The Marliave is a tiny but authentic chunk of Rome, ripped out of the eternal city and dropped unspoiled onto a corner of the block between School and Bromfield Streets. The stone steps leading up to the entrance once led to the Royal Gardens when King George’s royal governors were housed a block away.
Noon was a memory, but a recent memory, by the time I climbed those steps to the entrance.
The line of customers at the door suffered not gladly my weaving and squeezing my way close to the front of the line. I had a nodding acquaintance with the maitre d’ from past occasions, which was usually good for a smile, a handshake, and a prediction of twenty minutes to the next table.
I caught his eye and mouthed the words, “Is Mr. Devlin here yet?”
I think he misunderstood and thought I said the pope was awaiting my arrival. He moved the head-of-the-liners out of my way and led me like the returning son to a small upstairs chamber in the back.
The room had the same Romanesque charm that pervaded the Marliave. It held one single table at which were gathered Lex Devlin, a dapper little dude of about the same vintage, whom I assumed to be Conrad Munsey, and a third, gaping chair.
Lex acknowledged my arrival with an eyebrow and a nod toward the chair, which I took as an invitation to join the fun. When he introduced me as “the late Mr. Knight,” I realized that “noon” did not mean “or so, at your convenience.” I was gratified, however, that though he may never use it to my face, he still remembered my name.
Conrad Munsey, our dinner companion, was another piece of work. Judging from his sitting position, I estimated that he’d come about up to my chin. He had bright eyes and a sharp little moustache. In fact, everything about him, from his salt-and-pepper hair, which looked as if it were trimmed hourly, to his diminutive but perfectly formed body, which he had tucked into a tidy, dark three-piece suit with the correct, conservative tie, bespoke nobody’s fool.
I sensed comfort and probably more than mutual respect between Mr. Devlin and Mr. Munsey. I remembered Mr. Devlin saying they “go back.”
I shook hands with Mr. Munsey and received a menu from the waiter. I was about to open it, when a red-haired man of about fifty years swept in from the kitchen and snatched the menus out of the hands of the three of us. Judging from the fine Italian wool of his suit, I figured he was not the busboy.
“Mr. Devlin, you never need a menu. What do you feel like? A little veal? A little pasta first, maybe a white sauce? You like my antipasto. I’ll fix it myself. What do you think? You leave it to me?”
I saw the softest side of Lex Devlin I’d ever seen when he smiled and touched our host on the arm.
“We couldn’t be in better hands, Vincenzo.”
That widened the smile. Vincenzo gestured to the waiter and mentioned a particularly good vino bianco.
“Whoa, Vincenzo. No wine for this gentleman and myself. Connie, you suit yourself.”
I didn’t remember being consulted on the wine refusal, but apparently I was riding shotgun on Mr. Devlin’s wagon. No sweat. If the boss was suggesting that I had two days’ clear-headed work to do that afternoon, he was reading my mind.
When the room cleared and Vincenzo delicately closed the door to the outside room, Lex leaned across the table.
“Let’s talk, Connie. There’s a rumbling in the hills. I don’t like it. I wanted to see if you’re picking anything up.”
Mr. Munsey’s eyes were crackling, and his lips did something that put his moustache at a tilt, but nothing came out.
Mr. Devlin sat back. “You have no problem with Mr. Knight, Connie. We’re on the same side. He needs to know where the shots are coming from, too. They could blindside either one of us.”
Munsey took a couple of seconds on that one, but Mr. Devlin’s confidence apparently won out. There was no one else in the room, but Mr. Munsey leaned in a bit before he spoke.
“Something’s cooking. I’m getting more uncomfortable by the day. I remember the last time, and so do you. What tipped you this time, Lex?”
“The right honorable Mrs. Lamb. First she wanted to hang Bradley’s fleece on the courthouse door. That was honest ambition. She’d convict Kermit the Frog if it’d get her to the statehouse. That side of her I believed. This morning she calls with an offer of a reduced charge. No headlines. Could even look like a slap in the face to the Chinese community-and every other minority community. And if you read what I think you do, you know that the whole Chinese community is torn up over this murder. That move didn’t come from our Mrs. Lamb, Connie. Her lips were moving, but someone was feeding her the words. If it’s true, I need to know who. I thought maybe those foxy ears of yours might have picked up something in the wind.”
The moustache curled into a foxy grin.
“Could be that she heard that the redoubtable Lex Devlin was leading the defense, and she decided to withdraw to safer shoals.”
Mr. Devlin leaned across the table. Only his eyes were smiling. “Could be that you’re full of enough bovine feces to fertilize Ireland, Mr. Munsey.”
They were six inches apart. “That would be Northern Ireland, Mr. Devlin. You could handle that rowdy southern province with no help from anyone.”
For the second time since I’d known him, a smile cracked Mr. Devlin’s lips. “It’s not much of a compliment, Mr. Munsey, but I’ll give it to you anyway. You’re a credit to your race.”
“I’ll say the same for you, Mr. Devlin. And heaven knows your race needs all the credit it can get.”
I could be wrong, but as I listened to this verbal tennis match, I could swear that the brogues of these two Boston-bred colonials thickened progressively, one from Dublin, the other from Ulster. It was the arrival of three antipastos in the hands of Vincenzo that called a halt. When the door closed, and the antipastos had been sampled, the smiles were gone.
“What have you heard, Connie?”
“Nothing concrete, Lex. Let me tell you what I’ve noticed. The boys have been restless. The morning that indictment came down against young Bradley, there were messages flying between them and little clusters of them meeting in each other’s offices. The tone, you might say, was distinctly jubilant.”
“I take it that’s not their usual condition. Incidentally, sonny, ‘the boys’ are the esteemed justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, of which our Mr. Munsey has been the chief clerk since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary.”
I nodded, not wanting to interrupt the flow.
“The ‘usual condition’ of the crowd I’m talking about is benign indifference to each other at best. Incidentally, I’m not talking about all of them. It’s mainly Winston, Carter, Fulbright. Masterson and Chambers may be part of it. Carlyle doesn’t show much emotion about anything, but he was in on some of the meetings. The others-Keefe, Samuels, and Reynolds-seemed unaffected. As I say, there was a big mood swing. This is why I tie it to the Bradley business. The morning of the indictment, they were a jolly little play group. Later in the day, when word had it that you were saddling up on the side of young Bradley-I’m serious about this-the mood changed. They were a bunch of tense little puppies. That was yesterday afternoon. I noticed little clusters of meetings erupting all afternoon. What does it mean?” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That’s interesting, Connie. I know your collection of Supreme Judicial conservatives isn’t losing any sleep over the fate of our black defendant or the old Chinese man. Obviously, the focus is Judge Bradley’s chances of joining their club. Does it really shake them that badly?”
“It’s not so much Bradley himself. They could ignore him like they do Keefe and the rest. It’s whom he’d replace. Fulbright’s pushing eighty, and he appears less and less in chambers. I think his health is more of a problem than he’s telling anyone. That means that if he goes and Bradley replaces him, you’ve got an old-guard conservative out and a confirmed civil rights liberal in. There goes the delicate balance of power, at least on civil rights issues.”
“Come on, Connie. Do they still care that much about civil rights? What bastions are left to fall? We’ve got legislation on open housing, job discrimination, voting.”
“And still the most segregated society north of Birmingham. For all of the legislation, how many blacks live in Brookline? How many whites live in Roxbury? If you had a child, would you send him to school in Roxbury?”
“Granted, and that’s my point. You can’t tell me those tired old men still think they’re saving the world from the rising minorities. Hell, you could pack the court with Bradleys and in ten years Brookline still wouldn’t send their kids to school in Roxbury. It’ll take more than Bradley to change that.”
Munsey held both palms up. “I’m only telling you what I see. But I’ll tell you two more things.”
He cut off the discourse while the antipasto plates were cleared and the finest magic I’ve ever seen worked on veal was placed before us. Vincenzo served it personally, and again remembered to close the door behind him. Munsey spoke before a bite of the veal was tasted.
“You’ve got two facts here. First fact, the boys go into a tizzy when this Bradley business breaks. Then there’s another flurry of activity when the great Lex Devlin comes out of retirement for the defense. Fact two, coincidentally our crusading prosecutor offers a deal of leniency that runs against her personal best interests. Not in character. Can we agree on that?”
Munsey paused while Mr. Devlin nodded.
“Which leaves us with the question, is there a connection? And if so, what’s the grip they have on her?”
“And more to the point, Connie, why would they care enough to pull that kind of string, if in fact they have influence over her to begin with? No, I don’t see it. They may have a rooting interest in who joins their club, but I don’t buy the civil rights angle as anything serious. They’re not that afraid of Judge Bradley.”
Munsey sat back with his eyebrows raised for dramatic effect.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Mr. Devlin, but was it not yourself that called me out of concern over the strange turn of events?”
“I know, and I appreciate the information, Connie. I don’t think that’s the answer, though. You know, there’s another possibility. We could be looking in the wrong direction. Maybe the DA found a serious hole in her case and dropped back to a charge she thought she could prove. A conviction on a lesser charge would still be better for her than losing the case outright.”
Munsey dropped his voice a little, and I noticed he was looking right into Mr. Devlin’s eyes.
“I’ll say just one more thing. The last time I can remember the bees stirring in the hive this way goes back to the Dolson case.”
I was looking at Mr. Munsey, but I could almost feel the effect of those words on Mr. Devlin. I could tell that Mr. Munsey was taking it in, too.
“You know yourself, Lex, there was a lot more to that case than ever came to the surface.”
Mr. Devlin’s voice was quiet and heavy, but not unsure.
“Let it rest, Connie. There’s no connection. Is that all?”
“That’s the best I can do, Lex. I’m one of their breed, so they’re happy to have me as chief clerk. But they don’t invite me to sit around the campfire.”
Lex nodded. “Thanks, Connie. We’ll carry on the war with an eye to our backs.”