The Son of John Devlin (25 page)

Duffy paused and looked at Emily Lawrence. “Does this square?” he asked.

“Keep going,” she said.

Duffy hesitated. “I was wondering whether this squares, though. Whether we’re on the same train here?”

“Keep going,” she repeated.

Duffy frowned. “We think systemic,” he said. “We think centrally controlled. We do not, I repeat, do not believe these are freelance operations run out of different districts.”

“Uniformed or detectives?” she asked.

“Detectives,” he said. “Definitely. We think systemic, we think central, we think the normal stuff, club owners, regular payments, violations overlooked. The traditional things. But …”

Duffy drew a deep breath and hunched over his notes, and when he resumed speaking, his voice had dropped several decibels, as though he did not wish to be overheard.

“But we believe there are relationships with dealers doing protection money. Possibly, I emphasize possibly, a situation where detectives have an equity stake in some of the deals.”

Emily studied Duffy carefully. He was deadly serious.

“Are you saying that these are deals where detectives are, in effect, partners with dealers?” she asked.

Slowly, theatrically, Duffy nodded yes.

“And you’re getting this from inside?” she asked.

“Inside,” he agreed.

“Someone good?” she asked.

“Someone good,” he said. “Unimpeachable.”

“Command staff?”

“I can’t say.”

“If it’s someone good, someone who really knows, then it’s someone on the command staff,” Emily said. “I’m not asking who it is, but I need to know whether to
take this seriously, Kevin. Is it someone on the command staff, yes or no?”

Duffy didn’t respond for a long moment, then nodded.

Emily was surprised. And impressed. Cracking the BPD command was no easy task. “Congratulations,” she said, nodding respectfully.

Duffy smiled, clearly pleased by the praise, then frowned and shifted position.

“There’s something else you should know about that’s come up,” he said. “Nothing official, but some talk out of BPD, and you know how talk is.”

He looked down at the table and back up at Emily.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Devlin’s name’s come up,” Duffy said hurriedly, nervously. “It’s been mentioned.…”

There was a puzzled look on Emily’s face. “Come up how?” she asked.

“It’s not me,” Duffy said defensively. “It’s from our sources. People have mentioned his name. As possibly being mixed up somehow in …”

Emily cocked her head, the puzzled look deepening. “Mixed up with what, exactly?” she demanded in an angry voice.

“Murphy,” Duffy said. “He saw Murphy a day or two before Murphy was found. The daughter said the old guy was scared to death by Devlin. And there’s some talk that he’s possibly mixed up in it.”

Emily sat back and folded her arms across her chest.

“They said he’s got a dark side,” Duffy said. “They say he’s tended to violence over the years.” Duffy was calm now. “I don’t know whether any of it is true, but I wanted to let you know. I’m aware that you have a connection to him.”

“So you’ve heard from your source on the command staff that Jack Devlin may have been involved somehow in Murphy’s murder.”

“Correct.”

“Who is your source?” she demanded.

Duffy was offended. “That’s not something—”

“Who is it?” she asked again.

“Someone reliable,” he replied. “Someone very good.” Duffy hesitated. “They’re watching him very closely,” he continued. “He’s out of control. Twice lately he’s assaulted fellow officers.”

“Assaulted?” she asked, incredulous.

“Physically assaulted,” Duffy said. He hesitated and looked aside, then back at Emily. “They say he definitely has a dark side. They think he’s out of control on some vengeance trip, out to get anybody who was associated with his father back years ago. They think he’s lost his grip. Evidently he thought Murphy was somehow an adversary of his father’s, somehow hurtful to him. Murphy’s daughter told them her father was scared to death of Devlin Jr. Thought he was nuts. Capable of anything.”

The law offices of McMahon and McCloskey were located on Washington Street in Roslindale in the space wedged between D’Angelo’s Pizza and a coffee shop. Leo McMahon was in his late sixties, and he was the only person who worked in the office. His partner, McCloskey, had long since died, and Leo had let the secretary go some years back. Leo McMahon had once had a busy practice tending to the legal needs of small business people—owners of retail shops, small restaurants, bars—people who tended to have tax troubles
with the IRS and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The majority of Leo’s clients faced liens or other attachments for failure to pay property, income, or withholding taxes.

McMahon’s name was in the old newspaper clips as having been counsel to Walter Fahey, the owner of the Oasis. For some years, Jack Devlin had sought to persuade Fahey to sit down and talk with him. Fahey had always flatly refused. In response to letters he’d written to Fahey, Jack would receive terse notes of rejection. Two years earlier, when Fahey had been sent away to a federal prison farm for an eighteen-month sentence for yet another violation of the tax codes, Jack had written to Fahey and received a response that was somewhat encouraging. Fahey had instructed Jack to contact Leo McMahon and discuss the matter with him. Jack had done so, and McMahon said he suspected his client would consider talking on the eve of his release from custody if Jack was willing to keep the information confidential and if he would pay Fahey a fee.

Jack had contacted McMahon and readily agreed to the terms. A fee of three thousand dollars was settled upon. Jack pushed for Fahey to talk then, but Fahey insisted upon waiting for his release. As soon as he was out of prison, Fahey planned to move to San Diego, where he would go to work for a cousin who owned a club. He would make a new start and put Boston far behind.

Jack arrived precisely on time for the meeting. He went into the law office and found a vacant, open space in the reception area. He walked toward the back and saw an office door open.

“Oh, Mr. Devlin,” Leo McMahon said. He was a heavyset man with a nervous manner. “Come in. This is
Mr. Fahey.” Fahey was smallish, bald, wore a pressed white shirt and smelled strongly of lime-scented cologne. He appeared to be in his late sixties.

Jack and Fahey shook hands. “Sit down,” Fahey said, indicating one of the office’s two metal folding chairs. There was no desk, only a folding table with a portable electric typewriter on top.

As Jack moved to sit down, McMahon said, “Mr. Devlin, concerning the matter of payment …”

Jack reached into his shirt pocket and took out a check, already made out, which he handed to McMahon.

“Oh, a personal check,” McMahon said, clearly deflated. “I thought—”

“Forget it, Leo,” Fahey said. “Forget it. Just go cash it, then come back later.”

McMahon seemed embarrassed by his client.

“Go ’head,” Fahey said, frowning.

“I’ll return,” McMahon said.

“Sit down, hey,” Fahey said. “Take a seat. You want anything? Coffee? We can get coffee next door, huh?”

“I’m all set, thanks,” Jack said.

“Whatever,” Fahey said. “So your old man, huh? You look like him. Definitely there’s a resemblance.”

“How did you first meet my dad?” Jack asked.

“Oh, Jesus,” Fahey said. “You know, I knew all the detectives in my area, and I’d been involved with joints for a while. Started at the Jungle when I was fifteen, unloading trucks, keeping the bar supplied. So I’ve worked at a dozen places, maybe more, then me and my brother got a stake in a place and it was off to the races. We got the Oasis and built up a pretty decent business. See, people will come, but only if you’re constantly on your toes, running specials. We had a decent location, not the
best, by any means, but there are your hospitals and a few offices not too far down from us. Closing the Sears building hurt us very, very bad. They ran a catalogue operation out of there. You know, people mail in what they want out of a catalogue and they’d have guys in there filling the orders. Hundreds of guys, and they’d come in, quite a few of them, after work. We were handy for them. When that shut we was hurt.

“But we pushed it with the hospitals, and the secretaries and the maintenance staff would come in, sometimes a few nurses. And we’d have the free mini-franks and nachos and whatnot. And we put in the video games when that was big. Got a satellite dish, big-screen TV. We worked like a bastard to stay current and even ahead of the game. But in that business you’re inviting trouble.

“What do you do when a group of wiseguys comes in? You know who they are, know they’re wiseguys, but their money’s as good as anyone’s. Next thing you know, though, someone rats that this job got planned at the Oasis or this hit or whatever.

“We tried to be careful, but it’s not easy. And a simple thing like the taxes, the withholding, that’ll kill you every time. You keep the percentage out of the take for the state, and then you get squeezed by this vendor or that vendor or whatever and pretty soon the money that was supposed to go to the Revenue Department ends up going to the Anheuser-Busch distributor in Brockton, otherwise no product. See what I’m saying?”

Jack nodded. He knew the pattern all too well.

“So, listen, what was the idea, here? The idea was to stay out of trouble, because trouble put a drag on business. Trouble cost money. You got the tax people on you, it costs money. You got the cops on you ’cause
some guy’s running a couple hookers out of your place, some dope, whatnot, it cost money. It cost time. Court appearances. Licensing Board hearings. You been to one of those? Fucking nightmare. Nightmare. Licensing Board.” He shook his head. “Fucking guys, half on the take and the other half want to be sainted. Pricks.”

Fahey reached into the pocket of his brown leather jacket, which was hung over the back of his chair, and removed a box of Tiparillos. He tapped one out of the box and lit it. He inhaled and let the smoke sit in his lungs for a moment. Then he turned and exhaled away from Jack Devlin.

“So your father was one of these guys I knew, came to know, over time. Tell you the truth, I didn’t know him very well, not as well as a lot of other guys. ’Cause we would make up envelopes for individual guys at first, and then it got too much and we would do one for the group, and who exactly was in the group was made clear to me only by comments like, you know, ‘You got a beef with this or that, call so-and-so. Don’t call this guy or that, call so-and-so.’ It wasn’t like they gave me a roster,” Fahey said, smiling. “You follow? I knew who to call because, you know, I’d feel my way through.

“I called your old man, I don’t know, maybe once at the most on some minor thing. Very minor, I don’t even recall. Overcrowding notice or something. Maybe parking, I don’t know. At any rate it was like maybe once and on some dogshit thing. I can’t even recall.

“But then time goes by and I’m talking to one of my contacts and your old man’s name comes up and my guy says, ‘No, don’t call him, call so-and-so.’ And I remember I was surprised by that because I must have just dealt with your old man, which is why his name
probably come up right then, and my guy shakes his head no, like forget him ’cause he’s not in no more.”

“So that meant to you—”

“That he was out,” Fahey said through the haze of smoke. “Not involved no more. Period.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked, too eagerly.

“That’s what it meant, believe me, I know. This was a language I spoke. I understood.”

“How can you be sure?” Jack asked.

Fahey straightened in the chair and regarded Jack. “How can I be sure?” he asked, sounding offended. “I’m sure. ’Cause I’ll tell you something else—”

Here, Fahey caught himself as though he’d been about to say something he wasn’t supposed to say.

“Let’s just say I know and leave it at that,” he said, tamping out his Tiparillo in an ashtray. “I know,” he added, looked at Jack, and nodded.

Jack folded his arms across his chest. He was slightly slouched in his metal folding chair. “Mr. Fahey,” he said. “I’m thirty-four years old. My father has been dead for twenty-five years …”

“Jesus Christ, has it been that long?”

“… and I want to figure out what happened back there. I’m trying very hard to piece it all together. And now we come to this point, and you’re just out of prison and you’re going off to San Diego to start a new life, and before you go you agree, finally, to talk to me. And I fucking pay for that, a lot of money, because it’s worth something to me to know the truth.”

Jack sat up and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. “It’s worth more than anything to me. And now you’re saying to me, ‘Let’s just say I know and leave it at that’?”

Jack’s jaw was clenched. His eyes had narrowed and he stared at Fahey. “I’ve begged you to talk to me. I’ve promised confidentiality. I’ve paid you. Tell me what happened. Please, tell me.”

Fahey was not a bad man, not an uncompassionate man. He made a face and nervously rubbed his hand over the top of his head. He grabbed the Tiparillo box and tapped another one out, placing it between his teeth and lighting it. He rose from his chair and paced slowly across the room. As he walked by, there was a strong smell of cheap cigar smoke and lime cologne. Fahey paced to the wall and back, twice.

“This conversation we’re having,” he said. “This goes nowhere, right?”

“Nowhere,” Jack replied.

“It’s for you, for inside your head, right?”

Jack nodded in agreement.

There was something about the young detective’s raw intensity, about his honesty, that captured Fahey.

“I’m an old fuck, now, truth be told,” he said, sitting down again. “And I have a fucking conscience, believe it or not, although some people would say or not. And I also have a word from the doc that there’s this fucking spot on the X ray, the chestal X ray, and, well …

“Look, I’m leaving town and I’m gonna do it with a clear conscience. And you can call me a coward or an asshole or whatever you want, but this is it.

“It’s the weekend before Christmas, right, one of the biggest weekends of the whole year. People are pouring in, spending money like it’s water. There’s like a frenzy, people pulling wads of cash out of their pockets, buying rounds for their friends, for the house, whatever. Tips to the bartender like you wouldn’t believe. So it’s late, I
don’t know, like, twelve-thirty or whatever, and all of a sudden in the back a beef breaks out. Okay, so no big deal, right, except some asshole has a knife and all of a sudden it’s in another guy’s stomach and there’s fuckin’ pandemonia. Pandemonia. And the cops come and the ambulance and whatnot and the guy is hurt pretty bad but he’s gonna be okay. Thank God, right, because a murder in the place is nasty for business.