking that they went to the wrong place, or the place you told them to go?”

  Now he shook his head. His rage had subsided. He said, “I’m not telling you I was even an informant. I’m just a guy trying to earn a living. You’re not going to get anything out of me.”

  “The cop, your handler, might have been framed. His mother killed herself. His father’s in mourning. I’m trying to figure out whether you gave him wrong information, whether you gave him right information and he made a mistake, or whether you gave him right information and someone else in the department screwed it up.”

  He sipped on his Drambuie. The toilet flushed and I all but pulled a copy of that day’sTraveler off the bar and covered my head.

  “The cop, your handler, is dead,” I said. “His memory may have been violated. His family is ruined. You are the only sliver of hope.” As I said this, I reached into the envelope and pulled out the second photograph, the one of Officer Michael Sweeney. I looked him flat in the face and said, “Not often enough can any of us give anyone hope. You can, to this guy’s father.”

  He looked at the photograph out of the corner of his eye, then turned fully to face it. “Never seen him,” he muttered.

  “He was your handler,” I said.

  He quickly responded, “I said, never seen him.”

  I shook my head in resignation and slid the picture back into the envelope. Glass kept staring at me, surprisingly so. Rather than look relieved that this annoyance was retreating from his life, he seemed to appear interested for the first time in this brief conversation. He said, “You don’t get it. I never seen that guy before.”

  I replied, “No, I do get it. You don’t want to help. Fuck it. We’re out of here.”

  Now he stared straight into my eyes. “I am helping. Your records say I was the snitch. You’re saying this guy was the handler. I’m saying I never seen that guy.”

  Ding, ding, ding. Dawn breaks over Marblehead. Put it however you want. I asked, “Who would the handler have seen?”

  My new friend, Glass, smiled a wry little smile and turned toward the bar. But rather than ignore me, he pointed to the front page of theTraveler that had been sitting there, and on the front page there was a small headshot of Boston Police Commissioner John Leavitt.

  “Him.”

  “You worked with the commissioner?”

  “Back then, he was a superintendent, the head of narcs and detectives. We had what you might call a relationship. I gave him information. He gave me money and room to run a business.”

  I looked him long and hard in the eyes. His gaze didn’t waiver from mine.

  “Did you tell him the right apartment.”

  “Oh, I absolutely told him the right apartment. He messed up. And a month after he messed up, he got himself promoted to commissioner.”

  “Thank you,” I said. And without notice, I turned around, smacked Mongillo on the shoulder with the back of my hand, and mouthed the words, “I’ll call you later.” He was still on the phone as I bolted out the door.

  And with that, all of life seemed to turn into one giant sleight of hand.

  Thirty-Five

  SHE WAS KNEELING ONthe antique Oriental rug, boxes all around her and tears rolling down her alabaster cheeks, when I walked through the door of Paul’s office and said in as calm a voice as I could muster, “Amelia, I’m sorry, I got here as fast as I could.”

  She looked at me with eyes that showed a depth of sadness that I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. Amelia Bradford was more a Wasp than anyone I had ever met, in breeding, in demeanor, in outlook. Her family had lineage, manners, prestige—everything, in fact, but money, which is why she had been the secretary to the publisher ofThe Boston Record for the past thirty-four years.

  “Oh, Jack, my God, look at you. You’re bruised. You’ve been beat up. Oh God,” she said, rising to embrace me and burying her cheek into my shoulder in another fit of tears. This isn’t what any guy wants to be told, but I figured now was not the time to point that out to her.

  She smoothed out her pants and took a seat at the desk chair that was askew in the middle of the bright room. I sat on a nearby loveseat.

  She began to talk, but glanced over toward the open door and stopped. I got up and closed it and we resumed. The office, by the way, was silent but for the gentle hum of circulating air. The room was drenched in springtime sun.

  “The police came the day of Paul’s death and confiscated virtually every file,” she said. “They were wheeling dollies in and out all morning. Most of the material they returned yesterday, but some I believe they still have.”

  I wasn’t exactly in the mood for a long windup here, but didn’t have it in me to prod Amelia along. So I sat on my tongue, so to speak, and let her go on. In this building, I guess we’re all storytellers of some sort.

  She continued, “They seemed especially interested in his computer files, particularly his electronic mail activity, and took his whole computer system with them. They took his datebooks, his desk calendar. They asked if he uses a Palm Pilot, which of course, Paul doesn’t. He can barely figure out a Dictaphone.” She talked about him in the present tense, which was more sad than anything else, but with this, a smile passed over the corners of her lips. She became serious again and said, “They even emptied his trash and took that with them.”

  Any moment now, a point. So I kept waiting, and waiting.

  “But they were so obsessed with his email, wanting to know his address and his password, that they never asked me about good old U.S. mail, you know, stamps and the post office and the like. When he sends a regular letter out, I keep a copy in my computer system, from where I’ve made a printout. They didn’t ask me for any files like that, and I was in such a state when this all happened that I never thought to offer it.”

  I think we were approaching what we in the business of journalism call news, so I leaned forward with my elbows on my thighs and studied her face as she spoke.

  “I was going through some of this stuff last night, Jack. I just happened into the file and saw some of these old letters that Paul had sent to various people, and I just kept clicking on more of them, thinking of what a wonderful man he is, missing him.

  “And then I came across this—” she reached toward the desk, picked up a sheet of paper and handed it over some boxes to me—“letter that he wrote. I’m embarrassed I didn’t think about it before. This was written, as you see, a little over a week ago—just a few days before Paul was killed.”

  I took the sheet and began reading, but couldn’t focus, so I looked out the window for a moment at the perfect blue sky and thought about Baker loping across a freshly mown field in pursuit of a brand new tennis ball, all firm and yellow. I returned to the page, my world in better order.

  It was a letter from Paul to Robert Fitzgerald. The top of the page bore a stamp saying that it had been delivered to Fitzgerald’s office by hand. In it, Paul wrote that aRecord reporter—who I knew to be Vinny Mongillo—had approached him recently with concerns about the veracity of some of Fitzgerald’s human interest stories. Paul said he had hired an outsid
e investigator to re-report some of Fitzgerald’s stories from the past two years, and many of the people quoted could not be found. He said he was aware that John Cutter had warned Fitzgerald that the integrity of some of his stories appeared suspect, but that the matter was put aside when he died. Now, he wrote, he would need to meet with Fitzgerald to determine his future.

  “Robert,” Paul wrote in his closing line, “you’ve been a major asset toThe Boston Record, and consequently, to my family, for nearly half a century. Because of your work, your talents, and your dedication, my initial desire is to urge you to retire, and with that retirement, hope that this matter quietly disappears. But my principal reservation is that the transgressions have been so significant that we must take punitive action to restore the integrity of this great newspaper. Thus, I’d like to meet with you Monday morning in my office to review some options. I have sent you this letter both as a courtesy and as a request to begin pondering our respective futures.”

  And Monday morning, before that meeting occurred, Paul was dead. Five years ago, after John Cutter raised similar concerns, he, too, was dead, murdered, in a crime that had been concealed for all this time.

  I stared at the letter until the black ink of the words faded into the white page and I was staring at nothing at all. I heard Amelia say, “Jack, are you having the same thoughts that I am?” But her voice sounded distant, like it was coming from the other side of a thin wall.

  Let’s hope it holds up.

  That was Paul, Sunday morning, in the Public Garden, his words now having greater meaning than they ever had before. He knew. He knew. Not only was he headed off to work to wrestle back the Terry Campbell empire and save a family newspaper from the scourge of a down-market chain, but he had a fateful meeting scheduled the very next day in which he was most likely going to strip the most famous reporter in the history of Boston of his power, prestige, and reputation. By pushing Fitzgerald out the door, he knew he would be making it more difficult to keep Campbell from getting in, but Paul understood the importance of our reputation, the meaning of integrity, the preeminence of truth.