“It’s Hoffman,” he said. Without checking first whether she had time to talk, he plunged ahead. “You’ve got a note in your file about a DUI. You wrote ‘pending BAC,’ which I assume means you were waiting to see when the blood alcohol concentration results came in from the toxicology reports. So what made you suspect drunk driving?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. ‘Pending BAC’ . . . Okay, right. That must have come from the cops.”
“Not from Pappas?”
“Probably from him first, yeah.”
“So why didn’t you run with that? You don’t mention it in your piece.”
She sighed. “Because toxicology reports take sixty days to come in.”
“You could have reported it anyway.”
“No Afrin in the bottle.”
“No confirmation.”
“You don’t report that about a father who’s just died with his wife and teenage daughter unless you have the facts, and I didn’t.”
“Nice,” he said.
“Come on, man,” she said. “Even I have standards.”
“I heard something about an investigation? A community leader talking about stirring up an investigation into what really caused the accident?”
“So did I, which was why Pappas was all over this. Look, believe me, the city and the state and every single company involved in building that tunnel were deathly afraid of a lawsuit. Everyone was afraid of community pressure for an investigation.”
“But you didn’t report anything about an investigation.”
“Because there wasn’t one! There was nothing to report. Pappas was making sure I didn’t report something I wasn’t going to report anyway.”
“So who was he working for?”
“Something called the Boston Common Alliance, or like that. Didn’t I tell you that?”
“You said it was a coalition of firms involved in constructing the Big Dig. You happen to know which ones?”
“I don’t think it exists anymore, but I’m sure you could find out. Look, Hoffman, I gotta go.”
“Thanks,” he said, but she’d already hung up.
* * *
His father was still undergoing TMS treatment by the time Rick arrived.
He was escorted by a lab assistant into the darkened room where Lenny sat upright in what looked like a dental chair, canted back a bit.
A white cloth cap had been placed over his head, which was nestled within the arms of a tall contraption. “He has a few more minutes left,” said a doctor or lab tech who seemed to be running the procedure. His father’s eyes slid toward Rick, who gave him a wave. A loud rat-a-tat sounded, like the muted sound of a machine gun firing. Rick waited. After a pause, the machine gun sound went off again. Lenny didn’t appear to be in pain. He looked straight ahead, occasionally glancing over at Rick. He looked somehow more engaged, more present.
After another few minutes, the noise stopped. The lab tech or doctor lifted the arms of the contraption up and away from his father’s head. “Everything all right, Mr. Hoffman?” she said.
Lenny raised his left hand, his thumb sticking up in a sign of agreement.
Rick stared in amazement. His father hadn’t done that in almost two decades.
The door to the room opened and Dr. Girona entered. He nodded at Rick. They would talk in private.
As he shook the doctor’s hand, Rick couldn’t help blabbering, “He just gave a thumbs-up! I don’t think I’ve seen him do that since his stroke.”
“He’s been doing that for a couple of days now.”
The woman who’d been in charge of the treatment said, “I’m Rachel. I’m the clinical research coordinator.”
“Rachel, nice to meet you,” Rick said, extending his hand.
“You’re Mr. Hoffman’s son, is that right?”
He nodded.
“Well, Mr. Hoffman is a great patient. He’s got a session now with the speech pathologist. Were you planning to join him?”
“Is that okay, Dad?” he said.
Lenny gave the thumbs-up as he was helped into his wheelchair.
“Dr. Girona,” Rick said, “do you have a minute?”
Girona nodded. “Of course,” he said, escorting Rick into his office across the hall from the treatment room.
“You think my father was beaten, and that was the cause of his stroke?”
“He suffered traumatic brain injury, that much I can say for certain. He appears to have been struck with something on the left side of his skull. There’s evidence of bone fractures precisely where the blood vessel burst. The only explanation I can think of is that he suffered a blow to his head, which triggered the hemorrhagic stroke.”
“But how come no one noticed that in ’96?”
“The scans back then weren’t of nearly as high a resolution as they are nowadays. I’m sure they found evidence of a stroke and left it there. He didn’t present with external signs of trauma—no blood, for instance. Right?”
“Right.”
“So there would have been no reason to look further. The stroke was apparent.”
“He could have had an accident, right?”
Dr. Girona shrugged. “Certainly a possibility. There might not have been external signs like blood or bruising. But in one way or another, he suffered cerebrovascular damage to his head, to his brain.”
“He never indicated anything about it.”
“Maybe he will now,” Dr. Girona said.
* * *
A few minutes later, Lenny was seated at a table by a wall-mounted whiteboard in a small room. Rick sat across the table, and the speech-and-language therapist, an Asian woman in her midthirties, sat next to Lenny.
“Do you think I could have a few minutes alone with my dad?”
“Sure, of course!” the therapist said. She immediately rose from her chair and left the room, closing the door behind her.
“Dad, I need to ask you something,” Rick said.
His father turned to look at him.
“I need you to help me out. Maybe save my life, okay?”
Leonard turned and looked directly into his eyes. He was listening.
Rick pondered for a moment. He could ask yes or no questions. But based on what the therapist had just done, he also knew he might be able to ask open-ended questions, too, as long as Lenny could answer with the letter board.
“I figured out about the cash you hid in the house. I know you were in charge of collecting it for the cash bank. To pay people off for Pappas. Dad, this happened almost twenty years ago, but now there are people out there who are trying to hurt me. May be trying to kill me now, I don’t know. Okay? So I need you to talk. To help me out. Okay?”
His father was still looking him in the eyes, and there seemed to be something in his glance, something besides fear. Maybe it was dread, or something like that. At least a great reluctance. He didn’t turn his thumb up or down, but he was watching and waiting. His left hand rested in front of him on the table. His right hand was curled uselessly on the arm of his wheelchair.
“You’re afraid of Alex Pappas, aren’t you?”
Lenny slowly turned his left thumb up.
“Did he beat you?”
The thumb turned down.
Rick thought a moment. “Did he . . . have you beaten?”
Lenny’s thumb slowly, hesitantly, turned up. Then he tucked his thumb back in and placed his hand flat on the table.
“Who did it?”
Lenny’s left hand remained flat on the table.
“Who beat you?” Rick said.
Lenny’s left hand slid across the table for the letter board. Rick moved around the table in his chair until he was next to the whiteboard. He picked up a green marker and prepared to write down letters as Len pointed to them.
Len curled h
is left hand with his index finger stuck out, a pointing pose. He slid his finger across the row of letters and stopped on D. Rick wrote the letter D in green marker on the whiteboard. Then he moved down to O, and Rick wrote O on the board. Then N. Then T.
The word on the whiteboard was DON’T.
Lenny made a slicing motion with his fingers, which Rick assumed meant “end of word.”
Then Lenny touched R, and Rick wrote an R, and then E and within a minute the phrase on the whiteboard spelled out DON’T REMEMBER.
“You don’t remember,” Rick said.
Lenny slowly raised his thumb.
He didn’t remember. That wasn’t surprising, if he was telling the truth. A bad beating to the head, bad enough to induce a stroke—no wonder his memory was faulty.
He tried another question. “Dad, who was all that cash for? I need to know this.”
For a long while his father didn’t move. Rick wasn’t sure whether Lenny understood, so he repeated the question: “Who was all that cash for?”
Another long pause. Then his father slid his left hand across the letter board, his index finger landing on the letter I.
Rick erased “I don’t remember” on the whiteboard and in its place wrote an I.
His father’s finger moved to W, and then A, and then N. A few seconds later his index finger moved to the T.
Rick wrote the letters on the board. IWANT. Realizing that these were two words, not one, he erased them and wrote them again with a space between the I and want.
Slowly picking up speed, Len’s index finger moved to T and then O.
Rick had written on the whiteboard, I WANT TO.
Rick spoke the words aloud: “I want to . . . What do you want, Dad?”
His father’s index finger moved up the letter board to D and then I, and then Rick realized what his father was saying and tears came into his eyes as he finished the phrase:
I WANT TO DIE.
Rick put his hand over his father’s useless right hand and tried to look into Len’s eyes again, but his father was pointedly looking away, a tear coursing down his left cheek.
37
Leaving Charlestown, Rick had the uneasy sense he was being followed.
It wasn’t a certainty. A vehicle had been behind him all the way from the hospital parking garage to Storrow Drive. Not a black Escalade or Suburban but a gray GMC Yukon. Was it a tail, or just a coincidence, someone else traveling from Mass General to Boston?
Maybe it was nothing, but he had to be careful. Where he was going, it was crucial he not be followed.
He saw the exit for Copley Place and decided at the last minute to take the exit. When he turned off Storrow and the Yukon followed, he realized he wasn’t imagining things.
A quick left and straight down Arlington Street and a few blocks later he came to the Park Plaza Hotel. He remembered there was a gala being held there, the one Darren from the magazine wanted him to attend. It had probably started already. He’d had no intention of going, but his name was on the guest list. Which gave him an idea.
He pulled up to the valet and the Yukon double-parked across the street. He wondered whether they wanted him to notice the tail, as if that was part of a strategy to unnerve him, cause him to do something stupid.
Well, they could follow him into the hotel, but not into the gala.
He got out of the car, handed his keys to the valet, and entered the hotel without looking back.
It was easy to find the banquet room where the event was taking place. The usual crowd was gathering, bunched at the entrance by a sign for the SCULLEY FOUNDATION LITERACY INITIATIVE, as attractive young women in headsets, holding iPads, checked off names.
He was wearing jeans and a fleece pullover and was seriously underdressed for the occasion. But they weren’t going to kick him out for not wearing a jacket and tie. All he needed to do was spend thirty, forty-five minutes here, long enough for his watchers to give up and leave. He’d pretend to be on assignment from Back Bay. Which shouldn’t be difficult, since he actually was.
Someone grabbed hold of his elbow. It was Mort Ostrow. “I like your idea of cocktail attire,” he said. “Didn’t I just see you at Marco?”
Rick shrugged. “Hello, Mort.”
“Sculley’s right over there. Isn’t he on your dance card this week?”
“That’s right.”
“Listen, Rick, I want you to give him the real Rick Hoffman treatment.”
He winced. “Sure.” The truth was, Rick could write the lede to the Q&A in his sleep: He may own several of the most iconic buildings in the Boston skyline, but when you talk to the billionaire builder Thomas Sculley, he’ll tell you it’s people, not buildings, that he’s built his fortune on.
“Let me introduce you,” Ostrow said.
“Mort, how about we do this another time, I’m—”
“Two minutes.” Ostrow sidled in close and confided: “Sculley and I are in talks. I think he’s about to buy the magazine. Though I’m calling it a vertically integrated media company. I want him to experience the full Rick Hoffman treatment. There he is.”
Thomas Sculley was talking to an elegant fortyish blonde, but when he saw Ostrow, he turned. He had craggy, rough-hewn features and looked to be in his seventies.
“Thomas, I wanted you to meet one of our ace reporters, Rick Hoffman.”
Sculley gave him the big-man handshake-and-biceps grip-and-grin. “Oh, yes, Mr. Hoffman, why don’t we have our little talk right now?”
“I’d love that, but I don’t think these folks would forgive me if I took you away.” Rick gestured vaguely toward the throng. “Maybe you can find a few minutes next week?”
“Certainly,” the man said, crinkling his eyes.
A few minutes later Rick managed to escape Ostrow’s clutches. He walked around the perimeter of the ballroom, which was crowded with tables set for dinner, and exited via one of the doors at the far end. He emerged from the hotel at the cabstand and got into one of the waiting taxis. “Government Center, please,” he said.
38
Rick had met FBI Special Agent Ernie Donovan a few times, but it hadn’t been for at least seven years. Donovan hadn’t changed. He was ex-Marine and took pride in maintaining the look, the high-and-tight hair and the physique. Donovan’s black hair was peppered with gray now. That was the main difference.
Eight years ago Rick had worked on a piece on interstate sex trafficking of minors and had, in the process, gotten to know Donovan. The FBI is always finicky in its dealings with journalists. It views them as unreliable, uncontrollable, publicity-seeking loose cannons, which is largely true. Journalists view the FBI as hidebound, bureaucratic, and legalistic, which is also largely true. But when their needs overlap—when the bureau wanted a story out—the relationship could be harmonious.
They met at a Starbucks across the street from the Boston field office. Donovan turned down Rick’s offer of a drink after work. He had four kids and had a long drive home from Boston.
Donovan met Rick in line. The agent’s grip was very ex-Marine. They made small talk until they were seated with their coffees at a table. Rick told him about what he was investigating, the covered-up accident. “Did that ever come across your radar screen?”
“You’re talking about the Big Dig. The radar screen got awfully crowded those days.”
“So nothing about this accident in particular? A cover-up?”
“I don’t have anything for you, Rick.”
“Meaning you can’t tell me, or you don’t have anything to tell?”
Donovan smiled. “If I had anything, I couldn’t tell you.”
“You’d know if an investigation was ever opened.”
“And officially I’m not supposed to tell you that no investigation was ever opened.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
“I
remember the accident well. Off the record, it always troubled me.”
“But not enough to open an investigation.”
“A lot was going on back then. Whitey Bulger had just vanished in Boston the year before. A lot of fingers were being pointed. But if you find something, let me have a look.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Listen, Rick. You’re digging in a swamp. It’s Boston and the Big Dig and corrupt contractors and a lot of people don’t want the muck raked. Be careful out there, okay?”
39
You’re right on time,” Joan Breslin said as she opened the door. “I’ve just baked some scones.”
Lenny’s secretary had been surprised to hear from Rick again, but she agreed, though sounding somewhat reluctant, to meet with him again. She was dressed more casually this time, in a gray cardigan over a pink button-down shirt.
The house smelled deliciously of her fresh-baked scones. She led him into her kitchen, which was wallpapered in a turquoise paper with a white trellis pattern. The kitchen table, set with two plates and butter and jam, was turquoise-painted wood, the chairs painted turquoise as well. She lifted several scones with a spatula off a wire rack on top of the oven and slid them onto a serving platter. Then she served one to Rick and one for herself.
“Please,” she said, indicating the scones. “Tell me how I can help you.”
“It’s about my dad, obviously. When you found him, right after his stroke—is it possible he was beaten?”
“Beaten? For heaven’s sake, why would you ask that?”
“Because his doctor had a new set of MRIs done and found unmistakable evidence of traumatic brain injury. He thinks that’s what caused the stroke.”
Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “He was slumped on the floor when I found him. A bunch of things from his desk were on the floor. I always assumed he fell and hit his desk on his way down.”
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