by Chris Mooney
Darby swallowed, found herself making a fist. She stared at his bony neck, a part of her hoping he’d try something. She’d snap his neck before the guards entered the room. I won’t kill him. I’ll snap his neck just the right way so he’ll end up a quadriplegic, spending the rest of his life in diapers and feeding tubes.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he whispered.
‘What am I thinking, Mr Ezekiel?’
‘You want to know why Kendra came all the way down from Vermont when she could have picked up a payphone, called the Belham Police Department and asked for your father. Someone there would have told her what had happened.’
‘Why didn’t she?’
‘Police stations record everything now – phone calls, they have security cameras monitoring you the second you step inside. She didn’t want to risk the possibility of someone recognizing her. Kendra didn’t trust the police, but she did trust your father. The last thing he told her before she left was that if there was ever a problem to never, under any circumstances, call or come by the station. The phone lines were tapped, and he’d found out someone had bugged his office. Big Red told her to go by his house, and that’s what she did.’
‘Why was Kendra looking for my father?’
‘What do you know about Francis Sullivan, the head of the Irish mob?’
That name again, Darby thought. ‘I know he’s dead.’
‘I knew Mr Sullivan – that’s what you called him, even if you worked for him. I’m embarrassed to say I went back to the trade that sent me away to prison the first time – selling drugs. I had a network of contacts. Mr Sullivan wanted to take advantage of that, and I needed the money. What do you know about Kendra?’
‘I know she was arrested for prostitution.’
‘Kendra had a drug problem. Coke. She worked the streets for a while before Mr Sullivan brought her to these hotel parties where she serviced a number of men. Including cops.’
Michelle Baxter had told her the same thing.
‘Mr Sullivan,’ he whispered, ‘liked rough sex.’
Darby recalled what Baxter had told her about Sullivan holding a gun to her head.
‘Kendra didn’t mind it, so he kept her around. He had a thing for young girls, but that wasn’t what got him off. I didn’t believe the stories until… I walked in on him once. He was with a young woman – a teenager. I don’t know her name, she wasn’t from the neighbourhood, but I could tell she was very, very young. I didn’t see the braces until… afterwards.’
He swallowed. She heard a hitch in his voice.
‘Mr Sullivan had this poor girl on all fours. They were on the bed. Mr Sullivan was behind her, pumping away, holding her by the hair so he could slit her throat.’
In her mind’s eye Darby saw Kendra Sheppard bound to the kitchen chair, her head nearly decapitated.
‘I wanted to stop it, but the girl was already bleeding out,’ he whispered. ‘Mr Sullivan saw me – I was standing in the doorway, frozen. He was covered in blood, like he’d bathed in it. He got off the bed very calmly – I swear he did, I’m not imagining it. He didn’t come after me. He pointed to the girl with the straight-edged razor, this poor young girl who was running into the walls and choking on her own blood, and he looked at me and said, ‘Go ahead and give her a whirl, Zeke. She’s still got some life in her.’ That’s when I got the hell out of there.’
Darby had to clear her throat. ‘Where did this happen?’
‘Kevin Reynolds’s house in Charlestown. He lived there with his mother, Mary Jane. There’s a bedroom to the right of the stairs. Mr Sullivan took all his… victims there. Sometimes Kendra would find him napping in there. She told me that, even in the winter, you could smell the blood. It didn’t matter how many times they cleaned up or replaced the rugs, that odour never went away, she said.’
‘After you saw this, what did you do?’
‘I went into hiding for a few days. I knew Mr Sullivan was looking for me – I was a witness, a liability. I went to Kendra. She was a friend. I told her what I’d seen, and that’s when she introduced me to your father.’
‘Why?’
‘When you were at the hospital speaking to Kendra’s son, did he confide in you?’
‘He told me his real name was Sean.’
‘What else?’
‘He said he knew the real reason why his grandparents were murdered. We didn’t get a chance to speak about it.’
‘Why not?’
‘We were interrupted.’
‘By the FBI?’
Her breath caught. That information hadn’t been reported in the news.
‘Listen to me very carefully,’ Ezekiel said. ‘The men who killed Kendra Sheppard – at one time they were Federal agents from the Boston office. These men’s assignment was to dismantle the Irish and Italian mobs. But their main job was to protect Mr Sullivan.’
Darby recalled what Jennings had told her about Sullivan’s special status. ‘Was he an informant?’
‘Mr Sullivan was much, much more valuable.’ Ezekiel swallowed, his breath coming out sharply, excitedly. ‘He was a Federal agent. The FBI had planted a Federal agent at the head of the Irish mob. Sullivan’s real name is Benjamin Masters.’
‘Kendra told you this?’
‘No,’ Ezekiel said. ‘Your father did.’
48
Darby felt as though her stomach were packed with ice. Drops of sweat slid across her ribs.
‘I know only two names,’ Ezekiel whispered. ‘When they were alive, working as Feds, their names were Peter Alan and Jack King. But you won’t find them. They died in a boat fire, along with Sullivan. I don’t know what their names are now.’
She swallowed and said, ‘Mr Ezekiel, can you –’
‘I know what you’re thinking. “This man is a goddamn schizophrenic, he’s making this all up.” I’m not. The first time I was arrested, some quack slapped that bullshit diagnosis on me and it’s stuck with me ever since.’ Ezekiel was speaking fast, too fast, in a garbled rush to get the words out over his mounting anger. ‘Was I paranoid? Did I think people were always watching me? You bet your ass I did. In my line of business, you always have to be careful. You never know who’s going to sell you out. Paranoia is what keeps you alive on the street. But I don’t hear voices that aren’t there, I don’t think aliens are reading my brain waves or any of that crap. Doesn’t matter how many times I tell them, they still come around and inject that shit into my ass three times a week. All it does is keep me in a permanent fog, makes me easier to control. I don’t blame you for being sceptical. But whatever my present mental condition is, it doesn’t change the fact that Kendra Sheppard visited me, does it?’
‘You haven’t told me why she visited you.’
‘Kendra was working with your father, giving him information on Mr Sullivan and his crew. Kendra was the one who found out that Sullivan was an FBI agent and told your father. That stuff about his prior arrests and serving time in prison? All bullshit. Planted information for his cover. Kendra found out who Sullivan really was, and she also found out about the Boston Feds setting up local witnesses and informants. Some were killed; some just disappeared. And then there were the informants and witnesses who were promised witness protection as long as they cooperated. Guess what? They’re dead.’
Darby thought about Michelle Baxter’s comment about being placed into protective custody. Thanks, but no. I’ll take my chances here in the real world.
‘This one guy, Jimmy Lucas?’ he whispered. ‘He was supposed to go into the programme. The Feds picked him up, brought him somewhere and Kevin Reynolds strangled him to death. I overheard Reynolds talking about it. Kendra did too, only she was smart enough to tape it.’
‘She was taping their conversations?’
‘At the hotel, at Kevin Reynolds’s house. Sullivan found out what she was doing, and he went to her house to kill her and her family. Only Kendra wasn’t there. She was very smart – that’s how she survived this long.
She sensed Sullivan knew something was going on, so she split Dodge and went to see your father. She was helping your father, giving him tapes, helping him smuggle people out of Boston and Charlestown, from –’
‘What people?’
‘Witnesses. Some of the young women at the hotel parties. Kendra trusted a few of them – they helped her tape conversations, set up the listening devices and these pinhole cameras your father gave her. Kendra wanted to see Sullivan go down. She was helping your father build a case against him. It was brilliant when you stop to think about it. They had whole squads within the Boston police, the state police – officers, mind you, who were probably on Sullivan’s payroll – and these groups were sharing information with the Feds, who naturally turned around and told Sullivan everything. And here was Kendra working with a patrolman from Belham.
‘Your father knew what he was up against. Big Red heard the tapes, knew what these Boston Feds were doing, the names of the cops and state troopers Sullivan had on his payroll. Sullivan and his Federal friends, they were Charlestown’s version of the Gestapo. Witnesses and informants could never come forward because they knew they’d be killed. Your father… he had to take matters into his own hands. He couldn’t trust anyone on the Belham police force, but he couldn’t leave these people blowing in the wind. He knew what he was up against, so he had to get them as far away from Charlestown as possible, get them new identities. We’re talking dozens and dozens of lives that he saved.’
‘Was my father working with anyone?’
‘I don’t know. Kendra said when she spoke to your father she was alone. I met him only a handful of times, always alone. Kendra brought me to him. I told him what I saw, and Big Red set me up in a safe house. A week later, your father was dead, and I was arrested. A month after that, Sullivan and his Federal buddies died in that raid on Boston Harbor, and that was the end of it.’
‘Why were these men looking for her all this time?’
‘Because the tapes she gave Big Red were only copies,’ Ezekiel whispered. ‘Kendra told me she’d kept the actual tapes – and she had notes on the Feds, times and places, that sort of thing. And she’d kept a list of the names of the people your father had smuggled out of the state. All this time, Kendra thought these Feds had died along with Sullivan. That changed about a year ago when she was living in… Wisconsin, I think. Working at a small insurance company, she told me. One day she left work, was driving home, when she realized she’d left something at the office, and when she pulled around to the front she saw Peter Alan heading inside the building. The other guy, a man named Jack King, was behind the wheel of a car parked right out front. She picked up Sean from school and started driving to look for a new place to live, just left all of her stuff behind.’
‘What did she tell Sean?’
‘Kendra said she told him everything. She had to, because after Wisconsin, they were always switching identities. That’s why she decided to come forward, because of Sean. She didn’t want anything to happen to him. After Wisconsin, they moved to New Jersey. Their apartment got broken into and she panicked and split for Vermont, changed her name again, this time to Amy Hallcox. She was a pro at changing identities. Always worked at places where social security numbers were easily available – places like insurance companies. She told me she was sick and tired of running, said it was time to come forward with what she knew before they killed her. She was the last one left.’
‘The last of what?’
‘The last of the people your father smuggled out of Charlestown. They’re all dead. After she saw Alan, she did a little research. She took her list of names and found out that they had been murdered. All unsolved. This secret Gestapo unit of dead FBI agents – they had tracked them down and killed them.’
‘How?’
‘Your father must have had a list. They must have confiscated it. That, his tapes, evidence, whatever he had. They had a tough time finding Kendra because she kept switching her identities every time she moved.’
‘Was the entire FBI involved or just the Boston office?’
‘I don’t know. Kendra told me about the Boston Feds who were involved, that’s it.’
Darby thought about the ransacked house in Belham. Her home in Vermont had been searched.
‘Kendra told me she’d kept the tapes, notes, all of it,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t know where they are; she didn’t tell me. I told her to let sleeping dogs lie. Besides, it wouldn’t have changed anything. It’s been twenty plus years since she left Charlestown. If she’d come forward with whatever she had, what would it have accomplished? The FBI would have maintained that the Federal agents who had died on those two boats were, in fact, dead. It would’ve just made her a target. And when they find out you’ve spoken to me – and they will – you’ll be a target.’
‘Is Kevin Reynolds a Federal agent?’
‘Kendra had her suspicions,’ he whispered, ‘but she couldn’t prove it.’
‘Did she tell you who was on these tapes?’
‘No, she didn’t. We had only forty minutes to talk. I let her do all the talking. I just listened.’
‘Does she know who killed my father?’
‘No. I don’t know either. I was in this motel when your father was murdered. I told this to my wonderful public-appointed lawyer, of course. The motel said they had no record of me staying there. No bills, nothing. It didn’t matter. The Feds set me up. They stole my car, they found the gun I kept in my apartment – they planted enough evidence to leave no doubt that I’d done it. Without any evidence to support what I was saying, my lawyer thought he was listening to the paranoid ramblings of a schizophrenic.’
‘My father wouldn’t have left you alone in a hotel. He would have arranged for someone to watch you.’
‘He said he had someone watching the hotel – someone he trusted. I don’t know who he was, I never saw the guy.’
‘I’ll look into this.’
‘No,’ he hissed. ‘I didn’t call you to help me; I called to warn you about these so-called Federal agents. I have no idea if they’re still working for the FBI, but, regardless, they’re out there looking for these tapes. Don’t go looking for them. You know what they did to your father; you saw what happened to Kendra. If you find these tapes, destroy them. Don’t think you can expose these people. You can’t trust anyone, especially people inside the Boston police department. Sullivan had plenty of your people on his payroll.’
‘Tell me some names.’
‘I don’t remember their names, but I’m sure they’re still out there. You start in on this, you’ll wind up buried next to your father.’
I haven’t started in on this, Darby wanted to say. I’m already in it.
49
Darby felt cold all over as she collected her things from the female guard. She was dimly aware of the woman speaking, making a joke to Billy Biceps about how everything must’ve gone well with Zeke ’cause the doc still had both her ears, ha-ha. Darby forced a smile, thanked the guards and stepped into a cool, bright corridor echoing with murmured conversations.
The rational part of her, which had been oddly quiet all this time, spoke up. You actually believe everything Ezekiel has told you.
A statement, not a question. Did she believe everything? She didn’t want to believe any of it, but a good majority of the things he had told her – like Special Agent Alan, for example – were true. Some of the other things he had said clambered around the truth – too goddamn close to it. And if that wasn’t bad enough, the man didn’t fit the mould of someone suffering from a schizoaffective disorder. The delusion about the room being bugged should have dominated the entire conversation. His paranoid thoughts should have been rampant, but the man’s speech had remained remarkably coherent. He had answered each of her questions, had easily moved from one topic to the next without confusion and – and – had shown a remarkable degree of empathy when speaking about her father.
And what about her father? At thirty-nine, her mem
ories of Thomas ‘Big Red’ McCormick had started to blur and fade. As it was, she didn’t have many memories to start with. She had barely seen him during her childhood, Big Red having to work a tremendous amount of overtime while Sheila attended night school for her nursing degree. A few random snapshots came to her – clutching her father’s big leg on the subway as the crowded T-car rocked-and-rolled its way down the track; Big Red cracking peanut shells in his long, callused fingers at Fenway Park.
But, beyond her father’s love of the Red Sox, Frank Sinatra records, good bourbon and cigars, she didn’t have the first idea about what had made Big Red tick. He had been an unnaturally quiet man, more prone to listening than to talking. And he was always observing the world around him. In her memories he seemed constantly exhausted.
Kendra introduced me to your father… She loved your father very much.
I admired him greatly.
Big Red was a remarkable man. One of a kind, you could say. I regret what happened to him every single day.
Darby opened the main doors. The afternoon sky was a bright, hard blue and free of clouds, the air still unbearably hot and humid. She looked behind her, having the absurd feeling that Ezekiel had followed her outside.
Lieutenant Warner, sitting behind the wheel of her car, had parked in one of the spaces reserved for police. He had a good view of the entire car park and the prison’s front doors. He saw her and pulled out of his spot.
She didn’t want him behind the wheel, she didn’t want him in her car. She wanted to drive alone, in silence, to process what had just happened.
Warner was on his mobile.
‘Commissioner,’ he said after she shut the door. He handed over his phone as he drove off, heading for the exit. ‘Go ahead, it’s safe to talk.’