The Son of John Devlin (26 page)

“The next day, Sunday, I get a call at home from a guy I know in the department. This is a guy I’ve been dealing with on some Licensing Board matters, very important because they’re threatening to suspend my license for a week, and if they do that, I go under. So this guy, I’m kind of like on probation and if there are any more problems during a certain period of time—overcrowding, prostitutes, gambling, whatever—then I’m screwed. License heaved and I sink, I drown. So this guy on the department is helping me. He’s looking the other way on one thing after another. In other words—see if you can understand my point of view here—this guy is keeping me open. He’s allowing me to stay in business, to stay alive, for Chrissakes. Without him I’m dead!

“So Sunday this guy calls me and he says, ‘Look, the feds are swarming still,’ which I know because they had come to talk to me and I’m Mickey the fucking dunce like you wouldn’t believe. And he says, ‘Look, the heat is unbearable. We’ve got to do something.’ And I says, ‘Like what?’ and he says, ‘Here’s what you gotta do.’ And you know what he says? He says I’ve got to go into the tank with the feds. I’ve got to tell them I’m paying off the fuzz. And I laugh out loud and say you’re fucking crazy and hang up. And an hour later this guy, he’s at my house. And he walks in and sits down and he says to me,
‘Here’s the choice. You don’t do business with the feds and your place is closed next week. You’re through. You talk to them, make a couple admissions, and I guarantee you stay open.’ ”

Fahey drew back in his chair, his arms out to his sides. “So is this a hard call?” he asked. “So this guy says what I have to tell the feds is that there’s a guy coming by the next day to make a pickup. A BPD detective. And so I tell them that, and the next afternoon your old man walks into my joint to take a report on the stabbing. Routine. Goes through a series of questions, which I answer in full. And then I hand him the envelope and he frowns. Your old man. He frowns. He doesn’t like this at all. But he’s been told to bring it back. He’s been told to bring it back to the station house. And so I guess he figures he’s made enough of a stink over this and what the fuck, it’s not his anyway, so he’ll just drive it back and drop it off, and so he takes the envelope and he walks outside and bang. The feds surround him. And that was it.”

Suddenly, Fahey hung his head. He looked down at the floor, his shame evident. He shook his head at the memory. There was a long period of silence while the two men sat absorbing this, thinking it through. Fahey took another puff of his Tiparillo but still did not speak.

Finally, in a voice softer than any he’d used so far, Fahey said, “I’m sorry, hey. I feel bad for what I did. I feel very, very bad for it. But I wanted to try and do the right thing here …”

He shrugged.

Jack nodded, a signal that he appreciated what Fahey had done.

He felt a mix of triumph and anxiety, tremendous, building anxiety. He swallowed hard and then sought
to catch his breath but could not. He was on the verge of hyperventilating. He worked to steady himself, his breathing.

“Who, ah, was it?” he asked. “Who set him up?”

Fahey muttered under his breath. “Jesus, mother of God,” he said. “You don’t know, do you?”

H
ow had they discovered that he’d been to see Fahey? How had they known?

Jack opened his eyes and saw the morning light slanting through the windows of his bedroom. He rolled over and felt a shooting pain in his back. He shifted his weight and felt his knee throbbing. He worked himself so he was flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He was fully clothed lying on top of the bedspread. He remembered coming in and collapsing on the bed, his Glock nine-millimeter on the bedside table. He’d considered going to the station house or to a hotel for the night, but had been too disoriented to get anywhere except home.

As he blinked his eyes, he could feel a tightness on the left side of his face. He reached up with his right hand and touched it, and though he pressed only lightly on his left cheekbone, there was a sudden shooting pain. He moved his fingers slowly, gently, and could feel the swelling around his left eye.

Jack checked his watch and saw that it was seven-ten
A.M.
He’d been asleep about four hours. As he lay still on the bed he thought that if he continued like this it
would get progressively more difficult to get up. So he took a deep breath and rolled onto his right side, positioning his elbow directly beneath his body. He pushed off his elbow, raising himself sufficiently so he was able to slowly swing his legs off the edge of the bed and place his feet on the floor. As he did so, he pulled his torso into a sitting position. He then placed his hands on the bed and, steadying himself, rose to his feet. When he rose to his full height, he felt a sudden surge of dizziness, reached out with his right hand, and steadied himself on the bedside table. He shuffled into the bathroom and felt a powerful wave of nausea. His head throbbed. He leaned over the toilet and vomited. He soaked a washcloth under the cold water and placed it against his face. It was then that he saw, in the mirror, the purple swelling around his left eye and cheekbone. His left eye was all but closed. The right side of his face was unmarked. But the left side was swollen badly.

He made his way into the kitchen and wrapped ice in a dish towel. He went into the bedroom, got his Glock and took it into the living room, sat down in an easy chair, and put the gun on the end table next to it. He held the ice to his face and thought about the night before. He’d been at his office until very late, thinking, analyzing, planning. When he left police headquarters, he walked down Stanhope Street to where his Jeep was parked. To get to the lot he had to cut through a short, narrow alleyway off Stanhope, and as he turned the corner they attacked from the shadows.

One moment he was walking toward his car, the next he was on the cobblestones. He thought there had been two, but it was possible there were three. Or more. All he
saw for sure were two men, both wearing ski masks and tight leather gloves. The blows rained down on him and he was on the cobblestones and there were more blows, punches, kicks, dozens and dozens of blows, and then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. He thought it had lasted for no more than twenty seconds. Twenty-five at the outside.

The oddest thing of all was that none of them had made a sound. Not a single word had been spoken. He was all but positive they were not cops. They were young, in their twenties. They were agile and exceptionally powerful, and in their work they had been calm and precise. They moved with certainty, as though doing something to which they were accustomed.

This unnerved him. To contract out was serious business. To contract out meant connections between those in the department who despised him and people involved in some sort of organized crime activity.

To contract out meant they were doing business with these people. And if they could be assigned to follow him in a car, to demonstrate their presence, to get past his security system, to beat him into unconsciousness, they could be assigned to do anything.

There was a progression at work here, he thought. This latest, like the earlier incidents, was a warning. This one louder, more eloquent in its wordless way.

It raised the inevitable question: What next? What could they next logically do, short of killing him?

He arranged for a detective friend whom he trusted to come to his house and sit, armed, in his living room watching sports on television. With the friend settled in, Jack went into his bedroom and pulled off his clothes.
He got into bed and, as the swelling in his body throbbed, fell asleep for thirteen hours.

It was a cold, clear night and Christmas shoppers hurried along Tremont Street, cutting down School, headed toward Jordan Marsh and Filene’s. Emily Lawrence arrived first and took a seat at the end of the bar. She ordered soda water and settled in to wait for Jack. There was madness on the Boston Police Department, and she needed to see him. To sit with him and enjoy a glass of wine and look directly into his eyes as she asked him some questions.

Did she believe what Duffy had said? She thought it preposterous because, of course, she needed to think of it as preposterous.

Needed to. For she’d reached a point with Jack where she thought of them as being together, where she could envision them remaining together.

Was she delusional? Was she intentionally ignoring clues that lay strewn around her? She thought of Duffy’s comments, the crazed rumors he heard from inside the Boston Police Department, and she’d been dismissing it all in her mind until Duffy said that he had heard that Devlin had a dark side; that he was prone to anger and could be violent. She had been shaken by that because she had heard that characterization from Jack himself.

Emily realized that her anxiety was mounting because the stakes were suddenly so high. This man meant so much to her now, and she could not stand the thought that it would not work out.

Jack Devlin, having forgotten his overcoat, limped through the doors of the Parker House, shivering. Inside, the lobby was warm and festively decorated with
Christmas lights. A huge tree, laden with ornaments, stood near the far end of the lobby. The chairs and sofas that were set around the lobby were all taken.

Jack moved to the back bar and found Emily standing just inside the door. Though they had spoken earlier and he’d told her about the night before—minimizing the seriousness and the effects of the assault—she was startled by his appearance. The swelling around his eye, the discoloration, were worse than she’d anticipated.

She embraced him quickly when he arrived and looked carefully at his eye. “Jesus, Jack,” she said, surprise evident in her voice. “Have you had that looked at?”

He looked away, nodding vaguely.

“Meaning no,” she said. “Well, you have to. An eye isn’t something to fool with.”

She was very cool on the outside because she felt she needed to be. But then, as they moved toward a table in a quiet corner of the lounge, she saw that Jack was limping, and she was utterly stunned by it, rendered momentarily speechless. She stopped and watched as he shifted his weight unnaturally from his wounded leg back to his stronger leg, a pronounced limp that suddenly filled her with the image of Jack as an old man; Jack in his advancing years.

When they sat down at the table, she cocked her head to one side, fighting the burning sensation behind her eyes.

“What is it?” he asked.

To his astonishment, she started to cry. Her chin quivered and her eyes narrowed and she began, quite softly, to sob.

“Em …” he said, shocked by seeing what he’d never before seen. Quickly, he got up from his chair and went
around to her side of the table. He knelt on one knee beside her and put an arm around her shoulder, holding her close. “Em,” he said, “what …”

Embarrassed, she fought back the tears and dug a tissue out of her purse. She wiped her cheeks dry, apologizing for her outburst and asking him to take his seat. He obliged because he would have done anything she asked at that moment. That look, the depth of her vulnerability, had sliced through him. She needed him, he realized! Needed his support and protection, just as he needed her, needed her support and protection.

“Em, I don’t know what—”

“I’m frightened, Jack,” she said, composing herself. “I’m afraid. I don’t really understand all that’s going on and I’m afraid there are very bad people and look at you, my God, Jack. These people could have killed you.”

And she started to cry again, but this time pulled herself back and stifled the sobs. “I’m sorry but I’m very worried about you.”

“Come on,” he said, rising, “let’s get out of here.”

He helped her with her coat and they left the hotel, walking slowly down the block to where his Jeep was parked. They got in and Jack drove the few blocks to the federal courthouse, where her car was parked. They sat in silence for a long moment in his car.

Finally, Jack forced a smile. “Everything’s going to work out,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

She did not accept this. She frowned at his attempt to brush past it all. “Is there something you want to tell me?” she asked.

He thought about this for a moment, considered telling her everything right then and there; thought about confiding his plan to her, bringing her into it and making
her his ally. But he knew he couldn’t do it. He’d come this far through careful thought and planning and discipline, and he felt it was all so very close, within his grasp, and he did not want to lose his focus now.

“Yes,” he said. “There is something I want to tell you. I want to tell you that you mean so much to me, that you are very beautiful and quite wonderful.”

She did not smile. “I’m serious,” she said.

“So am I,” he replied.

She frowned and leaned forward in her seat. “Is there something going on, Jack? With you?”

“I’m lost,” he said.

“Something I should know about,” she said. “Are you involved in something in some way that I should know about?”

He pulled back. “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” he said.

She looked down at the dashboard for a long moment. “There are disturbing things going on,” she said. “There’s some suspicion of you at the moment.”

He knitted his forehead, clearly puzzled. “What you’re asking, I think, is whether I’m engaged in something I should not be engaged in. Right?”

“Yes,” she said.

“But the point is that your question is very broad, amounts to a fishing expedition, and I am therefore going to say no, Emily, I’m not.”

She folded her arms across her chest. “Don’t be such a frigging lawyer, Jack,” she said.

“I am a frigging lawyer, Emily,” he replied.

They stared at each other through a prolonged silence.

“Are you in trouble?” she asked him.

He started to respond no, then thought better of it. He
considered the question for a moment, then said, “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure?”

“There are people who would like me to be in trouble.”

“Who?” she asked.

“I’m not exactly sure,” he said.