William Landay - Mission Flats

And when it began to claw its way out of that hole, Trudell went to Gittens, because who else could he take his murderer’s guilty conscience to? And Gittens would soothe him. Gittens saw the big picture. Gittens reminded him what Fasulo had done. Rape, murder. And not just the cop in the Kilmarnock, bad as that was. Frank Fasulo was evil, Gittens said. Fasulo got what he had coming to him, and who knows how many other lives were saved because of it. Martin Gittens slept like a newborn babe, he claimed, he slept the sleep of the just. Those little counseling sessions would take for a while too. They would calm Trudell and allow him to go about his business of patrolling, first as a beat cop, then as a Narcotics detective in the Flats, the hot zone, where everyone wanted to be. That’s where Artie Trudell is now. Area A-3 Narcotics — Mission Flats. ‘Little Beirut,’ the cops call it, and who’s to say it isn’t worse than the actual Beirut in this hot summer of ’87? And didn’t Martin Gittens stick by him? Didn’t Gittens smooth the way for him? Even Julio Vega — who seems to know more about department politics than the Commissioner himself — Vega, who always keeps a jealous eye on the guy above him in the rankings — even Vega knows Gittens is a man to trust. So if Gittens says it was the right thing, then it must be the right thing. Period.

But in this summer of 1987 Frank Fasulo has begun to crawl back into Artie Trudell’s consciousness in a new and surprising way. Trudell stopped using the Tobin Bridge long ago. Now, on those rare occasions when he has to get to the North Shore, he makes the long sweep around Route 128, the ring road around Boston. A few extra minutes of driving time is a small — price to — pay for avoiding the nightmares that crossing the Tobin dredges up. But there is another bridge Trudell has to cross, one he can’t avoid. It is the Sagamore Bridge, one of two bridges that separate Massachusetts from Cape Cod. The Sagamore is a high bridge, much more graceful than the Tobin, a 1930s WPA project that spans the Cape Cod Canal. And isn’t it Artie Trudell’s dumb luck that his in-laws have a place in Dennis? That his wife insists on going to the Cape, for the kids, she says? Trudell is able to wiggle out of most of these trips. He can pile on the details and the double-shifts and jam up his schedule so tight in the summertime that there isn’t time for trips to Cape Cod. Sorry, honey. But there are too many weekends to avoid it altogether, and eventually she starts in with ‘do you mean to tell me you never even get a day off, Artie? Not one day? Are you the only cop in Boston?’ So Artie Trudell — who never liked to fight, giant though he is — has to face the Sagamore Bridge. Twice each trip, once on the way down, once on the way back. These crossings are causing a kind of anxiety that Trudell can’t quite explain. He even looked it up in the DSM, the dictionary of neuroses, the bible for crazies like Artie Trudell feels himself becoming. The proper name for it is gephyrophobia, the fear of crossing bridges, and Trudell’s anxiety is nothing compared to some of the case histories in the book. There are people — wack jobs — who get it so bad they can’t even be near a bridge, never mind on one. Trudell’s anxiety is nothing like that. But it is real enough. He becomes irritable, distracted, he sweats, especially when the Cape traffic leaves him up on that bridge for fifteen, twenty minutes at a time. He dreads the ride home and can’t sleep the night before. Now, in the summer of ’87, it has gotten worse, much worse, because each crossing triggers memories of Frank Fasulo. Every trip to the Cape to see his goddamn in-laws, every trip across the goddamn Sagamore Bridge triggers another round of dreams and night-sweats and worries. And visions: Frank Fasulo tipping forward like a chopped-down tree. Fasulo spinning around the bridge support like Gene Kelly on that lamppost in Singin’ in the Rain. Fasulo diving downward at such speeds… By July, Trudell is barely sleeping, and the guilt and exhaustion have begun to feed each other. Artie Trudell feels himself draining away.

And at some point he realizes the truth: He has committed a murder. The revelation does not come all at once like a bolt of lightning. No, one day it is simply there and Trudell can’t be quite certain when it arrived. Maybe it has always been there and he chose not to see it. But there it is, the undeniable truth — Artie Trudell is a murderer. Or an accomplice or a coconspirator or a joint venturer or whatever the lawyers will choose to call it. The technical term does not really matter. Whatever name the lawyers assign, Trudell knows the truest description is the simplest: MURDERER. He knows, at any rate, that he can’t live with the secret any longer.

So now it’s Monday, August 3, 1987, two weeks before the raid on the red-door apartment.

‘I’m going to see Franny,’ Trudell announces.

Gittens does not react. He can see Artie Trudell’s big face in front of him and he knows Artie is just about at the end of his rope. He looks like shit. His eyes are rimmed with red, his complexion is chalky. Gittens does not want to spook him.

‘I don’t know what else to do, Martin. We killed that guy.’

‘Shh. Keep your voice down, big man.’

They are in the locker room of the Area A-3 station-house, a cinder-block basement that looks and smells precisely like a school gym locker. The floor is painted concrete. Fluorescent lights hum overhead. It is eleven P.M. and the room is empty. Still, Gittens and Trudell act as if they are in a crowd. Seated on opposite benches, they lean close to each other and whisper. This is the A-3, the Hotel No-tell. We take care of our own problems here — and anyone who looks at Artie Trudell will realize there is a very big problem.

‘Martin, I don’t know what to do.’ Trudell squeezes his head with the heels of his hands as if he could squeeze the thoughts of the MURDERED man back down. ‘I don’t know what to do.’

Gittens takes Trudell by the wrists and pulls his hands off his head. ‘Come on, Artie, stop that.’

‘Jesus, Martin.’

‘Come on, Artie, what?’

‘I was a fuckin’ altar boy!’

‘Well, you probably won’t get that job back.’

‘I’m a murderer. We murdered him.’

‘No. We’ve been all through this. It wasn’t murder, Artie. You know what was going to happen to that guy? He was going to get caught and he was going to Walpole for life. End of story. He was already dead. You can’t kill someone who’s already dead.’

‘I don’t believe that.’

‘Artie, if we didn’t do it, the guy would still be alive today. Would that be right, after what he did? He might even get parole, Artie, think about that. His lawyer would say he was all coked up and they’d knock it down to second-degree and that’s only fifteen years to parole. Would you want to see that, Artie? Would you want to see Fasulo back on the street while that cop he killed is still dead as dirt? That wouldn’t be right, now, would it? That cop is dead and he’s going to stay dead.’

‘I feel like I’m dead too.’

It looks to Gittens like Trudell is about to cry, so he stops explaining and simply soothes. ‘Shh, shh. Come on, cut that shit out. Come on. Artie, you’ve got to pull it together.’

‘I’m going to ask Franny what to do.’

‘That’s a mistake.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘You will care, Artie. What do you think Franny’s going to say? You think you can walk up to a DA and confess to murder and then just walk away? Think of the position you’re putting him in. Don’t do that to Franny. He’ll have to report it. They’ll put away the both of us. They’ll have to.’

‘I don’t care anymore.’

‘No? You want to be a murderer?’