Pinto and I discussed the photo of Hoban in the Herald over the phone. It was a brief conversation. He had learned the names of the four men around Hoban. What I had thought was a photograph at a country club turned out to be a private residence with all the amenities a robber baron would’ve appreciated. A private gym, squash, and tennis courts, and an indoor swimming pool with a jacuzzi. Pinto said something about Duffy identifying the shooters for the three officers, but neither of us discussed it.
After I hung up the phone, I stared at that large picture until I could count the pixels and see the newsprint as an exercise in pointillism. I folded the newspaper, frustrated.
It began and ended with an article in the paper. Fewer and fewer people realize how much of the world they can grasp for ten cents, the cost of the Boston Globe. Knowledge depends on an ability to read and think critically, and that last part presumed a modicum of education. The other awareness, the kind that’s cumulative, came from living with your eyes and ears open, or with what the dictionary defined as discernment, or knowing the truth from a lie. There’s a universal certainty that we are never told the truth between the pages. We pay for the privilege to be lied to over breakfast.
The truth leaves clues. It’s a matter of knowing where to look, and this morning I found it hidden in a small block of text in the paper, about the size of an obituary for a man who had lived a humdrum life.
Pedro’s body had been rescued from the anonymity of Potter’s Field. The more I read, the more questions the article left unanswered, such as WHEN was the body found, or WHO found it.
I revisited the memorial article on Hoban. A glib sentence alluded to the veteran’s demise on the Boston Common without using the words ‘frozen’ or ‘hypothermia.’ The writer used the words ‘veteran’ and ‘activist’ but failed to describe WHAT causes in the Commonwealth had mattered to the man.
Tony had called earlier and said he’d pick me up after breakfast for the ride to Newton. Bonnie and I enjoyed eggs, toast, and bacon with Italian coffee made with the Bialetti Tony had given her as a gift. She seemed content with the outcome of the Costa case. Her client agreed to sign the divorce papers. Charlie Costa would be freed after the judge’s paperwork to release him from custody wended its way through the various offices within our legal system.
I said nothing to her about cognitive dissonance. Bonnie welcomed her new friend, the tall mafioso, at the door because he had, for the most part, rendered Brad impotent and irrelevant. Word must’ve traveled throughout the firm because Bonnie seemed to enjoy the aura of respect that surrounded her now.
Tony handed her a box from Antoine’s Pastry Shop in his Nonantum and a bag of Lavazza espresso while I put on my jacket. Before I left the house, I asked Tony whether Mr. B owned a tape player. I pocketed the cassette Agents Lusk and Miller had given me.
Alone with Mr. B in his office, I gave him no preamble before I hit PLAY. I’d let his ears do the mental work. He didn’t need to know the names behind the voices because he’d guess the first one the second he heard the Southie attitude. There was the initial sound of static, a little snarl, but the rest was as clear as Ella Fitzgerald on Memorex.
“I have news, but first tell me, who was the mick?”
“What mick? We’re all micks.”
“The one in here a few minutes ago. Never seen him before.”
“Relax. It’s a guy interested in the Double-Aught.”
“Interested how?”
“He said he was a cousin to the bartender and wanted to know what he was inheriting.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Nothing, it was all bullshit.”
“You didn’t answer me. Who was the guy, and what did you say to him?”
“It was Shane Cleary, a former cop, and before your time. He wanted to talk.”
“What the fuck does that mean, talk, and what’s this before my time shit. I grew up on the same streets, same time as you, Jimmy.”
“Yeah, and while you were at Quantico, he came and went. Don’t worry about him.”
Jimmy’s friend John was having none of it. His breathing was sharp as a razor.
“Don’t tell me what to worry about or not, fucko. Once a cop, always a cop.”
“Isn’t that gold, coming from you. He was fishing for what’d happened, you know, the other night. I told him to run back to his dago friend and let him know he needed to make good on the damage, otherwise, I’d let the guineas in New York know he broke the treaty, and they’d take care of his ass. I handed Cleary a price, and told him to play mailman.”
“New York? You didn’t contact them, did you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How much?”
“Hundred grand. Easiest money I ever made.”
“You mean, we made. We’ve got a lot riding on this, Jimmy.”
“What are you sayin,’?”
“No loose ends, Jimmy. No loose ends.”
“Cleary has enough problems that he’s not a problem for us. It’s the old man we need to worry about. And don’t talk about loose ends. You go after the messenger, and what do you think the don will do when his herald doesn’t return to the royal court?”
There was an exhalation, a sigh as old as Agamemnon.
“The guy is Irish and a former cop, right?”
There was a pause, and something of a grunt and possibly a shrug that accompanied the affirmative. John’s voice returned. “Then he’s double-fucked because he’s, one, a cop, and two, not Italian. In a word, he don’t count.”
“And what if the old man sends someone with him who is Italian and does matter?”
“You asked for Shane Cleary and he’d better send Shane Cleary.”
“Take it easy, John. Relax, will ya.”
I pressed the STOP and then the EJECT button. I didn’t remove the cassette.
Mr. B pointed to the player. “This does not help what you call my paranoia, Mr. Cleary.”
“No, it doesn’t, and it shouldn’t, because John in the recording is a federal agent.”
Mr. B said, “I figured as much when I heard Quantico, along with the place being bugged. Anything you’d like to add?”
“Other than someone has stepped off the reservation, no.”
“Whose tape is this?” Mr. B asked.
“Another agency, and one you don’t have to worry about since you’re not into narcotics. Your friends in New York, on the other hand, are another issue.” I pointed at the tape recorder. “I was given this as a favor. I’ve been told there will be an investigation on a connection between Southie and Canada. However, the party who provided this recording offered some advice.”
“Advice?” Mr. B said.
“An observation. The farther they explore the connection to Southie, the more attention there is on Boston. The thing about federal agencies is they don’t talk to each other, but they know each other’s business. The other side of the office at the FBI, the one that doesn’t know about John, will still come after you, and then there’s Jimmy. You go after him because he tried to kill Sal, then John will come after you because he has to protect his pet. If he comes for you, he’ll bring the full weight of the government with him, because even though nobody knows he’s crooked, they’ll want to bag you. See the irony?”
“I do,” Mr. B said. “He’s corrupt, but the means justify the end.”
“Whether it’s jam, jelly, juice, or wine, the grape gets squeezed. My friend’s advice is to get out while you can. Sal has the right idea about leaving the life.”
“And what about what he tried to do to you, Mr. Cleary?”
“I’m Irish. I don’t count, remember?”
“A word of guidance. You can take it or leave it. When Jimmy comes for you—and he will, and with what protects him—I suggest you use that nine millimeter in your possession.”
“Because it’s untraceable?”
“You’re already a ghost, so why let someone make it literal? Consider it self-defense, like what your friend did at the bar.”
“He also did what he had to do, so there would be no evidence.”
“Exactly my point. Follow your friend’s example, Mr. Cleary.”
Mr. B rose from his chair and visited the liquor cabinet. He’d pour us each some Strega, a Sicilian liqueur made from herbs. Strega was Italian for witch, and the drink yellow from the saffron used to make it. While he was uncapping the bottle and pouring, he said Sal would be staying in town with Vanessa. Then he said we needed to talk about Hoban and ‘my friend.’ He handed me my drink.
“When we last talked, you referenced a photo of him in The Herald. Uncover anything?”
Without mentioning Pinto, I explained that I had the names of the men in the photo, and the one clue to Hoban’s demise was the swimming pool in the background. Again, without naming JC, I mentioned the crystals in the man’s lungs.
I said it’d take several subpoenas to establish the whereabouts for each man in the picture. As for the chlorine, their lawyers would tell the judge that he might as well indict every YMCA with a pool. Without the man’s internal organs, there was no reason to use the word homicide and Hoban in the same sentence.
“Familiar with Crosstown Street in Roxbury, Mr. Cleary?”
“Methadone Mile?”
Mr. B sipped some of his yellow liqueur and waited for the Lite-Brite inside my head to form a picture. Hoban was an activist for addicts, especially after the politicians had threatened to close the drug treatment program on Long Island in Boston Harbor. Without treatment, the poor and veterans would die from drug overdoses. Without a place to house them during rehab, they would become homeless. Hoban and several community activists, chief among them Melnea Cass, a black woman with a long, long history of getting results, campaigned for housing, funding, and programs to help the impoverished and assist the addicted. The Lite-Brite came into focus as a giant billboard that screamed: Where there was real estate, there was money, opportunity, and politicians.
“How did they get to him?” I asked.
“He’d been lured out to the burbs for a weekend of food, drinks, and discussion. They’d used the invite as a pretense, and then they played to his weakness, since he had a reputation with drink and women. The rest is history.”
I sipped. Strega was an acquired taste, and not something I could drink more than one of after dinner. It was bright, not medicinal, but definitely different.
“I’d like specifics.”
“They’d plied him with champagne. A woman coaxed him into the jacuzzi.”
“How did you come by the details?”
“Servants to the wealthy see everything.” He raised his glass, and I raised mine.
“A jacuzzi?” I said.
“Few people know this, but the carbonation in champagne acts as an express train for alcohol. When combined with the temperature of the water, the heart rate increases, and the blood pressure drops. If his heart didn’t give out, the respiratory issues he had from Agent Orange and the chlorine in the air around the hot tub hurried him along.”
“He slipped under the bubbles,” I said. “Explains the water and chlorine in his lungs.”
“All of this, of course, is theory because the man’s organs remain missing, but I will tell you this: the person responsible will find himself out of a job after the next election. It’s not the justice you want, but it’s the justice you have. As for the late Sergeant Hoban’s plan for the boulevard, that’s a matter of patience.”
“But the election is months away.”
“People say patience is a virtue. Sicilians say the same about revenge.”
“May I ask why you even care? I mean, about justice for Hoban.”
“I’m a veteran like you. The man was trying to do some good in this world. I respect that. Let’s discuss your friend. What’s his name?”
“Hunter. It’s what we’ll call him.”
“Not his real name, then. Interesting,” Mr. B said.
“When we talked in the club and discussed quitting cigarettes, you said we make our habits, and then our habits make us. The same could be said about him. Hunter became a hunter. He was military, like me, worked with the government in southeast Asia, unlike me. He was a Company man during and, for a brief time, after his service.”
“By Company, you mean CIA.”
“Yes.”
“But he isn’t now?”
“He says he isn’t, and I believe him.”
Mr. B sensed that I believed that was the truth, but he wasn’t afraid to question it. “But?”
“I’m inclined to believe that Hunter is what government agencies call an auditor.”
“An auditor?”
“A mercenary.”
“Because the money is good?”
“That, and he has had the taste, and he enjoys it.”
Mr. B seemed to weigh what I had said about Hunter. “Mercenary is freighted with negative connotations, as it suggests a man who will do anything for a price, and has no principles. Does your friend Hunter lack ethics?”
“No, he has principles, which is why he came to Boston. Someone killed his friend, and someone had to pay for it.”
“He is what the Japanese would call a rōnin, a man with standards, but no leader. A wanderer. A question for you regarding the Company.”
I didn’t know what to expect. I found it hard to believe that he wouldn’t have had some personal knowledge of the agency. There’d been Operation Underworld, in which the mafia had worked with the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, to keep the northeastern seaboard safe from Nazi saboteurs. There was fresh ink about the Kennedy administration’s Operation Mongoose, where the Company and organized crime attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro. There were rumors of the CIA and Oswald. There was blatant evidence that Jack Ruby, the assassin’s assassin, had several business relationships with mafiosi.
Mr. B asked, “Why would the Company be interested in cocaine?”
“Puerto Rico is home to groups that want independence, some by any means necessary.”
Mr. B seemed to ruminate on my response. “Cocaine is a crop that finances revolutions.”
“Control the crop, and you control the source, whether the supplier is in Puerto Rico, Canada, or elsewhere.”
Mr. B sighed. “That’s what I call cynical.”
“No, cynical is this: in the absence of an enemy, create one.”
“I owed you an explanation,” Mr. B said. He raised his hand, so I could see the missing pinky. “Giri. It’s a Japanese word for obligation. Some say duty, and others say loyalty.” He looked at me with sadness behind his eyes. “I spent time in Japan after the war. I became acquainted with my former enemy, their way of life, and values. I formed a friendship with one of them. The absence of a finger is symbolic of my failure to honor that friendship. You, in your friendship with Hunter, upheld giri.”
“I think you give me too much credit.”
“And you give yourself too little.”
Sal stepped into the room. It was my cue to leave because he was my ride back into town. I thanked Mr. B for the drink and for the conversation. I removed the tape from the cassette player and reminded him to remember what we’d discussed.
Outside, as we were getting into the Mercedes, Sal asked for my destination. I said Commonwealth Avenue. We pulled away, to the sound of Gerry Rafferty’s “Right Down the Line” on the radio, and I heard the lyrics and thought of home, of Bonnie and Delilah.