The Now-And-Then Detective

by William Wells

  I had coffee, OJ, pancakes, and bacon for breakfast at Izzy’s, then checked out of the hotel and drove to the airport to catch a flight to Boston. I stopped in a gift shop in the terminal to buy a book to help pass the time on the long flight. They had three of Bill Stevens’s Jack Stoney books. Pass on those, I lived them. I selected the latest in the Prey series by John Sandford. His detective, Lucas Davenport, has a high close rate. Not as high as Stoney (and me), but still impressive.

  18.

  Officer Needs Assistance

  Coincidentally, I had the same driver that I did for my last cab ride from Logan airport into Boston. The driver recognized me, too, and asked, “Say, did you get scrod your last time here?”

  I checked into the Hyatt Regency. I put my overnight bag in my room and discovered, wonder of wonders, that it was dinner time. It was unseasonably warm, the daylight faded into dusk, so I took a walk, directed by a city map I got from the desk clerk, in search of vittles. After a while, I came upon the historic Faneuil Hall Marketplace. In Boston, everything is historic, or built to look that way.

  Lots of restaurants to choose from, but a sign on the Quincy Market building caught my eye, advertising Fat Thomas’s Tavern, established in 1827. I hoped the food was fresher than that. I went inside, found myself in the restaurant’s bar, and was told by the bartender to take the stairway to the dining room on the second floor.

  The cavernous dining room was full of people sitting side by side at long picnic tables. I found an open section of bench between a middle-aged man in a suit and a young woman wearing a Boston Police Department uniform. A waitress came over, put a menu on the table in front of me, filled my water glass, and said, “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll take your order. And hurry it up, I ain’t got all day.”

  She stood there with her arms folded, staring at me and tapping her foot. She looked to be in her fifties, and was thin, with an angular face and short, curly brown hair. The name tag on her uniform said Sally.

  The lady cop smiled at me and said, sotto voce, “The waitresses here are notoriously rude. It’s part of the charm of the place.”

  Sally could hear that but pretended not to. She gave me one last glare and went off to harass other patrons.

  I scanned the menu and noticed that they spelled scrod as “schrod.” Must be the way they spelled it in 1827. The businessman was eating a massive piece of rare prime rib, swimming in au jus, overflowing his plate.

  The lady cop said, “Prime rib is the specialty here, along with the Yankee pot roast, clam chowder, Boston baked beans, and Indian pudding.” She was eating a fried clam roll.

  “Thanks for the tip,” I told her. “It’s my first time here.”

  “You had sort of a deer-in-the-headlights look,” she said. “Where you from?”

  “Chicago originally. Florida now.”

  Sally the waitress came back and said, “Now do you know what you want?”

  “I’ll have the chicken pot pie,” I told her.

  She gave me a disapproving look, and said, “The prime rib’s better, buster, and so’s the pot roast, but some people can’t be helped,” and left me to wallow in my ignorance.

  “My name’s Millie,” the lady cop said. “My parents named me Millicent, if you can believe that, after one of my aunts, who always said she hated her name. She was named after her mother, who also hated her name. Same with my grandmother. Gotta keep that nomenclature of hate going down through the generations, I guess.”

  “My name’s Jack Starkey,” I said.

  “You here on business or pleasure, Jack?”

  Her name tag said Ryan. She wore corporal’s stripes. Millie Ryan was a fellow traveler, so I said, “Business. Police business.”

  “An interesting case?” she asked me.

  “About as interesting as it gets,” I said.

  She looked at me expectantly, like my cat, Joe, did when he wanted to be fed.

  Sally arrived with my chicken pot pie, which she dropped in front of me with a harrumph.

  “Have you been here since 1827, Sally?” I asked her.

  She laughed, punched me on the arm, and said: “Good for you, darlin’. I like bein’ sassed back.”

  She went off and I felt like a Fat Thomas’s Tavern regular.

  “You were saying it was an interesting case,” Millie reminded me when Sally was gone.

  I thought about it for a while, then I told her the whole story. When I finished the narrative, and the chicken pot pie, Millie said, “Wowie. When I grow up, I want to be a detective, just like you.”

  “Let’s hope you can do better,” I told her, meaning it.

  “If you’re planning on checking in with the department …”

  “I am,” I told her. Tom Sullivan had already called his Boston counterpart to clear the way.

  “I recommend hooking up with a homicide detective named Danny O’Rourke,” Millie told me.

  As she had? I wondered.

  “And if you need a driver, ask for me,” she added.

  “Definitely,” I told her.

  We both paid our checks to my new pal Sally. I left a 30 percent tip to make up for my ordering ineptitude. Then we walked downstairs and outside. Millie’s radio squawked. She pushed a button on the microphone hanging on her right shoulder and said, “Ryan.”

  A female dispatcher’s voice said: “Got a Code Three at One Ten Kilby Street.”

  “On the way,” Millie told her.

  She looked at me. “That’s nearby. Someone needs help. Good to meet you, Jack.”

  “Be careful out there,” I told her.

  She winked at me and hurried off. I wondered if she was too young to catch the reference.

  I walked back to the Hyatt Regency, watched the Bruins play the Red Wings on TV, switched to a movie, Road House, which I’d seen countless times, a cinematic classic, then slept soundly.

  The next morning, I had breakfast in the hotel coffee shop and called the Boston Police Department, a phone number I’d entered into my contacts list. A woman answered by saying, “Boston Police Department. With whom do you wish to speak?”

  With whom do I wish to speak? Correct grammar. Another moonlighting Harvard student?

  “Please put me through to Detective Danny O’Rourke in homicide,” I said.

  “What is this regarding?”

  Why does every receptionist want to know what my call is regarding? Do I have the voice of a time-wasting crank?

  “It’s a Code Forty-Four,” I said.

  “I’m not familiar with that code,” she said.

  “Officer needs assistance.”

  “That’s a Ten Thirteen.”

  “Let’s not get bogged down numerically,” I said. “I’m a police officer from Florida and I need Detective O’Rourke’s assistance.”

  “Wait one,” she said.

  After more than one, a voice said, “O’Rourke.”

  A man of few words.

  “This is Jack Starkey,” I said. “I’m a detective with the Naples, Florida, Police Department. I’m in Boston on a case. Your Chief Summerfield knows about it.”

  “Summerfield told you to call me?”

  “No, it was one of your officers. Corporal Millie Ryan.”

  “How do you know my niece?” he asked.

  Niece. Shame on me for thinking otherwise.

  “We met last night at Fat Thomas’s Tavern,” I explained.

  “You have the prime rib?”

  “The chicken pot pie.”

  “Like the tourist that you are. So what’s up, Detective Starkey?”

  “Do you have any time to get together today?” I asked him.

  “I’m jammed up. But I can do dinner. Divorced guys can always do dinner.”

  “I hear you.”

  “You like Italian food?” he asked me.

  “Be a fool not to,” I answered.

  “Let’s say seven at Carmelina’s, 307 Hanover Street in the North End. No chicken pot pie, but they have spa
ghetti carbonara that’ll make you wish you lived here.”

  “See, that’s why I need your help,” I told him.

  “Seven o’clock,” he said, and ended the call.

  I went back to my room with a day to kill before dinner. Boston was a town with many sights to see. I checked the location of the Boston Common on my city map from the hotel. I’d read in a guidebook in my room that, until 1817, an ancient elm on the land was used for public hangings. I wondered if the elm was still there and if I could use it to threaten Stewart Leverton into confessing his many sins of commission and omission. I’d ask him to meet me at the tree and show up with a rope and a few questions.

  Boston Common was nearby, so I walked over, saw a number of elm trees, all suitable for necktie parties, sat on a park bench near an old man who was tossing peanuts from a bag to squirrels, and called Marisa, Sam, and Tom Sullivan. Marisa and Sam were doing fine. Sullivan said, “Good idea to hook up with a local detective. What plan are you on now?”

  “Either D or E. After a while, they all blur together.”

  “I grew up in Quincy,” Sullivan said. “I highly recommend you eat at Fat Thomas’s Tavern at least once.”

  “I had dinner there last night,” I said.

  “What’d you have?”

  “The prime rib,” I told him.

  I passed the rest of the day strolling around the city, following my map, which highlighted Boston locations tourists should visit. I found the Downtown Freedom Trail and followed it easily because it was well marked, passing the Massachusetts State House, the Park Street Church, the Old South Meeting House, the Old Corner Bookstore, and other attractions. The common theme was that everything was very old, and therefore important.

  The highlight of my tour was lunch at the Union Oyster House, which was located in a redbrick building at 41 Union Street. A historical marker out front declared that the place, opened in 1826, was the oldest continuously operating restaurant in America. I recalled that Fat Thomas’s Tavern opened a year later, causing it to be considered a relative newcomer to the Boston restaurant scene.

  Inside, the cozy little place was all dark wood and brass and full with a convivial lunch crowd savoring Ye Olde Yankee fare. I noticed that there actually was a Ye Olde Gift Shop inside. Maybe I’d get a Ye Olde scented candle for Marisa and a Ye Olde wind chime to drive Joe batty.

  I sat at the curved bar near the live-lobster tank, scanned the menu, and told the bartender I wanted the clams casino for openers and then, what the hell, the Boston Scrod, which was a baked cod fillet topped with seasoned bread crumbs, the bartender explained when I asked. Given the atmosphere of the place, I felt like I should also ask for a seafaring drink like a grog or hot buttered rum, but I got a diet root beer instead.

  The scrod was yummy. Definitely not a joke.

  19.

  Saint Michael the Archangel

  That night, central casting sent me a Boston homicide detective named Danny O’Rourke. I spotted him easily among the bar patrons at Carmelina’s: a big, beefy guy with the build of a Boston College lineman which, I found out later, he had been. He was spiffy in a houndstooth sport coat. I could see the print of a gun in a shoulder holster under it. He had that whiter-than-white Irish skin, with red spider veins on his nose and cheeks. This wasn’t the first bar Danny O’Rourke had been in.

  I walked over and said, “Detective O’Rourke, I’m Jack Starkey.”

  “My niece describe me?”

  “No. You kind of stand out. Either a cop, or a well-dressed iron worker.”

  I could tell he liked that.

  “Join me in a Tullamore Dew?” he asked.

  “Thanks, but I’m off the hard stuff,” I told him.

  “Day at a time.”

  “That’s the program.”

  “I’m thinking about cutting back to a gallon a week,” he said. “Don’t want it to become a problem.”

  He finished his drink and led us to a table along the back wall. He took the seat against the wall, facing outward. Good tradecraft. Easy to spot a bad guy coming at him.

  A waiter in his late sixties or early seventies appeared and said, “Daniel, my boy. It’s been awhile.”

  O’Rourke grinned and said, “Tommaso, meet Jack Starkey from Florida.”

  Tommaso nodded at me and asked Danny, “He a detective too? He’s got the look.”

  “Just here to see the sights,” I told him.

  “Right,” he said. “Just seeing the sights. Can I get you boys a drink?”

  “The usual for me,” O’Rourke said. “And a grape Kool-Aid for him.”

  “Diet root beer if you have it,” I said.

  “We do,” Tommaso said. “Don’t sell much of it though.”

  He went to get our drinks, mine apparently being a disgrace to my Irish heritage.

  “Your chief called my chief who talked to the lieutenant in charge of our Homicide Unit who gave me an overview of why you’re here,” O’Rourke said. “Fill me in on the details.”

  For the second time since arriving in Boston, I did that. During the telling, Tommaso arrived with our drinks and took our dinner order, the spaghetti carbonara for both of us. Having been burned at Fat Thomas’s Tavern, I now knew to order one of the house specialties.

  When I finished my tale, long story long, and we were well into the carbonara, which was excellent, O’Rourke said, “We may need to call in Saint Michael from the bench for this one.”

  I knew exactly who that was: Saint Michael the Archangel, patron saint of police officers. My mother gave me his medal when I graduated from the Chicago Police Academy. I wore it on a chain around my neck under my tee shirt from that day until I retired. I had that medal at home in a drawer. It was a silver shield with the raised figure of Saint Michael, wings and all, holding a broadsword with its point in the belly of a serpent-like figure at his feet and the words “Saint Michael Protect Us” around the outer edge.

  “Now that’s the second reason I need your help,” I said. “You know how to put a team together.”

  Tommaso brought us each an espresso and cannoli, without being asked. We lingered over dessert as we talked about how to bring down Stewart Leverton, and maybe Libby, too, for murder.

  “I’ve heard of Leverton,” O’Rourke said. “He’s a major commercial real estate developer who’s often in court for not paying his subs and for thinking that building and zoning laws are guidelines, not absolute rules.”

  “That’s what Scooter Lowry told me,” I said.

  O’Rourke said, “You can come to police headquarters, borrow a desk, and use a computer to get into our database if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I told him. “I’ll do that.”

  More than using a desk and computer, I was eager to breathe in the atmosphere of a big-time law-enforcement operation again.

  As we finished dessert, O’Rourke asked, “How would Detective Jack Stoney handle this case?”

  I smiled. “You’ve done your homework about me.”

  “I’m actually a fan of the books,” he said. “Stoney’s a hell of a homicide cop.”

  “I could use his help right now,” I said.

  “Most days, I could too.”

  I asked him, “You know about that hanging oak in Boston Common?”

  He smiled. “Do I ever. O’Rourke family legend has it that a distant relative, who was a horse thief, met his untimely end on that very tree. An Irish family that doesn’t have a horse thief or two, some alcoholics, politicians, cops, and maybe a poet, isn’t very interesting.”

  20.

  The Cow Paths of Boston

  The next morning, to keep up with Danny O’Rourke, in the sartorial sense, I dressed in an open-collar blue shirt, navy blazer, tan slacks, and cordovan loafers, found a restaurant near the hotel called The Shamrock, had an enjoyable breakfast of baking powder biscuits with sausage gravy, and good coffee, and told a cabbie to deliver me to Boston Police Headquarters at One Schroeder Plaza, the address on O’Rou
rke’s business card.

  We pulled up in front of a glass-and-concrete mid-rise building, modern, not “olde.” I went inside and told the receptionist who I was meeting. She directed me to an elevator that took me to the Homicide Unit on the third floor.

  I strolled around the big room and found O’Rourke in a cubicle, talking on the phone. He nodded at me, ended the call, and said, “I’d like you to meet Lieutenant Halloran.”

  I followed him across the room to an office with an open door. He knocked on the door jamb and we entered. A tall, thin man in his forties, it looked, stood up from his desk chair, and said, “Detective Starkey, I presume,” echoing Henry Morton Stanley’s greeting to Dr. David Livingstone after tracking him down in Africa. Or maybe that was just how Halloran greeted everyone.

  “I’m Roger Halloran,” he told me. “Glad to have you visit us.”

  We shook hands and I said, “I appreciate your hospitality, Lieutenant. And Detective O’Rourke’s help. I’ll try not to take too much of his time.”

  “Danny told me about your case,” he said. “He’s one of our best. Good hunting.”

  As I followed O’Rourke to his cubicle, he said, “Halloran didn’t mean one of our best, he meant our best. He didn’t want to embarrass me.”

  When we got back to his cubicle, he indicated the one next to his and said, “You can use this one. Steve Bancroft’s at home trying to pass a kidney stone.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Use that computer to access our system,” he told me. “The password’s fightingirish, one word, lowercase. The LT’s a Notre Dame grad. I’ve arranged for you to use a car. Have at it and let me know what you need.”

  “Where’s the coffee?” I asked him.

  He pointed to a back corner of the room. “Over there, next to the bathrooms.” As if he could read my mind, he added, “You want doughnuts, get here early.”

  O’Rourke sat at his desk and I made my way to the coffee room. As advertised, a big Dunkin’ Donuts box with the top open held only crumbs. Instead of the traditional Bunn coffee maker holding burned, acidic liquid, there was a restaurant-grade espresso machine, and a refrigerator, which implied good coffee, and real milk, not that awful powdered coffee creamer. Score points for the Boston PD.