Back Bay (11 page)

“He means nothing,” said Peter. “I saw a receding hairline and a tweed coat. There’s no way I could pick him out in a lineup, and it says so right in the article. So relax.”

That afternoon, the Fallons told two detectives what they knew, which wasn’t much, although Danny suggested a motive. He told them that Gallagher had recently begun to book ballgames and races, and he hadn’t been cutting “the big boys” in on the profits.

“He never told us who ‘the big boys’ were,” explained Danny, “but I’m sure you fellas have some idea of who he was talking about.”

The detectives thought Danny’s explanation was sound. The killing had the earmarks of a gangland assassination. The killer worked in the open. He used a .22 caliber pistol, the new gangland signature weapon. And someone had ransacked Kenny’s apartment, probably looking for books and betting receipts.

“This is the sort of murder that’s rarely solved,” said one detective. “We’ve had hundreds of these cases over the years, but frankly, they’re low-priority unless the D.A. has the hots for a few crimefighter headlines. As a rule, as long as they’re killing each other, nobody seems to get too excited.”

“How can you say that?” protested Peter. “Kenny Gallagher was a good man. He was no criminal.”

“Makin’ book is a crime,” said the detective. “I’m not sayin’ we won’t find out who killed your friend, but I’m not too optimistic.”

Philip Pratt read the morning paper with great interest. At noon, he had lunch with Mr. Soames and Christopher Carrington in his office. He showed Soames the photograph of Pratt. “Harrison is certain this is the man?”

“Yes. He claimed he was some sort of graduate student,” said Carrington impatiently. “Not everyone works for Mr. Rule.”

“At the moment, we can’t assume that,” said Soames. “I’ve placed him under surveillance.”

“Ridiculous,” said Carrington.

Soames stared at the young man but said nothing.

“You must admit he’s been all over the place lately,” offered Pratt. “One day he’s worming his way into Searidge, the next night
he’s at the scene of a murder in a South Boston dive. He leads a very unusual life. I think it would be fascinating to follow him around, simply to find out what else he does with his time. Who knows what he may stumble onto next?”

“The surveillance shall continue, then?” asked Soames.

“Don’t let the son of a bitch out of your sight.”

Christopher Carrington finished his coffee and left.

In a single apartment overlooking a laundromat in Everett, the man with the pockmarks and the receding hairline read the newspaper. He wondered if he should eliminate the witness. He had never bothered before. Witnesses were always too shocked to describe him, and this guy Fallon was probably no different.

Besides, he killed only for pay. If his employer wanted the witness out of the way, he would know about it.

Jack C. Ferguson found his morning newspaper, as usual, on an abandoned table in Waldorf’s. He dressed in khaki work shirt and shiny pants. He had a barrel chest, a huge head, and a mane of white hair hidden under a Red Sox cap. With a shower and a new set of clothes, he might have looked distinguished, but he smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in months. He drank whatever coffee was in the cup beside the newspaper and left.

He walked down Washington Street beneath the shadow of the elevated, then down a side street toward a row of derelict apartments, half of them burned out, all of them boarded up. He was in the South End, in the deteriorating stretch of buildings between Dover Street and the Cathedral. As he walked, he surveyed the empty wine bottles strewn about, hoping to find a few drops someone had missed, and he glanced over his shoulder every few seconds to make sure that no one was following him. He sneaked down an alley beside the row, then ducked into a cellar door. Inside it was dark and damp, and the sweet charcoal smell of scorched timber mingled with the stench of puke and piss.

He heard something move in the shadows. A switchblade appeared in his hand. He stepped closer. Four rats the size of small dogs scurried away from a body in the corner. Ferguson couldn’t tell if the bum was alive or dead. Better off dead, he thought.
Carefully, he approached. It might be a trick. He kicked the body in the ribs. The bum groaned, then rolled over. Ferguson kicked again, harder. No reaction. In that condition, the bum was harmless, and Ferguson left him where he was.

Jack C. Ferguson lived four flights up, in an attic room equipped with a Coleman stove, a gas lamp, and a bed made of newspapers. He had booby-trapped the stairways and strung tin-can alarms in all the hallways. No one could get to him without his knowing it.

He scanned the front page quickly and noticed the report of a murder in South Boston. He cut it out and put it into a shoebox that was filled with clippings, all alphabetically arranged, on every murder committed in Boston in the last seven years. Kenny Gallagher, fifty-six, of South Boston, was the victim. Peter Fallon, twenty-six, of Cambridge, was the witness. He memorized the names and ages of both men, then turned to the sports page.

Peter Fallon spent the afternoon with his mother. She and Kenny were childhood sweethearts, and they had remained close friends through the years. Maureen Fallon was a heavy-set woman with eyes that seemed resigned to the inevitable pain of life, and she accepted Kenny’s death calmly.

“We know neither the day nor the hour,” she said softly, the sound reminding Fallon of whispered prayers in a confessional. “It’s God’s will. Did he make an Act of Contrition?”

“No, Ma.”

“He was a good man. I wouldn’t worry.” She paused for a long time and thought about Kenny.

Fallon marveled at the strength of Irish women in the face of death or unhappiness. Their faith and fatalism sustained them through anything. The men might go to pieces, but the women were like rocks.

“Would you like a cup of tea, Peter?”

“No, Ma. I gotta go.”

“Won’t you stay to see your father?”

“I have a lot of work to do.”

She smiled. “He still loves you, Peter.”

“I know, Ma.” He kissed her on the cheek and went next door.

Peter found Danny in the basement playroom. He was sipping beer and watching Bugs Bunny with his kids. “I’m takin’ off, Dan.”

“Don’t you think you oughta stick around and see the old man? He had some paperwork to do. He’ll be home early.”

“I’m two days behind in my work. I’ll see him at the wake.”

“Suit yourself. I’ll call you when they release the body.”

“You think they’ll find any relatives?”

“Ma was the closest thing Kenny had to a sister. I don’t think there’s anybody else, but they’ll keep the body on ice and make a search. Should be a couple of days.”

“He’ll be ripe enough to split open by then.”

“Let’s hope he’s in the box when he does,” said Danny, and both brothers laughed at the bad joke. “That poor, fat son of a bitch,” blurted Danny, suddenly holding back tears. “I told him there was no future in bookin’ numbers.”

“Danny,” said Peter, just loud enough to be heard over Elmer Fudd, “sometimes I think there’s no future in anything.” Peter headed for the door.

“Hey.” Danny’s voice was stern. “Don’t be talkin’ like that.”

No future in anything. The words rattled through Fallon’s head once more as he opened the door to his apartment. He had lived in three small rooms near Harvard Yard for nearly four years, and his life had not changed appreciably in that time. He still saw the back of Lamont Library from his front windows. He still lived alone, although a girl from the Law School had shared his bed for over a year. He was still telling himself that the place was cheap, convenient, and he might as well stay because he couldn’t find anyplace better.

He thought about going down to the river and taking out a scull for an hour. It was still light, and he could use the exercise to sweat out the last remnants of hangover and get into the mood to write. Fallon rowed every morning, and whenever he had a bad day, he rowed in the afternoon. Without the scull, he knew he’d be on a bender every few days. Rowing was smooth and rhythmic. It helped him to relax. It kept him in condition. But on hot, muggy nights, the Charles River smelled like dead carp. He decided to stay in.

He took a container of yogurt and a can of beer out of the refrigerator. That was his supper.

An hour later, Fallon was trying to say something fresh about Jefferson’s Embargo Act. He studied his notes from the Pratt ledger books of 1808 and searched for a theme. All he could see was Kenny Gallagher’s body jumping involuntarily as the bullets slammed into it. He couldn’t concentrate. He looked through his bookcase for something distracting.

The Day They Burned the White House
was a first-person account of the British march on Washington, written by a modern journalist. It was the sort of popular history Fallon never read but people always gave him for Christmas. He opened to the index and ran his finger down the “L” column. Latrobe, Lafitte, Lear, Lee, Lovell. He stopped. Lovell, Dexter, 185. D.L. This is too easy, he thought.

He flipped to
page 185
and searched for the name. “… two servants, Dexter Lovell and Thomas Jefferson Grew, disappeared….” Fallon jumped back to the beginning of the paragraph. “The only treasure that Dolley Madison could not save was Paul Revere’s Golden Eagle Tea Set. It disappeared and was never seen again. Two servants, Dexter Lovell and Thomas Jefferson Grew, disappeared along with it. We have often speculated that they made some sort of deal with the British and the work of art is now drunk from regularly in an English country manor where they still think of us as Colonials.”

An incident in Pratt’s life leaped to Fallon’s mind. At a banquet held for President Washington in 1789, Pratt had raised hell because the merchants of Boston had given Washington a Revere tea set called the Golden Eagle. He should have thought of it the moment he saw Dexter Lovell’s note.

Fallon was excited. He realized that the Golden Eagle story was simply an interesting footnote to his dissertation, something to brighten up the dull prose. Like most Yankee shippers who founded fortunes, Pratt smuggled, privateered, and traded opium when he smelled a profit. Acting as a middleman in an art theft wasn’t unusual. Except that the tea set disappeared and, apparently, had never been found. If it was still out there undiscovered, it was worth a great deal of money to the person who found it. If
it was in someone’s silver cabinet, its journey would make a great story. Fallon had to know more.

He found Evangeline Carrington’s number in the book.

“Hello.” It was only nine o’clock, but her voice sounded thick, drowsy. In the background, Fleetwood Mac played loudly.

“Is this Evangeline Carrington?”

She turned down the record. “Who is this?”

“Peter Fallon.”

“Who?”

Fallon recounted their meeting and told her he’d like to have lunch with her.

“Why?” she asked abruptly.

“Because I’m interested in your family history and there are a few questions I’d like to ask you.” He decided not to mention the tea set.

“I told you, my brother is the family historian. Talk to him.”

“I intend to, but I’d like to talk with you first.”

Family historians usually knew enough about their ancestors to withhold information that might seem scandalous or potentially profitable to an outsider. Fallon hoped the girl might reveal something unknowingly.

“I don’t see why. I’m not at all interested in the Pratts.”

“Well, I’m also interested in cars, and I really like your Porsche.”

“Then have lunch with my Porsche.”

Fallon tried for wit, but he sounded stupid, and she hung up.

At the Book Cellar, an all-night bookstore on Mt. Auburn Street, Fallon bought a copy of Walter Muir Whitehill’s
Boston: A Topographical History
. He did not notice that a young man in a dark sweatshirt had followed him on his errand and had written down the title of the book. When Fallon returned to his apartment, the man returned to a black Oldsmobile parked across the street.

Fallon opened his last can of Narragansett and settled in with his book. The man in the Oldsmobile drank coffee and watched Fallon’s windows.

Fallon discovered that Gravelly Point no longer existed, but Whitehill provided a series of old engineering maps which traced its fate.

In 1814, Boston was a peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow isthmus called the Neck. On the west side of the peninsula, a square mile of salt marshes and tide flats stretched along the Charles River Basin. Since the area was on the landward, or back, side of the peninsula, it was known as the Back Bay. Gravelly Point was a deserted spit of land that curled into the Back Bay like a fist aimed at the city. The Easterly Channel, which Lovell had mentioned in his note, sliced through the Back Bay and connected to Gravelly Point at the wrist.

Fallon knew that, at high tide, most of the flats were covered in two to three feet of water. He assumed that the Easterly Channel, formed by a stream that flowed into the basin, was several feet deeper. From the map, he could tell that the channel was anywhere from five to twenty-five feet across, and its boundaries were formed by the mean low-tide lines in the bay. When the rest of the Back Bay was mud, there was still water in the Easterly Channel.

The second map showed the area in 1836. A street now crossed Gravelly Point. A mill dam, which regulated the flow of water into the Back Bay, stretched from Sewall’s Point in Brookline to the foot of Beacon Hill. Two railroad lines crossed the marsh. The Public Garden, which did not exist in 1814, now extended west from the city on reclaimed land. The dividing and filling of the Back Bay had begun.

In 1861, the marsh had shrunk by half, new streets stretched toward Gravelly Point, and the Mill Dam had become Beacon Street. By 1888, the marsh was gone. Gravelly Point had been swallowed by the landfill and become part of the Back Bay, Boston’s most exclusive section.

When Fallon thought of the Back Bay, he saw Commonwealth Avenue, broad, tree-lined, graced by some of the finest nineteenth-century architecture in America. Or Copley Square, with Trinity Church on the east, the Public Library on the west, and the windows of the Hancock tower above. Or Symphony Hall. Or First Church of Christ Scientist. Or the Esplanade. But, as he finished his beer and turned out the light, he tried to imagine the Back Bay as it had looked on a September night in 1814.