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Michael, on the front porch.He paced.He hunched inside his winter coat, dragged on a cigarette, picked at the spongy floorboards with his toe. The planks were rotting, flaking apart.What a fucking dump. Whole place was falling apart. It was amazing how quickly a house began to disintegrate, how opportunistic the rot and damp were. One good stomp and he could crack any of these boards.
The screen door creaked and Ricky’s head extended horizontally out of the door frame. “Supper.”
“Be in in a minute.”
Ricky’s head retracted into the house, the screen door slammed, then the door snicked shut behind it. But a few seconds later Ricky’s head was out again. “She says
now.”
“Tell her in a minute.”
“I told her. She says ‘in a minute’ isn’t ‘now.’ ”
“I know ‘in a minute’ isn’t ‘now.’ That’s why I said ‘in a minute,’ because that’s when I’m coming in: in a minute. Jesus.” Ricky came out onto the porch, shut the door behind him. “The fuck are you doing out here? It’s freezing.”
Michael held up the cigarette.
“So come inside and smoke it. It’s freezing.”
“You seen this?” Michael nudged a long splinter in one of the floorboards with the toe of his penny loafer. He worked it back and forth until it flaked off. “Look at this.”
“I know. It’s a fuckin’ mess.We’ll fix it in the spring maybe. Come on, let’s go. It’s cold, I’m hungry.”
Michael scowled.
“What’s a matter,Mikey? You got a headache?”
“No, I’m fine.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I don’t have a problem.”
“You’ve got a puss on.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You do. I’m looking right at it. Puss.”
“I don’t have a puss.”
“You do. I’ll be in in a minute.”
“Fuck you, Rick.”
“Fuck you, Rick.”
Ricky smirked. The same charmed, blithe, princely grin he’d been deploying since the day he was born, four years after Michael. Ricky had smirked before he even had teeth, as if he knew, even as an infant, that he was no ordinary child.
The gloom Michael was feeling lifted a little, enough that he could shake his head and say “fuck you” again, warmer this time, fuck you meaning stick around.
“Let me bum one of those,Mikey.”
Michael dug the pack of Larks from his pocket, and Ricky lit up using the end of Michael’s cigarette.
“Jesus, would you look at this,”Michael said.
The brothers peered through the window into the dining room, where an enormous red-faced man was taking his place at the head of the table. Brendan Conroy settled back in his chair, made various adjustments to his fork and knife, then shared an inaudible uproarious laugh with Joe Daley, who sat at his left hand.
“Honestly,”Michael said, “I think I’m going to hang myself.”
“Don’t like your new daddy?”
“What ever happened to waiting a decent interval?”
“Dad’s dead a year. How long do you want him to wait?”
“Longer.”Michael considered. “A lot longer.”
Ricky turned away. He took a deep, contented pull on his cigarette and gazed out at the street, at the unbroken line of little houses, all looking drab in the winter twilight. December in Savin Hill. Cars were parked nose-to-tail up and down the street. Soon there would be fights over who owned those spots; around here, shoveling a parking spot was tantamount to buying it for the season. Christmas lights were beginning to appear. Across the street the Daughertys had already put up their five ludicrous plastic reindeer, which were lit from the inside. There had used to be six. Joe had broken one in high school when he came home drunk one night and tried to ride it. The next day Joe Senior had made Joe march across the street and apologize for riding Mr. Daugherty’s reindeer. What he ought to have apologized for was riding Mr. Daugherty’s daughters, which Joe did with the same gleeful droit du seigneur he exercised over all the neighborhood girls. Even Eileen Daugherty, the youngest of the three, took her turn—in Joe’s car, if Ricky was remembering right. That last coupling precipitated a brawl between Joe and Michael, because Michael had loved Eileen ever since kindergarten. He’d imagined that Eileen had somehow defied her genes and was not like that, until Joe set Michael straight, explaining that his conquest of the Daugherty sisters was really a sort of territorial obligation, like Manifest Destiny, and he’d needed Eileen to complete the hat trick, and anyway she had been a screamer. All of which had led Michael to throw himself at Joe, despite Joe’s size, because he couldn’t stop loving Eileen Daugherty even after she had offered herself up to Joe for the ritual goring. Maybe Michael loved her even now, deep down, the memory of her at least.He was that kind of kid.What ever happened to Eileen? Ricky turned back to his brother,“Hey, what ever happened to—?” But Michael was still engrossed in what was behind the window, a fresher outrage. “Would you look at this? Look at Joe! What the hell does he think he’s doing?”
Inside, Joe Daley and Brendan Conroy were holding up their glasses of pale beer, laughing.
“Look at him, with his head up Conroy’s ass. He’s like a tapeworm.”
“Conroy could use a tapeworm.”
“Really, Rick, the whole thing, it’s just— Doesn’t this bother you?”
“Not really. Hey, what ever happened to Eileen from across the street? You ever hear about her?”
“No.”Michael did not glance away from the window.
Joe’s wife, Kat, came out onto the porch. “Are you guys coming in or you want your supper out here?”
“Michael’s mad.”
“I’m not mad—”
“He thinks Mum’s going to lose her virginity—”
“I didn’t say—”
“—to Brendan.”
Kat thought it over. “Well,” she concluded, “she’ll probably wait till after dinner anyways.”
“There, see?” Ricky smiled.“Nothing to worry about.”
“Come on. In.” Kat herded them inside with a dish towel, and in they went. There was something about Kat—Kathleen—that suggested she wasn’t taking any shit. She was just Joe’s type, big and hippy and good-looking and stolid, and the Daley boys as a rule did
not fuck with her.
Michael went in first, wearing a sour-mouthed pucker. Ricky gave him a playful biff on the back of the head, and Kat rubbed his shoulder, both gestures intended to cheer him up. The house smelled of garlic, and the girls were bustling from the kitchen to the table with a few last things.
Amy sped past: “Hey,Michael. Thought we’d lost you.”
Little Joe passed without a word. Joe’s son, Little Joe, was thirteen and had taken over the title “Little Joe” from his father, who had been Little Joe to his own father’s Big Joe. The Daleys did not believe in Juniors and III’s and IV’s; too Yankee. So each succeeding Joe got a new middle name. The current Little Joe was Joseph Patrick. At the moment he was sulking,Michael had no idea about what.
Margaret Daley, the materfamilias, tweaked Michael about a “disappearing act,” which tipped his mood downward again. Over the years Michael had evolved an exquisite sensitivity to his mother’s voice, so that he could detect the slightest reprimand or disapproval. Margaret was well aware of this sensitivity—Michael was her most finely calibrated son, the quickest to take offense and the slowest to forgive—but Margaret simply did not know how to speak without setting him off, without triggering one of those little sensors, and so she could not help but resent him for being thin-skinned and fragile, though in this respect he reminded her of Joe Senior, another man she’d never quite known, even after sleeping in the same bed with him for thirty-some-odd years. She saw Michael’s face fall when she mentioned his disappearing act. She regretted the comment for a moment, then decided not to regret it. Let him regret it. He was the one who should regret it. Margaret would regret only that Michael might spoil their Sunday dinner with his sulking. Michael stood behind a seat in the middle of the table, feeling
awkward, a guest in the house where he had grown up.
“Sit down.” Conroy grinned. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Yeah, sit down,Michael.What is this?”
Michael looked at Joe, who continued to regard him with a quizzical, supercilious expression that said What is this? Joe was imitating Conroy; that was the insufferable part. Well, Michael sighed, dinner would only last an hour or two. The sooner it started, the sooner it would end. He could already see himself at home looking
back on it.
Michael took his place and the others filled in around him.Margaret at the head, opposite Conroy, in the same chair she’d occupied forever. Ricky at the corner opposite Joe, as far from Joe as he could get, to minimize the fighting. Kat positioned herself next to Joe, where she could keep a stern eye on him.Michael liked Kat and liked Joe for liking her. God bless her, Kat would take a bullet for Joe or put one in him, as the occasion required.
But opposite Michael was his favorite, Amy Ryan, whose cool redheaded presence was the best part of these Sunday dinners. Amy was Ricky’s girlfriend, and Michael harbored an illicit, quasi-romantic affection for her.Amy was wry,Amy was brave,Amy was funny,Amy was lovely, Amy was hip, Amy was profane, Amy was smart—her merits jostled for attention and it would have been impossible for Michael to name the one or two he liked best. Tonight she was wearing a white oxford shirt that may or may not have been Ricky’s, which struck Michael as a poignant gesture. She wore Ricky’s shirt as other girls had worn his varsity jacket once. There was a little of the bachelor’s yearning in Michael’s feelings for Amy. She made him question his instinct for solitude.
The group was still unfolding their napkins when Amy mentioned, “So, Brendan, I hear Alvan Byron is going to take over the Strangler case.” She spent a few seconds surveying the dishes on the table in a nonchalant way—noodles and gravy and garlic bread—as if the answer would not make a bit of difference to her.
But Amy Ryan was a reporter, one of only two women on the staff of the Observer, and Brendan Conroy wasn’t falling for any of her career-girl tricks. “Are we on the record or off?”
“Oh, Brendan, come on. Listen to you.We’re just talking.Alright, you tell me, on or off?”
“Off.”
“Okay, off. Remember that, Margaret,” Amy said, “we’re off the record.”
“Who could forget it?” the older woman drawled.
Conroy folded his arms. “Alright, then, here it is. Alvan Byron will not take over the Strangler case for the simple reason that he could not solve the Strangler case.He hasn’t got the people or the resources or the know-how.”
“He’s got Michael,” Ricky said.
“And we’ve got Joe.”
“Exactly.”
“Ricky-y-y,” his mother growled.
Michael forked a tangle of spaghetti onto his plate and, head down, he mixed red sauce into it with extraordinary care.
Conroy turned back to Amy. “Let me tell you something, girlygirl, before you go dancing off and write some story about the great Alvan Byron. Your Mr. Byron is not a cop, has never been, will never be a cop. What Alvan Byron knows about police work would fit on the head of a pin, with room for a few dancing angels.”
Ricky: “The great Conroy has spoken.”
Amy: “He is the Attorney General, Brendan. Doesn’t that count for something?”
“No. See, you don’t understand. Byron’s the Attorney General—that’s just the problem.You don’t go to a dentist for a broken leg, and you don’t send a lawyer to do a cop’s work. I look at the Attorney General’s office and do you know what I see? A law firm.Yankees and goo-goos and Hebrews, and the one lonely Irishman named Daley, and the whole place run by a colored fellow.” He smiled at his witticism.
“Whole outfit is upside down.”
“And you,”Michael said, “have got thirteen dead women.”
Ricky: “Plus Joe, don’t forget. Thirteen dead women—and Joe.”
Conroy held Michael’s gaze. “We’ll find him.”
Kat said, “Better find him fast. I don’t sleep at night, with Joe off working and this lunatic running around. I feel like he’s hiding in the closet somewhere, and if I fall asleep . . .”
“We’ll catch him. Don’t you worry. It’ll all be over soon.”
“Brendan,” Ricky said, “no offense, but Mike’d catch your strangler before Joe gets through his first dozen doughnuts.”
Joe waved his knife.
“Well.” Amy sighed. “I’m just telling you what I hear, Brendan. Byron is going to take the Strangler case. Bet on it.”
“I’ll take that bet, girly. It’s Boston PD’s case. I can’t imagine why on earth we would ever give it up.”
“If Byron says you’re out,”Michael said, “you’re out.”
“That’s what you think.”
“That’s the way it is.He’s the A.G., he’s got statewide jurisdiction. If he wants the Strangler case, he can just take it.”
“See, now that just shows how little you know, smart guy. I’m sure you’re right about the legalities. But there’s what’s legal and there’s what’s practical, and Byron can’t solve that case without BPD’s support. Doesn’t matter what’s in your law books. This is the real world. And in the real world you can’t solve a homicide without homicide detectives. Byron doesn’t have them; we do.”
“Yeah,Mikey,” Ricky said, “you’ve been spending too much time with your Hebrews and goo-goos.”
“And your coloreds,” Joe added.
“And Yankees,” said Amy.
Michael: “Well, maybe you’re right, Brendan. You don’t need any help. It’s, what, a year and a half? And what have you got? Thirteen dead girls and not one arrest. City’s scared half to death. Hell of a job.”
“Michael,”Margaret cautioned, “that’s enough.” Michael shook his head. He was not sure how he’d got into this position. He did not care much about the Strangler or Alvan Byron. He simply felt an irresistible urge to contradict Brendan Conroy. Something about Conroy’s voice, that sententious tone of his, brought out the worst in Michael.
Conroy seemed willing to let the whole thing pass.He would not grant Michael the satisfaction of goading him into a reaction. “We’ll catch him,” he repeated without any real conviction. “You wait and see.”
“So,”Amy cut in, “you still want that bet, Brendan?”
“That Byron won’t butt in? Sure. I just hate to take your money, girly-girl. How’s two bits, can you afford that? They pay you enough at that fish wrapper?”
“Doesn’t matter. I won’t be paying it.”
Conroy grinned and raised his glass to Amy. “I like your style.” Michael rolled his eyes.
Joe saw Michael’s eye-rolling and misinterpreted it. “It’s easy to make fun from the cheap seats,Mikey.”
“I didn’t say anything to you, Joe.”
“I’m a cop, too.”
“I wasn’t talking about you, Joe. Just let it alone.”
“Yeah, you were. You were talking about cops. I’m a cop.”
“Your dad was a cop, too,” Conroy threw in.
“Let’s leave him out of it,”Michael said.
“I was just saying—”
“Leave him out.”
“Sorry,Michael. I didn’t mean anything.”
“He didn’t mean anything,” Joe seconded.
From the police reports,Michael had formed an image of his father’s death: In an alley in East Boston, his heart pierced by a bullet, Joe Senior had shimmered down to the ground, hands pinned to his sides. That was the image Michael saw now, and it made him venomous.
“Brendan, you might have let that chair cool off before you sat down in it.”
“Michael!”Margaret’s tone was more astonished than angry.
Conroy was unruffled.“I see.”He simply had not understood and now everything was clear. “Maybe I should go.”
“So go,”Michael said.
Joe pounded the table with the butt of his fist.
Conroy dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come.Margaret, ladies, thank you for all this. Excuse me.”
“Brendan,”Margaret instructed, “you sit down. This is my house, you’re my guest. It’s enough of this.”Mother Daley could be magnificently huffy. Her late husband had called her Princess Margaret. The three boys,more accurately, called her Queen Margaret.
“No,Margaret.Maybe Michael’s right, it’s too soon.”
“Michael is not right.”
“Some other time. I don’t want to spoil this beautiful meal.”
“Brendan! You sit down.Michael is going to apologize.”
Ricky said, “What’s he got to apologize? He didn’t do anything.”
“Mind your own business, you.”
Brendan Conroy smiled gallantly. All the arguing was pointless. There was no swaying him from a grand gesture. “Some other time,” he repeated. He excused himself, got his coat, and left.
The seven Daleys listened as Conroy started his car and drove off. A moment of silence.
“Michael,” Ricky said, “let me have those noodles.”
For as long as the Daley boys could remember, there had been a basket attached to the phone pole in front of the house. They had gone through a few of them.Winters killed the steel hoops and especially the flimsy backboards from Lechmere’s, and every few years Joe Senior would swap in a new set, adjusting it slightly up or down the pole to avoid the holes left by the big lag screws he used. The current model, which had lasted the longest, had a faded, undersized fanshaped aluminum backboard. It was hung a few inches too high and seemed to rise even higher as you got closer to the curb, where the pavement dipped. The boys thought of this hoop and the pavement in front of it as their private court. Even now, with the Daley boys all long gone from the house, there were neighbors who did not park in front of the basket, out of old habit, as if it were a fire hydrant. Occasionally a new neighbor or visitor or other interloper, ignorant of the local etiquette,would leave his car under the hoop, and the boys took it as a sign of the decline of their city. Back in the day, no one would dream of parking there because, as a general rule, you did not fuck with the Daleys, particularly Joe, and in any case there was always a game going on there.
These games were a deadly serious business. A Code Napoléon of unspoken rules governed play. One must never take the feet out from under a player near the basket lest he land on his back on the curbstone, as Jimmy Reilly once did. The Daleys’ ball was never to be used in a game at which no Daley was present, even if the ball was sitting right there in the yard. All parked cars were inbounds. But the sidewalk was out-of-bounds, to discourage smaller players from running behind the basket and using the pole to rub off a defender, a strategy deemed so chickenshit that Joe forbid it outright. These were technicalities, though. The real secret knowledge of these games—their whole purpose—was the hierarchy of the boys involved. There were a dozen local boys who regularly played, mostly Irish, all linked through school or St.Margaret’s parish, and every one of them knew precisely where he ranked from number one to number twelve.
There was no allowance for age or size. Nor did it matter who you were.Michael Daley never rose above the middle of the pack, even on his home court; Leo Madden, though his father was in and out of Deer Island and his mother weighed three bills, was a rebounding machine and therefore he was completely respected here. Prestige to the winners, shame to the losers. All of it real and perfectly quantifyable and precious as money in the lives of boys, and men.
So,when the three brothers drifted out to play after dinner under the streetlight, the women gathered at the windows to watch. They arranged themselves at the living-room windows, which looked across the porch and over a shallow yard to the street.Margaret and Kat stood together at one window, Amy at the other. The younger women wore similar expressions, sharp, bemused, scornful. Queen Margaret had the same sharp smirk, but there was bleary concern in her eyes. She could not completely share in the womanly skepticism of boys’ games, knowing that, however it turned out, one of her boys would lose. She felt Kat’s arm curled around her lower back; that helped a little.
“Margaret,” Kat said, “you should have had one more. Two against one, it’s not fair.”
“Fair to who?”
“True.”Kat considered the problem. “You know, Ricky should let them win, just once.”
Margaret emitted a skeptical sniff. Cigarette smoke piped out of her nostrils.
“Amy, why don’t you talk to him? Ricky’s got to let Joe win sometime.” Kat gave Amy a sidelong look. “Come on, Aim, you could find a way to convince him, couldn’t you?”
Amy raised two fingers, scissored her cigarette between them, and removed the cigarette with a flourish. “Ladies, let me assure you, I could lie down in my altogether on a bed of roses and it wouldn’t make one bit of difference. Ricky’d cut off his right arm before he’d let Joe win.”
“Well,”Kat sighed, “if Joe beats him then, it’ll be fair and square.”
“He’s got to win sometime, right? I mean, if they play enough times?”
Amy: “I just hope Joe doesn’t kill him, after that fiasco.”
Margaret: “If he’s going to kill anyone, it’ll be poor Michael. I don’t know what’s got into him.Michael’s crazy lately.”
“Don’t worry, Mum, Joe won’t kill him. Maybe just, you know, shake him around a little.”
“Well, that’s a comfort, dear.”
Outside,Michael was hopping up and down to stay warm.
“I don’t know what Michael’s got against poor Brendan, I really don’t.”
Amy: “I do.”
Kat:“Margaret,maybe you should enter a convent.”
“I’m not entering any convents.”
“Still got some wild oats to sow?”
Margaret turned to face the two younger women. “Now why should that be so funny?”
Kat made a face at Amy: eyebrows raised, impressed smile, Wow!
Amy: “Nothing’s funny. So,Mum, is Brendan . . . ?”
Kat covered her ears. “Oh, stop! Ick.”
“Brendan is—”
“Stop, stop, stop!”
“I didn’t know you girls were so squeamish.”
Amy said, “I’m not squeamish.”
Kat watched Joe as he stood waiting for a rebound, arms up.
“Amy, you want to make this interesting?”
“Sure.”
“Six points okay?”
“Sure, whatever.”
“Margaret, how about you? Michael’s feeling feisty tonight. Care to put a little cash down on the middle son?”
“You want me to bet against my own sons?”
“Only one of them.”
Margaret shook her head.
“Go on,Mum,”Amy urged, “it’s just for fun.”
“We’ll never tell,” Kat added. “Promise.”
“No, thanks, dear.”
“Take Joe,” Kat pleaded. “The poor thing.”
Margaret considered it. “I’ll put a nickel on Ricky.”
“Oh!” Kat yelped. “You’re a horrible mother.”
Through the window they could hear the brothers ragging each other as the game got going. Joe and Michael were a team, as usual, and at the start they exploited their two-to-one advantage by spreading out, forcing Ricky to cover one or the other, then passing to the free man for easy shots. Michael was a careful player, a lurker. He liked to slide into open spaces for unmolested set shots. At times he moved out of the lighted area altogether, and the women had to squint to find him in the darkness. Joe’s game was all muscle. He moved like a bear chasing a butterfly, but his size ensured he would always have the best position under the basket. Together they made a decent inside-outside combination. As their lead climbed, 2–0, 3–0, 4–0, Joe’s taunting got louder and louder. Amy was right: Joe was pissed about the way Brendan Conroy had been treated, and, though Michael had been Conroy’s main tormenter, Joe directed his anger at Ricky. There was a tacit understanding that Michael was somehow disengaged from the grander struggle between Joe and Ricky. So if Joe was angry, it seemed perfectly natural for him to target Ricky, not Michael. The insults from Joe were all variations on a theme: “Come
on,Mary . . . Does your husband play? . . . What, are you afraid of a little contact? . . . Pussy . . .”
And then, in an instant, the game changed. Michael put up one of his little jumpers, the kind he knocked down over and over, but this time the shot was flat. It caught the back rim and rebounded high, out into the street, away from the hoop where Joe was hanging.
Ricky snagged it in the air.
“Shit!” Kat hissed.
A little smiled wriggled across Amy’s lips.
What happened next happened very quickly. Ricky bounced the ball once with his left hand, once with his right.Michael swiped at it, and Ricky avoided him by threading the ball between his own legs, from back to front, which left Michael behind him and out of the play. Joe took a step toward him, like a palace guard blocking a gate. Ricky paused for an instant to eye him up. He slow-dribbled the ball low and to his right, extending it a few inches toward Joe, who finally took the bait, leaning then stepping toward the ball, a reluctant irresistible stuttery step. But it was enough. Ricky crossed the ball over to his left hand, and he was behind Joe. He laid the ball in: 6–1. Kat groaned, “Mmm. It’s not fair. The way Ricky shows off!”
“He’s not showing off.”
“Oh,Amy!”
“Alright,”Amy allowed, “maybe a little.”
But Amy could not take her eyes off him. Because he was showing off for her. And because he was beautiful.His game was jazzy and gliding and fast, she thought, but more than anything it was beautiful. The way he moved. The way the ball moved with him, the way it yo-yoed back to his hand. The way he spun, his body in flight. Amy had not known Ricky when he was a high-school hero—when he was Tricky Ricky Daley, point guard and captain at Boston English, All-Scholastic, All-Everything; when he’d been offered a scholarship to Holy Cross, alma mater of the great Cousy himself—and she was glad for that. She did not want to think of Ricky as one of those arrested men who were such stars in high school or college that everything after was tinged with anticlimax and nostalgia. She did not want to define him by what he had been. And she particularly did not want to define him as a jock because he wasn’t, not anymore.
Anyway, Ricky never talked about it. For a long time after they’d met,Amy had had no idea the man she was dating had a glorious past, until she’d finally met his family and Margaret had shown her a book of clippings. In fact, for Amy the defining moment of Ricky’s basketball career was the way it had ended, the way he’d thrown it all away in a romantic, stupid gesture.He’d got himself pinched with a car-trunkful ofMighty Mac parkas that had “fallen off a truck,” as the saying went. That was the end of Holy Cross and basketball and Tricky Ricky Daley, and good riddance. It was all so clumsy—so un-Ricky-like—it seemed like a setup.Amy saw something heroic in the whole episode. Ricky had been true to some obscure, prickly, self-destructive impulse that no one, not Amy, probably not Ricky himself, could quite understand. He just had not felt like being Tricky Ricky anymore, so he had stopped. And yet Amy could not deny that she loved him more—at least she loved him differently, saw him differently—when she watched him play. She thought she understood in some intuitive, inarticulable way what made Ricky do the things he did. It was something about doing the opposite of what everyone else wanted him to do.My Lord, how could she not love such a beautiful, wasteful man? Ricky spun and tricky-dribbled and flew by his brothers.His hair flopped over his forehead, grew damp and drippy. He did not say much; his virtuosity was not news to anyone.
But Joe grew more incensed with each basket. His feet got sluggish and he was reduced to pawing Ricky as he rushed past, or elbowing him, or hip-checking him.
None of it mattered. Ricky scored with leaners and fades and baby hooks, and at 19–6 Joe finally exploded. He pushed Ricky hard into the chainlink fence behind the hoop.
“Nineteen,” Ricky said as he lay on the sidewalk. “Hey, Mike, wanna switch teams?”
“Hey, Ricky,” Joe said, “blow me.”
“Oh, that’s good, Joe. ‘Blow me.’ That’s clever.”
Joe gave Ricky the finger and held it there.
“Some brother you turn out to be, Joe.” Ricky got to his feet.
“First you take Conroy’s side against Michael, now this. Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Joe took a step toward him. “You want to say that again?”
“Oh, come on, Joe, be a good loser. You’ve had plenty of practice.” Ricky jogged out to the street and tossed the ball to Michael for the customary check.
“You ready, Joe?”Michael asked.
Joe growled that he was, and Michael lobbed Ricky the ball. Ricky eyed Joe again. He could end it by shooting from out here, over Michael, but he wanted Joe to know he was going to victimize him. Joe would not have the excuse that his teammate had let him down. Ricky jab-stepped left and with one of his whirling-dervish spins he put Michael behind him. He pulled up to shoot a little bunny directly in Joe’s face. Joe waved at the shot then gave Ricky a hard shove on the left side of his chest, which sent him sprawling
once more on the street.
“Jesus, Joe!”Michael shouted.
“Just play defense,Michael. It’s like I’m the only one working out here. You play like a fuckin’ homo.”
Michael offered Ricky a hand and pulled him up. “Twenty,” Ricky said.
“I’m out,”Michael said. “This is bullshit.”He stalked back toward the house.
“Go ahead, leave,” Joe called after him. “I’ll fuckin’ do it myself. Fuckin’ homo.”
Ricky tossed the ball to Joe. “Check.”
“The fuck are you laughing at?”
“I just thought you’d want to know what I’m gonna do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How I’m going to win. It’s gonna be a jump shot, right from here, right over you. Just so you know.”
Joe’s brow crumpled.Was it a trick? Or just more showing off? It would be just like Ricky to promise a jump shot then race by Joe, just to make him look foolish. Then again . . .
Joe flipped the ball back. “Check.”
Ricky stab-stepped to his right, a long, convincing lunge with the ball whipping far ahead of him, almost behind Joe, and despite what Ricky had said, Joe reacted, couldn’t help himself—he stepped back. Just one fatal fucking step. Ricky pulled back and shot over him. Joe’s chin dropped even before the shot hit.
“Game,” Ricky said.
Joe glared.
Ricky might have left it there. But the sight of Joe with that seething expression, that muscle twitching in his cheek—Joe looked like he might actually burst—seemed funny to him. Ricky watched Joe watching him, and because it was the only thing he could think of at the moment, Ricky finally blurted, “Boo!”
Joe took off after him.
“Oh, good gracious,” Margaret moaned, from the window. An image flashed in her mind: the two boys rolling on the sidewalk, punching, arms flailing, hugging each other close so neither could extend his arm and land a solid shot. They had been, what, eleven and sixteen? And determined to kill each other if she hadn’t rushed out and pulled them apart. And why? Over a basketball game. Good gracious!
Ricky was sprinting back toward the house now. He leaped up onto the ten-foot chainlink fence that separated the Daleys’ driveway from the neighbor’s. Joe jumped too, but too late. Ricky scrambled up and over the fence and dropped down on the other side. Behind
the diamond-mesh he grinned and panted, looking straight at Joe.
“Where’s a cop when you need one?” he said.
Amy covered her smile with her hand, as if it was impolite to laugh at the whole thing.
“Oh, Joe.” Kat sighed. “Well, girls, we couldn’t all bet on Ricky now, could we?”
Chapter Six
Walter Cronkite, in voice-over: “The focus of our report is a key store in Boston,Massachusetts.Address: three-six-four Massachusetts Avenue. Until recently this was the busiest store in the neighborhood perhaps one of the busiest key stores in the world, open for business six days a week, nine hours a day in the winter, twelve hours a day in the summer. During business hours cars double-parked in front, and on some days more than one thousand customers entered this door. Many proceeded to a room in the rear of the store.We followed with a concealed microphone and camera.”
A wide shot of a storefront. The picture was in black and white, though the TV set was a new four-hundred-dollar color console model, one of Ricky’s mysterious lavish gifts. In front of the store hung a sign in the shape of a key, its teeth facing up. The sign read,
S WA R T Z ’ S
K E Y S M A D E W H I L E U WA I T
Cut to a tighter shot of the storefront: People sauntered in and out of the front door, men and women, white and colored, in suits and T-shirts. Then an interior shot, blurry, the frame jerking around, the perspective a low angle, elbow height, as if the camera was being held under the cameraman’s arm. Cigar-chewing men behind a counter. Amid the ambient chatter, a voice was overheard: “Gimme number six in the fifth, for one.”
Cronkite’s voice again, grave and rhythmic: “The men behind the counter are called bookies. They are taking off-track bets on horses and dog races and selling chances on the numbers game, a form of lottery.What they are doing is illegal in every state of the union except Nevada. They are among thousands of bookies engaged in a nationwide multibillion-dollar-a-year business, a business that has been called ‘the treasure chest of the underworld.’ ”
Onscreen a cop in uniform—police cap, white shirt, dark necktie, jacket, and slacks—strolled out of the key shop. He got into the passenger seat of a marked BPD cruiser which was parked directly in front of the shop.
“Shit,” Ricky said. His hair was still damp and tendriled from the basketball game.
Cronkite, still in voice-over: “How does organized gambling operate? How does this business continue despite laws against it? And when the laws are not enforced by police officers, how does this affect the community and the nation?”
The police cruiser pulled away from the shop. Music swelled, Copland’s Appalachian Spring. The cruiser froze onscreen, and a title was superimposed over it: B I O G R A P H Y O F A B O O K I E J O I N T. “CBS Reports: Biography of a Bookie Joint is brought to you by pink-lotion Lux Liquid, the liquid for lux-lovely hands and sparkling
dishes . . .”
“Hey, Joe,”Michael called from the couch, “you better get in here and see this.”
“Mikey, we’re in the middle of something here.” Joe and Kat had been arguing in the kitchen, in shouting whispers. No doubt she was reaming him out for losing it with Ricky during the basketball game.
“No, you better come watch this.”
Joe came out with a scowl. What now? He saw the slack-jawed gawp on his brothers’ faces. He glanced at the screen, which still displayed an ad for dish-washing liquid. “What? You guys look like someone just farted in church.”
“They’re doing a show on The Monkey,” Ricky explained, “that key place on Mass. Ave.” The Monkey was the locals’ name for Abe Swartz, the old man who ran the bookie shop as part of Doc Sagansky’s operation.
“Get the fuck out,” Joe said skeptically.
“Just sit down, Joe,”Michael said.
Joe shooed Little Joe off the couch and sat down. The house, which had never seemed small to the boys growing up, now felt comically miniature. Joe and Michael contorted themselves on the couch so as not to touch each other. Little Joe arranged himself on the floor in front of the TV.
The show resumed with Cronkite in a wood-paneled studio, sitting on an unseen stool, his shoulders at an angle to the camera. He wore a gray suit, white shirt, dark tie, handkerchief folded in his coat pocket. Hair Brylcreemed straight back, bushy eyebrows, a thin mustache. He was not handsome—his chin was weak, his nose drooped—but maybe that was his secret. That sonorous, earnest, authoritative voice, the voice of Truth Revealed, issued forth from a guy who looked like your barber. Over Cronkite’s shoulder, in the upper left corner of the screen, was a still shot of the exterior of the
key shop.
“This is Walter Cronkite. Experts agree that organized gambling is the most lucrative, most corrupting, and most widely tolerated form of crime in the nation. This huge business pits the government of the underworld against the government of the people. The corner bookie, to be found in most American cities, is at the base of the problem. He is the so-called Little Man, but he is the funnel through which billions of dollars a year flow into the underworld. It is our purpose tonight to examine the consequences of the nickels, the dimes, and the dollars wagered with the corner bookie. He and his associates might operate out of a hotel room in New York or a tavern in San Francisco or, as in the case of this report, a key store on Massachusetts Avenue.”
The brothers stared.
On screen, a blank map of the United States. A line sprouted from Boston and stretched to a point that might have been Chicago. Then another, to Vegas. Another to L.A. To Miami. Montreal. New York. Soon the map looked like an airline route map, with every line originating in Boston. “. . . In August 1961, testimony at McClellan Committee hearings on illegal gambling alleged that Boston itself is one of the major layoff centers in the nation. . . .”
Amy wandered in from the dining room. “What’s this?”
“Shhhh!”
On screen, smoke rose from a trash can on the sidewalk in front of the key shop. A bettor came out of the shop and casually dropped a piece of paper into the smoldering can. “. . . It is a violation of a city ordinance to burn trash on the sidewalk, but here the smoke of burning betting slips remained a common sight, a beacon for bettors.”
Kat and Amy and finally Margaret joined the group. From the men’s faces, they knew this program was not leading anywhere good. A narrator’s voice, over grainy footage of people placing bets in the back room of the key shop: “The bettors at this bookie shop are not breaking the law; the bookies are. Most of the bookies’ business in the afternoon is in bets on horse races. The minimum you can bet on a horse race at a racetrack is two dollars. Here the minimum is one dollar and fifty cents.We watched some of the customers bet as much as fifty dollars; we’re told that a one-hundred-dollar bet is not unusual. The bookies claim that they pay the same betting odds as the racetracks; it’s generally reported that most bookies pay lower odds than the track. According to some of the customers, bookies at the key shop have never been known to welsh on a bet. As one customer put it, ‘This is a first-class bookie joint.’ ”
The program cut from the bookie shop to a montage of horseracing scenes: a bugler calling the horses to the post, crowds milling, money thrown down at the betting window, horses racing. Cronkite again: “Here the bettor who has the time and inclination can bet his entire bankroll legally. Pari-mutuel horse tracks are licensed in twenty-five states.Total attendance at these tracks last year: forty-eight and a half million persons. The handle, or total amount of money bet: three and a half billion dollars—one billion dollars more than the nation spent last year on new schools, classrooms, and textbooks. From the three and a half billions in bets on horses, the states received two hundred and fifty-eight million dollars in tax revenue. For every bet made here legally, it is estimated that at least three bets are made off-track, illegally, at places like the key store.”
Another montage: an establishing shot of the entrance gate to the Wonderland dog track, more crowds and betting windows, dogs racing.
Cronkite, in voice-over: “By seven-thirty P.M., Boston’s Wonderland, the world’s largest dog track, is open for business. Here gambling on dog races is legal. Attendance at this track during the racing season averages twelve thousand persons a night. Total yearly attendance: over one million, two hundred thousand. Pari-mutuel wagering on dogs is legal at thirty-five tracks in eight states. At Wonderland, more than six hundred and eighty-three thousand dollars was wagered in one night. The total amount wagered at dog tracks throughout the nation exceeds two billion dollars a year. Two hundred million dollars of this went to the states in tax revenue. It has been estimated that for each bet made at a pari-mutuel dog track, at least one other bet is made off-track. The states receive no tax revenue from offtrack bets made with bookies at places like the key store.”
Cronkite again appeared on screen, unruffled by all this troubling news: “Evidence to be detailed later in the program indicates that the gross income of the key store in Boston may have exceeded twenty-five thousand dollars a week. That’s a million and a half dollars a year, and that’s no penny-ante operation by any means. But there are larger bookie operations. Experts generally agree that illegal off-track bookmaking is a multi-billion-dollar-a-year business. And the experts also agree on another thing: illegal gambling cannot flourish for long unless it is protected.”
A montage of police officers ambling in and out of the key shop, all in full uniform, including motorcycle officers in jackboots and jodhpurs, and traffic cops in white hats.
A narrator’s voice: “Some government estimates put the cost of police protection at fifty percent of the net profits of the gaming operation. Several bookies told us the costs were getting so high that it was becoming more a police business than a bookie business.” More cops were shown coming and going. One was temporarily impeded by the trash can full of smoldering betting slips, which a bookie kindly moved out of his way. The cop tipped his cap to the bookie. Cronkite, voice-over: “From June the first to June third, 1963, we filmed ten members of the Boston police force entering or leaving the key store.We don’t know why they came to the key store or what they did inside.We only know that they were there.”
A man in plain clothes came out of the key shop. Big guy with a barrel torso. He wore a dark coat, open collar, and flat-brim fedora. “Oh my God—” Kat muttered.
But Cronkite cut her off. “The man coming out of the door now is a detective.We found that he comes from Station Sixteen, Boston Police Department, just a few blocks away.”
The camera lingered on Joe as he loitered on the sidewalk outside the shop. He looked, even to the Daleys, like the very face of police corruption.
“Oh my God,” Kat repeated. She had covered her mouth with both hands, as if to catch any words that might slip out. Cronkite: “Other Boston police officers were seen entering the key store during the course of our investigation.We must emphasize again that we do not know the nature of their business in the key store.”
A white-haired gent appeared onscreen to opine on the matter of cops and bookies: “I think most of the policemen on the Boston Police Department are honest and want to do their sworn duty. However, some of them have been in touch with me, by calls and letters, and have written on police department letterhead, although unsigned, about suspected illegal gambling operations which they hope we will do something about.”
And Cronkite again, now in close-up.“It has been said that police corruption can be found in every city where illegal gambling flourishes. The story has been told in headlines from cities across the nation time and time again. It is in part an answer to the question ‘What harm can there be in a little two-dollar bet at the corner bookie?’ ”
“Fuckin’Walter Cronkite.”
“Shush, Joe!”
“What,Mum? He can’t just— I mean, for Christ’s sake, I went in there for a key!”
Ricky snorted.
“Yeah?”Michael asked. “A key to what?”
“What is this, cross-examination? I needed a key. So what?”
Margaret turned to Amy as a representative of the news media.
“Amy, can they do this? Just, just put up someone’s pitcher like that and say whatever they want?”
Amy made a fatalistic shrug and turned her palms up. What can you do?
Now the program displayed a banner headline from the Boston Traveler, “Commr. Sullivan May Be on Probation,” with the subhead “Volpe Has His Eye on Him.” Cronkite in voice-over: “. . . At a press conference Governor John A.Volpe said he expects the Boston police commissioner to fulfill his responsibilities in full compliance with
the law.”
Cronkite appeared onscreen again, in the wood-paneled studio. “We extended an invitation to Boston Police Commissioner Leo J. Sullivan to appear on this program to comment on the difficulties facing local police departments in coping with illegal gambling as reflected by the history of the key shop operation. Commissioner Sullivan has replied to our invitation with a letter outlining problems confronting local police. He points out that legalized on-track betting stimulates illegal off-track betting; that placing a bet off-track is not an offense; and that bookmaking is only a minor misdemeanor.”
“Yeah, okay,Commissioner, I’m sure that’s gonna be good enough.”
“Shush, Ricky.”
Cronkite: “He went on to say that the local police administrator has limited manpower and funds, and that the combined efforts of all law enforcement agencies have failed to dent the framework of illegal gambling. ‘It would therefore be a grave injustice,’ said the police commissioner, ‘to denigrate an entire police department and to destroy the public image created by the fine accomplishments of many dedicated police officers on the basis of one such gambling establishment. In the final analysis, the people of this and every other community must come to the realization that it is their small individual bet that finances the illegal gambling empire and complete enforcement is not possible without the active assistance of all good citizens.’ Those were the words of Boston Police Commissioner Leo Sullivan.”
“What a fuckin’ rat,” Joe said.
The camera moved in on Cronkite. “At this point you may be inclined to say, ‘Well, those people in Boston certainly have their problems.’ Don’t deceive yourself. The chances are very great you have the same problem in your community. This is Walter Cronkite. Goodnight.”
The Daleys were silent.
The TV prattled awhile—“A word about the next CBS Reports in a moment . . .”—until Amy shut it off.
“Fuckin’Walter Cronkite,” Joe muttered.
“Stop that.”
“Fuck Walter Cronkite.”
“Stop it. It’s not Walter Cronkite’s fault.”
“Well, it’s not true.” Joe seemed to believe in the transformative power of his own confidence. A thing was not true because Joe Daley said it was not true. “They’re not gonna get away with this.” Amy said, “If you know any good lawyers, Joe . . .”
“Why do I need a lawyer? I didn’t do anything. I just got done telling you.”
“Joe,”Michael advised softly, “call Brendan.”
Chapter Seven
The hearing looked like a trial but it wasn’t. It was a bag job. The “judge” was a deputy appointed by the Commissioner, serving at the pleasure of the Commissioner, there to do the Commissioner’s bidding. The prosecutor was an I.A. lieutenant whose evidence consisted of a transcript of the CBS documentary and not much else. Joe had been forced to hire a lawyer, a shifty shyster he knew from the BMC, who made a few desultory objections. But everyone knew the verdict. Walter Cronkite had announced it on TV: Joe Daley was a bag man for the crooked cops in Station Sixteen. The inconvenient fact that the charge was true did not make the whole thing any easier for Joe to take.
After he testified, Joe paced the hallway on the sixth floor of BPD headquarters,where the hearing took place. There were no reporters, no crowds. It was a family matter, for now.
Brendan Conroy was still inside, shilling for Joe. His muffled voice carried through the door: Joe was a good kid, a good soldier. Third-generation Boston police. Son of a fallen cop. No one was defending what the kid did, of course. Of course. But then, there was honor in the way Joe’d come in there and kept his mouth shut and refused to roll over on anyone. Now, there was a time when cops were brothers, let’s remember. Did they mean to throw out the baby with the bath water? Did they really want to lose a kid like Joe Daley? Let’s not be more Catholic than the Pope here, fellas—if they were going to start canning every cop who ever took a few bucks, or who ate dinner at the kitchen door of a restaurant, well, let’s face it, before long there wouldn’t be a police department left. Anyway, the last Brendan Conroy had heard, Walter Cronkite had not been appointed commissioner of the Boston police.
Joe tried not to listen. He trusted that Conroy would pull it off. Conroy knew which strings to pull.He’d take care of the whole thing. No big deal. In time everyone would come to realize that this whole bookie thing was no big deal.
So why did Joe feel so aggrieved? It could have been worse, after all. The Monkey’s was not the only place Joe had ever picked up an envelope or put down a few bucks on a puppy or on his badge number. For Christ’s sake, if they had followed Joe around with a camera, Walter Cronkite would have shat in his CBS trousers. As it was, no one was going to throw Joe under the train for stopping by The Monkey’s once or twice. So it wasn’t the accusation that was so troubling to Joe. It was the sense of unseen forces, the infuriating awareness that he would never quite understand what had gone on here. He wasn’t fucking smart enough to figure it all out, to see the connections, the complexities. Why on earth had Walter fucking Cronkite come to Boston? Why the key shop? Why him? Joe thought he had it sometimes, that the truth was about to come shivering through, but it never quite did. So the answers hovered out there in the air somewhere,
just out of sight.He was like a kid.He could hear it in the way they spoke to him, that pizzicato pick-pick-pick tone the deputy had lectured him with—Detective Daley, you’ve embarrassed this en-tire department in front of the en-tire country. It was precisely the pissy tone Joe used with his own kid when he did bad.Now the adults were meeting behind closed doors to pass sentence on him.Well, so what could he do about it? He was not Michael or Ricky or Conroy. Guys like Joe had to just hold on to what they knew, cling to the catechism that had worked for cops for a hundred years. Rule one: Keep your mouth shut when you’re supposed to keep your mouth shut. He leaned his forehead against the wall, mashed it against the dusty ancient plaster.What he wouldn’t give to have Mikey’s brain just for an hour or two, just to see things clear, to figure out what he should do, then he could happily go back to just bulling his way ahead without all this worry and frustration. The decision, the right decision,would already be made. But he would never have that kind of peace. Joe was forty-two; he was what he was.
Conroy came out of the room and marched up to Joe with his arms extended in a conciliatory way. A reassuring smile. Everything was taken care of.
“How bad?”
“Not so bad, boyo, not so bad. You’ll keep your job—”
“My job! Jesus, Bren! For Christ’s sake, I’m just the fucking errand boy.”
“Keep your voice down—”
“Half the department’s on the sleeve, you know that!”
“This is the New Boston.Maybe you haven’t heard.”
“What fucking new Boston?”
“Just keep your voice down, Joe. You’ll keep your job and your lieutenant’s rank. But you’re off the detective bureau.”
Joe shook his head and sniffed at the injustice of it.
“Joe, what did you expect? You’re lucky you’re still in Station Sixteen. You know where they wanted to send you? Roxbury. How would you like that, chasing spooks all day?”
“Jesus, Brendan.What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
“Show up in uniform for last half tomorrow.”
“You gotta be shitting me.”
“Be smart, son. Report in uniform for last half tomorrow.”
“And do what? Walk a beat?”
“Yes.”
“For how long? What, am I gonna walk a fucking beat the rest of my life?”
“No. You’re going to be patient and do what I tell you. You’re going to take the deal and lie low, play the game. This is just politics. It’ll blow over. Remember, boyo”—Brendan hoisted a thumb over his shoulder toward the hearing room—“they come and go; we stay.You think your old man and I didn’t look out for each other?”
Joe shook his head.Whatever.
“Answer me.”
“Yes.”
“Alright, then.What are you going to do tomorrow?”
“Show up in uniform for last half.”
“Attsaboy.”
“Brendan.When am I gonna be a detective again?”
Conroy patted Joe’s meaty cheek. “When the time comes.”
Chapter Eight
A little before eleven, the cold deepened. A frigid current streamed past. Long strings of Christmas lights stirred on snow-shagged trees. The baby Jesus trembled in his wheelbarrow. Long way from Bethlehem.
Joe stomped his feet, paced in circles. His shoes were the only thing that fit him. His pants and shirt collar were unbuttoned. The whole damn uniform had shrunk. He’d have to ask Kat to let the pants out a little. The wool overcoat was good, at least. But the exposed parts, his nose and ears and eyes, were singed. He kept an eye on the Union Club across Park Street. They’d got to know him there the past few nights, and they were pretty good about letting him come in out of the cold. The bartender even stood him a nip before he closed up every night. In a few minutes he’d go across and warm up a little.He could keep an eye on the crèche from there for a while. This was Joe’s penance, standing guard over the Nativity scene on Boston Common overnight. The same punishment befell a lot of cops in Station Sixteen at Christmastime, but in the case of Joe Daley, with his televised humiliation and his demotion and his obdurate swagger, the assignment struck his brother cops as particularly laughable. Not that Joe meant to stand there all night. After midnight, he would relocate to the lobby of the nearest hotel, the Parker House, leaving his Lord and Savior to fend for Himself. He would circle past the manger scene a few times during the night and check in from the call box on Tremont Street, but he did not mean to freeze to death out here guarding a fucking doll collection.
At 10:55—Joe knew the time precisely because he was counting down to eleven o’clock when he would walk across to the Union Club to warm up—there was a loud smash from the bottom of the hill, somewhere on Tremont. It was glass shattering, but in the cold the noise was a dull crack, like the snap of a heavy branch. A smash-andgrab, probably, or drunks down on Washington Street. Joe took off running as fast as he dared on the icy downhill. He had to admit, as much as he wanted to call himself a detective, this was the sort of police work he was meant for. This was Joe at his most natural. He was a good reactor, he could impose himself on a situation, he could make things right, or at least make things better. Detective work was infuriatingly slow and irresolute. It was Miss Marple stuff, not police work. This—running like hell after a bad guy—was police work. Meanwhile, in the manger all was peaceful. The wind shivered the statuettes and the tufts of grimy hay. The Virgin Mary listed fifteen degrees to starboard.
From the top of Park Street, the direction opposite the smashing glass, came Ricky. He was slightly out of breath. He wore a wool cap and leather jacket and Jack Purcells. His hands were plunged deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched. In the Common he took a few mincing slide-steps over the ice to the Nativity scene and stood before it. Bless me, Father, for I am about to sin.He glanced around, then one by one he turned the statues around so they would see nothing, Mary, Joseph, the Magi, a donkey, two sheep, a family of very pious and awestruck Bakelite bunnies. He would leave no witnesses.When he’d rearranged the others, he lifted the baby Jesus out of His straw bed.“Now who left you out here in just a diaper?” he asked the child, who stared back with a conspiratorial beatific smile. He tucked the statue under his arm like a football and strolled off, his sneakers crunching in the snow.
• • •
There was a soft knock and Amy, still in her work dress, went to the door. “Who is it?”
“The Strangler.”
“Very funny.What do you want?”
“Um, to strangle you? That’s, you know, what I do.”
“Sorry, not interested.”
“Come on, just a little?”
“I said no. Go strangle yourself.”
“That’s how I got through high school. Come on, help me out.” She opened the door a crack to see Ricky posing cheek to cheek with the statue of the Christ child. “Oh, Jesus,” she said.
“Precisely.”
“Does this mean I’m dying?”
“No, no. He just came to visit.”
“Oh, thank God. I mean, thank You.” Amy stood back to let him pass. “I suppose you have an explanation.”
“Yes. I found Jesus.”
“Ha, ha. Let me guess. That’s the one Joe is supposed to be watching.”
“Exactamente.”
“And what do you intend to do with . . . Him?”
“I’m not exactly sure. I thought maybe you could hold on to Him for a while.”
“Like a hostage.”
“No, like a good-luck charm. That’s His job, you know.”
“You’ll rot in hell for this.”
“Anything for a scoop, Aim. You want the story? I’ll give you an exclusive: ‘Jesus Statue Stolen; Brazen Theft Right Under Dumb-Ass Cop’s Nose.’ Now, if that doesn’t move paper, then I give up.”
“You know, you Daleys aren’t nearly as fascinating to anyone else as you are to yourselves.Why don’t you leave poor Joe alone? He’s got enough trouble.”
“Come on, this is news. The public has a right to know.”
“Sorry.We’re a family newspaper.We don’t blaspheme.” Ricky wandered over to the dining room table, which was covered with papers, manila folders, handwritten notes, photos of women bloody and contorted. “What’s all this?”
“It’s work. Try it sometime.”
“Hey, I work.”
Amy sniffed.
“Since when are you covering the Strangler thing?”
“They assigned the story today. We’re reviewing it, me and Claire.” Claire Downey was the other girl reporter at the Observer. The paper liked to team them up. They were good, and the two-girl byline was a novelty, especially on crime cases.
“Hasn’t that story been written to death? What’s the new angle?”
“Between us?”
“Between us.”
“The angle is that BPD screwed up the investigation.”
“Did they?”
“All I know is I’m looking through these reports and even I can see the mistakes. The crime scenes, the interviews, the leads they’ve missed—it’s a disaster, Ricky.Well, you can read it in the paper, same as everyone else.”
He picked up one of the photos and examined it idly. It showed a room, a stained carpet, various marks and arrows drawn on it. “Maybe you’d better keep this little guy. You might need Him.” He propped the statue on a counter.
“Just take it with you. I’m not stashing your stolen property.”
“Now that’s blasphemy.”
“No, that’s your . . . work. I wish you wouldn’t bring it here.” Ricky frowned. But he was feeling buoyant at the thought of Joe and the empty manger, and he did not want to argue. Ricky was determined not to acknowledge her sour mood, not to become snarled in it. He shuffled to the refrigerator. A few eggs, a block of American cheese, a loaf of Wonder bread. “You know what you need, Miss Ryan? A wife.”
“The job’s yours if you want it. You know that.”
“Maybe just for tonight.”He came to her and put his arms around her waist. “I’ll be the wife. You can be the Fuller brush salesman.” She forced a smile but it faded.
“What?”
“You know what.”
He groaned.
“Don’t worry, Ricky, we won’t talk about it. It’s late.”
“It’s not that late. Come on, let’s go somewhere. Down to Wally’s. We’ll have a drink, hear some music, take your mind off things.”
“Ricky, some people have to get up for work.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that.”
“Maybe I should go.”
“No.” She laid her head on his chest. “You can stick around if you want.”
Ricky blinked uncertainly. He was not used to seeing Amy unnerved. He was not used to—and had no interest in—comforting her. “What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“The Strangler stuff? Those pictures?”
She shrugged.
“Come on. Did you read the paper today? The police commissioner says the odds of getting attacked by the Strangler are two million to one. Two million to one! The whole city’s in a panic—for what? You’re more likely to get run over by a car.”
“I know, I know.”
She felt his collarbone against her forehead. Under her hands, Ricky’s lower back was hard as a shell.He had a little boy’s wiry body. It felt unbreakable.
“Ricky,maybe we could just stay in tonight.”
“Nah, I need to get out. Come on. One beer. You can sleep when you get old.”
Amy felt with the tips of her fingers for the furrow at the center of Ricky’s back. She traced the backbone as it rose to the flat of the coccyx, and her anxiety receded.
“I never thought you were a worrier, Aim.”
“I’m not a worrier. I don’t care about the Strangler.”
She felt Ricky tap her shoulder blades in mock comfort. The gesture conveyed there, there and at the same time stop hugging me, let me go. A little chill went through her. Ricky was a consummate faker, but tonight he could not even be bothered to fake for her. He just wanted a playmate.Maybe that was all there was to Ricky, at least that was as much of him as Amy would ever have.Was it enough? A sentence repeated in her mind: I don’t know if I can do this anymore. But she did not say it. Probably she never would say it. She would never possess him, she knew that. Ricky was nimble and sheathed in an athlete’s confidence, and of course he was a man; he was not available to be possessed. She wanted him anyway. And if he never married her? Was it worth spinsterhood, did she want him even at that price?
Yes, she thought. Yes yes yes yes yes.
“Ricky, I love you, you know.”
“Okay.”
“No, the correct response is ‘I love you too,Amy.’ ”
“I love you too,Amy.”
She squeezed him. Yes yes yes. Maybe a few months earlier, she might have felt differently. But now she and Ricky were entangled. And in the year of the Strangler, well, even if all Ricky had to offer was his charm and his good strong back, Amy thought it might be enough. She had a sense that the city’s mood—the Strangler hysteria, all that mean, selfish, instinctive fear which everyone seemed to feel—carried with it an insight.What was happening in Boston was a passing revelation: The Strangler had taught them there was no safety inside the herd. Everyone was vulnerable. Death could strike out of a clear blue sky, like Oswald’s bullet. If that was true . . . then yes yes yes, she did want him, at any price.
“Come on, let’s go.We’ll hear some music, you’ll feel better.”
“Okay,” she said.
He bustled around, gathering up her coat and purse before she changed her mind. He held up the statue. “Bring Him?” She shook her head.
“Right, there might be a cover.” Ricky turned to place the statue back on the counter carefully. “You know, for a second there I thought you were going soft on me.”
“Never,” she said to his back.
Excerpted from THE STRANGLER © Copyright 2008 by William Landay. Reprinted with permission by Delacorte Press, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.
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