The Turnaround: How America's Top Cop Reversed the Crime Epidemic (6 page)

Dorchester was a lace-curtain Irish neighborhood, but not first-generation right off the boat. Besides the Brattons (we were Scottish and Irish and French-Canadian) you had Walshes and Quinns and McNultys and Devines. When I was growing up, there were still gas lamps in the
street, and once in a while a city worker would come down the block with a ladder, climb up, and fiddle with the gas fixtures. Eventually, we got electric streetlights. The rag man was around with his horse-drawn drays, and the fruit vendor with his pushcart, and Charlie the ice-cream man in the Good Humor truck with no top on the cab.

We lived one house off the corner of Hecla and Adams streets, two blocks from the Edward Southworth School, where I went from kindergarten through third grade. Edward Southworth was a twelve-room brick-and-granite public school built at the turn of the century. It looked and felt like a fortress and was located on Meeting House Hill, one of the highest points in the city, which George Washington occupied when Revolutionary troops drove the English out of Boston.

I always did well in school, never had to work very hard, and was kind of a teacher's pet. Whenever a note had to be run over to the Mather School next door, I was the one chosen to run it. When it came time to clap the erasers—don't ask me why we thought that was such a great honor, you'd just get chalk dust all over yourself; maybe it was because you got out of class for a couple of minutes—I got the job.

I moved across the courtyard to the Mather School, a much larger building constructed in the 1930s, for grades four through six. The separation of church and state wasn't very wide in those days, and one of my strongest memories is that every Tuesday afternoon at one o'clock, every student was marched out of Mather for two hours of religious instruction. The very few Protestants went right next door to the Universal Church of God in Christ. Almost all the rest of the school went to catechism class at Saint Peter's Church and School down the block. (I don't know if we had any Jews at Mather.) We lined up two by two, flanked by the school traffic monitors and the school crossing guards and the nuns in habits, the whole bit, and off we marched.

Saint Peter's was a gorgeous old church with a high spire and a beautiful interior. It would have been inspiring if I hadn't wanted to get out so bad. I went to church there on Sundays and then had to hang around afterward for Sunday school. I got a good education and a good moral grounding, but I could not wait for eighth grade to come so I could be confirmed and not have to go to Sunday school anymore.

One afternoon when I was about eight years old, a half dozen of us were out playing ball in front of the Edward Southworth School when we caught the attention of a local gang called the Parksmen. Local kids, twelve-year-olds, they were the big neighborhood bullies, and they used
to fight with another gang called the Red Raiders all the time. We'd been playing ball, and the Parksmen broke up the game and took us hostage. They put us on the front steps of the school and wouldn't let us go. They were much bigger than we were, so there was no chance of us fighting our way out. We were stuck. It started getting late.

Four-thirty came and went, and they wouldn't let us go. Finally, they let their guard down and I ran home.

“Where were you?” my father demanded. He and my mother weren't particularly worried about my safety—kids hung out in the streets all the time. What had him riled was that it was five o'clock and I had missed supper. There were rules—the family eats together was one of them—and I had broken one.

“The Parksmen held us hostage,” I panted. “They wouldn't let us go. They've still got some of the kids.”

My father hopped up from the table, grabbed my arm, and off we went. He stormed up the hill to Edward Southworth. “We'll see about this,” he muttered. I had to run to keep up.

I thought my father was the toughest guy who ever lived. He was a little guy, five foot eight, thin, about 130 pounds, but, boy, you didn't want to see him mad.

My friends were still huddled on the stone steps. They looked very glad to see us. The Parksmen were slouching in front of them, smoking cigarettes, on guard duty, a bunch of tough twelve-year-old boys. My dad walked right through the pack. He never laid a hand on them, he just put the fear of God in those kids.

“Who the hell do you think you are?”

The Parksmen backed off immediately. First, they fanned out in a semicircle, but my father gave them a look that told them he'd rip their heads off. Then they bolted. Our guys were free. That gang never bothered us again.

I don't know if my father has ever had a fight in his life, but he was a scrapper as a kid. His mother died young, and he and his four brothers were split up among the relatives. Somewhere along the line, my father developed the confidence that he could handle whatever came along. You could tell in the way he carried himself. He never swaggered, but he didn't back down. In my parents’ social circle, he was looked up to as the solid one, the good, hard-working, decent guy, the best at what he does, the rock, with a nice way about him. My sister and I were crazy about him.

One weekend afternoon, we were all up in the balcony of the Strand
Theater in Upham's Corner watching a movie. The Strand was a beautiful old ornate theater, and on those Sundays when we didn't take a family drive sometimes we went to the movies. Behind us, a bunch of older kids were acting up, talking and laughing during the show. Tough kids. My father asked them once, politely, please to be quiet. That worked for a minute, then they started up again.

My father stood up, gave them the look, and growled,
“If you don't shut up, I'm going to throw your ass the hell out of here!”
They shut up, of course. And there was something about the toughness of that expression that stayed with me.

Once in a while, Pat and I would get it, too. We fought all the time, over everything, it didn't matter what. Coop two kids in a car on a Sunday afternoon drive and sometimes we got out of hand. Finally, he would have enough. He'd pull over, slam on the emergency brake, throw his right elbow over the front seat, and shout.
“Goddamn kids, knock it off!”

The hand would go up, but he never hit us. It was just a threat. His anger would flare up and then be gone.

My mother, who spent more time with us, was the real enforcer. When Pat and I would go crazy, she'd come after us with a belt. Today, we'd all probably be in family court, but then we got a quick whack and were banished to our rooms.

At the same time, I was very protective of my sister. When I was in my teens, Pat got into a fight with Gene Stanley, the kid next door. Gene was about my age. He was one of the neighborhood tough guys, and he pushed her down into a wet puddle of mud. It was a cold March day, and she came running up into the house all scared and screaming. I went storming down the stairs after him.

I didn't think of myself as a tough kid—in fact, I was Caspar Milquetoast. I don't think I've actually had a real fight in my life. But I went after him.

Gene Stanley was still out in the street. He certainly wasn't hiding from me.

I grabbed him by the shirt.

“If you ever do that to her again, I'll kill you!”

It was so unexpected, I think I scared the hell out of him and he surprised the hell out of me. He apologized immediately. He wasn't a bad guy.

What I enjoyed most was staying in the back room at home and making clay figurines. I built whole scenes out of clay. I began with Dr. Seuss;
I read his books, loved his characters, and re-created in modeling clay what he depicted on the page. I built a little world.

As I grew older, my figures and settings became more elaborate. I created replicas of entire Civil War battlefields with hundreds of figures, Union and Confederate, detailed down to the straps across their chests and the insignias on their hats. I read everything I could get my hands on about the Revolutionary and Civil wars. When the family visited Fort Ticonderoga, I came home and made a model of what I'd seen, complete with troops. I was fascinated with uniforms and armies. I saw the movie
The Fighting 69th
, starring James Cagney, on television and built an elaborate diorama, including trenches and four hundred soldiers, and refought World War I in clay miniature.

Our downstairs neighbors, the McNultys, had four kids. Two of them, Bobby and Franny, were my age. They were twins, and Franny was an albino with significantly limited vision. He always had his right arm crooked over his eyes to shade them from the sun. He had white hair, purple eyes, and thick, thick glasses. Because of his condition, Franny couldn't play sports, and because he was kind of an odd duckling, he didn't have a lot of friends. But I liked him, and we used to hang out a lot. When we got to be about eleven years old, Franny and I took Saturdays and went off to ride the trains and buses and explore the city. You could ride all day for a nickel. The McNultys had less money than we did, but Mrs. McNulty was so grateful that I would take Franny with me that she'd slip us both a quarter, and sometime during the day we'd buy Cokes and candy bars.

We'd start the day by walking down Adams Street to the train station at Field's Corner—Fieldsie, we called it—and look around inside the barn that housed the trackless trolleys. Then we'd board the train, get a little paper transfer, and we'd be off. I got out of my neighborhood and really came to learn the entire city.

The trains were old rattlers, olive green, with bare lightbulbs, porcelain strap handles, and a little cab on the right-hand side in front, where the operator sat. We could see him hunched over the control levers through the glass in his door. We watched these men for hours. Franny and I stood in the first car and looked out the glass front windows as we went through the tunnels. Franny always got sunburned because of his pale skin, so when we were riding in sunlight, we had to be careful.

We explored the whole city and the surrounding area for a nickel. Subways and trains and trolleys and buses, we rode them all. I was always fascinated by the old buses, which were much better than the new ones
that were coming in. I'd jot down their numbers and keep track of the routes. It was big news when the old green trains were painted red or green or blue according to the lines they were on. When the first new cars came in—the Blue Birds, all sleek and modern but without the beat-up warmth and character of the originals—it felt as if a whole world was ending, as if good friends were moving away.

We'd ride till the end of the line and then get off and roam through the bus yards, go into the barns. A couple of times, the attendants showed us around. That was a thrill.

Over time, new kids began moving into Dorchester. We all hung on the corner, which was right up the block from my house. Every couple of years, a new generation of kids claimed that corner, and sooner or later it was our turn.

As the sixties began, there were two distinct social types in teenage Boston, the collegiates and the rats. The collegiates wore madras shirts and khakis and loafers with no socks; that was the look. That was
colleeege.
The rats wore leather jackets with buckles and chains and combed their hair in ducktails. Most of our corner was in between. We were twelve or thirteen years old, and we were so benign there was no phrase for us. Nerds hadn't been invented yet, but that's what we were.

We hung on the corner and had weeklong Monopoly games. We built scooters out of roller-skate wheels and milk boxes and two-by-fours. We didn't drink, we didn't disturb anybody, we didn't act up, we'd just be there hour after hour until eleven or twelve o'clock at night. The cops never once asked us to leave.

Our group on the corner was pretty much a democracy, but I did like to be in control. I was always trying to rise above the pack, especially in wartime. There were three or four wooded areas within a couple of blocks of our corner where kids could just go off and disappear; we were in central Boston, but as far as we were concerned we were on Iwo Jima. These Dorchester jungles were perfect for the kind of World War II fighting we saw in the movies on TV, and we saw a lot of combat. I was Captain Billy—or “Captain Billy Bones,” as my sister called me because I was so skinny—and I was always in charge.

One Christmas, Franny and Bobby McNulty showed up with new ordnance. We all had new toys, but Franny and Bobby came out with a very realistic .50-caliber machine gun with dual handles and a tripod. We all took turns shooting off a few rounds. When you triggered it, the batteries made the gun go
rat-a-tat-tat
, and the muzzle flashed with red-and-white
firepower. It was only plastic, but this cool new weaponry had the flat green color of Army materiel, and it looked to us like the real thing.

Of course, we had to take it to the “jungle” and put it to good use. For weeks, and then months afterward, we staged battlefield sieges, and it seemed like I was always the guy manning the machine gun, getting attacked by nine or ten kids and mowing them all down.

If we weren't on the corner of Hecla and Adams, we were down the other end of Hecla on Dorchester Avenue, near the plating shop where my father worked. It was a little seedier, a little poorer, a little more adventuresome. It seemed like a mile from one end of Hecla to the other, but in fact it was only a few hundred feet; the distance was cultural. There was a barroom on the corner of Dorchester, and a First National variety store, Johnny's butcher shop, a gas station, and Murray's drug store. Some old Irish guy actually tried to set up a restaurant for a while. That lasted about six months; nobody in that part of town had any money to eat out with.

If you walked the other way and took a left down Adams, the world was very different. That was on the way to Field's Corner, the commercial center of the neighborhood. The barbershop where I got my hair cut was at Fieldsie, as was the Peerless Market. Meyer's Delicatessen held a special place in my heart. I was a finicky eater and refused to eat Wonder Bread or Tip-Top or any white bread at all. Meyer's sold bulkie rolls, my favorite. Crusty on the outside, fluffy in the middle, I had my Sunday dinner leftovers on a bulkie roll for lunch almost every day at school, except for Fridays. Back then, Catholics couldn't eat meat on Fridays, so my lunch would consist of Saltines with jam. I think some of the kids thought we were so poor we couldn't afford sandwiches, but I just would not eat white bread.