I nodded. “Certainly, though I haven’t yet. They were just put into my hand within the half hour, after I left the mayor.”
Martin asked, “What did Harkins say when you talked to him earlier?”
I chuckled a little bit, though I’m not entirely sure why, then I told them how he confessed to having contact with his son, about his belief that he could get Toby to surrender, and about how all hope was abandoned the morning my story ran.
Mongillo looked away in an exaggerated sort of way and said, “That was a high-impact story all right.” I stared at him for a moment, until I realized that trying to intimidate Vinny Mongillo was like trying to get a politician to shut up.
Martin asked, “What did he say about the Kane killing?”
“Denied any role. Didn’t say anything else.”
There was silence all around the table. I should note that with most controversial stories, it’s almost always the reporter who is pushing it hardest and the editors serving as the brakemen, and the higher the editor, the harder they’re pulling the lever to stop the runaway train. Ultimately, it’s their responsibility, and they don’t want to go down in an infamous history as having cost the paper its reputation, not to mention millions of dollars in a libel suit.
But I could already see it on Martin’s face. He wanted this story in print, sooner rather than later, and because we publish once each day, the next day’s paper would probably be just soon enough. And I could already feel it in my gut. My uncomfortable preference was to hold on to this thing for another cycle and see how the situation shook out.
“We’ve still got it,” Martin finally said. He said this while looking not at me, but at Justine, who would have to give her blessing to the final decision. “His interview alone, his admission that he was in contact with his son, is one hell of a significant story. These computer records are nice if you can get a Fed or someone over at PD to confirm them, but you know what: Who really needs them?”
I didn’t reply for a long time, for what might be described in a pulp novel as a pregnant pause. When I did, I said, “There’s something else.”
Justine said with a sardonic smile, “There’s always something else on this story.” I nodded at her.
I said, “I got a visit after sitting with the mayor. A henchman in a really bad suit, bad haircut, bad teeth, bad accent, bad everything, cornered me in a parking garage and said I needed to talk to someone. He dialed up a number on his cell phone, handed it to me, and on the other end is a guy who says he’s Toby Harkins.”
You could see the looks all around the table. Justine’s jaw actually dropped. Martin’s expression went from excited to outright exhilarated. Vinny stopped crunching in midmotion, something I’ve never seen him do before.
“So Toby and I are chitchatting, and he says he’d like to get together. He’s got a story to tell, and if I’m willing to hear him out, he’ll return the remaining works that were stolen from the Gardner Museum, to us.”
I fell silent and looked from one to the other. They were all frozen in time and space and emotion, as if someone had just flashed the temperature down a thousand degrees and this would be how posterity remembered us all, with amazed but perfectly ridiculous looks on our faces.
Martin broke out of the spell first, as could be predicted, and said, “So if you’re willing to take an exclusive story from America’s most wanted fugitive and splash it on the front page of The Boston Record, he’s going to reward you with the return of the treasures in the costliest art heist in history?”
I nodded. As I was doing that, Mongillo, apropos of nothing, said in an uncharacteristically mesmerized way, “A clean news break, then all those priceless treasures.”
“There’s a catch,” I said, and Justine nodded, as if she alone, and perhaps she was right, understood that there’s always a catch. I explained to them that he insisted on a Q and A to accompany the story, and more importantly, that we had to hold off on any story about his father until after Toby and I met.
Suddenly, the dreamy, exhilarated looks dissolved into confusion and, in Martin’s case, anguish. I added for emphasis, “If we go with the Dan Harkins story for morning, we lose the potential Toby Harkins story for Tuesday.”
And then the world, or the world as it existed in the conference room of the Record, fell silent. You could hear a Frito drop, which I think I actually did.
From there, we played it all out, the four of us did, played every possible angle—whether the caller was real or a mayoral-engineered fraud (probably real, given that we’d already had two masterpieces returned); whether Toby Harkins would really abandon the plan if we ran with a story about his father (probably would, given that he’s used to getting his way on every front); whether the Toby story would be better than the mayoral story (probably, but one would inform the other, still giving us both). Competition wasn’t a huge issue on this front, mostly because the Traveler wasn’t getting the leaks, the paintings, or the calls that we were. Of course, that could change in a minute if we ran with the Dan Harkins story and Toby shopped his exclusive around.
Peter Martin looked at me and said, “Okay, Jack, your reporting, your mayoral interview, your life on the line in a tête-à-tête with Toby. What’s your call?”
It occurred to me how ironic it would all be if because I had rushed that first story into print a week ago, now I dug my heels in on something far more solid, and we ended up losing it all. Still, I felt something in my gut, though that could have been an ulcer or a hernia. But what I think I felt was a gnawing sense to slow down, get more information, trade up, be careful. Of course, all of this belies what we typically do at a newspaper, but I was learning that sometimes you have to be different in this business to succeed.
Be certain of this, we could decimate the career of Mayor Daniel Harkins within the next twelve hours. I mean, it would be over, stripped of any of its past success, hung to dry on the pole of devastating publicity, another great pelt in the famous collection of Jack Flynn. But it didn’t feel right this time.
I said, “I think we wait.”
No one disagreed. Justine nodded her head, almost imperceptibly. Vinny crunched anew, but only momentarily. Martin said, “So here’s what’s probably going to happen. Tomorrow, the governor will appoint Harkins as the interim senator from Massachusetts. She’ll give him an appointment letter to carry to Washington. I would predict that he’ll spend the rest of the day in Boston to take care of his affairs, probably resign, clean out his office, and then on Tuesday morning, fly to Washington for the start of the Senate session. At that point, he must present an appointment letter to the clerk of the Senate, and then get officially sworn in, most likely by the vice president.”
He paused, probably to allow us to appreciate his vast knowledge of all things Washington and political, and we did, we did. But if I ever have that kind of detailed knowledge of the minutiae of federal government, shoot me in the head, please.
Martin added, “My point is, we still have a second shot at this, Tuesday morning. Before Harkins is given the oath on Capitol Hill, his appointment can probably still be delayed or derailed, if not by the governor, then by senators who don’t want him as part of their body. So if your friend”—he looked pointedly at me—“Toby doesn’t come through sometime tomorrow, then we say fuck it and jam the mayoral story into print on Tuesday.”
Yet again, Martin had brought order to chaos, boiled down a complicated scenario into its most logical elements, and formulated an endlessly practical plan.
All of this meant that at some point in the next twenty-four hours, another gorilla in a bad suit would show up at my doorstep or be waiting in my car or sitting in my favorite restaurant, waiting to escort me to a place that no reporter has ever been—in the company of Toby Harkins. I probably should have been a little anxious about this upcoming reality. I’d be smart to be anxious about it. But all I felt was a renewed sense of opportunity that I hadn’t experienced since I heard the first vague radio
reporters of Hilary Kane’s death.
Vinny and I stood up in unison to get back into the newsroom, when Martin said, “One more thing. Vinny. I need you in Dublin by morning to check out this address that was pulled off the mayor’s computer file. Maybe you’ll run into Toby himself, but as important, find out if the FBI or Scotland Yard have been by.”
With that, Martin picked up the phone on the side table and punched out a number. He told whoever it was on the other end that he needed a reporter on a plane to Dublin that night. “Good, good,” he said, then he mouthed to Vinny, “You can still make the 8:30 flight.”
Back into the phone, he asked, “How much?” Silence, then, “No, I think there’s a misunderstanding. I just want a seat on the flight. I don’t want to buy the whole fricking plane.”
And with that, we left the conference room en masse to face a future that had already arrived.
I leaned on Vinny Mongillo’s desk and said, “Sorry you got dragged into this last-minute trip. It’s the second time you’ve had to rush overseas in a week. I bet you’re not going to miss that part of the business.”
He had taken the half-eaten bag of Fritos, crinkled up the top, and flung it into the trash. His desk phone was ringing. His cell phone was chiming some sort of marching song. His hair was matted down against his forehead, and his forearms were folded over his chest. He had already filed a page-one story for the next morning’s paper on the return of the Rembrandt that he so loved.
He pursed his lips and looked down with those big brown eyes of his and said, “Yeah, it’s just awful, racing to the airport, touching down tomorrow in another world, challenging authority, nailing the mayor or whoever we’re about to get, maybe getting all the art returned.”
He fell into silence, and I said nothing in return. He added, more softly, “This may be it for me. My last story. At least I’m going out with a bang.”
I nodded. I don’t know why this choked me up, but it did. Actually, of course, I know why it choked me up. Vinny Mongillo, the purest, most relentless information gathering machine I have ever met, was put on this earth to be a newspaper reporter, and he was right, this might really be it. I tried to picture the day that my phone would ring at work with Vinny on the other line pitching a story about a client who was paying him $10,000 a month to call in all his chits and connections in the biz. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
He said, “I’m worried about you on this one, Fair Hair. Your mood’s been off. Your nicely structured little world is coming apart. You’re blaming yourself for something that probably wasn’t your fault. So don’t let all this prod you into doing something stupid with Toby or the mayor.”
I nodded in acknowledgment, looking away all the while.
“I want to bring this story all the way back around,” I said. “I want to find out what the hell I did wrong. And I want to find out who the fuck killed Hilary Kane.”
Vinny replied, “I’ll be on the ground in Dublin for less than a few hours. If all goes well, I’m on a flight tomorrow afternoon back to Boston. I don’t want you muddling through this thing alone in that uncoordinated way of yours.”
And here, he smiled, that big, white, toothy smile of his that I’d seen a million times before and always thought I’d see a million times again, but maybe not anymore. I don’t know. Maybe I’d just go into business with him.
“You’re going to give Martin a conniption if you don’t haul ass for the airport,” I said.
“Exactly what I’m trying to do,” he said, still smiling.
He stood up and gathered a couple of notebooks and some pens together and pulled his passport out of his top desk drawer. Then he silently turned and wrapped his enormous arms around my shoulders and pulled me close to his very large, distinctly perfumed body.
“Be careful,” he said, his lips almost uncomfortably close to my ear, but that was okay, this time anyway.
“You more than me,” I said. And then he, like Elizabeth, like Hank, like everybody else, turned and walked away.
Chapter Thirty-three
A ny $50-an-hour hooker or million-dollar-a-year real estate agent knows there’s one true thing about business. It’s all about location, location, location, and sitting in the Record newsroom as darkness descended upon a September Sunday night, I knew this wasn’t where I would best attract the anticipated solicitations of a Mister Toby Harkins.
I mean, to get to me at my desk, Toby and his henchmen would have to somehow subvert the Record’s newly constituted security plan. Toby could mess with the Gardner guards, with the Boston police, with the FBI, with Scotland Yard, but don’t, under any circumstances, get on the wrong side of Edgar Sullivan.
So I made a couple of quick calls, the first one being to the private cell phone of Tom Jankle, special agent with the FBI. I had questions. He had answers. The issue was, would he give them to me. Would he tell me why he held back on me last Monday night, why he leaked what he did and didn’t leak what he didn’t? Would he tell me whether the FBI had nearly captured Toby Harkins in Dublin, whether they were gin clear on the involvement of the father with the son? These are the things I wanted to know, needed to know, before I met Harkins at a place of his obvious choosing.
“Yeah?” he answered.
Phone manners had gone the way of the Celtics dynasty and the $6 bleacher seat at Fenway Park. These days, it costs twenty bucks just to park at the game, another ten-spot for a hot dog and a beer, $65 for a decent seat and four bucks for a bag of peanuts, all so an overpaid bunch of prima donna choke artists can blow every homestretch to the dreaded Yankees. Maybe next year.
Not that this has anything to do with the price of Spam in Kuwait. So I said sharply into the phone, “Jack Flynn here.”
A hesitation. “Hello there, Jack Flynn.”
“How are you, Agent Jankle?”
“I’m well. Very well. What are you doing dedicating yourself to the public’s right to know on this fine autumn night?”
I could have beat around the bush, even if I’ve never quite understood the phrase or the action it supposedly represents. What kind of bush?
So I said, “I’m trying to find out—check that, I will find out, with or without your help—why you withheld so much information from me in your office last Monday night. You had a goldmine from Hilary Kane. You gave me some pyrite.”
Forgive the tough-guy talk, but I had had enough of the confusion, the obfuscation, the hazy motives, the two-bank setups. Like I said, I had questions, I wanted answers—just some straight-up, no frills information.
There was silence on the other end of the line, silence that persisted for so long that I asked, in no conciliatory way, “You there?”
He cleared his throat rather than provided a verbal answer. Eventually, he said, “Yeah, but I’m trying to figure out what I can tell you and what I can’t.”
“Agent Jankle,” I said, sharp, my words like metal rods, “Hilary Kane is dead. Maggie Kane, as you well know, almost joined her in the benevolent beyond. I’ve been punched and kicked and stuck in a hospital in Rome, which is someplace that no civilized person should ever have to be. I’ve had a man break into my apartment in the middle of the night.”
I paused here for dramatic effect, or maybe that’s melodramatic effect. Then I added, “And you started me on all this. I was having a perfectly merry time sitting with my girlfriend in some damned fine seats at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox when you kicked my life on its side. It’s not a matter of what you can or can’t tell me, what you want or don’t want to tell me. Sir, we’re at the point here and now when there are things that you need to tell me—immediately.”
Again, silence, though as I looked around the sparsely populated newsroom, the few reporters and editors present were now unapologetically staring at my end of this unfolding conversation. All we needed was a guy coming around selling Cracker Jack and the whole thing would have been complete—Jack Flynn, circus freak, come see him while he’s hot.
Still silen
ce on the other end of the line, silence for so long that I finally said, quietly, “Do you get my point?”
“Jack,” Jankle said, “I want to help. I’ve wanted to help you from the very beginning. I’m just trying to figure out the best way to do that right now, for your sake and for mine.”
His voice drifted off into another void, though a moment later, he added, “How about you meet me at nine P.M., Yawkey Way, outside of Fenway Park, Gate A.”
“Make it worth my while,” I said.
“I will. I will.”
I hung up with some flair, if only to let everyone know they could go back to whatever it was they were doing. Then, proceeding on some sort of roll, I picked up the phone and punched out the first nine digits of Elizabeth Riggs’s cell phone number before letting my finger rest over the tenth button, the zero. Again, I had questions, she had answers. Why didn’t you call? Where were you staying? Why not at home? I looked at the clock on the nearby wall and saw it was 7:00, the throes of her deadline, so instead of pressing down, I placed the receiver carefully back in the cradle. I convinced myself that these inquiries would be better to pose in person, though when that might be was anyone’s guess.
So I gathered up a couple of legal pads for the upcoming festivities and headed into the night, a place where anything could happen, and as it turned out, anything would.
I’m not a stalker, but I play one on TV. This is what I was thinking when I found myself in the lobby of the Boston Harbor Hotel amid a little detour on my way home from work. I had an epiphany, or maybe it was just a guess. Regardless, it occurred to me that Elizabeth, having missed the water views she so loved from the place we once shared, probably checked into this very hotel and requested a harborfront room.
I picked up a house phone that was resting on an antique desk and asked the operator to be connected to a Ms. Elizabeth Riggs. There was a long moment of angst, on my part, anyway, before the woman on the other end said in an indistinguishable accent, “Certainly.” Then the phone began ringing.
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