Chapter Fourteen
W hen I walked into the virtually uninhabited newsroom a few minutes after 7:30 on what was already shaping up to be a dismal morning, it appeared that the front line of the New England Patriots was holding an Egg McMuffin eating contest outside of Peter Martin’s corner office.
There were four, maybe five of them. It was tough to tell because they all seemed to blend in with one another like boulders on an Arizona desert. They wore golf shirts stretched so tight across their massive biceps that the fabric wasn’t angry as much as it was furious, absolutely livid, borderline out of control. There were fast-food bags all over the secretary’s desk and the men were eating these breakfast sandwiches like they were potato chips.
“Don’t move,” one of them said to me as I walked toward Martin’s office.
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” I replied. I thought that was pretty good. He didn’t. Rather, he came walking up to me like he might turn me into the cafeteria’s lunchtime hash, and the thought crossed my mind that I’d probably be tastier than their usual fare, though if it were the case, I wouldn’t be around to try it. I could see Martin and Edgar through the glass panels of the office, and just in the nick of time, the former walked toward the doorway and called out, “He’s okay.”
Thanks, Peter. Just what I strive to be: okay—though given that in this particular situation it may have saved my life, I guess I was once again the beneficiary of low expectations.
“We hired a private security firm,” Martin explained to me as I stepped past this mountain range of manhood into the office. The painting, by the way, was sitting unfurled in all its glory on the conference table, one of the greatest art treasures the world has ever known and lost, right now sitting in the control of a couple of chuckleheads—me included—whose aesthetic appreciation usually carries no further than a woman in a pair of tight jeans.
Truth is, when I looked at the canvas, I didn’t so much see a few people playing a song or even the sexual reverie that Mongillo had described. What I saw was me living a life of unadulterated leisure that would result from the black market sale of this little work. Alas, I’d probably get bored with the beach after twenty-five or thirty years of constant sea and sun.
Martin, for what it’s worth, was so serene it appeared that he might have ramped up his medications for what was doubtless going to be one of the most memorable days that either one of us would spend in the wacky realm of the written word.
I said to him, “Are you all right? I imagine you’ve been up pretty much all night.”
He replied in a somewhat distant tone, “We have a priceless work of art sitting right here in this office, and tomorrow morning, we’re going to tell the entire world that it was returned—not to the Boston police, not to the FBI, not even to the museum, but to you, to us, to the institution that is The Boston Record.”
He added, “Through great reporting, we got it back, the Record did. Maybe we’re going to get them all back.”
Perhaps. Or through shoddy reporting, the Record got an innocent woman killed. And maybe it was about to cause the death of her sister. This was a symmetry that I did not like.
I was about to tell him just this when Barbara’s voice beckoned over the newsroom public address system, “Telephone call for Jack Flynn. Emergency telephone call for Jack Flynn.”
There’s something about the word emergency that makes me think of red hazard lights flashing, the sound of a siren, the wrenching feeling of a tightened gut. Without bidding adieu, I bounded from the office, past the Muscle Beach crowd, and motioned Barbara to send the call to my desk. I had a feeling I was about to hear the panicked voice of young Maggie Kane.
“Flynn here.”
The next second seemed to extend across an eternity. In that time, I watched Mongillo walk into the newsroom carrying a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. I saw the portable television on my desk cut to a commercial for hemorrhoid medication. I felt my own fingers tingling as they tightly gripped the phone.
“You’re a tough guy to reach.”
It was a man’s voice, loud and gruff, vaguely familiar. And then my mind caught up like the clicking chains on a road bike, and I replied, “You’d actually have to try to reach me to know if I was tough.”
Touché, maybe, but on second thought, I really wasn’t trying to prove any point. It was Tom Jankle, special agent of the FBI, on the other end, and the sound of his midwestern accent caused relief to swell from my stomach into my chest.
He ignored my comeback, which was just as well, and said, “We need to talk.”
That’s an understatement. We had talked precisely once already, and the casualty rate from that particular conversation stood at one and appeared to be growing. Perhaps he more than anyone else might explain to me why. Or just as likely, maybe he was the direct cause and I was about to get a spoonful of lies. Either way, I needed him.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“Not on the phone. I’m worried about bugs.”
What is this? The whole world was engaged in spy games while my life was a hearty rendition of Chutes and Ladders. So I asked, “When and where?”
“In twenty minutes, at the clubhouse at the Franklin Park Golf Course. You know where that is?”
Know where it is? Which particular inch of it?
T he sun was shining, the breeze was light, and the air seemed as soft as calfskin when I made my way from the parking lot toward the clubhouse of one of the greatest public golf courses this world may ever know. Franklin Park spread through the broken heart of some of Boston’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods, yet it served as a sanctuary of good sport and better cheer, a magnet for golfers dressed in old tee shirts and tattered jeans who had swings so smooth and pure they could make a willow tree weep. I’ll take the five best players here in a match against the five best from Myopia Country Club anytime. I’ll even give out strokes.
I watched from a distance as four old black men stood on the first tee in their daily dispute over handicaps, among them an old friend called Sal, which is short for Salvador, though his real name is actually Eugene. He happens to be from El Salvador, and thus his assignation. Out here, the guy from Oakland is known as California; Omaha comes from, well, Omaha. The exception is Idaho, who really hails from New Haven but happens to have an insatiable appetite for potatoes. At Franklin Park, like the bar on Cheers, everyone knows your name; it just rarely happens to be your own.
“Hey Keebler, you slumming today?”
That was Sal. I’m Keebler, so named because my father began bringing me out here when I was a kid of about ten years old, a little elf, except one the regulars, who more polite society might describe as “vertically challenged,” already possessed the nickname Elf. You take what you’re given and Keebler’s what I got. Luckily, it never spread beyond these hallowed grounds.
“Doing some undercover work for the paper on illegal gambling,” I called back.
The four guys laughed and someone made the requisite first tee joke about Jose’s (San Jose) pencil being the best wood in his bag, and they laughed again. Three of the guys were retired from their respective jobs as a bus driver, a cop, and a City Hall janitor, and the fourth, Sal, still worked as the short-order cook in the clubhouse, though no one can actually remember the last time he cooked. He commuted to the course by subway, devoted himself to laughing, spent his time hustling, and life, all in all, was pretty damned good.
Imagine, I thought to myself, what it would be like to have it so easy, so simple, these days.
A police car and an ambulance screamed past, their sirens in full blare, and Europe—formerly Georgia until he took an overseas vacation—said, “Ah, another free concert from the Franklin Park Philharmonic.” Everyone laughed again and they all hit their drives—each of them straight and long—and I made my way up to the cement patio outside the fortresslike clubhouse and took a seat at a plastic table.
That morning’s Traveler was on a nearby chair so I scanned the
first few pages until I assured myself that they weren’t reporting anything that we didn’t have. Then I contemplated what was to come, which, very specifically, was Tom Jankle, but in a broader view, answers, I hoped, to some of the nagging questions of the day.
To wit: what the hell did I write, and what had he fed me, that would possibly cause the death of Hilary Kane? Was I correct in the fundamental point of the story, which was that authorities were now viewing infamous fugitive Toby Harkins as either a significant suspect in the theft of the paintings, or more likely, that he had some connection to them now? Or was I completely duped, as Vinny Mongillo had suggested over lunch at the University Club?
And while we’re at it, why me? Why had Tom Jankle, a senior FBI agent who I had never had the pleasure or displeasure to previously meet, specifically approached me, even sending hired thugs out to Fenway Park to escort me back into his office in the dark of a pennant-race night? And what was the rush? Why had he warned me so sternly that this information might not hold?
As I pondered these questions and still a few more, I thought of Peter Martin sitting back in the newsroom in a full-bore belief that we were on the brink of a coveted Pulitzer prize. And here I was, sitting in a shower of sun, wondering if I’d ever be able to wash this blood off my incompetent hands. I took one of those hands, balled into a fist, and absently hit the table in frustration, which is when I heard that upbeat voice call out, “We better get a waiter before you start in on the chairs.”
It was Tom Jankle, a proud but tired smile lurking under his twitching mustache. He was wearing that same blue windbreaker over a wrinkled navy suit and a striped tie that was already loosened along his neck. His bespectacled eyes were as alert as cold water, even if the rest of him looked like it was in dire need of some sleep. His full head of hair was brushed flat in a style that would best be called Boys Regular, or maybe Law Enforcement Standard. All in all, when you take heed of Hank Sweeney’s comparisons, Tom Jankle had more the look of a farm-belt tractor dealer than a suave agent of the federal government. He was easy to underestimate, which I’m betting worked in his favor every day of his illustrious career.
I stood up, slightly embarrassed but not really, and shook his hand. When we both sat down, I said by way of setting the tone, “I really could have used you yesterday.”
He met my gaze head-on in a neutral but unflinching stare and said, “I’ve got a job to do, and it’s not always answering to The Boston Record.”
I reflexively smiled, but not out of any amusement. We weren’t off to what anyone would call a good start, not unless you’re Bill O’Reilly trying to make enemies like the Woman in the Shoe made babies. But give me a break. He put me in a bind, and then wasn’t there when I most needed him to get or help me out. That didn’t exactly thrill me, even if I was sitting on a priceless work of art because of his original story.
“Maybe not,” I replied, “but you certainly seemed a whole lot more accessible before Hilary Kane died.”
Waste no time, test his reaction, see if he tried to pull off some sort of lame kind of lie. I wanted him to fully and quickly realize that he wasn’t dealing with some rookie crime and grime reporter from the Beaufort Bugle. Of course, I thought to myself, that cub reporter probably wouldn’t have careened into print the way I had with a sketchy story that caused an innocent’s death.
He looked away, off toward the first fairway, where Sal and his foursome were putting on the distant green. He put his manicured hand up to his carved chin in thought, looked back at me, then away again. The momentary silence had now filled the space in between us and was seeping all around. I had apparently thrown him for a loop, and wasn’t entirely sure if this was a good thing or not.
Finally, he smiled a thin and shallow smile and said, “You’re right, I was.”
And just like that, he fell quiet again with a look of contemplation on his face. I refused to speak in the time-tested reportorial belief that you never occupy a void that a source might fill with information. But he didn’t talk either, and the silence grew from awkward to stubborn until I finally said, and forgive my lack of eloquence, “Why?”
He gave me that same smile, turning his glance from the fair-ways to my face.
“Are we on the record or off?”
Last time I went off the record with Tom Jankle, we essentially sat in his office and negotiated Hilary Kane’s death. I didn’t much feel like doing the same thing all over again, this time with Maggie Kane’s life on the proverbial line. That said, to insist on journalistic purity and remain on the record, I’d probably be costing myself crucial information, and the bottom line was, at the moment, I was in search of answers more than I was a newspaper story.
So I said, almost dismissively, “Either way.”
He leaned forward in the bright sun, his elbows now resting on the white plastic top of the cheap table. He said to me, “Off the record, I think I’ve been played like an overfed steer in a Nebraskan slaughterhouse, and consequently, so have you.”
He let that sit there for a long moment while he searched out my eyes with his own. Then he continued: “I brought you that story with every good intention. I’ll be honest. The Bureau got a tip. It was our first sign of progress on this case in a long, long time. I think you realize, I’m obsessed with Toby Harkins’s capture. I sought the indictment against him that drove him out of town, and now I spend every waking moment wanting to see that piece of garbage behind bars. I thought I could leverage more information by having something in the newspaper.”
His voice trailed off some as he talked. His eyes, at first, focused on mine, then flitted off to points unknown. And he finally said in an entirely different tone of tired resignation, “And now I don’t know what the hell went wrong.”
Reflexively, even obstinately, I replied, “Bullshit. Of course you do.”
I must have sensed weakness on his part, and thus the opportunity to bully more than cajole information out of him. He looked at me with no surprise and said, “It’s not bullshit.” And then he looked down and so did I.
Collecting my thoughts, I asked, “What’s Hilary Kane’s involvement?”
He put his fist up to his mouth, his thumb under his chin, and looked down at the table between us. Still looking down, he said, “The official answer is, absolutely nothing. That’s what you’ll get if you call one of our spokesmen in Boston or Washington. The real answer is, I’m not sure yet. I just don’t know. Me and you, we’re like two hungry hens in a wire coop.”
Enough with the barnyard analogies. He was basically telling me that he was harboring the same suspicions I was, and had no more information than I did, which I knew couldn’t be true. If that was the case, how to explain his early-morning appearance at Hilary Kane’s murder scene just hours after he had tipped me about the Gardner Museum heist. He knew something that he had yet to share.
So I asked him about it pointedly, asked him why he raced to the Boston Common Garage early that morning when a city murder was so far out of his jurisdiction or common field of interest.
He looked at me square and said, “Still off the record?”
I nodded.
“The tip I got from my superiors in Washington was that a young woman had intercepted information about the Gardner, valuable information. I don’t know how, I don’t know where, I don’t know who. I just know it incriminated Toby Harkins. They wanted me to get to him. So I leaked to you. You wrote. A young woman is murdered. And I shot down there to find out why.”
I asked, “You think she was the one who intercepted the information and passed it along?” An obvious question, but I wanted to make sure we were operating under a floodlight rather than sitting in a dim corner of implication and intuition.
“Nobody’s told me that, but I do, yes.”
He shook his head absently as he looked at me. Truth is, Tom Jankle appeared worn, not just from lack of sleep, but from a deprivation of information. It’s a look that any reporter, any investigator of any so
rt, knows all too well. Information is energy. It’s like that wonderful can of spinach. You eat and you flourish. And the lack of same is exhausting, even debilitating, causing you to question everyone and everything around you, including yourself. Right now, especially yourself.
He added, as something of an afterthought, “I believe I may have acted too quickly, and consequently, so did you.”
We both looked at each other hard amid this communion of the tragically flawed. He was obviously trying to form an alliance, but whether I could believe he had told me everything he knew about Hilary Kane was entirely unclear.
He said to me, “There’s something else,” and then fell quiet, as if to build expectation.
I didn’t bite, which I have a feeling aggravated him to some small degree. Rather, I simply maintained eye contact with him until he said, “It’s the mayor—Mayor Harkins. We have reason to investigate the possibility that he’s had some level of contact with his son, though I’m not in a position to be more specific about the type or nature of the contact. I just know it is in contradiction to his public statements. That’s all off the record for now, but it’s something to keep in mind.”
I would. Believe me, I would, despite his accusation, which was so carefully worded—“reason to investigate the possibility”—as to be absurd. Bill Clinton was more reckless in front of a grand jury than Tom Jankle just was with me. Still, the very notion intrigued.
He asked me, “What have you learned that would be helpful for me to know?”
If we were in a sci-fi movie and he was wearing those thick goggles that allowed him to view images that were flashing inside my significantly sized brain, he would right now be looking at the beautiful and frightened Maggie Kane sipping a cappuccino or maybe picking at a tartufo in a shaded café on Piazza Navona. Or maybe he’d be looking at the three musicians in Vermeer’s painting, The Concert, sitting there as it was in Peter Martin’s office.
Instead, I met his gaze and said, “I don’t have anything for you yet. But I’m working it every minute. By my estimation, I caused Hilary Kane to die. You’re telling me nothing to dissuade me of that. You’re also giving me precious little else to go on.”
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