William Landay - The Strangler

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 withDetective 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.”

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 creche 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-and-grab, 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?”