CHAPTER 3

SUNDAY, APRIL 12, 1981

 

-1-

 

In the early morning heat of the Sunday of Charles F. Sullivan, III’s funeral, shortly after first light but before the sun breached the horizon, the reddening dawn sky foretold another day just like the day before and the day before that and the days before that, so many days that Boston could no more remember its last snowfall than it could what life was like before Charles’s murder.

Mabi, the token African-American member of the Capablanca Chess Club, sat naked in bed, listening to his own heavy breathing. He unfolded a frayed, creased poster of a black basketball star now many years retired, many years forgotten by white sports fans except the few obsessed with professional basketball. It was the only relic he had taken with him when he moved out of his parents’ home, that and a lingering desire to learn the meaning of Wallaca and vivid memories of his brother Jim Ed.

His soul burned hotter than the weather. He dozed on and off, his sleep made fitful by his dreaming of a little boy named Leroy Wallaca who shared a bedroom with his brother and a basketball poster tacked to the ceiling. He dreamt the leprechaun floated down from the ceiling like a snowflake and settled on the pillow beside Leroy’s head. It whispered into the ear of the sleeping Leroy that he was descended from generations of leprechauns going back thousands of years to the beginning of time. Leroy awakened and asked the leprechaun how a little black boy could be descended from generations of white leprechauns. “Bad luck for life not to believe in me,” the leprechaun said and before Leroy replied, it vanished. Leroy stood on the bed and tried to scrape the leprechaun off the poster. In his dream, Mabi shouted to Leroy, but Leroy ignored him, begging the leprechaun to come back. He dreamed Leroy cried himself to sleep and when he awoke, his, Mabi’s, pillow case was damp.

In that same Sunday morning heat, Charlie and Trish Sullivan dressed for their son’s funeral. They had concluded the funeral arrangements the night before. The cardinal would officiate at the funeral Mass which, with the internment, would be by invitation, family and friends. No politicians. No campaign contributors. No tuft hunters, brown-nosers, or favor seekers. To allow the public to bear witness, Boston’s public television station would televise the Mass without commentators or comment. Reporters would be barred from the church and cemetery, but to appease them and to satisfy the public’s curiosity, its need to know how Boston’s first family was coping, Charlie insisted on holding a news conference later that day. Trish’s complaint it would turn the funeral into a campaign rally went unheeded. From church to cemetery, the cortege would pass through the wards Charlie carried in his last election.

After finalizing the funeral arrangements, Charlie and Trish had attended Saturday night Mass. Trish had sat silent through the Introductory Rites, not responding with the rest of the congregation. The Liturgy of the Word was a mere buzz in her ears, as annoying as a mosquito. Father Curry’s homily, speaking of death, forgiveness, resurrection, and eternal life, was like a pagan’s spear puncturing the heart of her grief. What good was Father Curry? What did he know of the death of a child? She needed to talk to someone who had been through it, someone who had lost a child. She thought of what Maddie had said in Michelle Furey’s office, how the hurt never went away, how she still cried on Elizabeth’s birthday, how she thought about committing suicide. Maddie was the one to talk to, but Katie would crucify her and Charlie would do worse. But what could be worse? Charles was dead and death was eternal. Those thoughts kept Trish company through the night, accompanied her to the funeral Mass, and, as she rode in the cortege, to the cemetery.

Later that Sunday morning, Spider and Mabi waited for Virgil outside the African Meeting House where Virgil was the custodian, a second job, more a labor of love than anything else as the pay was minimum wage when there was money enough to pay him. “If that old man don’t hurry,” Spider said, honking the horn, “Bumper’s box be dirt covered ’fore we get there.”

Virgil hobbled forward and leaned against the door frame. The wood was dry and cracked with age like the earth after a severe drought. He hooked his cane over his forearm. “Welcome to Nigger Hill.”

“I heard of Nigger Heaven,” Mabi said, “and Nigger Hell, but never Nigger Hill.”

“It’s where you’re at.” Virgil rested his hand on the brick. It needed pointing. Time and the weather had gouged out chips.

“I thought this place Beacon Hill,” Mabi said.

“Bet you never heard of Cato Gardner neither. He came from Africa and raised the money needed to build this church. See his plaque up top the door.”

“Ain’t much of a church,” Mabi said.

Virgil closed and locked the front door. “The oldest black church in the U.S. of A. Built in 1806. Blacks they built it ’cause they had to sit in the balconies of white churches. That’s called segregation.”

“Them balconies closer to heaven, further from hell,” Mabi said. “Still, they get what they deserving praying to white bread Jesus. Be no segregation if they prayed to Allah.”

Virgil limped to the car. “Welcome to Nigger Hill,” he said to Spider.

Spider laughed. “If there be a nigga on this hill, I s’pose white folks calling it nigga hill.”

Virgil asked, “Would they be calling it fool’s hill if there be a fool on this hill?”

“Depends if that nigga be a fool,” Spider said.

“Or that fool be a nigga,” Virgil replied.

 

The air conditioner of the limousine transporting Charlie, Trish, and Katie Devlin to Bumper’s funeral labored to cool the limousine’s interior. Sweat accumulated at the base of the driver’s neck, stained the collar of his shirt, an odd pattern, an upside- down mountain range. George Harriman, riding shotgun in place of the head of Charlie’s security detail, guzzled bottled water, rubbing the bottle across his forehead, up and down his cheeks. The limousine’s tinted windows darkened the sun, but did little to repel the heat that built up inside the passenger compartment street by street as the cortege passed through Boston’s neighborhoods. Grief doubled the ambient temperature. Burrowed into the corner of the limousine’s back-seat, Trish in the opposite corner, Katie Devlin between them, Charlie rested against the window. The glass warmed the side of his head. He ignored the passing neighborhoods. He ignored the people lining the sidewalks thrusting signs of sympathy above their heads. Ward heelers had brought out the loyalists, the lackeys who depended on him for their daily bread, their evening beer and chaser. Their expressions of mourning were as sincere as his at the wake or funeral of a constituent’s cousin where he curried favor with his people, collecting votes by the show of his face, the slap of his hand on a back, the murmur of ‘my condolences for your loss.’ How many candles had he lit to help ferry unknown souls to Heaven? How many of those unknown souls had arrived there? On the sixth day, God created Southie.

A pothole jolted the limousine. Water cascaded out of Harriman’s bottle wetting the front of his shirt. Charlie tapped a warning on the glass partition. Someone would sacrifice their job to that pothole. He was in a new place, Charlie was, an undiscovered place, a place as alien as the worlds in the monster movies Bumper once devoured on Saturday afternoons. Now, the monsters of this world had devoured Bumper. No. Not the monsters of this world. Him. Charlie Sullivan. He alone. He was the monster of this world. He had devoured his son. The Irish had a way of doing that, devouring their own. The sow always ate its young. Had he made it to the library sooner, Bumper would be alive. How many minutes sooner? Five? Ten? A tick or two?

The cortege slowed for traffic. No sirens, Charlie had told the police escort. No running red lights or stop signs. No speeding. No signs of privilege to desecrate his son’s funeral. Voices muffled by the closed windows mouthed words of sympathy. He wished he could stop, accept their embrace, but how could he? A tick or two. Were the Bruins highlights that important? They could have waited. For the highlights, there was all the time in the world; for Bumper, a tick or two.

He had relived that night many times over, the night of Bumper’s murder, an endless video loop with God’s finger eternally welded to the replay button. For the rest of his life he would relive that night. On his death-bed, it would accompany him down the dark corridor toward the light, accompany him through the gates of hell, accompany him as he stood before God awaiting judgment. The night of Bumper’s murder. He closed his eyes. No longer in the back seat of the limousine, no longer escorting his son’s body from church to cemetery for eternal internment, no longer in this world.

Damp and clammy from the steam heat of Boston Garden, Charlie draped himself in front of the window air conditioner while he watched the television highlights of that night’s hockey game between the Boston Bruins and Montreal Canadiens. The players had skated at half speed on ice the consistency of the syrupy slush sold at Revere Beach in summer. Fog had obscured the game’s one goal and he hoped the television replay would give him a clear view.

Hockey was his one respite from the pressures of being mayor of a city riven by court-ordered school busing, the pressures of his campaign for elevation to the United States Senate, the pressures of being a father and husband, the pressures of his wife’s opposition to moving the family to Washington if he won, the pressures of fearing for his soul and the soul of his wife and son.

With Bumper’s death, would he, could he, ever watch another hockey game? Ever lace up his skates to play in an amateur league? If Bumper had died at the hand of a hit and run driver, died from being mugged on the T . . . but hockey.

Slouching against the bedroom door, Trish squinted to read the tiny numbers on her watch. She felt floppy as if the heat had incinerated her bones.

“Charles should be home by now,” she said. Exercising a mother’s prerogative, she referred to her son, Charles F. Sullivan, III, as Charles rather than Bumper. “Call the cab company.”

Charlie pulled a tissue from a box and spit a wad of phlegm into the palm of his hand. “He must have locked himself in the library.” A chess prodigy, Bumper had full membership privileges at the Capablanca Chess Club, on paper a municipal recreational facility but in reality a club whose membership decisions were subject to the mayor’s whims and caprices.

“It’s a school night, Charlie.”

“After this replay.”

“That’s another stone on our grave.” Trish retreated into the bedroom.

Charlie squatted in front of the TV as the announcer recapped the Bruins loss to the Canadiens. On the replay of the game’s only goal fog absorbed the puck and he settled for the announcer’s description, Savard hip checking Bourque off the puck, the pass to Lafleur who skated through center ice with Cournoyer on his right wing, the deke bringing Cheesie out of the net, faking the pass to the wing, then scoring in the upper left corner, the one hole in hockey argot. Charlie doubted the goal judge saw the play any better than he did, but things like that happened when the Bruins played the Canadiens.

The hip check, the pass, the center ice skate, the deke–which of these cost Bumper his life? Charlie tapped on the barrier between the limousine’s back seat and front and gestured for Harriman to pass back a bottle of water. Trish ignored his asking whether she wanted one. As did Katie.

“The cab company, Charlie.” From the bedroom, Trish’s voice sounded wee and small. A cab company dependent on the Boston Licensing Commission for hackney licenses chauffeured Bumper to and from Capablanca.

Charlie poured two glasses of iced tea and carried them to the bedroom. Trish paused from her nightly reading of the Bible and marked her place with a red leather bookmark bearing the likeness of her favorite saint, St. Charles of Sezze. Each year, she celebrated his feast day, January 5th, by serving lamb out of respect for his humble origins. Charles of Sezze was an illiterate shepherd who risked his life to aid those stricken in the plague of 1656. To her, he was a true hero of the Church, not one of those born and bred into the papacy like the Medici popes and cardinals.

“The cab company.” She rubbed the glass across her forehead.

“Let him be. It’s the one place he’s really happy.”

“He won’t have that in Washington.”

“He’ll have more. He’s outgrown Capablanca.”

Chains of causation, Charlie thought, as he sipped his water. Both life and chess were chains of causation, random events tied together in ways unforeseen. Was the cause of death the first link in the chain or the last? Was checkmate ordained on the game’s opening move?

Bumper’s grandfather on the Sullivan side, Charles F. Sullivan, Sr., had taught him chess while Bumper recuperated from an appendectomy. Charlie the First, as he was known, played for whiskey with beer chasers in bars throughout Boston, losing only after the rewards of winning had so dulled his brain and dimmed his senses he could no longer tell the castles from the knights, the bishops from the pawns, the king from the queen, white from black. By the time Bumper had healed and his stitches had been removed, he dominated the man who called himself Charlie the First. For his birthday, Mayor Charlie arranged formal lessons with Pete Kelly, Boston’s only grandmaster and Capablanca’s president, and for Christmas, a Club membership.

Bumper savored the novelty of being treated like an adult more than popcorn at the movies or chocolate syrup in his milk. When he sat king of the hill at the chessboard, childhood’s dark side–bogeymen under the bed, nightmares of dying while asleep, priests vomiting visions of hell while their hands fumbled with the belt buckles and zippers of acolytes and altar boys, bullies pissing on naked feet–dissolved in the checkmates he inflicted on the Club’s members. At Capablanca, he had no bedtime. Preparing for a tournament, he had no homework. If he won, his reward was tickets to the Bruins or, in summer, the Red Sox.

In the limousine, Charlie gulped his water. In his memory, in his bedroom, he gulped his tea and changed the subject to buy Bumper a few more minutes at Capablanca. A few more minutes. Another tick; another tock.

“The governor called,” he had said to Trish. “He wants to name a Jew to the Superior Court. His poll numbers are slipping and he needs their money. He asked for a recommendation. If I give the governor a real money bag, I’ll score his endorsement for the Senate primary which is worth something even if it isn’t worth as much as he thinks.”

“We’ll stay in Boston, thank you.”

Charlie’s mouth drooped with exasperation. “Mayors are a dime a dozen, hon, but there are only one hundred United States senators.”

“What kind of father would take Charles away from the one place he’s happy?”

“One who would take his son to a place where he would be happier.” Charlie scooped the car keys off the dresser, winked Trish a kiss, and stepped into the inferno.

Happier? Are there chess boards in heaven? If it wasn’t the hockey highlights that killed Bumper, was it his lack of urgency on the drive to Capablanca, dawdling as he planned strategy for his Senate campaign in his mind?

Driving to Capablanca, Charlie reviewed in his mind for the hundredth time the results of the polls he had commissioned to help him plot his campaign strategy. Running state-wide was not the same as running in the city of Boston. His organization lacked presence beyond the city limits, lacked the ability to get out the vote in the wards or precincts favorable to him outside Boston, or suppress the vote in those that weren’t. The dynamics of the election also differed. State-wide he would need the black vote. In his mayoral campaigns he was able to pacify black voters with lip service because their vote was irrelevant to the outcome. Statewide he would have to lure them to his side. And he would need Jewish money to fund his campaign, something also less critical in Boston. All without alienating his natural constituency of angry white voters. It would be tricky, but he was confident he could pull it off. Reagan had.

Charlie capped the empty water bottle and tossed it on the floor of the limousine. Drops had dribbled on his dress shirt. He patted them with his handkerchief. He glanced at Trish, wishing he could read her mind. He didn’t have to. Her face told him what she was thinking. It’s your fault, her face said. And her face was right.

Charlie parked between the stone lions that guarded the front entrance of Capablanca. He dragged himself up the granite steps. His breath rattled in his lungs, the sound reminding him of his mother’s death rattle. He coughed up a wad of phlegm; then, another. He leaned against the front door to catch his breath. His lungs ached. His chest felt like it was constricted by an ever tightening straitjacket. Slowly, he crossed the foyer to the circular staircase leading to the Club’s second floor. Gripping the banister, he pulled himself up the stairs, pausing to pant on every other step. With each pant, he considered what punishments to inflict on Bumper. Take away his bicycle. No television for a few days. Extra chores like sweeping the winter’s grit out of the garage, or raking the dead leaves from beneath the shrubs. Nothing too harsh, but harsh enough so Bumper understood he should never, never, never pull stunts that worried or frightened his mother. That, Charlie would explain with a wink and a smile and a playful slap against the side of the head, was a spanking offense. He coughed up more phlegm, grinding it into the carpet with the tip of his shoe, then struggled to open the library door with his shoulder. If this was a preview of old age, he hoped to die young.

A small reading lamp on the fireplace mantel glowed yellow. It illuminated the library and imbued the mahogany paneling with a rich, peaceful luster which was what Charlie imagined the paneling in a Senate office to have. He wished the mayor’s office had that look. He despised the poured concrete of Boston’s City Hall. Cement had the charm of a grave liner, and Charlie felt himself stepping into the grave each time he entered the building. He longed for Washington’s hallways of marble.

In front of the fireplace, Bumper sprawled on a high backed red leather couch. One hand, fist clenched, flopped across his face, the other hung down by his side, fingers dangling above the thick nap of the carpet. His feet rested on the arm of the couch. His sneakers were unlaced in the school-yard style. Less than a week old, they were already scuffed from pick-up basketball games and Little League tryouts. Bumper wanted to pitch–it was the part of baseball closest to chess–and over the winter Charlie hounded the Red Sox for their pitching coach to teach Bumper to throw a curve. At his age, the coach advised against it, his bones being too fragile to handle the torque.

“Bumper!” Charlie’s voice was soupy, phlegmy.

Charlie shook his son. No response. He kneeled beside the couch and searched Bumper’s wrist for a pulse. Nothing. He put his ear to Bumper’s chest. He thought he heard a heartbeat. He covered his other ear with the flat of his palm. It was his, not Bumper’s, the heartbeat. He pinched Bumper’s nose shut, squeezed open his mouth, and blew as hard as he could. Bumper’s chest did not rise. With his fist, he pounded Bumper’s chest. Still, no heartbeat. Charlie pried open one of Bumper’s eyelids. The pupil, dilated, yawned open.

Bumper was dead. His son was dead. Nine years old. Dead.

He took a deep breath, then lay his head on Bumper’s chest, cursing the God that punishes the son for the sins of the father. Tears occluded his eyes.

Charlie took another deep breath, then wiped the tears from his eyes with the tips of his fingers. He grasped Bumper and lifted him off the couch and hugged him and rocked him back and forth as he had when Bumper had colic and had to be comforted and cooed to sleep and he tried to sing him a lullaby; but the words jumbled up in his head and all he could remember was “Down came the cradle, baby and all” which he sang over and over until his voice dissolved into a cough and tears flowed from his eyes like the phlegm clogging his throat. He lowered Bumper on the couch and pried open his clenched fist and smoothed his shirt and straightened his legs and crossed his arms over his chest and made the sign of the cross and tried to recite the Act of Contrition, but could not remember what came after ‘. . . I detest all my sins’ even though he had started reciting it before he could pronounce all the words correctly. He attempted the Twenty-third Psalm, but his mind went blank after “the valley of the shadow of death”.

What would he say to Trish? His words were a politician’s words, words for constituents at wakes and funerals, words of public condolence written by speechwriters; but for his wife, what words did he have?

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a skull-cap beneath one of the chairs of the chess table closest to the couch. It was inside out. He crawled over to it. Stitched inside the lining was a name, Avram Levy. He shook his head to dislodge, to expel, the cancerous thought that he should take the skull-cap, find this Avram Levy, exact revenge; but he knew better. He knew enough not to disturb evidence at a crime scene. He left the skull-cap untouched, the crime scene uncorrupted.

He looked around. Under the couch, a spiral notebook, Bumper’s spiral notebook in which he recorded all his chess matches, move by move, in standard chess notation. It was open to the most recent match, the one he had apparently played that evening. Date: April 9, 1981. Opponent: A blank. An empty space. Location: Capablanca Chess Club. Played: Black. It made no sense. Bumper never omitted the name of his opponent. Unless it had been erased. By the murderer. By Levy. Charlie held the page up to the lamp on the mantel. In the yellow light, it glowed like an illuminated manuscript. No erasure; the space was blank. Why? Was Bumper ashamed to play Levy? Was he afraid Levy would checkmate him and he didn’t want to record losing a match to a Jew? Or, in the rush of the moment, had he skipped over the name of his opponent, a typical goof for a nine-year-old?

Charlie didn’t understand chess notation, but he knew the white moves were on the left, the black on the right, and that “checkmate” entered beside a move meant that player had won. Entered as white’s last move: checkmate. Whose writing? Not the same as the earlier moves. Not childish enough to be Bumper’s. No matter. Bumper had lost his last match. To a Jew. And now he was dead. Charlie closed Bumper’s spiral notebook. This is not evidence, he thought. It’s a relic, something to be venerated as if it were the finger bone of a saint, a sliver of wood from the Cross, something tangible to remember his son by, something for him and Trish to cherish, to cry over, to lament the future that never would be. He tucked it into the waistband of his pants in the small of his back.

Once again, Charlie’s eyes burned with tears. His lungs ached. He kissed Bumper on the forehead, then stumbled out of the library in search of a phone. He had to call Detective George Harriman of the Boston Police Department. Maybe Harriman had words.

Another pothole, another jolt. Charlie opened his eyes. The heat inside the limousine had intensified. The stink of grief seared the air. It emanated from his pores. It coated the inside of his mouth. Scarred his lungs. Dried the tears in his eyes. Baked love out of his heart. The cortege slowed as it approached the cemetery. In his mind’s eye he dumped a bucket of ice water on himself, slapped himself across the face, once, twice, a third time, desperate to shock himself awake. He faced a challenge, one he had never faced before, perhaps one of the most important of his political career, sharing his grief with the people of Massachusetts without whimpering, without wailing. Whimpering and wailing was for women. Not for the mayor of the city of Boston. Not for the next United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He would go forward with the news conference. Today. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Today. Doing so, he would stare down Bumper’s empty grave, dare it to swallow him, mock it when it didn’t. He closed his eyes as the cortege passed through the cemetery gates.

Between Trish and Charlie in the back seat of the limousine, Katie Devlin’s mouth moved in silent prayer. She crossed herself, then sighed. Was she praying for Bumper’s soul, Charlie wondered, or for God to strike me down? God already had. By letting him live.

The telephone rang and rang and rang until Katie Devlin realized it was the real telephone, the ancient black bulky phone which crowded her night table beside her pill bottles and Holy Bible, and not the petite pink Princess phone secure in her night table drawer through which Jesus spoke to her, she to Jesus. Katherine Meaghan Devlin, born in and of the old country, spinster sister of Trish’s da, Trish’s favorite aunt, tolerated one informality in her life. She allowed people, friends and family, even strangers, to call her Katie, and, only then, because Jesus had done so in their first conversation. Too sleepy to answer the phone, too hot, too tired, she let it ring; but like the devil who created a new temptation with every click of the clock, the ringing persisted. Sliding her sleeping mask on to her forehead, she answered.

“We’re on our way over,” George Harriman said, “Charlie and me to pick you up. Be there in about ten minutes.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Katie bunched her nightgown in front of breasts, pendulous with age and calories. Once she had enjoyed the rakish beauty inbred in the Devlin women, her hair redder than the setting sun, but age had whitened her hair, thickened her body, and curved her upper spine so she walked with her head angled forward, her shoulders hunched.

“It’s Bumper.”

Katie twisted the nightgown, noosing its collar around her throat.

“He’s dead, Katie. Murdered. His blood drained. Every last drop.”

“Passover. The Jews are baking their matzoh.” She crossed herself and prayed for her Princess phone to ring.

“Charlie wants you there when he tells Trish.”

Inside the limousine, time crawled and the limousine crawled with it. It was an endurance race Charlie ran, a race he wanted to end; but it never would. After the funeral, the press conference. The Senate race. The election. Maybe six years in Washington. Twelve. Eighteen. Maybe none. A race with no finish line. A race death would not end if the Catholic doctrine of the soul’s journey were true. All the money in the world would not buy the indulgences he needed to escape his fate. Bumper was dead and would always be dead. And he would be famous in Hell as the father who put hockey highlights ahead of his son.

Thirty minutes later, Harriman parked across the street from the Sullivans’ house. The car was standard issue for police detectives, black, chromeless, oversized exterior mirrors, heavy duty engine, unmarked but easily recognized. It blended into the shadows of the trees that canopied the street. Moths danced on the heat waves that distorted the street lights. Silent but for Charlie’s wheezing, they watched Trish pace back and forth in front of the picture window with the regularity of a metronome. In her mind’s eye, Katie saw her ma pacing the same way as her ma awaited word on whether Katie’s da had survived the ambush. She heard once again the voice of the priest when he came to tell them the Brits had killed her da and, later, that her uncle had been executed and, later still, the tone in which he spoke when her ma passed away in her sleep, her death mask bearing the scars of her life. Those memories had stowed away with Katie and her brother, frightened teenagers smuggled out of Dublin, consigned to steerage on the ship to New York, and to third class on the train from New York to Boston. Now, years later, watching Trish, her brother’s daughter, pace back and forth, those memories were as real as loose dirt beside a freshly opened grave. Harriman helped her out of the car.

“I’ve buried as many people as I can in one life,” Katie said.

He nudged her toward the house. “Trish needs you.”

Trish flung open the front door. “Charlie! Aunt Katie! Where’s Charles? Which hospital? Take me to him.”

Katie wrapped Trish in her arms and whispered in Trish’s ear, “He’s dead.”

“Dead?” Over Katie’s shoulder she saw George Harriman on the sidewalk at the foot of the stoop, his head bowed. She pushed Katie aside and rushed down the steps. “How, George?”

Harriman bit his lip. “Murdered, Trish. Murdered.”

Trish shrieked and collapsed against him, almost toppling him. Harriman grabbed the wrought iron railing to steady himself, then wrapped his arm around Trish’s shoulders and helped her up the steps, into the living room, to the couch. Trish gripped Harriman’s arm. He peeled open her fingers and lowered her on to the couch.

Through the night, Trish shuddered in Katie’s arms like an infant fighting a high fever. Charlie paced from kitchen to living room to bedroom and back, avoiding Bumper’s room. Harriman worked the phone, coordinating Bumper’s autopsy, the examination of the crime scene by forensics, the arrangements with the funeral home, the press bulletin. A police detail guarded the street, keeping reporters at bay. At first light, Trish finally dozed off. Slowly, her sleep deepened, became less fitful. Her facial muscles relaxed. She breathed in little gasps as if she were dreaming she was crying.

Harriman kneeled beside Katie and squeezed her hand. “You holding up?”

“Do you think it’s the Jews?”

“Get some sleep, Katie. It’s going to be a long day.”

Charlie reached across Katie’s lap and fumbled for Trish’s hand. Her fingers lay limp and lifeless on her leg. He covered her fingers with his, gently squeezed them. Trish did not respond. Katie shifted in her seat, separating his hand from Trish’s. He withdrew his hand, folded it into his lap. The cortege arrived at the open grave. The driver hastened to open the back door of the limousine. It had been two long days, two long nights. Now, another long day, another of the death march of never ending long days. Now and forever. He stepped into the heat. He would not wilt.

At the cemetery aides from Moynihan’s Funeral Home held umbrellas to shield the mourners from the sun. The membership of Capablanca formed an honor guard through which Charlie and Trish and Aunt Katie passed to reach the grave. Trish wore neither veil nor makeup. Grief twisted her features into those of a gargoyle on a Gothic cathedral. Throughout the graveside service, Trish’s expression did not change: not when the cardinal sprinkled holy water on the coffin; not when cemetery workers lowered it into the grave; not when the rich black loam, shovel by shovel, cascaded off the coffin’s slippery shine; not when stones bounced off its polished wood, sounding like shots from a child’s cap gun; not when the members of Capablanca lined up to offer condolences, Mabi, Capablanca’s only African-American member, at line’s end.

“I’m Mabi,” he said when Trish reached him.

“Did you know Charles well, Mr. Mabi?” Trish asked. He dressed like a young associate at one of Boston’s Brahmin law firms, tailored suit, white shirt, regimental striped tie.

“Just Mabi. We chess played, ma’am. Charles always won.”

Trish’s lips quivered.

“This cemetery sure be looking nice,” Mabi said. “My brother he’s buried in a city cemetery. Weeds so bad we bring scissors when we visit. The old potter’s field. White folk call it Nigger Heaven.”

Trish touched his upper arm. “How can people be so full of hate they hate the dead?”

 

-2-

 

Maddie Devlin connected a borrowed video cassette recorder to her television to videotape Charlie Sullivan’s press conference. Michelle Furey had insisted Maddie watch it at her place–I have a VCR, she pointed out–but Maddie needed to concentrate and to concentrate she had to be alone, not distracted by the strange attraction she felt for Furey. Sudden, unforeseen, it had welled up from deep within her like the lava of a long dormant volcano. Church dogma–that sex with persons of the same gender violated both divine and natural law–had been drummed into her from early childhood. It was little consolation that homosexual desires without consummation were not considered sinful. She had leapfrogged the desire stage. If it were a sin, why did she feel so fulfilled? So at peace? Focus, focus, she chastised herself.

 

*

 

One of Mayor Charlie’s endearing qualities was that he strayed off-script whenever his mouth started moving. So harebrained was he that a talk radio host once labeled him the Happy Harebrain. In the social halls of Boston’s Irish and Italian neighborhoods, people laughed with, not at, Charlie’s harebrain; but the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit cited it as a reason for affirming one of the nation’s toughest school busing orders designed to integrate Boston’s racially segregated schools. They learn better when they’re schooled with their own, Charlie had testified in the busing trial before United States District Court Judge W. Arthur Garrity, Jr. who was so outraged at the mayor’s testimony he devoted several pages in his initial court opinions and several more in subsequent opinions attacking and refuting it. Charlie wore those court opinions as badges of honor on the campaign trail, his defiance blinding the voters of Boston to his complicity in the court orders that roiled the city.

Charlie’s harebrain vexed Maddie. Maddie knew Charlie understood the problems that would arise both for the prosecution and for his Senate campaign if he pronounced Levy guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and urged, better begged, a jury to convict. It would not surprise her if he spoke of blood libel. Reason did not always control Charlie’s actions. At times, he spoke and acted with the underdeveloped brain of an adolescent. If he did now, maybe she could use it to Levy’s advantage in court; but it would also guarantee the change in venue Ugolino had schemed to obtain. Maddie tested the video cassette recorder, pulled a chair up to the television, and unfolded a tray table for her pot of tea. When Charlie stepped up to the podium, she pushed the record button.

The camera zoomed in on the mayor’s face, on his nose, the nose that caused his detractors–especially the righteous liberals who lived in the ritzy suburbs beyond Boston’s city limits–to mock him as Boston’s Jimmy Durante, twice the nose, half the sense of humor. The tight focus made his nose look like a top-down view of a mountain after an avalanche, the nose of a boxer who had been knocked out in the first round of every bout he had fought.

It wasn’t boxing that gave Charlie his nose; it was hockey. Twice Charlie had broken his nose playing hockey, once in high school, once in college. Shaped like a blob of oatmeal fallen off the spoon, his nose would embarrass most men. Not in Boston. Not in Southie. People still stopped him on the street to thank him for his exploits on the ice, to ask him to sign autographs for their children. His nose was his calling card. In Southie’s bars and taverns, people bought him drinks because of the cross-check he made that freed Pierzynski to score the winning goal for Holy Name High School in the Massachusetts Super 8 state championship game, Holy Name’s one and only trip to the Super 8 Hockey Tournament. Neighborhood recognition became citywide when he earned a hockey scholarship to Boston College and saved a NCAA championship by diving into the goal crease over the body of the injured goalie as time wound down, deflecting a slap shot with his eye socket and cheekbone. Hockey fans had elected him to the City Council, and a few years later with Boston euphoric over Bobby Orr and the Big Bad Bruins’ first Stanley Cup in decades, they had elected him mayor. Term after term they had re-elected him, the opposition weakening with each election.

Charlie’s political machine was reminiscent of Chicago of the Daley era or New York of Boss Tweed’s time. With his appointees controlling the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Boston Zoning Board of Appeals, Charlie personally issued the zoning and building permits for the office towers and hotels that revitalized Boston to developers who awarded the work to the right contractors, who hired people out of the right union halls. If a restaurant needed a liquor license, Charlie’s henchmen on the Boston Liquor Licensing Board approved it if the right wholesaler vouched for the restaurateur, the right distributors provided the produce, the beef, the fish. He distributed real estate tax abatements as if they were papal indulgences, proportionate to the applicant’s contributions to his campaigns. When video games resurrected the penny arcade, he rammed a regulatory scheme through the Boston City Council mandating a municipal permit for each machine; not each arcade, each machine. To protect the youth of the city, he explained at the press conference when he signed the ordinance. He, of course, controlled the permits. People beholden to him could mobilize more campaign workers, raise more money, than any candidate other than those named Kennedy.

“Mr. Mayor.” James Goddard, a wire service reporter and senior City Hall correspondent, always asked the first question. “On behalf of the press corps, please accept our condolences. How is Mrs. Sullivan?”

“Thanks, Jim. It’s been difficult. She’s doing as well as can be expected.”

“Mr. Mayor.” Franklin Crocker of the Boston Globe stood.

Charlie’s facial muscles tightened as the camera panned from him to Crocker who was referred to as “Crocker Shit” by Charlie’s inner circle. The Globe had supported Charlie in his first run for mayor, then abandoned him when he ran for reelection because it perceived his opinions on school busing and the distribution of low income housing throughout the city to be too similar to such ardent segregationists as Ross Barnet, George Wallace, or Lester Maddox. When Charlie announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate, the Globe editorialized a plea he not run, arguing he would divide the Democratic Party and prevent the election of a senator in the tradition of John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the current senior senator from Massachusetts, Edward Moore Kennedy. Some tradition, Charlie joked to his aides. One hunted pussy ‘round the clock; the other drove it off bridges.

“Any new developments on the investigation?” Crocker asked.

“No.”

Charlie’s composure came through on television because he knew how to use the small screen to his advantage. He alternated eye contact with the camera as if it were a constituent sitting across from him in his office and with the reporter asking the question. He modulated his voice so it did not sound pre-recorded. He held his hands and head steady. When he paused to blow his nose, he made it look as if he were struggling to overcome a deviated septum his parents could not afford to have surgically repaired.

“Chief Ugolino,” Charlie continued, “has assigned the investigation to Detective Angelo Procaccino, a thirty-year veteran of the police department well-respected for the thoroughness of his investigations. Detective Procaccino has linked the skull-cap to Avram Levy who, as you know, is in custody. Several more like it were found in his apartment.”

Angelo the Sweeper, Maddie thought. She called him that because Ugolino, according to gossip among the defense bar, assigned him to cases where the chief wanted inconvenient facts swept under the rug. Maddie had encountered him in defending a busboy in the Flying Dragon arson case in which the building housing Chinatown’s Flying Dragon restaurant had been gutted by fire. The prosecution theory was that the busboy was acting on behalf of one of the Chinese triads, China’s version of the mafia. Maddie’s defense theory was that the owner of the building, a parochial school classmate of Ugolino’s, had torched it for the insurance. Maddie could not break Procaccino on cross-examination. Years later, the owner of the building confessed to the arson on his death bed. By that time, Maddie’s client had died in prison, silenced by a guard on the triad’s payroll.

Procaccino added several new layers of mystery to Levy’s case. What facts did Ugolino want swept under the rug? Who was he protecting? Why? No wonder, Maddie thought, he wanted a change of venue. No wonder he wanted to lay off on the defense the work the police should be doing. Once again, her temptation to ask Levy if he murdered Bumper Sullivan, her wisp of a wish he would confess, agitated her.

“Say, Mr. Mayor.” Tony Cochoni of the East Boston Patriot waved.

Maddie read Charlie’s mind through his smile. Cochoni was Charlie’s pet reporter. For him, “off the record” meant off the record. Now and again Charlie had a few beers with him without worrying every word would appear on the next day’s front page. Trish appreciated he didn’t feel obliged to interview her every time they met. Charlie rewarded Cochoni’s discretion by leaking him enough scoops to make the Globe and the Herald-American jealous. “Rumor has it that Capablanca’s only black member played chess with Bumper that night.”

“His name is Mabi and that rumor is true.”

“Was he in conspiracy with Levy?”

“No. He left Capablanca when it closed and has an alibi for the rest of the evening.”

“Have you questioned him?” Crocker shouted.

“I haven’t questioned anyone,” Charlie said.

“The police, I mean.”

“The police have undertaken a thorough investigation and are confident in the accuracy of the outcome of that investigation, as is the district attorney.” Charlie stared straight into the camera and Maddie felt he was in her living room challenging her to make something of the fact that the police investigation had started and stopped with Levy’s skull cap and that, arguably, he had just pronounced Levy guilty. Charlie’s harebrain was as cold and calculating as Ugolino. Angelo the Sweeper changed the game within the game. Her instincts told her more, much more, was going on than trying to force a change of venue.

“Is it true Mabi attended the funeral?” Cochoni asked.

“Everyone from Capablanca did.”

Charlie pointed at Makim Obawa from the Roxbury News, a black weekly.

Obawa rose as if standing would elevate his question to a level of importance it would lack if asked while seated. “We in the black community know Mabi as the leader of the Trojans. Some believe the Trojans control the trade in the drugs poisoning our streets. Why would someone like him join Capablanca?”

Charlie paused to add import to his response, then repeated the question, a strategy Maddie had woodshedded her witnesses to use to buy time. “Why would someone like him join Capablanca, you ask. Perhaps, you should ask him. On a more serious note, Mr. Obawa, as you know Capablanca is a municipal facility. As such it is open to all city residents without regard to race, religion, or national origin. To refuse admission to a city resident for one of those reasons is a violation of federal law. Are you advocating the city deny membership to Mr. Mabi because of his race?”

Maddie sensed the press conference was becoming an ordeal for Charlie. Rapid eye blinking was the first sign his harebrain was struggling to free itself.

Crocker pointed his pencil at the mayor. “I understand Levy’s bail hearing is Friday. How would you rule on his application for bail?”

“How would I rule? I would give the safety of the community due consideration. A person accused of murdering a young child in such a horrific way should not be released before trial.”

“So you’re advocating preventive detention,” Crocker said.

“Preventive detention is a buzz word fuzzy-thinking liberals like the Globe use to deceive the public. What I advocate is common sense. Every parent, black or white, Christian or Jew, rich or poor, will sleep better knowing someone accused of such a heinous murder is not free to prey upon other innocent children. The numbers don’t lie. Countless crimes are committed by people free on bail. Protecting the community is one of the reasons bail may be imposed. I wish your editors would climb down off their polo ponies and wake up to real life.”

Polo ponies, Maddie thought. He’s on the verge of losing it. Maddie sipped her tea. It had cooled to the point of being bitter. Not losing it, she realized. Hitting a home run. Charlie’s core voters would certainly agree the Globe was an elitist paper pandering to readers insulated and isolated from the real world by their bank balances. Polo ponies was the perfect symbol, concise, quotable, the image of the filthy rich. It would resonate with voters happy to afford a dog for the kids, not a pure bred, a mutt. It would play well outside the city among voters who didn’t read the Globe. It would align him with the majority who lived paycheck to paycheck. In her mind’s eye, Maddie saluted him.

“Hey! Give someone else a break,” Cochoni shouted. “Are you saying judges are too soft on criminals?”

In Charlie’s first campaign, criminals were portrayed as victims of societal conditions beyond their control. In his most recent, they were stereotyped as predatory deviants who victimized the innocent and law-abiding. Maddie’s years in legal aid had taught her Charlie was right about seventy-five per-cent of the time.

“If every judge spent time riding in a patrol car or, even better, walking a beat, they’d show more common sense in their application of the bail statute.”

The harebrain was peeking out, fighting to liberate itself from the calm, rational man temporarily controlling it. Maddie knew this demeanor, if Charlie maintained it on the witness stand, would overwhelm the jury. If the evidence were there, no feeling person would vote to acquit the man accused of murdering his son. Yet, to her and her alone, Ugolino’s machinations whispered Levy’s innocence, whispered that the police knew something that pinpricked a hole in what seemed like an airtight case. Emotion would patch that hole unless she figured out some way to neutralize it. Or, found the real killer, if it weren’t Levy. To ask or not to ask, that is the question.

SCLS couldn’t afford to hire a private investigator, at least one capable of finding anything not beneath a flashing neon sign screaming “Look Here!” In all her years as a public defender, she had never persuaded the court to order the Commonwealth to pay for a private investigator for an indigent defendant even though the U.S. Constitution and the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights arguably mandated it. Maddie Devlin, P.I., a wonderful title for a television series. She’d insist on a jazz score like the old Peter Gunn show her da watched religiously.

“Do you think Levy can get a fair trial in Boston?” Maise Davis, a television anchor, asked. Maise anchored the 6:00 and 11:00 news on the least-watched of Boston’s three network television stations. Unlike most anchors, she wanted to be a field reporter, but the salary and perks of being an anchor in a market as big as Boston’s were too good to trade down for being a reporter for a local station in a smaller market. Her overtures to the networks and to local stations in New York and Los Angeles had been ignored.

Charlie stepped back from the microphone so he would have to raise his voice, an old trial attorney trick Maddie recognized from her own repertoire. “As the Christian Science Monitor editorialized, Boston does not need another Sacco and Vanzetti. And, I would like to add, Boston does not need its own Dreyfus either.”

Not the Monitor; the Globe. A slip of the tongue so minor it would not undermine Charlie’s credibility as a witness at Levy’s trial. Two teaspoons of sugar did not sweeten the bitterness of her tea. She spit the mouthful back into her cup.

“Mr. Mayor.” The camera focused on Aaron Finegold, a reporter from The Daily Herald, a Jewish newspaper that circulated throughout New England. “I appreciate your sentiments, but I must remind you that on Friday leaders of the Jewish community requested police protection at synagogues during Sabbath services and you refused. Yesterday morning, a bar mitzvah in West Roxbury was disrupted when vandals threw smoke bombs through the synagogue windows. By refusing to act, is not the city condoning if not promoting anti-Semitism?”

“No one is more opposed to anti-Semitism than me, Aaron, but I can’t assign police units to every synagogue. The rest of the city would go unprotected. The people of Boston are good people. Anti-Semitism is the illness of the lunatic fringe. A few smoke bombs do not a holocaust make.”

The harebrain was wrestling its way to freedom. The hot television lights reflected off the sweat accumulating on Charlie’s brow. He blew his nose to clear his nasal passages.

Crocker waved his hand like a first-grade boy desperate to go to the bathroom. “Do you think it proper for an elected official to permit his position on an issue of public debate to be influenced by a personal tragedy?”

The mayor’s press secretary intervened. “It’s been a long day.”

Charlie nudged her aside. “Public debate? What public debate? It’s not a matter of public debate that Boston should be safe for my son, for yours, for everyone’s.”

“Is Boston safe for Jewish sons?” Finegold asked.

“The arrest and prosecution of Avram Levy are not anti-Semitic acts, but rather proof justice is blind in America. Crime victims also have rights and the most important is having the person who committed the crime apprehended, brought to trial, convicted with due process, and sentenced to time to be served rather than suspended. As long as I am mayor of the city of Boston, due process will not be a shield behind which people who murder out of hatred can hide from justice. This defendant will be judged in accordance with the American system of justice, which guarantees him a fair trial before a jury of his peers and representation by competent counsel at the expense of the Commonwealth if he can’t afford to pay.”

Charlie paused, his mouth open as if he were debating with himself to say something else, then pointed to a woman sitting at the end of the front row. “You’ve been very quiet this afternoon,” he said to Anne McGann, editor of the woman’s page of The Lighthouse, the weekly newspaper published by the Archdiocese of Boston. “Do you have a question?”

“I was just thinking you and Charles must have been very close.”

“Me and Bumper would go to Bruins games together, Fenway Park, watch road games on television. Movies, bowling, pizza, the kind of things you do with a kid his age.”

“Did you and he ever play chess?” McGann asked.

“He’d have none of me.” Charlie smiled. “I wasn’t good enough.”

“Did he enjoy campaigning?”

“He was a natural. Do you remember the time he stumped the Democratic Solidarity Dinner with a riddle? What did the deep sea diver have for lunch?” He paused. “Peanut butter and jellyfish sandwiches.”

Everyone laughed, Charlie the loudest, until his laughter disintegrated into sobs. Tears streaked his cheeks as he struggled to rein in his emotions. Failing, he stepped back from the microphone, then hurried from the podium, from the room. His press secretary announced the press conference was over.

Maddie rewound the tape and watched it again. She couldn’t get out of her mind the thought that Charlie and Ugolino knew of a weakness in the prosecution’s case that might lead a thinking juror–and she only needed one–to have reasonable doubts. Perhaps Bumper’s opponent across the chess board that night, Mabi, was that weakness. Perhaps Mabi was the intended beneficiary of Angelo the Sweeper’s skullduggery. Had his alibi been corroborated? Charlie certainly tried to create the impression it had. But, Mabi’s name had not appeared in the Globe? Or, the Herald-American. It wouldn’t be beyond Charlie to plant that question with his pet reporter. Charlie hadn’t flinched when Mabi’s name came up. He had acknowledged the truth of the rumor the way a proud parent acknowledged a son or daughter who won a prize at the school spelling bee or science fair. Was Charlie’s confidence a bluff? Or, a tell?

She admired the way Charlie was playing politics, Boston’s favorite blood sport. Levy’s trial would be the engine that drove Charlie’s Senate campaign and nothing would be allowed to make that engine sputter. Free press coverage of Levy’s trial, Charlie’s and Trish’s grief, would be more effective, more valuable, than millions of dollars of campaign ads extolling Charlie’s positions on the issues. Any Democrat who opposed him in the primary would be condemned as heartless, or worse. The name of the hapless Republican opposing him would rarely, if ever, be mentioned. Bumper’s absence from the campaign trail would speak more eloquently than any words his speechwriters could write. There was something callous and coldhearted, something odious and repellent, about Charlie riding his son’s murder to the United States Senate; but Bumper was dead and nothing Charlie did on or off the campaign trail would resurrect him.

Maddie cursed the “what-ifs” parading through her mind like the marching bands on Southie’s West Broadway, then East Broadway, during Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. At the heart of each band like an oversized bass drum on wheels was the biggest “what-if” of all, Michelle Furey. She wished she were on Furey’s bed, the beady eyes of “The Screaming Pope” ogling her naked body. She wished Furey’s tongue was gently lapping her labia, then burrowing into her vulva, deeper, deeper, until it found her clitoris, attacking her clit, pounding against it, as if she, Furey, wanted to dislodge it. The orgasm washed over her like the chill of plunging into the ocean at Carson Beach in early spring before the new season had warmed the water. Too quickly, the last marching band exited her mind and only the echo of the bass drum remained, fading step-by-step as it moved away from her.

Maddie clicked off the television and dumped the cold tea in the sink, running the water so it wouldn’t leave a stain.

Outside, there was no relief from the heat.

 

-3-

 

The television pundits were still analyzing Charlie’s performance at his news conference when a group calling itself Bumper’s Brigade claimed responsibility for the wave of anti-Semitism plaguing the Greater Boston area since Bumper’s murder. “We disrupted yesterday’s bar mitzvah at Temple Beth Sholom in Jewtown Sharon,” they proclaimed in letters to Boston’s newspapers and television stations. The letters were printed or broadcast uncensored. “We broke the windows in kike stores in Hymieville Brookline. We spray painted the interior of the kosher deli on Beacon Street. We cut the sidelocks off Jews walking to Saturday morning services in Rich Jew Newton. We are not the lunatic fringe. We are the mainstream and we have only just begun.”

The prisoners in Levy’s cellblock tallied the incidents as if they were scoring a prize fight: Christ Lovers eight, Christ Killers zero. Outside the Charles Street Jail, a mob paraded with signs demanding Justice! Southie’s teenagers marched along the route of the St. Patrick’s Day parade carrying a gallows with Levy’s effigy hanging from it. An occasional priest begged for tolerance, but Boston’s Catholics interpreted the cardinal’s silence as an endorsement of the Brigade. Ugolino bitched about the strain on the limited resources of the police department, but refused to cancel vacations or personal leave or request the governor to call out the National Guard or the president to deploy the army. Mayor Charlie issued a statement urging “the good people of Boston to reject lynch mob mentality and repudiate violence.” In Boston’s subways and on its busses, in the elevators of its office buildings, in its bars and beer joints, its shopping malls and supermarkets, its movie theaters, on its sidewalks, on Boston Common, in the Public Garden, at Fenway Park, at Boston Garden, people eyed each other, wondering who belonged to Bumper’s Brigade, how to join. The Brigade claimed responsibility for so many anti-Semitic acts the Boston Globe likened it to the rats that had spread the plague throughout medieval Europe.

With each new desecration, Boston’s Jewish community distanced itself further from Levy, disowning him the way status-seeking parents disown wayward children. The majority of Jews avoided social and business contacts with Gentiles so they would not have to apologize for Levy. The more militant agitated for the formation of a counter-terrorist group, a Haganah, to enforce the biblical dictum of an eye for an eye. One or two, such as Rabbi ben Reuben and Jacob Moskovitzky, begged the Jewish community to support Levy, but their pleas were ignored. Sacrifice the one to save the many was the consensus.

 

-4-

 

That evening, Trish Sullivan set Charlie’s traditional Sunday night dinner before him, pan-fried shoulder lamb chops, a baked potato, and baby carrots. Charlie rotated his dinner menu day by day the way a diner rotated its blue plate specials. He never ate green or leafy or chicken or fish except when forced to at political fund-raisers.

“None for you?” He sliced open the mottled brown potato, squeezed out a crown of white, and centered two squares of butter on it. Yellow rivulets trickled between the hot crevices and Charlie mixed his carrots in the butter pooling beside the potato. “You should eat.”

“The horrible things they’re doing in Charles’s name. Make them stop.”

“I released a statement. What more can I do?”

“They’re stealing Charles from us. He deserves a better legacy than hatred. It’s what people will think of when they hear his name. Is that what you want for him?”

“It’ll die out.” Charlie sliced the fat off his chop and dipped it in the butter.

“I wish you never found that little hat. I wish you’d thrown it down the sewer. I wish they never arrested the Jew. Charles would be able to rest in peace.”

“You’ll feel better when the heat breaks.”

“Make it stop. If you don’t, I’ll tell people you’re behind this Bumper’s Brigade. I’ll tell them it’s a dirty trick to win an election.”

Charlie stopped chewing. “Christ, Trish. It’s beyond my control.”

“You let this go on, you’re no better than the Orangemen of Belfast.”

 

Charlie shoved aside his dinner. He no longer had any appetite. If he ever had one. Maybe it was just a reflex. Eating. Trish’s preparing it certainly was. A reflex. A distraction. A failure. How to calm her down. No. Wrong question. How to help her deal with her pain. Bumper’s Brigade was beyond his control. It was true, but he shouldn’t have said that. He shouldn’t have. He reached for the phone.

“George,” Charlie said before Harriman could say hello. Charlie’s voice was hoarse, as if his throat were raw and red from a day of crying. “Trish and I . . . we . . . need to know how Bumper spent his last hours. Could you talk to whoever was at Capablanca that night, anyone who might have seen or talked to Bumper?”

“I’m sure Ugolino’s on it.”

“I want you on it.”

“I doubt I’ll learn anything of value beyond what the chief’s turned up.”

“For me and Trish.”

“Chief don’t like it when people go behind his back. He’ll have me pounding a beat in Roxbury.”

“I’ll need a head of security in Washington.”

Harriman decided to take the Joe Friday approach from Dragnet, his favorite television cop show. He’d start with Charlie’s boys, members of Capablanca who were either part of Charlie’s inner circle or owed him for favors past. They’d be sympathetic, prone to exaggeration. He’d record and transcribe the interviews, neither comment nor editorialize. Just the facts, ma’am. Let Charlie make of them what he would.

Harriman would interview Patrick Reilly first. Reilly had been appointed clerk-magistrate of the Boston Municipal Court because the governor owed Mayor Charlie a favor. Egged on by his dad, Bumper always called Reilly “Spud” because his gut hung over his belt like a bag of potatoes falling off a counter.

Next, he’d interview Robert O’Malley, chief enforcement officer of Boston’s Department of Inspectional Services who had played hockey with Charlie on the Holy Family High School Super 8 championship team and against him in college, O’Malley’s Boston University squad losing to Charlie’s Boston College team in the NCAA championship game.

Brendan Nolan, Bobby Doyle, Sheila Diggle, others.

And, Pete Kelly, an at-large member of the Boston City Council and Capablanca Club champion. Kelly had first played chess with Bumper three years ago, taught him strategy Charlie the First could never have conceived, coached him between tournament games, and never shushed him when he shouted after a good move. Bumper sucked up the respect of these men, though he could live without the Reillys, the O’Malleys, the Nolans, but not Kelly. He fed on Kelly’s respect the way Charlie fed on the love of the voters.

After completing his interviews of Reilly, O’Malley, Nolan, Kelly, and others at Capablanca on the night of Bumper’s murder, George Harriman prepared two documents, one a sanitized set of transcripts for Trish in whose eyes Charles was as uncorrupted as the baby Jesus, the other an uncensored set for Charlie. He figured Charlie knew about Bumper’s attitude toward blacks, probably approved of it since it mirrored Charlie’s as well as that of Charlie’s dad, Charlie the First. The interview tapes and his notes he’d stick in the bottom of a desk drawer in the unlikely event they would be needed someday.

If Trish read the censored version of the transcripts, she would learn that Bumper and Mabi had played chess the night of Bumper’s murder; that Bumper recorded the moves in his notebook; that Reilly, Kelly, Nolan, O’Malley, and several other members witnessed the match; that at closing time, Bumper and Mabi agreed to finish the match on another day; that when the Club closed Mabi and the other members left while Bumper, Virgil, the African-American janitor, and Brian Cairns, the Club manager, remained. Mabi corroborated this narrative, at least the parts concerning him. Virgil stated he left after cleaning up the game room, stopping by the African Meeting House on Beacon Hill, the first black church in Boston where he also was the custodian, to vacuum the sanctuary. Cairns confirmed the time of Virgil’s departure and further stated Bumper was in the library when he locked up and left at approximately 9:30.

If Charlie read the unexpurgated version of the transcripts, he would learn about the interaction between Bumper and Mabi across the chessboard. Bumper had teased Mabi, saying he had seen Mabi before but wasn’t sure where, maybe in one of the dioramas in the Museum of Science, a cave man with a club, or as one of the natives in the original King Kong, or as Kong himself. Bumper hadn’t stopped there. He boasted to Mabi he didn’t understand why his dad gave so many blacks city jobs or was nice to them at election time; but he figured what was right for his dad and his granddad was right for him. Hatred, like chess, made Bumper feel powerful, superior, and he knew at the age of nine he would always hate, that it was as natural for him as praying the Rosary.

Bumper didn’t limit his racism to Mabi, but extended it to Virgil, the Club janitor. Every member knew he demanded Virgil be fired the first time he stayed past closing. Virgil had found him in the library surrounded by books, plumbing the secrets of past international grandmasters, and told him the Club was closed and he best be getting along. I’ll get you fired faster than you can suck down a watermelon, Bumper threatened. Harriman explained the emptiness of Bumper’s threat in his report. Funded through Boston’s recreation department, Capablanca was a municipal facility like the skating rinks and swimming pools, parks and tennis courts, the Franklin Park zoo. The Club’s employees, as decreed by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, were protected by civil service laws that clearly defined the reasons people could be fired or disciplined and which granted the employee right of an appeal, first in a hearing before the civil service commission, then a hearing in court. And in the case of war veterans like Virgil, a member of the 92nd Infantry Division in World War II, dubbed the Buffalo Division because it was descended from the Buffalo Soldiers of the 10th Cavalry Regiment, the added protection of the Veteran’s Preference Act which gave veterans a preference for being hired for certain municipal positions.

Charlie was advised at the time by the city’s law department that the best he could do was to order Brian Cairns to reprimand Virgil for insubordination–in a dignified manner so as not to provoke a Federal civil rights suit–and place a disciplinary warning in his personnel file. With a paper trail of warnings, the city solicitor concluded, in a year or so Virgil can be put out on the curb with the week’s trash.

Bumper’s harassment of Virgil did not stop there according to the interview transcripts which included an account of Bumper’s behavior when demanding Virgil fetch sodas for him and all the spectators.

Two things intrigued Harriman when he reviewed the transcripts. First was the way Mabi ignored the insults to himself and Virgil, concentrated on his chess moves, and agreed to resume play at a later date. He puzzled at Mabi’s self-control, his restraint, in the face of Bumper’s conduct. It was as if Mabi was following a script, implementing a well-conceived plan, a game of chess off the board. Second was that none of the people he interviewed stated that Levy was present that night. No one placed him at the scene of the crime, a loophole in the case on which Maddie Devlin could construct a defense. One juror was all she needed.

Harriman debated with himself whether to tell Maddie. Guilt or innocence, truth or justice, in the context of this case he cared little. His concern, his only concern, was Maddie. What were the consequence to her if she won, if she lost? He owed it to Brian to do best by his daughter, to protect her, if necessary from herself. Maddie was relentless, as relentless as her da had been on Guadalcanal. When she set her mind to something, she was unyielding. Obstinacy polluted her perseverance. She lived and breathed the old Irish proverb that the road to heaven was well sign-posted, but badly lit at night. Telling her would illuminated the signposts. Brian would want him to.

“Angelo got their first,” Ugolino said when Harriman pointed this out to him. “He says it’s an old Jew trick–create a distraction to send us on a wild goose chase by making someone else look guilty. Evidence of the brilliance of the Jew’s plan. We got our man. We’ve had him since the night of the murder. Res ipsa loquitor or whatever the fuck attorneys say when the case is open and shut.”

Not all attorneys, Harriman wanted to reply, but didn’t so he wouldn’t have to endure one of Ugolino’s infamous rants.